Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 15:52:24 -0500 (EST) From: "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> To: graeme@echidna.com (Graeme Tait) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs. Linux (was: a couple ?'s) Message-ID: <199902212052.PAA17470@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> In-Reply-To: <36D00F9E.428B@echidna.com> from Graeme Tait at "Feb 21, 99 08:52:30 am"
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Funny thing about all of these reasons, Graeme, the M$ operating systems slaughter both Linux and FreeBSD on all of these. However, I have a comment about one of your points, Graeme Tait wrote, > (3) Technical Support > > If I have to pay for technical support, it rather ruins the effect for a free > OS. I've noticed that several technical questions important to me have gone > effectively unanswered on the FreeBSD lists. I have no idea if Linux groups or > vendors might be better in this regard, or how the cost of paid support > compares, but it's something I would want to know more about for future > decisions. You say this is a reason for choosing Linux over FreeBSD, but admit you have know idea if it is true. My little joke about M$ aside, they are known for having some of the worst customer support in the industry. I have heard, anecdotally, that the free support you get for FreeBSD, Linux, and other open source operating systems and applications is almost always superior to their paid technical support. My personal experiences with SGI tech support versus comp.sys.sgi.admin are mixed. It was sure nice to have a human whose job it was to help me when we had a bad disk crash[0]. But I have had other problems solved more quickly and better on Usenet. Vendor support is not always better than free support. I think the people who demand vendor support tend to be the management-types more than the real administrators (and these management-types are the same people who want to switch to NT because 'it is the future'). [0] But I still do not know if I actually got things working again much or any faster than I would have without paid tech support. In fact, I still was forced to resort to Usenet support. The disk crashed on a Friday and I came into work on Saturday to try to have things in working order by Monday. The regular SGI tech support only runs weekdays roughly during U.S. business hours. To get help on Saturday, my only recourse was help from fellow SGI users and admin (who read comp.sys.sgi.admin on Saturday afternoons =). -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@home.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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