On Wednesday 12 Jan 2005 00:22, Bruce Marshall wrote:
So you're saying that if SuSE *says* it is going to give you 90 days of install support when you purchase 9.2 Pro, that they then don't have to provide it???
I think Josephine's point is that it's more difficult to give full support on everything to private users, because they are likely to have more heterogeneous systems than company users. Certainly, SUSE gives support to those who purchase the boxes, but only on certain areas - for that reason. Company users are likely to have older, company-wide PCs with fewer hardware add-ons, and the company will have entered into a longer-term support relationship. Moreover, in many cases, the queries may be mediated through the company's IT person, who may already have dealt with the more obvious issues. So it's probably easier to get a handle on what the problem may be than with a query from a private user, some of whose problems may actually be due to the fact that he is completely new to Linux. Where do you start? As some of the queries on this list show, it can sometimes take some intricate work to tease out a specific issue. It's just not practical to do more than the basics for that user - I suppose about £10 of the box price goes to support, and that would pay for, what - 15 minutes? I tend not to waste time (theirs or mine) with Support - you're more likely to get a sensible answer from one of these lists, or googling. The things that can't be solved that way, I put up with until the next release, which at least (unlike proprietary software) is fairly frequent. And if I really couldn't stand SUSE any more, I could use another Linux distro (which again isn't really possible with proprietary software). -- Pob hwyl / Best wishes Kevin Donnelly www.kyfieithu.co.uk - Meddalwedd Rhydd yn Gymraeg www.cymrux.org.uk - Linux Cymraeg ar un CD!