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I was wondering "What about Canonical" but it looks like SUSE's annual revenue is about 4 times that of Canonical, and of course SUSE requires a contract to get

I was wondering "What about Canonical" but it looks like SUSE's annual revenue is about 4 times that of Canonical, and of course SUSE requires a contract to get patches etc. where Ubuntu doesn't. I'd be curious what the difference in the install base is like.

metildaa 8y ago
Considering Suse has Walmart, Kroger (and their QFC, Fred Meyer, etc subsidiaries), Safeway/Albertsons, and numerous European & African chains using SLES as the base of their retail systems, they likely sell many more support contracts. SLES has pushed deep onto back office computers and embedded devices like deli scales, which ia a big stretch from where it started (as an IBM 4690 OS replacement).
- Barrin92 8y ago
  Yep suse is big in retail, IIRC they service about 70% of the top 100 retailers or something like that. Also the car industry seems to rely on suse quite heavily, and I think the US defense and airforce use SLES as well.
beatgammit 8y ago
Isn't Canonical also operating at a loss even after it's massive success? I don't think I've seen anything definitive about it's success as a commercial offering, but I can say I rarely meet commercial Canonical consumers but I regularly meet commercial SUSE and RedHat customers. If Canonical is sold, I doubt it would be for nearly as much as SUSE or RHEL. The general consensus seems to be that Ubuntu is for new users, while SUSE and RHEL are for serious customers, and that's far more important than most other features from an enterprise perspective (nobody ever got fired for choosing RHEL/SUSE). And yeah, I also would be very interested in the paying install base. Personally, I'm switching to SUSE because there's a supported path from Tumbleweed to SUSE, and Ubuntu has caused me far too much pain for me to trust them with my money and my business. Ubuntu just doesn't seem to know what it wants to be when it grows up, and that's a problem that SUSE and RHEL have solved long ago.

metildaa 8y ago

Considering Suse has Walmart, Kroger (and their QFC, Fred Meyer, etc subsidiaries), Safeway/Albertsons, and numerous European & African chains using SLES as the base of their retail systems, they likely sell many more support contracts. SLES has pushed deep onto back office computers and embedded devices like deli scales, which ia a big stretch from where it started (as an IBM 4690 OS replacement).

Barrin92 8y ago
Yep suse is big in retail, IIRC they service about 70% of the top 100 retailers or something like that. Also the car industry seems to rely on suse quite heavily, and I think the US defense and airforce use SLES as well.

beatgammit 8y ago

Isn't Canonical also operating at a loss even after it's massive success? I don't think I've seen anything definitive about it's success as a commercial offering, but I can say I rarely meet commercial Canonical consumers but I regularly meet commercial SUSE and RedHat customers. If Canonical is sold, I doubt it would be for nearly as much as SUSE or RHEL. The general consensus seems to be that Ubuntu is for new users, while SUSE and RHEL are for serious customers, and that's far more important than most other features from an enterprise perspective (nobody ever got fired for choosing RHEL/SUSE). And yeah, I also would be very interested in the paying install base. Personally, I'm switching to SUSE because there's a supported path from Tumbleweed to SUSE, and Ubuntu has caused me far too much pain for me to trust them with my money and my business. Ubuntu just doesn't seem to know what it wants to be when it grows up, and that's a problem that SUSE and RHEL have solved long ago.