On Fri, Apr 09, Phil Mocek wrote:
On Sat, Apr 10, 2004 at 03:42:52AM +0200, Philipp Thomas wrote:
Phil Mocek <pmocek-list-suse@mocek.org> [Fri, 9 Apr 2004 13:10]:
The fact that bug tracking information for official SuSE packages is unavailable, even to paid users of ``SuSE Professional'', makes it very hard for me to recommend this distribution for use in a production environment.
For use in a production environment SUSE offers the "SUSE Linux Enterprise Server" which is maintained for five years and for which you buy the maintenance on a yearly basis.
By ``production environment'', I mean, loosely, a situation in which downtime or decreased functionality costs a business money -- as opposed to computers I have at home for personal use or ones on which a business tests out new software in an appropriate sandbox. This could be, say, a desktop machine in someone's office, or maybe a server that handles SMTP and IMAP.
Are you saying that SuSE 9.0 Professional shouldn't be used in such a capacity? Isn't SLES the same thing with some extra software and a support contract?
No, it is not.
SLES starts out at what, $800 - $1000? What about those of us who don't need a support contract, but just reliable software and up-to-date documentation for it, including known problems with it?
Do you know how expensive it is to create up-to-date documentation for something with known problems? If you wish this, you have to pay for it.
Bad example. Debian and the BSDs rely on volunteers and aren't commercial distributions so they don't have to account for where they spend money.
No, I think anyone who has used them would agree that Debian's and the BSDs' package management systems and related documentation are *shining* examples of quality packaging and package management. Does anybody here disagree?
Yes, what does it help if you know there are about 10.000 open bugs, some of them are there since years, and nobody is looking at it? Thorsten -- Thorsten Kukuk http://www.suse.de/~kukuk/ kukuk@suse.de SuSE Linux AG Maxfeldstr. 5 D-90409 Nuernberg -------------------------------------------------------------------- Key fingerprint = A368 676B 5E1B 3E46 CFCE 2D97 F8FD 4E23 56C6 FB4B