synthetoonz@bellsouth.net wrote:

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From: "Marden P. Marshall" Date: 2005/08/03 Wed AM 09:30:13 EDT To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] Novell Plans to Open SuSE Linux Pro to Community

On Wed, 2005-08-03 at 08:10 -0500, Donn Washburn wrote:

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Synthetic Cartoonz wrote:

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On Wednesday 03 August 2005 01:40, Fred A. Miller wrote:

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"Novell will be launching a community-based Linux distribution, OpenSuSE, at next week's LinuxWorld in San Francisco, according to sources close to the company.

Following in the footsteps of Red Hat Inc. with its successful Fedora Project Linux distribution, Novell Inc. will be opening up its Linux development efforts with OpenSuSE, sources said.

A site, opensuse.org, has already been set up for the project by Novell under the name of Batman's alter ego, Bruce Wayne. The site, however, is not open for business yet."

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1843097,00.asp

I hope this doesn't spell the end for a consumer SuSE distro in a box. The SuSE printed docs are excellent and worth every penny of the retail price tag.

The reason I went with SuSE instead of Red Hat was due to Red Hat abandoning the consumer boxed distro. (And being about twice the price of SuSE at that time didn't earn them points either.)

Please let the lizard continue living in the box.

I agree with you on the retail issue. Just having boxes on the shelves in Computer stores makes Linux more visable. Which is less intimidating to new users. Also it make Linux available to people with only phone line connections. Imagine being faced with a phone line download of 5 CD's

Here at Hal-pc's Houston LUG due to Red Hats dropping a store distro has promoted SuSE 9.3 Now at Hal hardly anyone is using Red Hat or Fedora. They have dropped Mandrake and based on a box purchase SuSE wins. Free downloads have moves to Debian based CDs.

If you read the article, it states that SuSE will continue to sell boxed distributions.

The article does not indicate if the boxed version will continue to be SuSE Pro, or SuSE For Your Granny.

"The expected distribution model isn't quite the same as Red Hat's, though; unlike Red Hat, which only makes Fedora available as a download and doesn't offer support for it, Novell will also sell SuSE Linux in a boxed retail version with manuals and paid technical support, sources said." Art