Hi Derek and all,
People pay a lot of money for SuSE Linux. It's not a shoestring product as someone else said. In the UK SuSE-8.0 Pro is 60 quid. For anyone on an average income, that's a figure which requires some thought before spending.
The upgrade cost me more like 40 including p&p. My income's well below average, as I'm stupid enough to work in the public sector, but this is still less money than a windows upgrade (about a third if you want to upgrade to xp), and it comes with 95% of all known linux programs. How much do you think they should charge?
I'm not saying SuSE is bad value - quite the contrary - but given a significant financial outlay one feels entitled to complain about the poor aspects of any product, software or otherwise. And yes, going to another distro is an option, as long as SuSE give a full refund when someone says the quality of the SuSE product is not good enough.
Oh come on. Does IBM do that when people complain? A total-satisfaction-with-every-slight-aspect-of-the-product-or-your-money-back guarantee? On gigabytes of stuff? They'd be bust in months. Like I said, I'd rather it was free, too, but I'm always surprised at how cheaply they manage this.
Also, don't you think that SuSE actually appreciate the feedback such whining produces? They can't fail to have noticed that YaST2 is not popular. They'll do something about it.
"Product x SUCKS!!!" isn't feedback. It's worthless bleating. No-one minds a constructive comment.
...which has a seriously crap user interface. YaST1 was a snip to navigate around. YaST2 in text mode is a bewilderment.
I haven't got used to it either. But surely you appreciate their points about development costs? Best Fergus