Debian, a free distribution of the Linux operating system, is better suited to mission-critical applications than rival commercial distributions, one of the distribution's developers — who you can see pictured in our CeBIT 2005 Gallery — claimed on Friday.
Debian developer Michael Meskes told the Linux Forum in CeBIT that because Debian is run independently as a volunteer organisation it has a number of benefits over alternative Linux distributions that are managed by companies.
"A free project can't go insolvent and can't be taken over," said Meskes. He also claimed the software is of higher quality as developers can take their time getting it right.
"It has a higher quality [than some commercial distributions] as there's not this need to bring features out quickly," said Meskes. "There is no product manager that says we need a release now. There is no need to add new features because other distributions have."
Despite being developed by volunteers, Debian does offer features such as security updates and support.
"You can do automatic software updates in Debian," said Meskes. "We don't have nice graphic interface, but all you need is there. You can update hundreds or thousands of machines at the same time."
There are various companies that offer support for Debian, including Credativ, an open source services company run by Meskes. Noèl Köthe, a Debian developer who is a consultant at Credativ, said it is able to provide 24-hour support, with a response time of one hour during the day and within three hours at night.
Meskes claimed that Credativ provides support for a number of companies that are running mission critical applications on Debian.
Commercial Linux vendors, such as Red Hat and SuSE Linux, offer free support to their customers. For example, many of Red Hat's Linux products come with service level guarantees, which vary by product.
For a look at the fun side of CeBIT, check out our CeBIT Digital Living special. Or visit ZDNet UK's CeBIT Toolkit for more enterprise technology stories and pictures from the show floor.
Talkback
A very nice article. Just one comment I'd like to point out.
"Commercial Linux vendors, such as Red Hat and SuSE Linux, offer free support to their customers. For example, many of Red Hat's Linux products come with service level guarantees, which vary by product."
Commercial Linux vendors such as Red Hat and SuSE *DO NOT* offer free support. Thats exactly what you're paying for when you license copies of RHES or Suse Professional. The ability to get support from the vendor, as well as access to their online repositories for package and kernel updates.
ie. GPL v2 Section 1 second paragraph:
"You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee."
granted not everything in various distros are under the gpl, but thats just an example.
Of all the things that make up distributions like Red Hat and Suse.. very little of it was actually developed by those vendors.
So just to re-iterate, when you go and spend the extra $$$ for a non-free (as in beer) distro.. it's the support thats costing you that $$$ not the software itself.