Feature changed by: Martin Seidler (pistazienfresser) Feature #306982, revision 17 Title: Create an open SLES openSUSE-11.2: Rejected by Stephan Kulow (coolo) reject date: 2009-08-12 16:38:23 reject reason: 11.2 will not be an open SLES. If you want to found a new distribution, go ahead. But don't redefine 11.2 Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Stephen Shaw (decriptor) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: It would be great to have something like centos but that is based off of SLES. This would give people the abililty to use openSLES (for example) and move over to SLES if needed. I believe it would help to grow our user base in the enterprise as well by allowing small companies to start and grow and later move to a supported model. I don't think we would loss customers as these are the people that probably wouldn't be buying licenses in the first place. As they grow this could completely change and they would be well positioned to buy support from Novell. + Relations: + - Make openSUSE releases with more life time than 18 months. + (feature/id: 310963) Discussion: #1: Stephen Shaw (decriptor) (2009-07-29 19:29:57) I think there are tons of good reasons for this. Please add them as you can. #2: Alexandre Rogoski (aledr) (2009-07-29 20:23:22) We offer server services to a lot of our customers and we use openSUSE for their server since years ago. They like to know that openSUSE is enhanced by Novell, it gives credibility to openSUSE. And as soon as their business grow they can turn on Novell customers too. I guess this is a commom scenario around the world. #3: Stephan Kleine (bitshuffler) (2009-07-29 21:41:44) Actually, with the current decision to reduce the lifetime to 2 releases + 2 months (with the current "one release every 8 months" policy lifetime get's reduced to 75% from former 24 months to mere 18) this is more important than ever because most wont bother installing a server with such a short lifetime. It was said that the community is free to create a community supported LTS and Novell will help to provide the necessary infrastructure but will not help by maintaining any packages. I really doubt there are that many people able to properly backport e.g. security fixes and drivers for the kernel and so on which is why I think the idea of a "cummunity supported LTS" wont work (or at least wont produce anything one wants to run on a public server). Therefore I would like to suggest the following: Create a LTS version based on the openSUSE version on which SLE is based and also apply the SLE fixes to it with a lifetime of 3-5 years. Perhaps reduce it to what is needed on a server without any X, KDE, Gnome et al so it should be quite some work less, compared to the "full" system, and since it is done anyways for SLE it shouldn't matter that much anyways. That way one could be comfortable to have a professionaly maintained system without any dangling sword of Damocles (which is IMHO how a "community maintained LTS" sounds). Why doesn't that harm Novell / SLE sales: 1) It would be an easy entry level to get a professional server OS for free and then later update to SLE once support / more is needed. I can't provide any numbers but currently you have the choice between CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu (somehow). Naturally people who install CentOS wont switch to SLE once they need support but to RHEL since it's pretty much the same. 2) If you concentrate on the server there's no chance it could harm SLED. 3) Novell targets only big sales. That would be an easy entry point for smaller corporations who then will upgrade to SLE once they need support / more. Last but not least that's also the reason why their fear that an openSLE will decrease SLE sales is a big logical fail in the first place. 4) Red Hat apparently is doing mighty fine not albeight there is CentOS but because of it. Also, together with Ubuntu, we were the only distro to offer a LTS edition. Contrary to theirs ours would work ;D So, IMHO creating an openSUSE LTS would really help SLE but merely "community supported" without SLE patches it wont happen. #5: Andreas Jaeger (a_jaeger) (2009-08-12 10:41:46) (reply to #3) If somebody wants to do openSUSE support for longer than the 18months, that's possible as well but will not be done by Novell engineers. #4: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-08-09 14:34:11) SUSE products are IMHO mature enough and there's free support (and I would claim we have more lightbulbs than others too) to warrant not having an extra LTS edition to worry about. And on the other hand, LTS is a headache for volunteer supporters that would need to get their heads into totally outdated systems when a lost soul comes along. #6: Ralph Ulrich (ulenrich) (2009-09-05 16:04:14) A more radical view: - openSUSE should release every year (12 months) with 18 months support but a perfect zyppper dup distribution-upgrade for the enthusiasts - an open SLE community supported edition with longer support for the tiny commercial business That eases upgrades to commercial support and conforms more to the enthusiasts. The big TODO in this scenario is a working zypper dup. The more often openSUSE release should be no problem since factory work like a charm and could be released soon. Just put there less new features in a new release! #7: Christian Quante (chrischaan) (2009-09-26 14:22:31) I'm using openSUSE (and SuSE Linux) for a long time as server OS. It fits all my needs and I knew how to handle it. But most of the time it is very outdated. At the moment it runs with openSUSE 10.2 and cries for update. I haven't got the time to install a new OS every year, so I take a look at Scientific Linux / CentOS. The lifetime is seven years! The problem: I have to learn how to handle such OS. A distribution-upgrade in this case is not what I prefer, because the changing in server applications sometimes is very massive. In a server os lifetime there's no changing of services. All the things remains the same and that's what I prefer. I would be very happy to see an openSLES with a long lifetime. As my server is only for private, I would never buy a commercial server os. But if I knew how to handle such server os, I may try to use it at work too. That would be the commercial version then. #8: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-10-07 16:59:17) (reply to #7)
I'm using openSUSE [..] most of the time it is very outdated. At the moment it runs with openSUSE 10.2 [...] so I take a look at Scientific Linux / CentOS. If you are comparing 10.2 (releases many moons ago) with CentOS 5.3 (rather recent), you are doing an unfair comparison.
-- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/306982