Money can't buy you love; nor can it buy you happiness. But it just might bring you peace of mind. The Big 3 commercial Linux vendors; Canonical, Novell and Red Hat are ready to serve you through support subscription services for your Linux infrastructure. There are some big advantages to using commercial vendor support for your systems: 24x7 priority support, fixed support costs and experts who know your operating system inside and out.

All three companies provide two basic levels of support: Standard and Priority. Standard is support during normal business hours and defined as either 9x5 or 12x5 support, depending on the vendor. A priority-level subscription buys you 24x7 support and one-hour turnaround on priority-one incidents. All subscription models include unlimited incidents. Prices vary widely between vendors, but all are on a per-machine basis.