I'm looking for a comparative review of the technology and it's future state and the companies each OS belongs to.

Does anyone have any links handy that they could reference or point me in the right direction around this topic?

My client is a financial investor looking for advice and opinions on the current state of technology in both regards.

Novell and SuSE and IBM and RedHat

Xen Works and VMWare.

My first impression is that you are being paid by a client to do work in a field that you know little about. If that's true, then there are some pretty serious implications---for everyone---if we start helping you.

I think you need to ask some kind of more specific question. Also, explain to us what your client wants to invest in.

Sorry I left such a poor impression.

I'm looking for "Two heads are better than one".

SuSE has great enterprise support and Novell really goes out of their way to address issues/bugs and provide top notch resolution. (Each customers mileage may vary) Since kernel 2.6 SLES has gained in popularity and most notably scalability. We have been able to get some great 8x16 performance on IBM 445's. There's a memory management problem (Memory fragmentation) in Kernel 2.4, I haven't looked into it if it's been fixed in 2.6 or addressed individually by Novell or RedHat

RedHat has a great product as well, and I even prefer it better. The Base OS is a little heavy and requires significant securing off the shelf, but the Satellite service they offer is great for small business who don't have enterprise asset management in place. Also, since OLE is gaining in popularity, working on RedHat is a transferable skill when dealing with oracle OLE installations.

I've found that RedHat support at all levels is superior to Novell, both on the web through their knowledge base support docs and over the phone. I do get a little frustrated with SOS reports, but that rigtht there differentiates the two products. SuSE doesn't have a SOS type tool that grabs all your pertinent system info for diags.

So I'm not fishing for someone to tell me what to tell my customer, I'm recognizing that to say I have all the answers is just foolish and was looking for current info on the products that I may not be aware of (EX: Novell Files CH13!!! *How'd I miss that?*), if any exists.

Is your client trying to decide who to hire for some service?

What is your area of expertise?

Your second post has more detail, but I fear that most of what you get here will be partially-informed biases. Also, the forum can't really be in the position of **appearing** to have recommended (or discredited) a particular company.

OK, so strip the client part and just offer conjecture.

I'm not looking for anything binding here, just what's the word on the street?


I'm a Sr. Systems Admin for the past 15 years. They're not looking to hire anyone, they're just looking for the word from a "horses" mouth as it were. It's an investment group that reaches out to SME's for the skinny.

I assumed I would get fanboi commentary and the like, but just trying to see what the feel is.

I think RedHat has a better shot at the moment myself, but SLES is tight, no doubt.

Hrmm..I should look for a market share data.

Regardless of my reservations in this situation, I am not qualified in the specific questions you are asking. All I can offer is that---when advising a paying client--you are probably best off using your own personal experience.