From: "Guy Van Sanden"
Reply-To: sienix@flashmail.com To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: [SLE] SuSE 7 Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2000 05:29:15 -0700 Has SuSE gone completely mad!
As I understand it, the equivalent of what we now know as SuSE would be the professional version. You know, you need only to buy the distro to have all those programs you like so much.
But the professional costs about 70$... I use SuSE mainly at home, running an apache web server to test my home-berwed cgi-scripts etc.
As I see it, the professional is little more than a diet version of what we're used to, which is useless.
I'm afraid SuSE is going much the same way as redhat, which was why I initially switched from RH to SuSE.
Does anyone else feel that way too?
Guy
No, god is there anybody out there who sees what SuSE is trying to do. They try to open up their product scheme. Choice is good. Remember when we had no choice and there was only Windows? Now you can chose between two SuSE versions. Just because they sell now two versions doesn't mean they can't go back to one version the next year. They have to see how to enlarge their user base. Do you just care about yourself or about the SuSE company of staying in existance so that you are even able to buy a SuSE version in two years. SuSE has to go out and see what ways of marketing they can use to find new users and keep the old ones. If they don't make money over time they go out of business and everybody loses including their customers(you). If they make less money by selling two versions and lose customers then I am sure somebody at SuSE will wake up and change the way they distribute in the future. They cannot know this unless they try it. It's a business risk they take. I used SuSe since 5.3 and I have to say they recently have vamped up their product a lot. I don't even want to imagine what development costs went into YaST2. YaST2 is a huge front-end cost. They now have to recover by raising the price a bit. In the past you paid 45 dollars. Now you pay 70 for Pro. You get more manuals/books. You get basically two distros(CD version and DVD version) You get the YaST2, which probably cost a lot to create. You get things like reiserfs many others don't bundle. The higher cost is clearly warranted. I don't even need to look at the accounting sheets of SuSE but I bet my a$$ on the fact that SuSE lost lots of money on SuSE Linux DVD version in the past. Reason was that people didn't buy it because even DVD users sometimes have to install using CD roms. Hence they quickly got rid of that distribution method. (Smart move SuSE =) If you have no price/value with the new Pro distro you should then buy the evaluation version CD from cheapbytes.com. It is another SuSE distribution channel and may hold the right price/value target for you. To many people forget that you can get SuSe via multiple ways and adjust the cost; ftp, nfs, evaluation, personal, professional, local store, borrow copy from friend. All are legal. With Windows you only have one choice. Go out and pay 100 bucks. Too many people here are discounting the positives of the deal or ignoring important facts. Furthermore I like to question this "American" discussion. SuSE comes from Germany and is created there and largely targets the European market. I haven't been in Europe lately but the market works different over there. There is not many fast Internet connections. You pay per minute for downloads. A highly bundled product like this largely targets European users as they try to save money on download time with their phone company. People need to look at the base of SuSE users and not judge on what they themselves are like. Maybe you are a minority and not so important on the balance sheet. mk ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq