Users who are technically self-supporting and don’t want to pay Red Hat for service and support could deploy Debian, says Open Source Development Lab analyst Stacey Quandt, “and it would lead to greater return on investment.”
Is There a Place for Debian in the Enterprise?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Well, with no certification I would say no. That is basically why software is deployed because of support and hardware vendors cerfify drivers ect. With the current economic climate, I would not want to be the one who would bring a community software product into the enterprise. You could wind up on the outside looking in.
“Well, with no certification I would say no.”
Why not?
What makes one think Debian GNU/Linux cannot do right now what RedHat is doing? If you run stable, you are basically stable as solid rock.
The article states:
“The biggest challenge for Debian is that vendors do not necessarily certify their applications for it,” Quandt said.
Without major software vendors giving their stamp of approval — certifying that their programs are compatible with it — many enterprises will not consider buying a given Linux distribution.
So this answers the question.
There is, or there was (I dont know it’s current status) an LPI path for Debian. I know when I took the 100 tests, you had to choose Debian or Redhat paths.
There are quite a few certified debian admins out there.
I have always thought that deb was better suited for the enterprise than Red Hat, but Red Hat has better marketing, and corpo support.
It’s never the best made product that gets adopted. It’s the best advertised product that does.
The main problem as stated in the article is that Debian DOES not have certification and therefore will not be adopted into the enterprise. This is a must in a 24/7 mission critical datacenter, this is the way it has always been and will be.
The world is not run by just enterprise alone. I work for a museum and we have to get alot out of old hardware. Have you tried to make a Mac or a Windows machine into a stable kiosk for public to beat up on. Well I have and I can tell you that Debian and Linux as a whole can do this and many thing far better then either Windows or Mac os.
Debian does have a place but as it stands now it will not go. There are things that need to be done to get to be in the spot light.
First Tech support:
This becomes a problem in the sense of FREE. One way or another you must pay for tech support.
Second Software companies
This is also a problem as the company must then have a team of people to just keep track of it on the new system. Alias
|wavefront makes Maya ,a high end 3d program, It is stated to only to run on RedHat. But after having a friend look it over he laughed and said debian could run it you would have to downgrade some libraries to run it.
Lastly PR
Nothing will sell it self. You need something other then word of mouth. But this runs back into the problem that it takes money to do this.
Until these and other that I have not thought of are covered it will remain where it is on the desktops and server of the few.
Well since Debian is free and a non-profit, there is noone stopping anyone from setting up traning/paid support for it.
I am in if anyone else are! just sing up for a great offer on a web hosting, and hammer down some ideas, get IBM or any other large companey to give us some $ and we`re god to go.
IT managers are lazy to understand what implies open-source: get to the public and let the public feedback to you
It seems to me that hardware and software profit companies don’t try to get involved really, and they just do what IT managers expect
also
some companies that build distributions are forgeting that
“Without major software vendors giving their stamp of approval — certifying that their programs are compatible with it — many enterprises will not consider buying a given Linux distribution.
So this answers the question.”
Not really. Many tasks (of course not all) can be done by open source programs, which Debian includes, and due to the way Debian is done, with apt, and the high level Q&A in Debian stable (because of the Q&A, it’s a bit outdated though) make it a system that is very well suited for enterprise usage.
What exactly is the Enterprise? Is it that ship in Star Trek? Well, for years, ‘experts’ were telling us that Linux was not ready for the Enterprise, yet at the same time, people were putting Linux to good use in the workplace. It played a major roll in webserving, mail-servers, routing, firewalling, printing, file sharing, etc. Many companies even put their companies bread and butter on it (ex. Google). Finally, a year ago, the ‘experts’ starting telling us that RedHat, SuSe is ready for the Enterprise while Debian isn’t even though they use the same basic components. Well, I myself will continue using Debian in my workplace and enjoy the benefits of easy upgrades and easy security fixes installation. I will enjoy the high loads it is able to handle, the stability, etc. Seeing how I don’t have a starship, I’m happy using Debian at work and letting Solaris and RedHat run on the Enterprise.
The Debian project is confortable allowing others to package their product for commercial application.
Progeny, Lycoris, Xandros, Libranet, even Corel. Strangely enough most of those companies are aiming at home users. But the project keeps itself separate from any marketing efforts.
“…..I’m happy using Debian at work and letting Solaris and RedHat run on the Enterprise.”
lol … this is a good one, mate.
Lycoris is based on Caldera, not Debian. But I agree with you; others have tried to make Debian succeed commercially.
“Without major software vendors giving their stamp of approval — certifying that their programs are compatible with it — many enterprises will not consider buying a given Linux distribution.”
So if <insert any name here> doesn’t want to run Debian GNU/Linux just because of that, that’s their choice. I honestly don’t care rats…
This (lack of) authority doesn’t prove it ain’t ready for Enterprise.
Just because you don’t have a drivers license doesn’t mean you can’t drive a car.
I work at Electronic Government, at Sao Paulo ( http://www.telecentros.sp.gov.br/english/ ), and Debian was the best thing that happened to us: much more reliable tban Red Hat, easier to maintain, apt is the best! Oh, and make-kpkg (kernel-package) is very good to!
Long life to Debian!
chances are the Enterprise will be running Debian since they somehow exist in the future without money.
If you have ZERO marketing, than you will have ZERO people (aside from yourself) using your product. I’m not saying Marketing is more important, you need both a good product and good marketing. If you have marketing only and a crappy product, you can only fool people for so long (You can fool all the people some of the time, and some people all the time, etc).
Sure Debians probably ready for the Enterprise, but most of the enterprise using Linux buys hardware with Linux already installed. With debian not approaching the hardware vendors, it’s just not going to happen. Also, RedHat is guaranteeing 5 years of support (per RHEL release). Debian probably will support it even longer, but they’re not telling anybody.
But, the bottom line is, both RedHat and Debian make great contributions to the Open Source Community. We need to realise that both camps are playing for the same team. Otherwise Microsoft isn’t the greatest threat to us, we are.