[FASherman]

I haven't had much of an opportunity to work with Linux on Power yet, aside from our tech lab. And since I only had Red Hat, that is what I installed on the test/dev Linux partitions.

I was wondering what everyone else's experience has been? Of the two Linux flavors, which do you prefer and why? Are there any feature benefits of one over the other? Is IBM more committed/more tightly partnered with one over the other?

I've read that IBM is working with SUSE to include dynamic LPAR functionality. Is that already part of Red Hat? That would seem to me to indicate whether SUSE is behind Red Hat or if SUSE and IBM have a tighter partnership.

Any information folks want to share would be greatly appreciated.

[stubbe]

Hi I'm new here. Redhat vs Suse. Hmmm. I'm a regular desktop user so I can't say much about their power on servers. On most occasion I would say try both, they're both linux, it's all matter of the user preferences. But why not.

One thing I do know Suse is older player (2 years, CMIIW) in Linux/unix world than Redhat. But however, Redhat grown overtime and surpassed SuSe, in term of popularity and users. Redhat really contribute alot to the Linux community, with support to project such as Gnome, and the de facto linux packaging system (Redhat Package Manager - RPM). Even SuSe can't resist adapting this packaging system.

Redhat, by abandoning its end user product, evolving it to fedora core, I think RedHat is doing another smart, innovative move. They probably have noticed that community based development sometimes can do wonders. And yet they still able to grab the fruits from the Fedora plant, and serve them to their RHEL product.

Even if you don't really want to bother much about tech support from redhat, the user base community is wider on RedHat, for sure. Since not only they have established themselve a userbase, RedHat also have alot of derivatives, such as CentOS and YellowDog, which trying to immitate a certain aspect of RedHat. RedHat own userbase added with its derivatives userbase, would mean an army of helpful users. For end users, this is linux heaven for sure.

Suse, is one way have interesting aspects, like the unquestionably great YaST. Also Novell really took this linux business carefully, by delivering overwhelmingly professional look to their distro. But again, looks like SuSe followed Redhat's footstep by releasing OpenSUSE.

While I most of the time I won't throw out any speculations, but SUSE will trying hard to catch up with RedHat, thus they'll consider every move they
make very carefully trying to prove themselves to the users, that's when SUSE will show its power.

[cMack454]

As you'll likely have already seen/heard (or will hear soon), both R/H & SuSEL support DLPAR in their newest editions. IBM has partnered with both to support this vital function in the IBM POWER Roadmap. Virtualization is the key driver to all of the new announcements, and IBM is setting its partners on the forefront (as it seems).

I prefer SuSE, but is goes back to my Mac days (which I still own & utilize for my personal computing), wherein I had a SuSE PowerPC intall on a partition for one of my older PowerBooks (Wall Street). The GUI is nicer, IMHO, and the efficiency of the processor utilization is much higher.

I'm not using either, currently, and have resolved myself to remaining a UNIX-man.

CM

[inferno]

Originally Posted by stubbe

RedHat also have alot of derivatives, such as CentOS

CentOS is not really a derivative of Red Hat. Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux is composed of free and open source software, Red Hat has to release their source code to the public as is required under the terms of the GNU License. The CentOS guys simply recompile that code and make it available for everyone. So basically it is Red Hat minus the logos, a price tag, and support.

[sukete]

Hi

Both are a great solution for pSeries box.
If you are looking for an user friendly and a easy of admin solution, SuSe and its YAST is the answer

red Hat includes LVM at instalation time that its good for people who loves AIX.

But in the daily job i have no preference.

Only one recomendatión, if you want to install Oracle DBS, IAS or any Oracle Product in a pSeries partition (or micropatition) use AIX, its a realy headche to installOracle in Linux, finally it works fine, but it is very dangerous for your health.

Good look

[Fulvio Malfatto]

In Intel world, I prefere Suse for servers (expecially IBM Xservers) due to its supports for enterprise devices such as raid adapter, etc.
RH is better in my opinion for supporting laptops, advanced consumer desktops with strange graphic adapers ....
In Power enviroment, I think they are both good distributions, choose the one you know better.

[mcr]

I find yast2 to be horrible.

If you apply updates, then yast2 can't find the right packages if you then
want to add software, and you get into a lot of trouble.

yast2's ability to deal intelligently with copying the entire CD to a disk
and then using that is pathetic. I create an LPAR as an adminstrative
LPAR and make that my YOU server for the cluster, sharing the updates via HTTP over a private VLAN. This works well, and is sorta easy to setup,
but isn't trouble-free.

I haven't tried RHEL on LPAR, but I run FC5/6 on Xen servers elsewhere.
Not very happy with yum, although it's much better than up2date.
yum is amazingly slow, and still gets stuck.

My next install will be debian, perhaps. The support I've gotten from SUSE has simply not been worth the money paid.

[cdelgadop]

Hi

I have installed both RH and SUSE for ppc64 on LPARs of p690 and p5 servers without problems at all. Only concern about newest disks and RAID adapters and support for them in the Linux version to be installed. Personally i prefer SUSE because of the Yast interface and the way it manages the disk partitioning and Volume administration. Another point for SUSE: it has support for IBM JFS while RH does not.

I have installed partitions on RH for SAP Netweaver and ran ok. And have installed Suse 9 on JS21 partitions using IVM to run SAP Netweaver and everything OK. What i've tried to do without success was install Debian on Power.

So for your question, every OS has it's advantages and only way to know them is to install and test.

Hope this helps

[k0da]

I prefer SLES

[estuart]

Ask both Red Hat and Novell for subscription pricing. You may learn that Red Hat charges per instance and Novell will charge just for the processors in the box and you can run as many lpars as it will support. The SuSe pricing model is very similar to the AIX pricing model.