Susanne Oberhauser-Hirschoff wrote:
Per Jessen <per@computer.org> writes:
The Linux you work with, for a living.
I like the concept, and have been working with openSUSE Linux for a living since 2004. With a good dose of frustration every and now and then. When you work with something for a living, it has to remain fairly stable, you can't be introducing your employees to a new steep learning curve every other day.
Yep, an ever current rock solid Factory is something a developer and a contributor want and value, and that is cool if you don't have additional dependencies deployed on top, as in "for a living". So there is a need for a released version, too.
Sorry about the late reply, I got distracted. I think "for a living" implies a third user-group - I'm taking a clue from other parts of this thread or other current threads. We have "new users" which we want to attract, we have "current users" we want to keep and I submit we have "for a living"-users which we dont' want to antagonize. 10 pissed off plain back-office users of openSUSE will override a single openSUSE admin/advocate in a nanosecond.
Wrt "A desktop and a server oriented release that target end users that work everyday with their computers.", it would be good to define the "end users" in this context more precisely.
Go ahead :)
This part more than anything is a community project of professionals around openSUSE. People like yourself.
Thanks, Susanne - if(!) it were up to me, I would propose we make decisions/changes such that we accomodate the following user-groups in order of priority: 1) "for a living"-users 2) admins of "for a living"-users 3) current users (developers, hobbyists, plain users. mediacenters ... 4) admins of the above. 5) new users. I am myself in the top three/four groups, having grown from a 5 to a 3 to a 4 to a 1 to 2. (over twenty years).
For instance, where should/would openSUSE place itself when compared to SLED/SLES?
openSUSE is good for many cases, depending on the community it may even become better than it is today, but when you need more than a volunteer community can generate, you should easily and without pain be able to move to SLES. That move obviously also helps the project.
There is only a limited energy available for openSUSE releases and their mainteance updates. If you --- as a professional --- need more for your customer than what the community provides, much longer maintenance, certified hardware, higher-end hardware, certified applications for your customer, then both your customer and you will be better served with SLE.
Completely agree. My customer is primarily my company. The main problem I have is that openSUSE moves too fast (which mean we have to remain backlevel) and without consideration for (my/the) users. We have considered SLE a number of times, but sofar openSUSE has won.
Where do you, as a professional using openSUSE, see the transition area between the two? Where would you like to see it?
Those are difficult questions. In the early beginning, I chose openSUSE for purely personal reasons. Now, some 7-8 years later, I cannot really make decisions for personal reasons. For pure cost/benefit reasons I don't see my company migrating to SLES/SLED for now, but we're also way backlevel on openSUSE in many places. openSUSE 12.3 (which I am much in favour of) is a show-stopper due to a kernel issue (bnc#814510), most back-office desktops remain on 11.x due to KDE and openOffice. (KDE learning curve and office documents having to be adjusted). I think openSUSE _could_ be a very real solution for the lower-end KMU (10-50 employees) with an enthusiastic admin and an in-house "appreciation" of open-source software. Somewhere beyond that, the decision becomes mostly managerial/financial. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (1.2°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - dedicated server rental in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org