I'm with Don. Let's look at it like this: you pay less than thirty quid
(6.4 anyhow) for 4-odd gigabytes of stuff, a really helpful book (that could
easily have cost 25 quid itself and not been expensive), several weeks of
telephone support, and a lively (!) user community. Tiny bits of it are not
perfect. I was massively inexperienced when installing 6.4 - now I've
traded up to just very inexperienced, but even that's enough to tell me I've
not been robbed.
Right enough, kpackage didn't start properly, and Netscape was a bit wobbly.
(That could never, of course, happen with another kind of OS - Netsape's
always been rock-solid with three windows open. Not.) I had to wait a
whole day before downloading the fixes from the SuSE site, which took about
five minutes, even over a modem and ordinary phone line. Then I came
downstairs in the morning and, damn me, no-one from SuSE had been round to
cook my breakfast or iron me a shirt. Where's my lawyer?
I'm not that sure even that Ron's right in saying we're buying a 'product',
as such - OK, it is in one way, but in fact all the stuff that has been
beefed about is actually available free. The added value is the media and
the documentation. Oh, and those little stickers. And you get enough
documentation to fill the Enc. Britannia. Oh, and you can install it on as
many machines as you can eat without paying anyone a penny.
I suppose SuSE could indeed expand their workforce by tenfold, release a
version every three or four years, and hide behind monster corporate
attorneys who would make sure no-one ever got an honest answer again ('sorry
sir, it must be your buggy hardware / other software / ugly girlfriend - our
software is canonically perfect' - you've all heard it).
Great, the product would then cost five hundred bucks and eliminate all
experimental features. Plenty of companies have gone this way, and guess
what? Their stuff still has broken bits and needs fixing.
Let's get real, this stuff is fantastic value.
Cheers to all at SuSE once again, 'nuff said,
Fergus Wilde
Chetham's Library
Long Millgate
Manchester
M3 1SB
UK
Tel: +44 (0)161 834 7961
Fax: +44 (0)161 839 5797
----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Hansford"
Ron Heron wrote:
SuSE, and anyone else who cares about this thread....
I think we have every right to be critical of SuSE. We, after all, pay them for a product. When the product comes out half-baked (or under documented) we tend to get sour.
I find the product to be quite 'well-done' myself
While we as customers sometimes make brain-dead mistakes, SuSE, as a vendor does, too.
That's called 'life'.
Just looking at Michaels replies - how the hell were we supposed to know what suse or RH do with their kernels, unless they tell us?
How the hell do they know you want to know? Try asking.
Does he REALLY want to stand behind me while I work on my system - for what?
Probably so he can help you with what is (seemingly) not a real common problem.
Do I need SuSE to tell me that the problems are MY problems? - No duh, they're my problems.
Also, SuSE wants a bug report for everything. Some of this stuff is very basic, and a low level of QC or Documentation could easily have kept people from major frustration.
How does QC work? People report problems - problems get fixed.
Right now, the feeling I get is
"This is SuSE, you like it, you told me so, so shut up. If you got a problem, fill out a bug report, and we'll tell you that we already knew about it. We save ton's of money letting the customer QC our distributions, so we can hire egotistical people to respond to your concerns and really make you feel like an idiot."
This must be why SuSE made a nett loss last fiscal year - not enough bug reports!
Truthfully, I am not really bothered by the whole ordeal. I think it's rather funny seeing these kind of responses from vendors, especially in this day and age. It's kinda like the old days, when you could treat the customers poorly, because there was no alternative. I said WAS.
There is an alternative - it's called good manners and common courtesy.
Oh, and SuSE, before you get started on this - I know you need details, and general statements don't help much, blah blah. But, perhaps the marketing and management folks should attend to this issue. It is clearly not an engineering problem. It is a QC, Documentation, Customer Relation, and Packaging problem. That was the reason for the generality in the original post. If I actually wanted help fixing the problems (I didn't ask for help, did I?) then I would have posted in that matter.
Customer Relation problem? Perhaps with one customer
But, on a positive note, I did learn alot about the kernel packaging!
See, there's an upside to everything! :-)
--
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Regards Don Hansford ECKYTECH COMPUTING/ SQIT Warwick
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