Doug B wrote:
On Tuesday 28 December 2004 03:12 pm, Joe Polk wrote:
There are many posts here relating to issues with 9.2. It was because of these that I was very apprehensive about making the move from 9.0. I did anyway. I found several issues, as I've posted here before, that made me give it up. Some probably cannot completely attributed to SuSE as I think the new kernel had issues with my monitor (a monitor that worked fine with 9.0). Others were klugy issues that could have been corrected with some decent QA. I'm disappointed, really, that Novell didn't QA the product better. The only machine I have that might have ran it decently was my server but I never installed it there. In my opinion, it came across as a rushed product and frankly appeared that way in KDE. That's my opinion and my experience. I don't do anything funky with my desktop install. I don't recompile the kernel, I don't customize my menus really. It's just a straight, out-of-the-box install. Others have had great success with it and are obviously able to get beyond some of the bloopers. For me, my choice, it was just not worth my money. I hope the next version is better because I am behind Novell's Linux efforts whole-heartedly.
---------- Original Message ----------- From: Doug B <suse@hatterhill.com>
On Monday 27 December 2004 01:40 pm, Joe Polk wrote:
Congratulations on having only mouse issues with your 9.2 upgrade! You're one of the lucky ones.
Actually, if you had problems, I would restate that to say you are one of the unfortunate ones.
I don't take issue with your having problems. As you say, there have been a number of people who have problems with 9.2. I understand your frustration... I really do.
The only thing I take issue with is describing those with success stories as being the lucky ones. To me, that sounds like most people have problems but there are some lucky ones. I feel it is the other way around. Most people have had a good experience and but some have been unlucky.
That has been true of every release I've installed from RedHat 6.x to Suse 9.2 and a few others. There are always people who have problems. Since I signed up on my first distro mail list, there have always been comments like -- "Watch the mail list for a surge in emails around release time. The bigger the surge, the more the problems and the longer you should wait before upgrading your box.". There was no surge this time. That could be a very good sign about 9.2 (fewer problems) or a bad sign about Suse (fewer people moving over/upgrading). Since my experience was pretty good (a few problems, but nothing I couldn't work out), I choose to think the (lack of surge in) volume of email is a good thing.
I do think SuSE needs to watch quality better. There is no excuse for what happened with the last two kernel updates. Marketing sells a product... quality keeps folks comming back. Years ago I worked as a salesman in the oil field trucking business. I used to tell my drivers that I could sell anyone once, but it was up to them to sell the next job by doing a good job. In a product like this, getting the first sale is important... but getting the second sale is critical.
Good luck with the next one! Doug
All I can say is that with so many bad experiences, I am very hesitant to purchase software without knowing that it is going to work. Unfortunately for SuSE, they don't seem to have a public evaluation system, nor are there distros for NON-COMMERCIAL usages. I liked it when one could download SuSE for free before, and I like it when companies like Oracle and Sun, and even Microsoft, have evaluation/non-commercial options to get at their software and try it. It many sales, especially enterprise, they have a POC phase, i.e. Proof-Of-Concept. I don't see why we can have some form of this, rather than just blindly pay, and find out later it doesn't work. :-( Anyhow, combine with that and and users reporting problems, SuSE doesn't seem like a viable platform at this stage, or at least one cannot find out... :-)