Custom Distro vs Localised Fork vs Enterprise Distro?

About Us Forums Future of OSS in South Africa Future Linux Desktop OS for SA Gov Custom Distro vs Localised Fork vs Enterprise Distro?

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    • #2454

      To discuss what Linux option we go for.

    • #2467

      From Aslam Raffee: I maybe considered biased (I work for a Linux distro) but I honestly think that having your own distro is not the best way to spend your energy, much better to localize a well supported distro. I have been there, implented Impi linux at Dept science

    • #2468

      From Prince Sebapu: What about we then fork Fedora, considering we have you in case we want consultation services especially on some proprietary that ships with RH when we happen come across needs to simulate mainframe etc

    • #2486
      Prince Sebapu
      Participant

      If we possibly go with Aslam’s suggestion of localising a supported distro, who will pay support licensing while we are still experimenting?

      Or we just take it and start building on it, then are we not going to have issues again convincing government to cut on licensing but still require them to pay for licenses of an enterprise linux?

      I am suggesting we play around with the community versions of the enterprise distros, so it becomes easier to upgrade to enterprise without much trouble when we want support later for mission critical servers.

      • This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Prince Sebapu.
    • #2489

      Yes true and that is another fundamental question we need to answer…

      Do we go enterprise supported distro because if so there may not be much customisation apart from the standard image, and yes there would be a cost to roll it out across government? Less than Windows, but we lose the maximisation of savings.

      Other option is a free distro that “we” establish as standard distro for SA gov (something with broad support like Ubuntu, CentOS, OpenSuse, etc). We could have ourselves and local industry build up expertise and support capability on it. But there are downsides like it won’t have enterprise support when needed, and it won’t be certified to run SAP and some other enterprise software.

      Or do we separate server side (maybe needing enterprise support) from desktop installs – probably a good idea to separate. Separating servers and desktops gives u more flexibility. The two areas are probably two different strategies to tackle.

      • #2491
        Prince Sebapu
        Participant

        OS that is certified to run existing enterprise software like SAP, that is a very important consideration. Then in that case I agree with licensing server side and customising our own desktop.

        I am going to post a suggested implementation strategy in the implementation thread of this forum.

    • #2496

      OK good idea – yes we split it into:
      1. Server side – enterprise if needed/certified for apps being hosted on per app basis. General application hosting could standardise on whatever is most broadly used in SA gov (survey needed).
      2. Desktop OS – we could certainly standardise on what is felt to be a well-supported non-enterprise distro as we (within gov and across our local industry) will skill up on it. Thing is we should ideally not have a different flavour distro for each Dept as we need to standardise on expertise, support, driver tweaking, etc. We’ll probably also need input from local companies such as Obsidian Systems, LSD, etc who do this type of work. If there is already experience in our local industry, we need that input.

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