[Scottish] Re: Large Linux environments

[Kevin McDermott]

Hi,

<disclaimer I work for Canonical, but not on Ubuntu>
>
>  For 'Enterprise' applications you tend to really only have two options: Red
> Hat and Novell. It's a pretty miserable situation where most hardware and
> software vendors will only certify for these two. Sure, Oracle might run
> fine on Gentoo, or Slackware on a HP server. But if you have support
> contracts the moment they realise you're not running one something with a
>  veneer of corporate gloss and with their seal of approval, you are on your
> own.

Ubuntu is now certified on a wide range of Sun hardware, and on a
selection of Dell desktop machines.

>  Yeah, and you can get even cheaper support on SuSE/Novell Linux if you have
> a relationship with Microsoft. You can buy some of Bill's discounted support
> vouchers and with that the assurance that MS won't sue you for the patent
> infringements in Linux.

This has yet to be tested in any way, and given Microsoft's historic
knavishness, I'm not sure it's as useful as a chocolate fire-guard.

The project I work on http://www.canonical.com/landscape is
Canonical's own Ubuntu specific management system, and is under heavy
development at the moment, even if it doesn't meet your needs, we'd
definitely be keen to find out what you'd want from such an
application as there's a lot of internal discussion going on about new
features.

Kevin