“We invited all five vendors to participate in our test of Linux
support services. MissionCritical Linux, however, didn’t reply to
multiple phone and e-mail requests. Perhaps the staff was too busy
helping real customers?“So we settled into our Green Bay, Wis., Real-World Labs and
tested the services from Caldera, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and
Linuxcare. In addition, we asked Linux Support Services to submit
its enterprise offering but never heard back, so we looked at the
company’s free service, which is available only on the Web…“We didn’t just examine the shiny exteriors–we hopped in and
took each service for a test-drive. Under the guise of mythical
company Surreal Systems and using pseudonyms, we called support
lines to evaluate both technical competence and responsiveness. We
are certain the companies did not tip off their staffs, though one
clever fellow claims he quickly figured out what we were up
to…”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.
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