Business support for Arch Linux

I read this

and I am glad I decided to move to Linux not Windows.
First idea that came to my mind after this “When you do not believe in your own product”

Last summer when I was thinking about moving fully from Apple after M1 announcement, talked to few team mates at worked who switched to windows (now after w11 they are all moving to Linux) I considered the idea or “entertained” the idea of moving to windows, but never did and I am happy for it I work in software development industry data science as PMP, Linux is great even for management.

Since last august close to 1 year now have been using EndeavourOS Linux and I am quite happy with it music, games and light work stuff at my home PC (router, mobile phone tablet, entertainment tv all to linux). My company after many years since 2000s of being loyal Apple users, we are considering switching to RedHat Enterprise Linux or Suse Linux (because of the support for business needs), I have been using Open Suse Tumbelweed as my main work PC and testing PC EndeavourOS, I will see I may switch out main PC EOS, test PC Open Suse T, I am aware Open Suse Leap is more stable and not rolling release, but I prefer the rolling release and cutting edge.

Does business support for Arch in Linux exits as an option (we discarded Cannonical already, at the moment open suse and red hat are the only viable options and non of them are Arch Linux based).

Thanks in advance for any information or input.

Regards, Alex.

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I don’t think they could could go wrong with either Red Hat or Open suse Tumbleweed. I like Tumbleweed myself and it’s rolling.

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I am using Open Suse T as my main PC, since January works really great. Thanks for the feedback

What desktop is it running? I’m a KDE Plasma fan but just wondered.

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initially I went with GNOME, similar to MacOS back in august 2020, but after installing Open Suse, switched both Eos and OpenSuseT to KDE, I like to “freedom” to do changes in KDE.

EDIT: now when I see GNOME 40, I know I made the right decision with KDE

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Nice… I have never been a Gnome fan. It just reminds me of Ubuntu. Albeit there are some Gnome distros out there that i could like such as PopOS or Solus.

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I have a system76 pc for gaming respect for their team, but PopOS is based on ubuntu so…
only difference between my work PC with Open Suse T and EOS at home is the wayland and x11,
I use wayland with plasma works great, but for my Open Suse T I have to use x11 or xorg due to legacy apps made in BSD (hopefully when we re engineer them) I can move to wayland.
both OS have the same dark theme look and I love the wallpaper collection here in the forum.

Apart from all I really enjoy the community here the experience is great, kudos to everyone.

Regards, Alex.

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So, I am going to take a different perspective and tell you something you probably don’t want to hear. For most business use cases, a broad rollout of a rolling distro is a terrible idea. There are a bunch of reasons for this:

  • On a rolling distro you are often forced to upgrade applications. This may cause problems in a business environment, either because you need to hold software back or because the lack of predictability around it will frustrate your user base.
  • In some cases, applications just plain don’t work on Arch/Tumbleweed because it takes time for the application developers to catch up with the new libraries
  • Support isn’t only about being able to call someone for help. It is about 3rd party application makers being willing to support you. Many business applications are only supported on SUSE Enterprise, Redhat and Ubuntu. Often even those who support SUSE won’t support OpenSUSE leap and almost nobody supports tumbleweed.
  • While it may be easier for you, personally, to maintain a rolling distro, it isn’t easier to manage for an entire business. It introduces way too many variables.

My advice is to start by assessing which applications your business needs/wants to run. Then evaluate the risk and support lifecycle with each application.

For me, there are only a handful of desktop distros I would consider running in mid-size or larger business environment.

The ones with big corporate support:

  • RedHat
  • SUSE Enterprise
  • Ubuntu

Free derivatives of those with broad support:

  • Fedora
  • OpenSUSE Leap

Of course, it all depends on what applications your organization needs to run and the tolerances of your user base but hopefully this helps a little.

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Why not Debian btw?
Too free? :upside_down_face:

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If this was about servers, I would definitely include Debian. However, Debian is not broadly supported by commercial desktop application providers in my experience.

Of course, it all depends what your needs are.

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It all comes down to what you can get away with. In corporate environment, that’s often less than what you can at home.

But if you can get away with using Arch, by all means, use Arch. Just have a fallback solution which you can quickly implement.

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How about corporate LFS?! :rofl:

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that is a good feedback thanks for the honesty.

Yes me and my team came to the same conclusion since January, we disregarded Cannonical already few people made comments about including some amazon search features and product placements in ubuntu and other issues. We are left with Red Hat Inc. and SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH as companies and their business products, Red Hat is not a favorite due to IBM, our best candidate is Suse.

I mentioned that I have already tried products supported by Suse like Open Suse T and even if our clients and services are hosted on Suse Enterprise Linux, the devs would like to try out the Open Suse leap or tumbeweed.

My Main question was do companies like Cannonical, Suse or Red Hat exits that support Arch, but wat you said makes perfect sense that Arch Linux is rolling release and it is not possible to offer LTS support.

EDIT: our codes / services can run on any BSD / LINUX OS even mac os (based on darwin bsd), (we even "entertained the crazy idea about windows linux subsystem), main requirement is stable OS.

thank you for the feedback.
Regards, Alex.

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I used Gnome2 before Ubuntu even existed. :older_adult: Was psyched when Gnome3 released, but quickly realized I don’t like it. It just felt so clunky and weird. Then I had my dwm/awesome-phase, ended up with XFCE - and then came Gnome40. It’s really great, I love it. It’s kinda weird. Manjaro still ships with Gnome 3.x, and I tried that, and I immediately hated it. I have no idea why tbh. :man_shrugging: Did try KDE multiple times, but could never stick to it. Just not mine.

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If we are talking corporate then there is almost none. The worst thing that could happen is slight change of a software’s GUI. Some of my colleagues do not know what operations with the software they are doing, they only know that if they press certain pictures in a right order it might do something useful.

A: So , what is your business model?
B: We compile
A: But what do you sell to make profit?
B: We don’t, we just compile. :sweat_smile:

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Personally I’d just use EndeavourOS. :rofl:

Edit: It has the Corporate Purple which denotes premium service.

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this will not affect our user base (our user bases is B2B development companies), since we do data science business intelligence in the field of STU, Satellite, Telecommunications and UAVs commercial use. We get the data analyze it and send the data back via API to another company and the application or website or pdf email or whatever else is take care of that other company that cares about the GUI, how it looks of the END user etc. All of our code scripts work in terminal no need for GUI, worked on BSD, worked on Mac, can work on Linux, the main questions is what is the best Corporate Linux that offers support where we can pay a premium fee to Linux experts to take care of the Linux OS like: Suse as first option and Red Hat as second.

Regards, Alex.

To my limited knowledge of corporate sector - i agree with such choice and your reasoning few posts above, makes sense to use Suse

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probably the best part about Linux, other than having a great community like endeavouros, is the ability and the freedom to choose your own desktop and make it your own, instead of look in system in Apple.

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in any case Suse, Red Hat or even Cannonical, even free Linux like Open Suse is much better option even for me as a for profit business, compared to Apple or worst option blowtware Widnows 10 or 11.

another option is partnering with a linux distro, like isreali company CompuLab did with Linux Mint, company donates resources to a specific Linux Community and gets help / support in return.

I am glad we are are switching soon and I am glad I moved close to a year now, to eOS and Linux. I’m really enjoy my endeavouros journey along with the community here the experience is great, kudos.

Thank you all for your time, advice and valuable feedback I’ll consider it.
Wishing you all a good day and a wonderful week ahead.
Regards, Alex.

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