On Wednesday 12 Jan 2005 08:15, James Mohr wrote:
However, I am talking about a case where I cannot even get the software installed. Note software for which I paid money. Suse 9.0 works. Suse 9.2 doesn't. Formatting as an ext2fs works, an ext3fs doesn't (nor does reiser). Something support has not addressed.
Yes, but what you're asking for in effect is a guarantee that you can install SUSE without problems on any machine of your choosing. The free support can't do that - they can provide best efforts to try and answer your questions, but even then there may just be something about your machine that they've never come across, and couldn't sort out without a large expenditure of effort. The word is "support" (ie help) - there's no guarantees about it.
What I read there is that support should stop working after about 15 minutes (more or less). If Suse support considers it a waste of their time, then they shouldn't offer it. Drop the price of the software accordingly and then expect people to pay for support. If I don't like it,I can go elsewhere, "which again isn't really possible with proprietary software".
You can always do that, as I said. I doubt if SUSE considers it a waste of their time to try and keep paying customers happy, but in the real world, resource decisions have to be made. Suppose, for instance, sorting out an obscure problem for one person took so much time that the simpler queries of 5 other people get ignored? What's best there?
However, from the end-users perspective, how does Linux differ from Windows? I cannot get it installed and the support the vendor gives me does not address the problem (let alone solve it). Yes, it was/is probably more sensible to google or the list. Why then is this service offered? Personally, I think it is bad for their reputation to ask money for a service and then say you need to go somewhere else for that service.
From what you said above, you *can* get it installed with ext2, but not with a journalling filesystem. Maybe there's something about your setup (hard disk controller?) that doesn't like such filesystems insofar as they are implemented in 9.2 (even if 9.0 was OK). Or maybe some kernel or other parameter change has caused this. Either way, it is not necessarily simple to track down. If Support haven't come across it before, there may actually be no answer as yet. That doesn't mean that the concept of support is itself invalid. As regards "how does Linux differ from Windows?", I think that even if installation and support were zero in both OSs, the question is easily answered in Linux' favour. The key point is that in a community effort in a field where new technology is being introduced every 6 months, there will be glitches, and frustrating ones. They will get fixed, but not necessarily on a timescale that suits our immediate needs. For example, I've just bought an Aldi Medion 8383XL, and can't get sound working on it - I think the Intel ICH6 chip isn't supported yet. Who is that down to? The community? The kernel developers? The ALSA people? SUSE support? Intel? Or me, for buying stuff that was built only to run Windows (but actually runs SUSE like the clappers apart from the sound issue)? I just have to live with it, but I'm sure that SUSE 9.3/10.0 will sort it out. -- Pob hwyl / Best wishes Kevin Donnelly www.kyfieithu.co.uk - Meddalwedd Rhydd yn Gymraeg www.cymrux.org.uk - Linux Cymraeg ar un CD!