Novell said on Wednesday that its recently released SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop will cost users over USD 300 less than Microsoft forthcoming Windows Vista operating system, and encouraged users to look at their desktop operating system options. Novell UK’s technical director, Brian Green, laid out the list pricing for SLED and Windows Vista. Green said a business Vista license will set users back USD 299, compared to USD 50 for a one-year subscription to SLED.
And what happens afterwards?
You buy another one year subscription?
You lose technical support. This isn’t Vista where it locks itself up because it’s not authenticated.
You don’t need a subscription with Vista to keep it activated. The license is perpetual and the standard support cycle for businesses is 10 years.
yeah, but you are limited to the number of times you can move your windows installation. And you’re limited by the number of times you can change your hardware before it does lock up without activation.
IMO that’s much worse than a subscription for support that doesn’t stop you using the product after the subscription expires. In 10 years time, I could end up having to buy Vista two or three times with the amount of times I change hardware and computers.
That’s why companies get site licenses, silly.
Volume license customers are subject to different terms that depend on the plan they choose, and volume media generally uses one key for all systems covered under the license. As long as the business has enough licenses to cover the systems on which they want to use the software, moving from one system to another shouldn’t be an issue.
The USD 50 subscription allows your system to continue to receive updates and patches from Novell via the net. If you believe you’ll need more support than what’s available in Novell’s user forums you can buy support at any level you’re willing to afford. Note that SLED is really intended for companies (“enterprises”) and the support pricing reflects this.
AFAIR you can’t access updates without subscription in SLED. Microsoft doesn’t ban people from automatic updates even if they didn’t buy a copy of Windows XP in the first place.
but they will with Vista…
//AFAIR you can’t access updates without subscription in SLED. Microsoft doesn’t ban people from automatic updates even if they didn’t buy a copy of Windows XP in the first place.//
There are multiple places (repositories) from which you can get updates for SuSe with or without subscriptions.
Apt4RPM for Suse. Smart package manager. Not only are there several different repositories, there are several different ways they are organised.
This type of multiple-source free support just isn’t available for any version of Windows.
So that means its not really cheaper right?
You can buy a three year subscription for $125; about $41.67 a year. SLED includes much more software out-of-the-box than Windows Vista Ultimate and will have a competitive interface by 11 or 12, when KDE 4 and Gnome 2.20 are released.
I use openSUSE, which has a TCO of $0. Its free as in time as well! Because my system and peripherals work flawlessly on SUSE and most other up-to-date distros, including my Winmodem.
“One year’s maintenance for Vista would cost an additional $86”
Really? Since when?
Are you sure they aren’t confusing “Software Assurance” with “maintenance”. SA comes with significant benefits, inclusing the big one: Softgrid. Thats going to make deploying software easy!
Green admitted that businesses should also consider the cost of migrating users to Linux on the desktop
That would expensive! As Munich has proven.
//That would expensive! As Munich has proven.//
Au contraire, Munich is on budget.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/80071
“Wilhelm Hoegner, the city’s IT director, now expects to stay within the migration budget of 35 million euros. The largest share of that budget — 38 percent — is set aside for training courses, but apparently these courses do not have to be as intensive as initially feared.”
Who knows what will be required for training budget for organisations thinking of switching to Vista and Office 2007? Probably significantly more.
A switch such as Munich is undertaking now is going to place Munich’s IT in an excellent position for the future of operating IT systems in the EU.
http://business.newsforge.com/business/06/10/20/1621200.shtml?tid=1…
Munich is going to have no trouble at all complying with the European Interoperability Framework.
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/3473
Organisations in Europe that do not switch soon will probably have a much larger expense later on.
Is that, SA, like in ‘BSA’?
still get updates just not from the Novell repositories, so in theory you can update from a mirror site or etc?
It seems that the article was pulled from CBR’s website. After seeing that the link was broken, I tried a search for “Novell” without any luck. So, I wasn’t able to read the actual article.
In response to some of the comments made here though, I would like to just mention that it would take six years worth of subscriptions for SLED to match the price quoted for Vista (I have no idea whether most businesses will actually pay that price). So, what will happen after a year, and the subscription has expired? Businesses will have the option to renew the subscription to continue to receive support from Novell, continue using SLED without official support, or move to something else without feeling that they’ve wasted money.
What else could they move to? SLED has releases far more often than once every five or six years. Even if SLED is only released once every two years going forward, the latest and greatest with full commercial support will cost less than Windows or OS X. I can already guess at responses claiming that SLED can’t match either OS for one reason or another, but for me, a Linux-based system is superior to either Windows or OS X for a number of reasons for a number of tasks. And, Linux is improving on many of its so-called weaknesses quite rapidly.
I think that what Novell would like businesses to consider is that an automatic upgrade to Vista may not be the best option right now or even a year from now, and I agree with them.