Hi Steve,

The personal edition of RedHat Linux only cost $39.95. It comes with 30 days of free tech. support. At this low cost there is little reason not to upgrade, other than the need to configure the new system. $39.95 per year to key your Linux system current is a steal.

If you need commercial grade support, you can go with RedHat professional. It costs $149.00 and does not have near as fast of an upgrade schedule as the persoanl edition. I'm thinking a new release of the professional versions comes out about once every two or three years. This keeps the professional version a litte behind cutting eadge, but it ensure the professional version is better tested and more stable than the personal edition which has all the latest bells and whistles. This gives the IT people plenty of time to get the system up an running and to get many hours of use from the system before it is necessary to distrube anything. The professional version give you 60 days of tech support and all the admin. and install guides in paperback os opposed to CDs.

Otherwise, there is no difference between the personal and professional versions as they both come with a full OS and full set of application software per the CDs.

You can subscribe to the RedHat update agent for an additional $60.00 per year which allow you to receive automatic update just like in windows.

Linux is a wonderful OS. The longer I work with it, and the more I learn about it, the more I have come to appreciate what it can do for me.

LelandJ