Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (422 mails)

[Koushik Kumar Nundy <kknundy@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I have some views on the openSUSE LTS/openSLES comparisons.

1. I have a feeling the two being analogised to CentOS is a bit
unfair. openSUSE's relation with SLE has always been more the Fedora
to RHEL kind. We, as a project, form a base, not a copy of SUSE's
enterprise offerings, if typically more conservatively than
competition.

2. openSUSE has the direct primary sponsorship of Novell. CentOS has
no official affiliation with RH. An openSLES may antagonise
Novell/SUSE/Attachmate's friendly approach.

3. Offering of an LTS version alternately with a couple of normal
versions has not been discussed. I wonder why. Ubuntu does that quite
appreciably, (though I have never personally encountered an
Ubuntu-powered server).
> From Wikipedia, "To date every fourth release, in the second quarter
of even-numbered years, has been designated as a Long Term Support
(LTS) release, indicating that it has updates for three years for
desktop use and five years for server"

 To say what that means, let's say we have 12.0 as LTS(5 release cycle
support), then 12.1, 12.2 and 12.3 with normal 2.2 cycle support. Then
again 13.0 as LTS, and so on. This will cause an LTS version to be
perennially active, while having a "cutting edge" version for systems
here stability is not primary.
This would help a only one extra already present older version needs
to be maintained, reducing stress on the developers.

4. The point mooted in (3) can also help on standardising a versioning
scheme, the need for which was discussed but never finalised some time
earlier, probably on the marketing and project lists.

5. Nelson Marques has a point. Too many offerings would cause
confusion. Normal openSUSE vs openSUSE LTS vs openSUSE Tumbleweed vs
openSLES has already confused me to an extent.

6. Someone suggested binary compatibility with SLES would make people
recommend SLES for paid-for-support Linux. While I appreciate Novell's
roles in what openSUSE is today, I personally feel SLES sales figures
are not supposed to be the concern of the openSUSE project.
Furthermore, even openSUSE can be paid-for-support Linux, considering
people pay for 90 day support or something like that when they buy the
box.

Regards,
~kknundy.
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