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If you pay for support, you get support. I doubt that there would have been much difference in your experience if you were paying for a support contract with on

by orib 18y ago

If you pay for support, you get support. I doubt that there would have been much difference in your experience if you were paying for a support contract with one of the larger Linux distributors, like Redhat or Novell. Linux doesn't mean you're stuck without vendor support, although that's a common misconception. I don't know how Sun's support compares to the various commercial distros, but comparing an unsupported Linux install to a supported Solaris install isn't an apples-to-apples comparison.

astine 18y ago
This is true. What would be interesting however, would be a nice comparison of a supported Linux with a supported Solaris. Then again, when you've paid for Linux support, do what is price difference between it and Solaris then? Whit is the price difference between a supported Solaris install and a supported Red-Hat install? Is Red-Hat significantly cheaper? Does it's less restrictive licensing bring about an advantage? Does it have features that compare with Solaris? In addition to Red-Hat, Novell and supported Ubuntu are also worth talking about. Ubuntu may be free, but support licenses sure aren't. You could also then compare supported Linux distros to unsupported Linux distros, but that's a whole other box of worms.
- 131072 18y ago
  Indeed, you can buy Linux support from Red Hat and other companies. But this rings hollow - they do not provide the level of support that Sun or Microsoft does - try getting them or anyone else to fix an obscure bug in the GNU linker, especially if you're not using their distro (even if you want to pay). If you think you're going to convince the likes of prickly GNU toolchain developers to prioritise the development or release of a patch your company depends on, guess again. And those support contracts cost money, just like Sun/MS support contracts. And as soon as you start relying on software that isn't in their distro, you rapidly run into uncharted territory. The Linux meme of 'you can get support', is, I think, promoted mostly by people who haven't worked on critical IT systems, or have done so without understanding their responsibility. That's not to say Sun's engineering is better than OSS (after all, we got their compiler to segfault as well as gcc, and my BSD/Apache shared hosting has had better uptime than my landline and TV for the last few years, and I'm sure many people want to set fire to the source code for NFS). Linux and other OSS provide the bulk of features that most people use. And you're probably better off with an unsupported apache server than some of the hideous commercial webservers that used to be around. The bottom line is Sun charges a lot of money to mitigate somewhat nebulous risks that are hard to understand and communicate, and their OS has no killer features. They have also mastered the art of alienating potential enthusiasts. All of which put them on shaky ground. It is a shame, because platform diversity is one of the best defences of the internet as a whole. (If you have access to dtrace, learn it. Understanding what it does and being able to use it will make you a better and probably richer developer).
  - orib 18y ago
    As I said, I have no clue on how Redhat's paid support compares to Sun's, although I know they hire lots of developers working on things throughout the entire stack, so I'm assuming that if you paid enough they'd set one of their developers on your problem. I'm not qualified to judge how helpful they are though. Interestingly, I seem to have the entire opposite experience with unpaid support. If I asked nicely, I quickly got help about where to dig into the software and what to look for when fixing stuff. The programmers on the projects were quick to respond with requests for more information and suggested fixes, and often the problem was solved within a day or so. All I did was poke them on IRC. No support contracts at all.

by orib 18y ago

astine 18y ago

This is true. What would be interesting however, would be a nice comparison of a supported Linux with a supported Solaris. Then again, when you've paid for Linux support, do what is price difference between it and Solaris then? Whit is the price difference between a supported Solaris install and a supported Red-Hat install? Is Red-Hat significantly cheaper? Does it's less restrictive licensing bring about an advantage? Does it have features that compare with Solaris? In addition to Red-Hat, Novell and supported Ubuntu are also worth talking about. Ubuntu may be free, but support licenses sure aren't. You could also then compare supported Linux distros to unsupported Linux distros, but that's a whole other box of worms.

131072 18y ago
Indeed, you can buy Linux support from Red Hat and other companies. But this rings hollow - they do not provide the level of support that Sun or Microsoft does - try getting them or anyone else to fix an obscure bug in the GNU linker, especially if you're not using their distro (even if you want to pay). If you think you're going to convince the likes of prickly GNU toolchain developers to prioritise the development or release of a patch your company depends on, guess again. And those support contracts cost money, just like Sun/MS support contracts. And as soon as you start relying on software that isn't in their distro, you rapidly run into uncharted territory. The Linux meme of 'you can get support', is, I think, promoted mostly by people who haven't worked on critical IT systems, or have done so without understanding their responsibility. That's not to say Sun's engineering is better than OSS (after all, we got their compiler to segfault as well as gcc, and my BSD/Apache shared hosting has had better uptime than my landline and TV for the last few years, and I'm sure many people want to set fire to the source code for NFS). Linux and other OSS provide the bulk of features that most people use. And you're probably better off with an unsupported apache server than some of the hideous commercial webservers that used to be around. The bottom line is Sun charges a lot of money to mitigate somewhat nebulous risks that are hard to understand and communicate, and their OS has no killer features. They have also mastered the art of alienating potential enthusiasts. All of which put them on shaky ground. It is a shame, because platform diversity is one of the best defences of the internet as a whole. (If you have access to dtrace, learn it. Understanding what it does and being able to use it will make you a better and probably richer developer).
- orib 18y ago
  As I said, I have no clue on how Redhat's paid support compares to Sun's, although I know they hire lots of developers working on things throughout the entire stack, so I'm assuming that if you paid enough they'd set one of their developers on your problem. I'm not qualified to judge how helpful they are though. Interestingly, I seem to have the entire opposite experience with unpaid support. If I asked nicely, I quickly got help about where to dig into the software and what to look for when fixing stuff. The programmers on the projects were quick to respond with requests for more information and suggested fixes, and often the problem was solved within a day or so. All I did was poke them on IRC. No support contracts at all.