Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3031 mails)

["Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier" <jzb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 05 February 2008 5:40:53 pm Doug McGarrett wrote:

> Well, Zonker, I think that the consensus here on the list is that Novell
> should make boxed editions with manuals available for purchase, and for
> best effect, (IMHO) should make them available at the same time as the
> on-line release--before everyone finds out how crappy the release really
> is.  I see that   there was some discussion about reliability vs. bleeding
> edge, and I don't know what the consensus of that was, but I'm running 9.3,
> if that tells you anything.  (And I have 10.0, which I bought.)  If Novell
> will sell SuSE with some legal drivers which are now left out,and sell it
> thru Staples and/or bookstores,  it would really  help to spread the
> product around, which I assume they would like to do.  And might even make
> some money-- who's paying for all this freeware, anyway?

A couple of thoughts on this... one, I am using 10.3 right now, and I don't
find it to be "crappy" at all.

I think some other people have covered some of the problems with
selling boxed product later in another thread, but I can just add --
when I worked with Linux Mall, it was really difficult to do well
selling boxed copies of distributions, because of the short release
cycle and such. And that was when more people bought boxed copies due
to sparse availability of broadband -- now, even though more people
are using Linux, fewer people want to buy the box set.

> BTW, I'm not in favor of .pdf "manuals."  I don't really want to burn a
> ream of printer paper and a half cup of toner just to have the manual in my
> lap in my armchair.  That strikes me as awfully inefficient, not to mention
> expensive.

I wonder if a good compromise might be for openSUSE to put the PDFs on
a service like Lulu.com and allow people to buy the manual through
Lulu. Since they operate on a print-on-demand system, that might be a
good way to go.

> It will be interesting to see what effect you have on Novell, and I wish
> you the best of luck with that endeavor.

Thanks!

> Blessed are the peacemakers ... for they shall be shot at from both sides.

:-) Awesome sig.

Best,

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
openSUSE Community Manager
jzb@xxxxxxxxxx | zonker@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://zonker.opensuse.org/ | http://www.dissociatedpress.net/
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