RE: Why redhat will never get another dime of my money.

From: Julie Felton (Julie.Felton_at_pl.netl.doe.gov)
Date: 03/31/05

  • Next message: Burke, Thomas G.: "ipchains support"
    Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 08:30:55 -0500
    To: <redhat-list@redhat.com>
    
    

    I've worked with SuSE several years ago and have to say that (at least
    back then) their tech support was *exceptional*. In fact, I urged our
    company to choose SuSE over RH for that particular reason. Of course,
    they choose RH because they had a bigger percentage of the North
    American market share.

    I can't speak much about RH tech support as I haven't used them often
    enough to form a personal opinion, but I hope (keeping my fingers
    crossed) that they're responsive when I need them for something
    critical. I will say that I've heard numerous horror stories about
    their support from several people over the years. If you're going to
    pay $10k/year or more for support, they *better* be good.

    Regarding software quality (or even support quality)...

    Personally, I understand that nothing is perfect; and just because an
    app works flawlessly on one system, that doesn't mean it's good for all
    environments. HOWEVER, customers should have some options. As it
    stands, we spend sometimes hundreds of thousands for software, and if it
    doesn't work in our environment or if it doesn't do what the sales rep
    and "demo" claims, we're left with a plastic disk and an unused license.
     Businesses seem to have no course of action for bad service, bad
    software, or snake oil.

    I suppose I have a real problem paying out cash to be someone's bug
    catcher - and then more for the patches - and then more to resolve
    problems that the patches create. It's not just RH either; I've had
    LOTS of issues with MS too (big surprise). I will say, though, that
    I've paid for support calls to MS and have been reimbursed if the
    problem turns out to be a bug in their stuff.

    Regards,

    Julie A. Felton

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create
    the universe. "
                                                                           
                   --Carl Sagan
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    >>> Steven.Jones@vuw.ac.nz 3/30/2005 3:56 PM >>>
    Personally I am very shocked at RH's quality, it is as bad if not
    worse
    than MS IMHO. And it doesn't end there.... we also get Support from MS
    and as we have Sun servers as well, Sun, then add in HP for tru64
    boxes
    and RH is by far the worst performer of the lot in terms of release
    and
    patch quality, and their support, well......

    Having used Debian for 8 years, Solaris for 5 and having to use RH for
    9
    months commercially the difference is tremendous.......

    I am seriously looking at Suse, at least with Novell down the road I
    have someone to kick locally in NZ. Dell NZ/AP suck for RH support and
    RH in the USA just do not cut it either.

    8><----

    >So you didn't properly test a new release that impacted 100 servers?
    >Shame on you...

    The computer software world has a lot to learn, while I agree with you
    up to a point....In a QA engineering environment you trust the item
    you
    install as being fit for its purpose, you do not need to test it, its
    QA'd. In turn when you release something as QA'd in turn the person
    downline should be able to trust it is going to work.

    8><-----

    >It doesn't matter if you buy a car or software - you need to test
    drive
    >each one and determine how it's going to react to what you're going
    to
    >do. If it's important to you, test it first and develop a backout
    >plan.

    See my comments above.....

    Regards

    Thing

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  • Next message: Burke, Thomas G.: "ipchains support"

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