Novell Linux Desktop 9 Vs. Redhat Enterprise WS? 83
amorelock asks: "I manage a small group of 4-6 Linux software engineers / developers that are part of a larger engineering organization. Our IT department has finally, after several months of pushing-back, decided to support our Linux workstations. The have requested that we use an off the shelf distribution that will be fairly easy to manage and maintain (we're talking about Microsoft folks with practically zero Linux experience). We are evaluating both Novell Linux Desktop 9 and Redhat Enterprise WS. Have any fellow Slashdot folks had experience with either of these two distributions, and if so, what did you like or dislike about either of them?"
Re:Ubuntu! (Score:2)
If this is what it takes to get a reluctant IT department to join the mothership, so be it.
Re:Ubuntu! (Score:1)
Novell vs. RedHat? (Score:3, Funny)
It's a tough choice, but I guess I'd go with Solaris 10.
Re:Novell vs. RedHat? (Score:2, Redundant)
Solaris 10 is not a valid option here. They have to use a "an off the shelf [*Linux*] distribution that will be fairly easy to manage and maintain". But if *I* had a broader spectre for desktop systems then I'd say MacOS X.
Grimness is not a valid option (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Grimness is not a valid option (Score:3, Funny)
See?
Isn't that a paradox or something? (Score:2)
Pretty good
Re:Grimness is not a valid option (Score:1)
Lack of a sense of humor is distasteful here on slashdot.
If by "distasteful" you mean "will get you modded Redundant or Flamebait," I totally agree :) Check my history for proof, or just wait till the mods get a hold of this post. I'll learn to use that AC checkbox one day (prolly when I set up another account just so I can post from one place and mod myself up from another...isn't that how it works anyway?).
trolly trolly trolly....Re:Novell vs. RedHat? (Score:1)
Re:Novell vs. RedHat? (Score:1)
Choices such as these are ones companies make on a very regular basis without ever having to Ask Slashdot. Come up with your requirements, come up with a test plan for those requirements and tick the boxes. Once all the boxes are ticked (or not
OSX, Novell (Score:2)
Personally, I'm very happy with SuSE 9.2 and I was very happy with SuSE 7.3. I view SuSE as the perfect middle ground of great support and installers and RedHat. More importantly, SuSE has always, without fail, just worked for everything.
Try CentOS (Score:2)
Re:Try CentOS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Try CentOS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Try CentOS (Score:2)
definitely go with Redhat (Score:1)
But if you want to avoid support headaches, then you might consider just using Knoppix 4.0 DVD edition with the UnionFS . Just have each of your users store files using UnionFS on a separate hard drive.
Re:definitely go with Redhat (Score:1)
Re:definitely go with Redhat (Score:3, Informative)
I hope this has changed in a year as Novell - but I'm guessing prolly not.
Re:definitely go with Redhat (Score:1)
Yay! Another Linux "shootout" (Score:2)
Re:Yay! Another Linux "shootout" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yay! Another Linux "shootout" (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yay! Another Linux "shootout" (Score:2)
That being the case I'd agree this is not a
Debian (Score:1, Offtopic)
I know it wasn't on your list of options, but because you didn't explain why you were limiting your options
Re:Debian (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks for the reply...
Re:Debian (Score:1)
Otherwise, I'd go for a Debian-style (or Debian-based) distro. These days, Debian is seen to lack support; you might prefer Ubuntu, as a server or a workstation.
I admit I haven't tried SuSE or RedHat. Perhaps when I have a hard drive with more than 10.2GB total, I'll try them.
Re:Debian (Score:2)
Download it (that's a fast site, thanks Uncle Sam!)
Burn it to DVD.
Boot from DVD.
Experiment with SuSE 9.3 Pro
When you are done, reboot, pull out the DVD and your file system is un-modified.
Re:Debian (Score:2)
I explained him by phone how to format an extra drive and put it in fstab, he did just fine after a minute of explanation.
In my opinion Debian is quite easy to manage once properly set up, then awaits the task of reading hundreds of man-pages and HOWTO's over the next couple of years. Imho that's the best way to get a profound understanding of GNU
Ubuntu (Score:1, Offtopic)
you are missing the point of the question.. (Score:3, Insightful)
he said we're talking about Microsoft folks with practically zero Linux experience
I rather think IMHO the correct question is "WHO has the best support."
If his MS folks are to feel good about this, pick the distro with the best support. phone, email, in person, or web.
NLD! (bias alert!) (Score:4, Interesting)
Way back when, I used Red Hat as my first serious GNU/Linux rig. I'm glad I did, it was well suited for teaching me the ropes, and my buddies knew it, at least moreso than they knew any other distro. Of course, that was a different time, Red Hat was the undisputed king of distros. Eventually I ran out of patience for RPM hell, which I'm sure has gotten much better in recent years. I wound up taking a deep breath and diving into Slackware, where I knew I'd basically be on my own. I love it, I love basically building everything myself. I should try one of these new-fangled Gentoo type distros that promise to do the grunt work for me.
At work, of course, it's SuSE and NLD, and I'm honestly very impressed with both. SuSE's my weapon of choice as a developer, but it's not hard for me to understand NLD's high marks in terms of usability and as a general Windows-replacement OS.
I'm obviously biased, and I haven't even touched a Red Hat distro in some time, apart from a short fling with Fedora on some spare hardware. And it's not as though the stuff coming out of Red Hat's been getting bad press either, both Red Hat and Novell's offerings to the business world have been really solid lately from the sounds of it. It's probably little more than a matter of taste right now. Novell obviously hopes to shift that and do some very big things in the desktop space, and I think we will. So my knee-jerk recommendation stands; Novell's not going to let you down if you're looking for a solid GNU/Linux OS but don't have any experience with such things.
Just don't let those of us with flamethrowers influence your decision.
Re:NLD! (bias alert!) (Score:2)
I've been meaning to try NLD but so far Fedora has met my simple needs.
Re:NLD! (bias alert!) (Score:2)
Let me see if I got this straight. The Redhat Package Manager doesn't always work so you moved to Slackware where you build everything yourself. Did I get that right? Why did you have to move to Slackware? Can't you build what you need on a RedHat distro?
I still use RedHat. Most of the time, the RPM works fine. When it doesn't, I install the source and build it. Sometimes I have to get into it to solve build errors but
Re:NLD! (bias alert!) (Score:2)
I was still a relative newbie to GNU/Linux. I was using RPMs as a crutch, which led to extra irritation when they didn't work correctly. I thought that by presenting myself with a sink-or-swim situation, I'd force myself to get to the point where I knew what the heck was going on and would no longer use or need any crutches. Slackware jumped out at me as a good
Updates? (Score:1)
But what? (Score:2)
To be honest I don't quite get the problem. Maybe you should read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.htm
I use both and (Score:2)
Now, if I had to choose one I would suggest you go with SuSE all else being equal. The reason for this is that their newest desktop 9.3 is a very good distro and it will keep you happy. But if you went with Redhat you would be happy a
Re:I use both and (Score:2)
Having used both... (Score:2, Informative)
However, if I were looking for a WinDoze replacement, I think you should look at Xandros for the desktop.
Having Used Both (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I was looking on the Suse website and somehow ended up at a German page. Clicking back loaded the previous page in German as well, and so on. That made it even easier to justify downloading the RHEL evaluation.
RHEL installed with minimal fuss. All the hardware in my PC was picked up, including the wireless networking and bluetooth. The installer is pretty-much Fedora but RedHat branded. The whole thing feels much like Fedora, but obviously there are some improvements and proprietary parts.
We are trying to get ClearCase installed on RHEL ES4, but it's proving to be ellusive even though Rational claims it's fully supported. I'm going through the second round of ClearCase patches now to try and fix the userspace and stop the kernel panics (it is a ClearCase problem - doesn't do it until clearcase is installed).
All I can suggest to the OP is download both the evaluations; Suse/Novel have a DVD download and RHEL comes as 4 CDs. You have to register with the respective companies and you get a 30 day trial. Run them on two similar machines, side-by-side and see how they stack up in terms of a few criteria that are important to you.
Re:Having Used Both (Score:1, Funny)
Hey, I'm wondering if there are any valet drivers from expensive resorts here, who can tell me whether I should go with the M5 or for about the same price I can get a Lotus...I just don't know, but I need a really solid driving car. Any tips?
How would they support whatever you choose? (Score:1)
NLD rules (Score:2, Informative)
The integration work that Novell has done with the UI is quite nice. Novell has provided some nice OOo integration with network file access, dialog boxes and improved printing. Additional plusses include the fact that they aquired Ximian which means full Evolution support. I'm not sure how RH supports their
Re:NLD rules (Score:2)
Everyone I've known that began their Linux experience with SuSE has ended up using Linux primarily or exclusively within 2 years, myself included. I can't say that about any other distro.
Re:NLD rules (Score:2)
Hasn't that always been the problem at Novell? Superior tech, lousy marketing.
Depends on the apps (Score:2)
On a more practical note: BEA seems to
Re:Depends on the apps (Score:2)
http://www.novell.com/products/linuxpackages/prof e ssional/index_all.html [novell.com]
http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/v2/ec_dynamic.main? cat_id=1&pn=7&sid=27477 [digitalriver.com]
maybe you meant that on top of the $99 suse pro price, for $40 you can add crossover ?
ok..i did some checking and this looks like the current pricing $99+$39.
Re:Depends on the apps (Score:2)
http://www.codeweavers. [codeweavers.com]
I'd have to say SUSE (Score:5, Interesting)
As many others have said, RedHat and SUSE are both enterprise-class, stable products with great tech and community support. They run lots of commercial applications without modification. Either one is a great general purpose choice for your desktop environment. I feel the NLD product has a more unifed feel and management through YAST. Many RedHat admins dislike SUSE because of YAST, that it changes many config files and no one really knows what it is doing. Be that as it may, managing your network (and possibly having somewhat less skilled Help Desk staff) is made much easier by letting YAST take on the brunt of that work. YAST is a GUI and a command-line application, so you get the best of those two worlds as well. In my typical environments, you don't want the end-user going to the command-line at all if you can help it, as YAST is a great way to keep things straight.
Both systems run Gnome or KDE, so your desktop choice would be more of a decision for how much training you can provide as well as what fits best in your environment. Again, both are enterprise-class environment and both a good choice. Both OS's can run pograms designed for either window manager (aka, you can run Gnome apps in KDE if you have the KDE libraries installed, and vice versa) so you aren't missing out on applications due to window manager issues or widget libraries.
I think Novell is pushing further with more innovations on the desktop (or "features" they are not always new to the computer world) then RedHat is at this time. The SUSE Professional product is really a test-bed for what goes into Novell Linux Desktop. It seem Fedora Core is the same, but feels more like they keep it no-cost so people will continue to use RedHat products. I'll probably get flamed for that, but that's just my impression.
Hardware support (for laptops anyway) seems better in SUSE. Fedora Core 4 won't work with my 802.11 wireless card in my IBM Thinkpad X31 (yes, have to jump through hoops to get it working). It has worked on SUSE since 9.0 out of the box (3 versions ago). But this is not a huge problem these days as you can buy your hardware with linux in mind, and more drivers for new hardware are available.
Finally, determine your support needs and see what offerings both companies have. If you have really green linux admins (like your current Windows admins probably are) you may need many incidents the first year and then fewer after that. You should be able to get a fairly customized support package from either vendor.
Best of luck on your journey!
-m
Re:I'd have to say SUSE (Score:1)
And now for something completely silly (Score:4, Informative)
Well, you can get them anyway - just send a SASE. But it would be kind of silly to put a NLD sticker on your RH box...
Re:And now for something completely silly (Score:2)
That's awesome!
Novell (Score:2)
Having used SUSE for quite some time, and having recently kicked all the Windows out, I would go with Novell for the support.
Yast2 is dead simple. There's a lot of great material regarding migration on the Novell website, which is really geared towards Windows people.
I also like that they seem to have reasonable self-study kits.
Red Hat, no matter what they say, has always seemed to be more server-oriented anyway. I think your Windows guys would get confused. (My boss seems to get confused anytime I sugge
Isn't the real question (Score:1)
I have experienced first-hand the pain of turning over my linux box to the Windows only admins. It is very difficult to have your rights taken away, and have to walk the "admin" though a task that would have only taken seconds.
Seems Obvious To Me (Score:2)
Novell has a long history of decent support of their customers and I believe their prices for workstations are less than Red Hat's (correct me if I'm wrong here, I haven't looked recently.)
The only question you might have is Novell's long-term viability vrs Red Hat's. But since Novell HAS been around longer, has a lot of cash in the bank
Apples to Apples (Score:1)
Re:Apples to Apples (Score:2)
Re:Apples to Apples (Score:1)
Regardless, SLES (despite the name) is Novell's enterprise code base and goes beyond servers. In fact, Novell Linux Desktop is based on SLES.
Re:Apples to Apples (Score:1)
Yeah yeah; "desktop" and "workstation" are both clients, but us marketing people see the world a little differently. You wouldn't run a CAD program on an eMachine, would you?
Re:Apples to Apples (Score:2)
Re:Apples to Apples (Score:2)
And the main difference between RHD and RHEL WS seems to be suppoert for 2 CPUs, Itanium (a market failure), and 4gb of ram (I'm sure this limitation will disappear in a few
You should consult your marketing people... (Score:3, Interesting)
You see, if you read your question carefully, you'll notice that you are Linux developers. Which means you are making a Linux product, that your company sells. Which means you should be using whatever distro your customers use. Marketing should have those figures for you.
Even if you're writing for some embedded box or such, find the distro closest to the one being used.
It's pretty much of a muchness for 6 machines (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, it's crippled in that it ships without mp3 and avi support. This is fixable (on an enterprise scale if you know what you are doing), but annoying.
If something's broken (ACLs over NFS for one) it takes RedHat a long time to acknowledge that it's broken and even longer to release a fix - despite the fact we have 16000 licences and a support contract! This is however a disadvantage of any "Enterprise" distribution.
RedHat is also gnome-centric. This is not a bad thing in itself unless you must have KDE - in which case you must be prepared for RH to say "I'm sorry we won't include because we focus on Gnome."
That said, the enterprise management tools (RedHat Network) absolutely rocks my world, but will be much less useful for 6 machines. I don't think SuSE/Novell have anything that come close to rivalling this. But YMMV of course.
I haven't used Novell Desktop 9, but I have used SuSE extensively and nominally support it for academic use. YaST is good, but then so are the redhat-config-* tools. Novell is much more KDE driven - if you like that kind of thing. SuSE Pro is much better with newer hardware and automating NVidia binary driver install (among others) - but NLD may well suffer from the same stale odour as RHEL (in the same way that Fedora Core works much better on newer hardware than RHEL - but then it is the test-bed for stuff to be included in RHEL)
To be honest, I would push your IT department to either recruit or train one or two guys up to a minimum level of Linux experience alongside their Windows Duties and pick whichever Enterprise Distribution has the best support/price balance for you. At your scale of deployment, you won't see the benefits of RHEL over NLD.
What about Linspire? (Score:1)
This will make things easier for them, not for you I guess.
The true solution. (Score:1)