Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-testing (33 mails)

[Andreas Jaeger <aj@xxxxxxx>]

"Quentin Jackson" <Quentin.Jackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> I think we all agree SLE is for the enterprise, hence it's name, and
> you are bang on regarding hardware support, Novell have 90% of the
> solution right, but when your wireless card won't run it kinda makes
> it impossible to continue if you rely on it.  Obviously I don't expect
> every flavour to be supported for the enterprise but..... Novell could
> support the big brand corporate/workstation models via vendor
> agreement to maintain a loyal customer base of their target market -
> corporates!  Who wants an OS that might not work in a few months when
> your company is forced to change hardware due to EOL?  Only those
> really trying to say something with Open Source I expect which is not
> whom we're trying to bring over.

Speaking about your hardware example: We have backported to SLED10 SP2
many wireless drivers.

> I wanted to Beta test SLE 11 as I'd like to go back to it and be able to 
> recommend it to the enterprise again, but they turned me down, odd 
> considering how much more pro-active I was in selling their software than any 
> other vendor in NZ.  Oh well, that's Novell I suppose.  No wonder all their 
> offices here have closed down.

Our partner betas can only take a limited number of users.  It might be
that the person doing the decision did not know about your experience.

> But back on topic :) My question re OpenSuSE is not to suggest that it
> should run in the enterprise but that it will run in the home /
> enthusiest market, which then if stable could potentially be used in
> business if it got a good name for itself.  If it doesn't achieve
> this, what's the point of the distro?  Presently as I'm sure everyone
> here is aware, we never know exactly how good an OpenSuSE release is
> until we uninstall our current one, format, install, re-install etc
> which is a major pain so unfortunatley we can't trust that things will
> work as we would like.  In my opinino this is a major probelm that
> needs to be discussed and an outcome agreed.  No-one will ever be
> truly serious about OpenSuSE if we can't trust that there's been a
> regulated effort to get found bugs / problems out.

What do you propose to do for this?

> For example, what's our philosophy on allowing a version to be
> released with a network manager that doesn't work properly such as
> OpenSuSE 11.0?  I know it would have delayed the release to get that
> right, but what's the cost of not getting it right?  It seems to me we
> may end up getting a bad rep and be setting the wrong example if
> things like that continue to happen.  I even heard one of the Novell
> guys say one time that the whole reason SLE 10 was delayed so much was
> to get theOpenSuSE bugs out since it's made from the same code

The way you state it is bullshit. ;-)

SLE10 was late because of the package stack and some other areas,
openSUSE was hurt by it the same way and not the reason.

> initially.  So I guess the question is can we afford to have such a
> rigid release cycle such as what we currently do and what justifies an
> extension?  Do we need to re-address some of the rules about releases
> and their schedules?  Perhaps this is what is happening right now with
> the delay of 11.1 alpha 3?  Do we have a philosophy stating we are not
> so concerned about this stuff as we are an enthusiast distro?

Alpha3 was not delayed, it was cancelled since it was uninstallable.

> Lots of questions, it would be great to get some answers. :)

Andreas
-- 
 Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform / openSUSE, aj@xxxxxxx
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