Re: SuSE obfuscation of known issues

On Sat, Apr 10, 2004 at 06:50:34AM +0200, Thorsten Kukuk wrote:

On Fri, Apr 09, Phil Mocek wrote:

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On Sat, Apr 10, 2004 at 03:42:52AM +0200, Philipp Thomas wrote:

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Phil Mocek [Fri, 9 Apr 2004 13:10]:

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The fact that bug tracking information for official SuSE packages is unavailable, even to paid users of ``SuSE Professional'', makes it very hard for me to recommend this distribution for use in a production environment.

For use in a production environment SUSE offers the "SUSE Linux Enterprise Server" which is maintained for five years and for which you buy the maintenance on a yearly basis.

By ``production environment'', I mean, loosely, a situation in which downtime or decreased functionality costs a business money -- as opposed to computers I have at home for personal use or ones on which a business tests out new software in an appropriate sandbox. This could be, say, a desktop machine in someone's office, or maybe a server that handles SMTP and IMAP.

Are you saying that SuSE 9.0 Professional shouldn't be used in such a capacity? Isn't SLES the same thing with some extra software and a support contract?

No, it is not.

Is there a concise description, available on the Web, of the differences between SuSE Linux Professional and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server that those of us who thought, incorrectly, that they were mostly the same besides the support contract and price, should take a look at? Also, have we established that SuSE 9.0 Professional shouldn't be used in a professional environment other than for ``non-production'' uses? If so, what is SuSE Professional's target customer? Hobbyists and amateur home users? -- Phil Mocek