}=}> modified, and therefore useless as a complete system. I'd }=}> be willing to pay $70 for a clean new system every couple of }=}> years but not every 4 months, which is about how often new }=}> versions come out. }=} }=}Indeed, it's more than just a small fortune for me to spend 70$ every 4-or-so }=}months. The above solution would be highly appretiated. SuSE's release cycle has been about every 6 months or so for the last 3 releases..if you don't want to pay $70 then get the personal edition every 6 months. I mean RH's standard comes with about the same as SuSE personal for the same amount, yet their Pro is about $100 more then SuSE pro and RH releases every 6 months... *shrug* oh well. -- Ben Rosenberg mailto:ben@whack.org ----- If two men agree on everything, you can be sure that only one of them is doing the thinking.

Jeffrey Taylor wrote:

Cheap updates are available.

Free, yes (if you have a reasonably fast net connection). Cheap, no (ironically).

I updated Samba last night via FTP. SuSE continues to make available updates for several years. For me, the biggest cost of new versions is the days to reconfigure everything. The money is a smaller part.

Let's say you had gotten version 6.4. How would you update via FTP to 7.1 in an orderly way? Or for that matter how would you update from 6.0 to 6.4?

I think there was a upgrade version for 7.0. The retailers wouldn't carry it, so you had to order direct and pay full list price, which was just about street price for the full version. Guess what happened.

That's exactly my point about the need for cheap upgrades. The problem in this case is SuSE's full list price, which really ought to be set at a "tiny profit" level. Paul

I agreed with Jeffrey on time is more important than money. You may call me lazy, but I don't update security patch on all the SL workstations under my care. Only the production servers. It's just too much work to 'upgrade/update', I rather pay the price for new full version (but the pricing must be reasonable) than to spend hours to download, patch and pray (new PnP definition : ). Example: I downloaded the Mandrake 8.0, which took me 27 hours (thanks to my new unlimited ADSL), this cannot happen two months ago as I will need to pay my ISP (ATM ADSL) S$3 x 27 = S$81. The street price for ML8.0 is S$85 (SuSE: S$125), don't really make sense to me at all. One more: KDE2.1.1, I took about 6 hours to download all the packages, I did it for 7.0 and 7.1 (so about 12 hours). Average hourly rate my boss pay me: S$15 => S$180, wow! It simply don't make sense even to upgrade KDE? but I refused to wait for another 5~6 months before I can get SL7.2 here. Conclusion: I don't even mind if SuSE have new distro sooner, but the pricing should be reasonable (SL6.x were S$82~85 and SL7.x are S$125~145), though more content now, but pricing may defer buying decision (not everyone so lucky like me, my boss willing to pay for the new distro most of the time). Keep up the good work SuSE, and keep the price down. Dennis/sg ** 1 USD = ~ S$1.82 (on 4 May 2001)

Cheap updates are available. I updated Samba last night via FTP. SuSE continues to make available updates for several years. For me, the biggest cost of new versions is the days to reconfigure everything. The money is a smaller part.

I think there was a upgrade version for 7.0. The retailers wouldn't carry it, so you had to order direct and pay full list price, which was just about street price for the full version. Guess what happened.

Jeffrey

Quoting Paul Abrahams :

...

I think there's something counterproductive in the way that SuSE prices various versions and upgrades. A couple of people on this list have commented that even at $70, the Professional Version is well worth it. I'd agree - were it possible to get free or really cheap upgrades for a while. I think of it not as a purchase but as a maintenance fee. How much should I pay per year to have the latest version?

Here's a suggestion: keep the Pro Edition price at $70 but offer upgrade CDs for just a little more than the cost of manufacturing and distributing them (with an online version also available, of course). Each upgrade CD would be a "delta" on the previous one, changing only what's been modified, and therefore useless as a complete system. I'd be willing to pay $70 for a clean new system every couple of years but not every 4 months, which is about how often new versions come out.

I don't think SuSE would get any less revenue under this plan.

Gerhard den Hollander wrote:

I subscribed to their subscription program. The price for each update is less thant he full list price (IIRC) , but even so, it is worth it (esp. since I have to maintain a bunch of linux boxes).

For some folks it is.

I do agree that for a home owner the $70 prioce tag 2 or 3 times a year is rather steep.

yes.

Unfortunately delta';s aren't that easy to maintain and test (esp. not over the years .. So you bought 7.0 pro, now they're at 8.3 .. You want to try out gnome (for whatever reason you never bothered). In order to do so you have to: install base gnome from 7.0 and all the deltas between 7.0 to 8.3 .. not to mention that installing something from 7.0 on 8.3 will likely not work or break existing packages ...

It will be hell to maintain for Suse, and therefore the cost of it would be rather high as well .. maybe not $70, but probably aroun $40, $50 ...

If done right, the maintenance effort for deltas wouldn't be any higher than what SuSE now has to do anyway. For instance, the delta for 7.2 would consist simply of those rpms that are different in 7.2 than they are in 7.1. It would be particularly helpful if there was a "latest-full-names" directory at the SuSE FTP site that would contain the latest version of all packages. It would, in effect, be a snapshot of what at any moment SuSE considers to be the best system they can provide. The hard part would be getting the dependencies right so that if you install xyz.rpm you also are told that you need to retrieve and install pqr.rpm and hjk.rpm. However, I believe that most of that dependency analysis has to be done now anyway (Yast seems to know about it). The problem with the current update directory arrangement is that you have to check out every series within it if you're going to update from it under Yast. That whole business of the aaa series, a1 series, etc. is just a leftover from early Slackware distributions, I believe, when everything was done with diskettes. If it has any use at all, the items within a series could be symlinked to their occurrences in the full-names directory. I think that with appropriate upgrade procedures, the world would actually buy more full versions and SuSE would make out better economically. If nothing else, it would be a selling point vis-a-vis Red Hat. Paul

Rick Green wrote:

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Paul Abrahams wrote:

...

It would be particularly helpful if there was a "latest-full-names" directory at the SuSE FTP site that would contain the latest version of all packages. It would, in effect, be a snapshot of what at any moment SuSE considers to be the best system they can provide.

Actually, with 7.1, they went to that. Whenever a package is added to the 'update' directory, the corresponding package in the distribution directory is symlinked to it. So if you point an FTP install at /current/, you'll get as up-to-date a system as SuSE can provide!

I'm puzzled, then, as to why nearly all the links in /pub/suse/i386/current are dated March 16, even though some packages are newer than that. Paul