Jerry Feldman wrote:

On Wed, 27 Dec 2006 15:03:58 -0800 J Sloan wrote:

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Jay Smith wrote:

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The real major difference is support.

OpenSUSE is free and meant to be used as a desktop Linux.It's not suited for enterprise usage because it's unstable, always changing, there's a lot to keep up with. SLED on the other hand is pretty much standard. You get a few Service Packs every so often, but for the most part, what you see is what you get.

Actually, the difference between SLED 10 and opensuse 10.1 is that SLED 10 is desktop client only, while opensuse 10.1 is much broader in scope -

SLED is coordinated with SLES. both are intended for the enterprise, and as youall mentioned, SLED and SLES are more stable, with firmly scheduled releases. OpenSuSE has more frequent releases, and is certainly more bleeding edge.

Here is something I had posted on the Novell discussion list in an attempt to clarify matters regarding the many Linux incarnations from Novell. Hope this helps: To date, as I understand it, here is the current taxonomy of Novell "Linux obfuscated" products: 1) OES: Open Enterprise Server. Runs on either a NetWare or Linux kernel. Has all assorted Novell goodies, such as NSS, LUM, NetStorage, etc. OES with the Linux kernel is based on SuSE Linux 9 - so you get older versions (older than what ships with opensuse for example) of Apache, MySQL, PHP etc. This is a commercial product. One thing to note, the "fully functioning" (as in providing functions other than just eDirectory) NCP engine is only available in this family of Linux named products from Novell - so people with various Novell clients can connect to OES boxes via the Novell client and consume services via NCP. 2) SLES: SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, and it's second cousin twice removed on the mum's side, SLED (SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) are pretty much all "Linux" (meaning much less Novell product contributions than for OES). These come with some Novell goodies, namely LUM and a Novell customized Samba that hooks into eDirectory easily (as opposed to not as easily if you were to use some other Linux from Novell, such as OpenSuse). There is no NSS, NetStorage etc available for this. SLES and SLED are commercial products. There is no NCP engine for SLES or SLED, other than limited NCP business installed and used if and when one installs eDirectory on this family of products. 3) OpenSuSE: This is the "truly open" (free, open source, no commercial entanglements out of the box). You get some Novell contributed enhancements, such as Novell's OpenOffice which has better integration with MS Office. No NSS, no LUM, no NetStorage etc. This product is not commercial. There is no NCP engine for SLES or SLED, other than limited NCP business installed and used if and when one installs eDirectory on this family of products. The NCP differences between item 1 versus items 2 and 3 above are important. Installing eDirectory on any Linux gives you a bare bones NCP engine that is used by eDirectory itself. eDirectory updates to Linux often update this NCP engine. This "eDirectory only" NCP engine is different from the fully functional NCP engine included in the OES family - so, for example, one has to be very very careful installing eDirectory updates to OES boxes for fear that one may inadvertently replace the fully functioning OES NCP engine with the eDirectory only NCP engine shipped in an eDirectory update. Hope the above clears up some confusion as to the myriad Linux and "Linux like" offerings from Novell - it took me quite some time to finally get an understanding. Not sure how long this scenario will last before it is change once again and we get hit with a new plethora of names and re-bundling of products. --Moby -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org