Linux sucks?

[Jeff Guilfoyle]

Kunal Shah said:
> For Microsoft, they have policy, if it's the problem of 
> Microsoft, they wont charge you. If its problem of your 
> application, they will charge you heavily.

It has been my experience that this is somewhat true.  If there is a known
fix that has not been fully regression-tested you can often get MS to cough
it up for free[1], as well they should.  The bigger issues tend to be
determining the cause of a new problem that has not yet been resolved, or
one that occurs as a result of interaction with a 3rd party driver,
software, hardware, etc.


> As I said, we could never go in production with Linux. 

I run Oracle 9i RAC on a linux cluster at work, and have been in production
for a couple of years.  In that time, I've dealt with some _very_
interesting (read: crappy) problems with everything from fibre-channel
driver problems to completely locking systems.  I had RedHat, Oracle, and
Dell all on the line several times working out these issues.

Here's the interesting thing:  This was no different from any other new
install on any major OS, regardless of the level of support.  For most
'enterprise, server-level' users, the support you get from RH/IBM/MS/Sun is
all about the same today.  Some issues are easy to troubleshoot and resolve,
and some require escalation.  The biggest issues we've run into lately are
getting issues escalated to an appropriate level within Oracle.  RedHat has
not been an issue, and their support has continued to improve over the past
several years.  However, their licensing fees are also now much more in line
with their competition, but that is to be expected.


--jeff

[1] Contrast that with Linux where the fix is always free to all users,
because any fix has to be released under the GPL.