Oracle Linux adopters labelled 'idiots' Down Under

Melbourne company Opes Prime Stockbroking told ZDNet Australia, that in the weeks following its announcement to adopt Oracle Linux, upset Linux enthusiasts phoned, e-mailed and wrote about the company online to complain at the decision.

"People called us out of the blue to tell us we were idiots," said Opes executive director Anthony Blumberg.

He also fielded a call from an unhappy Red Hat Australia and New Zealand managing director Max McLaren.

"I said, this is probably the first call I've had from Red Hat since we've been a customer," Blumberg said.

Opes received little communication from the vendor during their contract, he said, and was not about to change its stance.

Meanwhile, McLaren told ZDNet Australia Opes had acquired Red Hat support subscriptions with the purchase of two servers from channel partner Dell. The hardware vendor then was responsible for providing Red Hat support to Opes.

Nevertheless McLaren said he was "not at all" disappointed with Dell.

"It was difficult for us to prove our worth to the customer," he said. "They hadn't complained to us about anything being wrong." Linux enthusiasts also slammed the company on bulletin board systems across the world. Most believed the Oracle offering to be inferior to Red Hat's, a vendor that has been at the forefront of Linux's gaining popularity.

However, the stockbroker is happy with the support Oracle provided. Opes has a three-year contract for Linux support, and is using Oracle Enterprise Linux, modeled on Red Hat 4.

Linux runs Opes' server infrastructure which consists of four for production, two for staging, one for development and another for disaster recovery.