I think we all agree SLE is for the enterprise, hence it's name, and you are bang on regarding hardware support, Novell have 90% of the solution right, but when your wireless card won't run it kinda makes it impossible to continue if you rely on it. Obviously I don't expect every flavour to be supported for the enterprise but..... Novell could support the big brand corporate/workstation models via vendor agreement to maintain a loyal customer base of their target market - corporates! Who wants an OS that might not work in a few months when your company is forced to change hardware due to EOL? Only those really trying to say something with Open Source I expect which is not whom we're trying to bring over.
I wanted to Beta test SLE 11 as I'd like to go back to it and be able to recommend it to the enterprise again, but they turned me down, odd considering how much more pro-active I was in selling their software than any other vendor in NZ. Oh well, that's Novell I suppose. No wonder all their offices here have closed down.
But back on topic :) My question re OpenSuSE is not to suggest that it should run in the enterprise but that it will run in the home / enthusiest market, which then if stable could potentially be used in business if it got a good name for itself. If it doesn't achieve this, what's the point of the distro? Presently as I'm sure everyone here is aware, we never know exactly how good an OpenSuSE release is until we uninstall our current one, format, install, re-install etc which is a major pain so unfortunatley we can't trust that things will work as we would like. In my opinino this is a major probelm that needs to be discussed and an outcome agreed. No-one will ever be truly serious about OpenSuSE if we can't trust that there's been a regulated effort to get found bugs / problems out.
For example, what's our philosophy on allowing a version to be released with a network manager that doesn't work properly such as OpenSuSE 11.0? I know it would have delayed the release to get that right, but what's the cost of not getting it right? It seems to me we may end up getting a bad rep and be setting the wrong example if things like that continue to happen. I even heard one of the Novell guys say one time that the whole reason SLE 10 was delayed so much was to get theOpenSuSE bugs out since it's made from the same code initially. So I guess the question is can we afford to have such a rigid release cycle such as what we currently do and what justifies an extension? Do we need to re-address some of the rules about releases and their schedules? Perhaps this is what is happening right now with the delay of 11.1 alpha 3? Do we have a philosophy stating we are not so concerned about this stuff as we are an enthusiast distro?
Lots of questions, it would be great to get some answers. :)
Thanks,
Q
>>> Boyd Lynn Gerber <gerberb(a)zenez.com> 09/17/08 12:50 PM >>>
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008, Quentin Jackson wrote:
> On the whole Opensuse / SLED topic, what are the chances of adjustment
> for provisioning of an equally stable opensuse distro? I love OpenSuSE
> but I used SLED10 extensively until it got too outdated for my hardware
> simply because of the awesome stability. There's a definate difference
> even in the pre Service Pack release between SLED and the OpenSuSE
> version in my opinion.
I tend to agree, but I really like having my customer's on SLED and SLES.
They were previous SCO OS's and they do not like to upgrade/change very
often so the SLES and SLED are really good. The problem is that SLED
seems to not be updated soon enough. I tried to replace a few vista
machines with SLED and was unable to because the new HW would not work
with SLED. I now have them dual booting to openSUSE 11.0 and vista, but
they need a longer more reliable option. I would really be hesitant
putting openSUSE in the corperate offices because of the 2 year cycle.
The do not like to update very often. They like their UNIX/Linux to just
run and not have to deal with it.
> So, what is the wider opensuse team doing to aim for a more stable OS?
> I'm not saying OpenSuSE is unstable, but it does tend to be a bit hit
> and miss, (though it's a lot stabler since you came on board Andreas :))
>
> Is there a place for serious discussion on the future stability of this
> product and ways we can help improve it? Or am I barking up the wrong
> tree here?
I am not sure where the best discussion for this should be, but given that
it was brought up here, I really felt the need to speak up about it as
well.
Thanks,
--
Boyd Gerber <gerberb(a)zenez.com>
ZENEZ 1042 East Fort Union #135, Midvale Utah 84047
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