[olug] OS thoughts -- SLES vs RH

[Obi-Wan]

I spent the last four years running a fleet of RHEL servers and a half
dozen SLES servers in a high-dollar, 24x7 environment at a hospital.
I'm a big fan of RHEL/CentOS for servers.  I can't stand SLES/D.

> 1) having the same support interface whether in X or in console with YaST -- same keyboard shortcuts and all.; 

In about 10 years of running various flavors of desktop & server Linux,
YaST is by far the most convoluted, difficult package management system
I've had to use.  That's the number one thing I hate about SuSE.  RHEL's
up2date and yum systems are far easier, IMHO.  And lest you think this
is a knee jerk reaction to something different, I spent over a year
each running SLES on some servers and SLED on my primary desktop.

> 2) supporting multiple SCSI LUNs at install vs RHEL only supporting one (until the system is built) -- we boot from SAN on some systems and having multiple LUNs is an important issue for me.

I setup a kickstart server to install new machines, so the default
capabilities of the install disk didn't concern me much.  Multiple
LUN's weren't a problem with RHEL, IIRC.

> 3) install server software is included w/o needing to purchase a license for a "satellite server"

Yeah, that is annoying.  RHEL's satellite server isn't cheap, either.
I thought several times about trying to rig up my own satellite server
for free, but it never made it to the top of my priority list.  We only
had a few dozen servers, and our Internet pipe was big enough that it
wasn't a big deal to just update all of them remotely.

> Those are a couple of my "high" points, there are others but don't want to make this too long.

I'd be happy to address any others you may care to mention.

> Can someone fill in my RHEL blank spots?

RH provides a really good online management tool that makes it easy
to compare package versions, manage updates, etc.  I'm not aware
of a similar offering from SuSE.

Depending on your environment, third party package support may be an
issue.  RHEL is hands down the most widely supported Linux distro
for enterprise class software.  SLES is a solid, but distant, second.
That was the primary determining factor for us choosing RHEL at the
hospital for most of our Linux boxen.  In that environment, the
application is all important, and the OS merely comes along for the
ride (hence our handful of SLES servers).

-- 
Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth                             obiwan at jedi.com
   The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
     Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
       promise that You will pull me through.  -- Rich Mullins