* Matthew (matthew@psychohorse.com) [010207 12:14]:

Where is the source of your information?

I don't know where he read it, but it is true. -- -ckm

Looks like this is not true, thankfully! http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-02-07-003-20-NW-BZ-SS Much relieved here :-) Matt On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Nadeem Hasan wrote:

Look at http://lwn.net/daily/#t67

Christopher Mahmood wrote:

...

* Matthew (matthew@psychohorse.com) [010207 12:14]:

...

Where is the source of your information?

I don't know where he read it, but it is true.

--

-ckm

-- Nadeem Hasan nhasan@nadmm.com http://www.nadmm.com/

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You too Ben! I will miss you on this list! T'is a very dark day.... Matt On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Ben Rosenberg wrote:

Yes. It is true. Very true. I wish everyone on this list good fortunes...and it has been interesting.

* Matthew (matthew@psychohorse.com) [010207 13:11]: =>Looks like this is not true, thankfully! => =>http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-02-07-003-20-NW-BZ-SS => =>Much relieved here :-) => =>Matt => =>On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Nadeem Hasan wrote: => =>> Look at http://lwn.net/daily/#t67 =>> =>> Christopher Mahmood wrote: =>> > =>> > * Matthew (matthew@psychohorse.com) [010207 12:14]: =>> > > Where is the source of your information? =>> > =>> > I don't know where he read it, but it is true. =>> > =>> > -- =>> > =>> > -ckm =>> =>> -- =>> Nadeem Hasan =>> nhasan@nadmm.com =>> http://www.nadmm.com/ =>> =>> -- =>> To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com =>> For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com =>> Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq =>> =>> => => =>-- =>To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com =>For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com =>Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq => -- Ben Rosenberg mailto:brosenb@suse.com --------------------------------------- SuSE Inc. 580 Second St Suite 210 Oakland CA 94607 U.S.A Tel: 1-510-628-3380 EXT:5086 Fax: 1-510-628-3381 --------------------------------------- "There are no problems, only solutions."

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What you can do for me is keep the "Linux" faith. No matter what happens to SuSE..just believe in Linux/Unix...and not to be cheesey or anything...above all else HAVE FUN! * filip (vhf@skynet.be) [010207 13:35]: =>Hi Ben, => =>I just wrote I was relieved seeing the contadictory news and now this ????? =>I believe you and I'm very very sad. =>What can we do for you? => =>Filip. -- Ben Rosenberg mailto:brosenb@suse.com --------------------------------------- SuSE Inc. 580 Second St Suite 210 Oakland CA 94607 U.S.A Tel: 1-510-628-3380 EXT:5086 Fax: 1-510-628-3381 --------------------------------------- "There are no problems, only solutions."

Hi Ben, You are very wise Ben and we will keep the "Linux Faith" no matter what happens. Let me once again express my gratitude to you and all the others for all the time you gave us, the patience you had etc..... GOOD LUCK. Filip. Le Jeudi 8 F�vrier 2001 00:18, Ben Rosenberg a �crit :

What you can do for me is keep the "Linux" faith. No matter what happens to SuSE..just believe in Linux/Unix...and not to be cheesey or anything...above all else HAVE FUN!

* filip (vhf@skynet.be) [010207 13:35]: =>Hi Ben, => =>I just wrote I was relieved seeing the contadictory news and now this ????? =>I believe you and I'm very very sad. =>What can we do for you? => =>Filip. -- Ben Rosenberg mailto:brosenb@suse.com --------------------------------------- SuSE Inc. 580 Second St Suite 210 Oakland CA 94607 U.S.A Tel: 1-510-628-3380 EXT:5086 Fax: 1-510-628-3381 --------------------------------------- "There are no problems, only solutions."

Ben Rosenberg wrote:

What you can do for me is keep the "Linux" faith. No matter what happens to SuSE..just believe in Linux/Unix...and not to be cheesey or anything...above all else HAVE FUN!

* filip (vhf@skynet.be) [010207 13:35]: =>Hi Ben, => =>I just wrote I was relieved seeing the contadictory news and now this ????? =>I believe you and I'm very very sad. =>What can we do for you? => =>Filip. -- Ben Rosenberg mailto:brosenb@suse.com --------------------------------------- SuSE Inc. 580 Second St Suite 210 Oakland CA 94607 U.S.A Tel: 1-510-628-3380 EXT:5086 Fax: 1-510-628-3381 --------------------------------------- "There are no problems, only solutions."

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I want to thank all you guy's for all the help you gave us loyal SuSE users. This is the most helpful list and I hope it continues and I hope you have good fortune in the future. Thanks again. jozien

;-{

It's a little disturbing that the SuSE PR person could come out and just tell a blatant untruth. Well, I believe the part about expanding marketing and sales, it fits with the blatant untruth part. Sign of things to come? Corvin -- Corvin Russell

Apparently, this is still up in the air. Did SuSE really lay people off in the U.S. office? (Would not surprised me that much since the current market probably sink their opportunity to do a IPO now or on more favorable terms.) Or, did a single fired employee start rumors to get back at SuSE? Either way, business is business, and I hope we don't see a removal of the SuSE distribution from the U.S. market. Christopher On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Matthew wrote:

It is very disturbing :-(. Hopefully they will release a reason "why" thye are laying off most of the staff.

Good luck to all the staff!

Hopefully you will all stay in the Linux field and hopefully things will get to turn round sometime in the future.

I really hoped nothing like this would happen to an non-IPO company, or the slumps owuld not affect them as much as IPO ones...

Matt

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Corvin Russell wrote:

...

It's a little disturbing that the SuSE PR person could come out and just tell a blatant untruth. Well, I believe the part about expanding marketing and sales, it fits with the blatant untruth part. Sign of things to come?

Corvin

-- Corvin Russell

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* Christopher D. Reimer (creimer@rahul.net) [010207 14:36]:

Apparently, this is still up in the air. Did SuSE really lay people off in the U.S. office? (Would not surprised me that much since the current market probably sink their opportunity to do a IPO now or on more favorable terms.) Or, did a single fired employee start rumors to get back at SuSE?

No, there hasn't been anyone fired in quite a long time. (I resigned as of about two weeks under friendly terms if that's what you were implying). -- -ckm

* Michael Hasenstein (mha@suse.com) [010207 17:27]:

Christopher Mahmood wrote:

...

* Christopher D. Reimer (creimer@rahul.net) [010207 14:36]:

...

Apparently, this is still up in the air. Did SuSE really lay people off in the U.S. office? (Would not surprised me that much since the current market probably sink their opportunity to do a IPO now or on more favorable terms.) Or, did a single fired employee start rumors to get back at SuSE?

No, there hasn't been anyone fired in quite a long time. (I resigned as of about two weeks under friendly terms if that's what you were implying).

Yes, he was our "statistician" (sounds like a decease), now back at the university... Chris, Friday evening in the "Walzwerk" all together - you with us?

I'm leaving for Cuba tomorrow night (why would SLE care about this?), but thanks. Babelfish translates 'Walzwerk' as 'Rolling Mill'...is this that place in the Mission? When I get back we'll have a party. -- -ckm

Not just 1..all but 5. * Christopher D. Reimer (creimer@rahul.net) [010207 17:08]: =>I believe I read on Linux Today that someone was quoted as saying that =>only one single person was recently fired. It did not mention anyone =>specifically, and I wasn't implying anything against you since I wasn't =>aware of your situation. (If you did mention it in a previous email, I =>missed since I was skipping through the other emails.) => -- Ben Rosenberg mailto:brosenb@suse.com --------------------------------------- SuSE Inc. 580 Second St Suite 210 Oakland CA 94607 U.S.A Tel: 1-510-628-3380 EXT:5086 Fax: 1-510-628-3381 --------------------------------------- "There are no problems, only solutions."

"Timothy R. Butler" wrote:

That sure is a shame. I think SuSE will regret loosing such great employees some day... I suppose RedHat & Co. ought to benefit if they seize the opportunity to grab some more employees. Say, any chance you might still be on this list for your personal Linux use?

RH? They also just recently layed off people in this area, about the same number.

"Timothy R. Butler" wrote:

...

RH? They also just recently layed off people in this area, about the same number.

Seems to me all the more reason to get some SuSE'ers. Since SuSE is obviously better than RH Linux, it would never hurt to get some talent from their competition. ;-)

Only - as I said - that not a single part of the distribution was made in the Oakland office. It was sales and i-support only.

Christopher Mahmood wrote:

...

Only - as I said - that not a single part of the distribution was made in the Oakland office. It was sales and i-support only.

...and some development, consulting, testing, and documentation, etc. It's not going to help the PR disaster you have inherited by trying to minimize Oakland's role in company. It's only going to piss people off more than they already are.

And it's not going to help that you're pissed off about me for whatever unkown reason. COnsulting was just two people. Testing - what testing? No hw-testing or suse linux 7.1 testing took place here. Oh well, a little - but 80% of that by ME (SL7.1 beta tests). There's no documentation developed in this office whatsoever. I don't know what you're trying to do here.

Yes..from a web development company they bought and some smaller office and they moved the people who would go to that other local office. BTW..they have many U.S. offices and European offices. Hasi, don't justify this..don't explain it away. Just let a beaten, fleabag dog alone. You can't explain it away. You shouldn't even try. * Michael Hasenstein (mha@suse.com) [010207 17:49]: =>"Timothy R. Butler" wrote: =>> =>> That sure is a shame. I think SuSE will regret loosing such great employees =>> some day... I suppose RedHat & Co. ought to benefit if they seize the =>> opportunity to grab some more employees. Say, any chance you might still be =>> on this list for your personal Linux use? => =>RH? They also just recently layed off people in this area, about the =>same number. -- Ben Rosenberg mailto:brosenb@suse.com --------------------------------------- SuSE Inc. 580 Second St Suite 210 Oakland CA 94607 U.S.A Tel: 1-510-628-3380 EXT:5086 Fax: 1-510-628-3381 --------------------------------------- "There are no problems, only solutions."

Tim and the rest of the list, I don't want to comment any farther on any of this. I just don't know how I feel about any of this. I was a SuSE user for more then 2 years before I moved from St. Louis to Oakland to join the SuSE team..but with Hasi behavior and justifications of SuSE taking a nose dive..I just don't know what I shall do. I do know this. I will work my last 2 days with pride and giving 100% and after that it is debatable what I shall do. I simply don't know...get a job..pay rent..dsl..etc :) Most of you have my personal email...and if you don't. Then you haven't been here long enough *lighthearted jab*. Anyways. Gimme a few days..let me rap this up..and please don't full Michael anymore..he has nothing to loose. He's German..he's the Oracle rep..and he still has a job. It's easy to talk shit when you still have a pay cheque coming in. Regards, * Timothy R. Butler (tbutler@uninetsolutions.com) [010207 17:37]: =>That sure is a shame. I think SuSE will regret loosing such great employees =>some day... I suppose RedHat & Co. ought to benefit if they seize the =>opportunity to grab some more employees. Say, any chance you might still be =>on this list for your personal Linux use? -- Ben Rosenberg mailto:brosenb@suse.com --------------------------------------- SuSE Inc. 580 Second St Suite 210 Oakland CA 94607 U.S.A Tel: 1-510-628-3380 EXT:5086 Fax: 1-510-628-3381 --------------------------------------- "There are no problems, only solutions."

Hi, On Wed, Feb 07, John Eighmy wrote:

By the way...anyone hear from Lenz lately?

I am still alive and back for now, now that 7.1 is out the door - no more 85 hour weeks for the next few months :) However, I am still catching up on more than 3500 messages in this list... Please bear with me. And of course shit _really_ hits the fan, if you are out of the office for one day (yesterday). Sheesh... LenZ -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ Lenz Grimmer SuSE GmbH mailto:grimmer@suse.de Schanzaeckerstr. 10 http://www.suse.de/~grimmer/ 90443 Nuernberg, Germany Old age is not for sissies.

Hi Lenz, On Friday 09 February 2001 10:59, you wrote:

Hi,

On Wed, Feb 07, John Eighmy wrote:

...

By the way...anyone hear from Lenz lately?

I am still alive and back for now, now that 7.1 is out the door - no more 85 hour weeks for the next few months :)

Good, I was afraid that you left for that vacation island again.. ;-))

However, I am still catching up on more than 3500 messages in this list... Please bear with me.

And of course shit _really_ hits the fan, if you are out of the office for one day (yesterday). Sheesh...

You will make it.. BTW, will you be at Cebit this year seeing as how you missed it last year? Mike -- Powered by SuSE 7.0, Kernel 2.2.16+

* Timothy R. Butler (tbutler@uninetsolutions.com) [010207 18:34]:

That sure is a shame. I think SuSE will regret loosing such great employees some day... I suppose RedHat & Co. ought to benefit if they seize the opportunity to grab some more employees. Say, any chance you might still be on this list for your personal Linux use?

At least I will be on the lists, I just won't be subscribing/unsubscribing people anymore. And I'd never work for Redhat... -- -ckm

At 02:35 PM 2/7/2001 -0800, Christopher D. Reimer wrote:

Apparently, this is still up in the air. Did SuSE really lay people off in the U.S. office? (Would not surprised me that much since the current market probably sink their opportunity to do a IPO now or on more favorable terms.) Or, did a single fired employee start rumors to get back at SuSE?

Either way, business is business, and I hope we don't see a removal of the SuSE distribution from the U.S. market

You can allways order the international version , has all the krypto stuff as well.

Christopher

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Matthew wrote:

...

It is very disturbing :-(. Hopefully they will release a reason "why" thye are laying off most of the staff.

Good luck to all the staff!

Hopefully you will all stay in the Linux field and hopefully things will get to turn round sometime in the future.

I really hoped nothing like this would happen to an non-IPO company, or the slumps owuld not affect them as much as IPO ones...

Matt

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Corvin Russell wrote:

...

It's a little disturbing that the SuSE PR person could come out and just tell a blatant untruth. Well, I believe the part about expanding marketing and sales, it fits with the blatant untruth part. Sign of things to come?

Corvin

-- Corvin Russell

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...

Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

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You can download ~ 650Mb CD in an hour. Six CD's is about a 6 hour download if you take everything instead of just what you need. It takes far longer than that to have it mailed to you and almost as long to find time to go to the store and locate what I want ( Though it's getting easier to find Linux! ). Of course the University here keeps copies of all the popular current distros so it's a pretty fast connection if you're anywhere near (on campus is very fast..). Check w/ your local LUG to see if they keep copies too. :) *^*^*^* Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape you. -- Albert Einstein On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Matthew wrote:

7.1 will have all the crypto stuff on the CD's even for the US.

I have a DSL line, but still will get the CD's, as its a whole lot faster for me to upgrade via and install off of them than hunting down packages. But I can see why people will use the download and retrieve method.

Matt

On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Samy Elashmawy wrote:

...

At 02:35 PM 2/7/2001 -0800, Christopher D. Reimer wrote:

...

Apparently, this is still up in the air. Did SuSE really lay people off in the U.S. office? (Would not surprised me that much since the current market probably sink their opportunity to do a IPO now or on more favorable terms.) Or, did a single fired employee start rumors to get back at SuSE?

Either way, business is business, and I hope we don't see a removal of the SuSE distribution from the U.S. market

You can allways order the international version , has all the krypto stuff as well.

...

Christopher

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Matthew wrote:

...

It is very disturbing :-(. Hopefully they will release a reason "why" thye are laying off most of the staff.

Good luck to all the staff!

Hopefully you will all stay in the Linux field and hopefully things will get to turn round sometime in the future.

I really hoped nothing like this would happen to an non-IPO company, or the slumps owuld not affect them as much as IPO ones...

Matt

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Corvin Russell wrote:

...

It's a little disturbing that the SuSE PR person could come out and just tell a blatant untruth. Well, I believe the part about expanding marketing and sales, it fits with the blatant untruth part. Sign of things to come?

Corvin

-- Corvin Russell

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...

...

Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

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...

Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

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Matthew wrote:

It is very disturbing :-(. Hopefully they will release a reason "why" thye are laying off most of the staff.

??? Why??? How about "cutting costs"?

Good luck to all the staff!

Hopefully you will all stay in the Linux field and hopefully things will get to turn round sometime in the future.

I really hoped nothing like this would happen to an non-IPO company, or the slumps owuld not affect them as much as IPO ones...

Actually, it's a small step for SuSE in general, we've still got about 600 employees worldwide.

Corvin Russell wrote:

It's a little disturbing that the SuSE PR person could come out and just tell a blatant untruth. Well, I believe the part about expanding marketing and sales, it fits with the blatant untruth part. Sign of things to come?

The "SuSE PR person" didn't know anything so she rightfully suspected this to be a rumor.

On Wednesday 07 February 2001 15:28, Ben Rosenberg wrote:

Yes. It is true. Very true. I wish everyone on this list good fortunes...and it has been interesting.

Why the rubbish below? Is this a B.Clinton syndrome? "I never had... I lied" " Xenia Von Wedel of the Terpin Group, a California-based PR firm and press contact for SuSE dismissed an unattributed story appearing on Linux Weekly News today that her client had layed off an unspecified number of U.S. employees as "just gossip, bad gossip" despite the LWN report and several calls she'd already handled today on the stories. <snip> Von Wedel also said that despite a recent firing of a single employee, SuSE has not, to her knowledge released anybody else, and that the company is in the process of adding office space in its current location." Quote from http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-02-07-003-20-NW-BZ-SS What's the real dimension of the problem? Alvaro Novo SuSE 6.4 -=- Kernel 2.4.0 -=- KDE 2.1.0-Beta1-0 3:53pm up 9 days, 23 min, 6 users, load average: 0.05, 0.10, 0.09

Thank you to all the staff in the US who have been so friendly and helpful on this list. It is a rotten thing to be fired, especially if it's from a job you like and it comes out of the blue. I wish you all the best of luck in finding new jobs. Although it may not seem like it at the moment I am sure that your future's in the Linux field are bright. Jethro

I always buy the new distro :-). The added quality of the manuals is always soemthing I liked (and I have noticed it evolving into something very few software companies offer). My main worry is if they are shifting there focus into the Enterprise market, which may mean that there distro is very dramatically change. Matt On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, filip wrote:

Hi all,

Me to, very relieved with that latest news. I wish them to expand even if the financial people say the market is down. So, don't forget to buy 7.1 from SuSE. Cheers, Filip.

Le Mercredi 7 F�vrier 2001 22:11, vous avez �crit :

...

Looks like this is not true, thankfully!

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-02-07-003-20-NW-BZ-SS

Much relieved here :-)

Matt

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Nadeem Hasan wrote:

...

Look at http://lwn.net/daily/#t67

Christopher Mahmood wrote:

...

* Matthew (matthew@psychohorse.com) [010207 12:14]:

...

Where is the source of your information?

I don't know where he read it, but it is true.

--

-ckm

-- Nadeem Hasan nhasan@nadmm.com http://www.nadmm.com/

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joe wrote:

My guess is the sudden change to two different releases and raise in prices by SuSE was to offset lower than expected sales. A lot of other linux companies

No. The sales have climed steadily. It's just that when suse started in the us people thought they'd add an incentive for retail by selling the box cheap to them, so that they could add a huge markup and make a nice profit. It turned out they only added a very small markup and suse linux was WAY too cheap in this country.

will suffer the same fate. Times have changed, the ecomomic climate for linux in America is not the same as it was a year ago.

Actually, the business climate is still very good. All the big guys are moving into Linux rapidly. It's just that the consumers don't buy as many boxes here, plus the market is split much more than anywhere else - because EVERYONE wants to be in the us market so here's the most competition for box sales.

* Gary (medmanks@mindspring.com) [20010208 00:05]:

they just don't have the engineering behind them. <g>

Pardon? The engineering mostly stays behind us. At least the one on this side of the pond. Philipp -- Philipp Thomas Development, SuSE GmbH, Schanzaecker Str. 10, D-90443 Nuremberg, Germany Penguins shall save the dinosaurs -- Handelsblatt about Linux on S/390

joe wrote:

...

My guess is the sudden change to two different releases and raise in

...

SuSE was to offset lower than expected sales. A lot of other linux companies

No. The sales have climed steadily. It's just that when suse started in the us people thought they'd add an incentive for retail by selling the box cheap to them, so that they could add a huge markup and make a nice profit. It turned out they only added a very small markup and suse linux was WAY too cheap in this country.

...

will suffer the same fate. Times have changed, the ecomomic climate for

How meny boxes at $79.99 do you expect a typical non comercial user to buy a year at M$ type pricing. At $29.99 I have no problem buming up at each dot version , but at $79.00 I will realy look closely at the product. If I hade a big fat internet pipe I would just download it , but with dial up that is not an option. Shucks if you put the boxes in comp usa , best but , and aall the other consumer retiual outlets , you are not going to get the big coperate guys buying them there. You instead end up having your typical "joe blow" aho knows little about linux getting phreaked out by sticker shock. This is not MS it is LINUX. Freely aviualable and GPL. The chain stores want to move product and mark it up based on traffic , and with 4 reviosons / dot versions a year , the wont keep the stock on the shelf , as soon as the new one is released theey will mark down the older one. $79.99 is to expensive , shucks , you can go down to the book store and buy a good quality linux book with the distro on cd for half the $79.99 price of the boxed set. Spliting it into two diffrent version was not to my likeing. Most peaple will feel they are missing something in the standard vversion , and feel they are paying to mucg for the deluxe version , just to make sure they got every thing. I bought my first version 5.3 for $69.99 retial at borders , and a real short time it was obsolete as the newer veersi0on came out. Linux is now getting just as expensive as M$ from looking at the retial shelevs. At 02:36 PM 2/7/2001 -0800, Michael Hasenstein wrote: prices by linux in

...

America is not the same as it was a year ago.

Actually, the business climate is still very good. All the big guys are moving into Linux rapidly. It's just that the consumers don't buy as many boxes here, plus the market is split much more than anywhere else - because EVERYONE wants to be in the us market so here's the most competition for box sales.

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At 09:07 AM 2/8/2001 -0800, Michael Hasenstein wrote:

Samy Elashmawy wrote:

...

How meny boxes at $79.99 do you expect a typical non comercial user to buy a year at M$ type pricing. At $29.99 I have no problem buming up at each dot version , but at $79.00 I will realy look closely at the product. If I

That is no wonder when they are air shipping the product when they cna down load or air mail a master and pressw the cds here. That just plian bad busines decision. Not even microsoft hits you for three to four updates at $79.99. At that price I will look very closely to see weather or not to upgrade. I may just decide to upgrade a few packages or so as it is with three to four revisions per year. I would rather spend that money on tech suport or hardware. I havent had any rave reviews form there tech suport that I have used. I have found this list to bemore detialed and in genereal a great learning tool.

You're wrong right from the start - we didn't sell a single box less with the new pricing, which is JUSTIFIED anyway. Slashing the price to $3 won't get us even 20% more sales (but a huge loss per box).

Michael Hasenstein wrote:

Samy Elashmawy wrote:

...

How meny boxes at $79.99 do you expect a typical non comercial user to buy a year at M$ type pricing. At $29.99 I have no problem buming up at each dot version , but at $79.00 I will realy look closely at the product. If I

...

You're wrong right from the start - we didn't sell a single box less with the new pricing, which is JUSTIFIED anyway. Slashing the price to $3 won't get us even 20% more sales (but a huge loss per box).

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I have no problem with the pricing, since with each upgrade I get a new version of everything, all on CD so I don't have to search the internet or end up compiling a bunch of code to stay current. Also, even with the increased price, SuSE still has the mose bang for the buck of any distribution, in my opinion. -- Computer programmers do it byte by byte

Cliff Sarginson wrote:

On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 11:04:53AM -0800, Tim Hanson wrote:

...

Michael Hasenstein wrote:

...

I have no problem with the pricing, since with each upgrade I get a new version of everything, all on CD so I don't have to search the internet or end up compiling a bunch of code to stay current. Also, even with

Of course, and this would be a very generous individual gesture. Give the older distros and documentation to a school or worthy charity of your choice :) At least then you would be acting in the spirit of TGMOO.

Cliff

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Actually, I end up giving it to someone who has shown an interest in Linux, usually a workmate, neighbor, etc. I gave one to my community college last year. -- Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!"

or buy $5 white cd's from one of the online dealers. If SuSE had similar CD's of their own for sale (and I knew it) I'd go w/ them even if it cost a lil bit more just to give them their own profit. Especially if they had a mini-boxed set w/ both PC and Mac versions in one case.

Exactly what I've been thinking, saying, and even writting the suggestions dept. at SuSE about. Please - write them, maybe if we both bug 'em they'll consider it. ;-) I think a 7-CD's + DVD in a jewel case no-manuals, no support $35 or so dollars would be quite nice... -Tim ----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks Information Tech. Consultant Christian Web Services Since 1996 ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm An Authorized IPSwitch Reseller tbutler@uninetsolutions.com http://www.uninetsolutions.com ============== "Information Powered by Innovation" ==============

At 12:10 PM 2/8/2001 -0500, jfweber@eternal.net wrote:

**strings of ones and zeros arranged themselves into a message from Samy Elashmawy on Thu, 08 Feb 2001 07:38:47 +0000 which said...

**How meny boxes at $79.99 do you expect a typical non comercial user to buy **a year at M$ type pricing.

uh, have you bought a M$ box lately???? for an upgrade product ( which bitches at you on each subsequent clean reinstall ( and you will need to do a lot of clean reinstalls , even w/ thier "best" version ever ( w2k) ) Suse's $80 boxed set includes actual useable distrobution of linux plus actual useable verisons of a whole helluvalot of stuff I haven't even had time to play w/ yet. Plus the manuals . there hasn't been a printed manual in M$ box for eons! For all you guys who already know every thing in the universe that many not be important... okay, but the $30 box, or dl and compitle your won, but stop bitching about a paltry difference in price for a big difference in "what's included" There are several thousand people in the world just coming into the Linux world, no

Last box I bought from M$ was a win98 upgrade for $89.99. That was the last microsoft product I bought. Win 98 is the end of the road for me. All out new machines hear at work get linux , and I am not paying the M$ tax as I am puting them together myself. That way I know they will work with my distro of choice - SUSE - I have a P166 file server , a P133 POT intenet gateway/firewall , P50 linux workstation , P166 dual boot workstation and an AMDK6 360 dual boot . The two dual boot handle the limited M$ needs , mainly the payroll program. every thing else is being moved to linux as they become avialable for linux. Kylix will very likely allow me to move completly to linux expet fot payroll wich can stay on a dual boot or with vmware wnr I get soem better hardware. What realy set me in motion for linux wwas two things. 1/ the 95 serive release 1 and 2 fiasco , where I ahd release one , and in order to get FAT had to buy service release 2 , inotherwords an 89.99 dollar upgrade. Sucks , for something that should have been put up on the ftp server. 2/ Win 98 that was unstable , and would reboot with new settings and driver for a whole bunch of stuff , forcing you to go in and delete them and reinstall them. Not to mention that it craped out twice when I was out of town. 3/ I slapped suse 5.3 on an old 486 to test samba on , Guess waht , It ran faster than windows. Thaat belw me away , and REALY CINCHED the deal. Linux has been rock solid for me. yes it takes time to set up , driver are in short supply. But dam , it just plian works , not only that but it even runs on my old hardware letting me recycle them. I just retired the 486 whi it realy crapped out and ble the gasket. I would not mind buying a full version for 79.99 and then a set of cds with the documentaion on the cds. I would pay 29.99 for this with out hadr manuals and tech suport. But Hitting me up for 79.99 a pop is a bit much. point

in makeing them think our favorite company is ripping them off, is there?? Adn besides, there are all thoe cute stickers for the kids.... or the big kid within. Blondely,

j

afterthought: Reader not found ... please notify tagline.

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At work I was running Win95 and crashing about once or twice a week. I had to upgrade to Win98SE because the HP CD burner required USB support. While that burning was doing it's job I couldn't use the computer for anything else. Period. Crashing went from once or twice per week to once or twice per day. I was asked a couple of days ago to install Win2000 as a test bed, since my 20 inhouse software packages are the biggest in the dept and really exercise the workstation. The first install failed because W2K ignores your request for a clean install if it sees an existing WinXX installation. It creates a dual boot mode. When you tell it to 'C'onvert to NTFS it does so, but keeps the software on the disk (and the various apps run!). But, when you choose the "Windows" dual boot option you get a very pretty BSOD and total hangup. (Win95 can run on an NTFS partition.) Time to reinstall. This time I boot a Win95 floppy and run FDISK to destory the existing partions. Then W2K goes on nicely. When I installed the Adeptic CD Lite software I got a BSOD on reboot (those annoying incessant reboots -- $)(#&$(&$(#*^^%@#&) ---). Had to run the save made and uninstall. Then, I powered down the PC and took out the HP ScanJet 3P scsi card which W2K was blind to. When I booted back up Win2K came ok. I began boxing up the scanner when all of a sudden, on its own, W2K performed an infamous Stealth Phantom Reboot. Windows Explorer sometimes tangles itself up in knots, dies, and W2K kills the remains. Internet Explorer still feels its ok to download only a few KB of any file you choose to download (So I installed NS 4.75 so I could get a reliable download). Typical for the first two days. The only good thing I see about W2K is that NotePad can now handle files larger than 64KB. I read in a 6.4MB text file this morning. All in all, my SuSE 7.0 is much better than W2K. In fact, I haven't had a crash on any of my SuSE installations since 5.3. I may start turning my PC off when I am not using it, however, to conserve energy. JLK On Thursday 08 February 2001 13:27, Michael wrote:

Indeed Windows is a pain. Each of our brand new computers came w/ it forcing us to upgrade all Windows software on the machines we left it on as well as upgrading the OS and software of all other Windows machines. Probably over $1000 per machine. Myself I was all for replacing Windows w/ Linux but there are still some programs the sales staff uses that we've yet to duplicate so we're stuck with Windows in a few places for the time being. My only comfort is that we'll never have to upgrade again as by the next version we'll have it all running on Linux and most of it from any web browser. :)

It's all math, Samy! A linear algebra problem. At low prices you have lots of sales but higher overhead, after fixed costs At higher prices you have fewer sales but lower overhead., after fixed costs. You do some testing to determine some data points and then you do the gaussian-jordan sweep on your matrix. What pops out are your Max-Mins (Profit-cost) and slack variables, the change in the max-min as a function of changes in inputs. You set your price to Max Profit price and monitor your slack variables for compliance. The final result may be a price between $30 and $80, but it could be higher! (Sorry, not lower, it obvious that their previous wholesame price didn't generate a prudent profit margin.) JLK On Thursday 08 February 2001 01:38, Samy Elashmawy wrote:

How meny boxes at $79.99 do you expect a typical non comercial user to buy a year at M$ type pricing. At $29.99 I have no problem buming up at each dot version , but at $79.00 I will realy look closely at the product. If I hade a big fat internet pipe I would just download it , but with dial up that is not an option.

Shucks if you put the boxes in comp usa , best but , and aall the other consumer retiual outlets , you are not going to get the big coperate guys buying them there. You instead end up having your typical "joe blow" aho knows little about linux getting phreaked out by sticker shock.

This is not MS it is LINUX. Freely aviualable and GPL. The chain stores want to move product and mark it up based on traffic , and with 4 reviosons / dot versions a year , the wont keep the stock on the shelf , as soon as the new one is released theey will mark down the older one.

$79.99 is to expensive , shucks , you can go down to the book store and buy a good quality linux book with the distro on cd for half the $79.99 price of the boxed set. Spliting it into two diffrent version was not to my likeing. Most peaple will feel they are missing something in the standard vversion , and feel they are paying to mucg for the deluxe version , just to make sure they got every thing.

I bought my first version 5.3 for $69.99 retial at borders , and a real short time it was obsolete as the newer veersi0on came out. Linux is now getting just as expensive as M$ from looking at the retial shelevs.

At 02:36 PM 2/7/2001 -0800, Michael Hasenstein wrote:

...

joe wrote:

...

My guess is the sudden change to two different releases and raise in

prices by

...

...

SuSE was to offset lower than expected sales. A lot of other linux

companies

...

No. The sales have climed steadily. It's just that when suse started in the us people thought they'd add an incentive for retail by selling the box cheap to them, so that they could add a huge markup and make a nice profit. It turned out they only added a very small markup and suse linux was WAY too cheap in this country.

...

will suffer the same fate. Times have changed, the ecomomic climate for

linux in

...

...

America is not the same as it was a year ago.

Actually, the business climate is still very good. All the big guys are moving into Linux rapidly. It's just that the consumers don't buy as many boxes here, plus the market is split much more than anywhere else - because EVERYONE wants to be in the us market so here's the most competition for box sales.

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-- "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are a gift of God? Thomas Jefferson - 1781

Some points are vaild, some are erm.... First off, forget that rubbish about Mandrake being the number 1 choice, its based on total sales, which includes Macmillan books. Lots of people buy there books, but never use the CD. I did a search on Linuxcentral for Mandrake, here are the prices: Linux Mandrake 7.2 Professional Suite D000-117 Linux $127.95 in stock Linux-Mandrake OS 7.2 Complete D000-111 Linux $28.95 in stock Linux-Mandrake OS 7.2 Powerpack Deluxe D000-113 Linux $64.95 in stock And as a comparison, from the same place here are the prices on SuSE (including the PPC edition). Official SuSE Linux 7.0 Personal Edition D000-104 Linux $31.95 in stock Official SuSE Linux 7.0 Professional Edition D000-105 Linux $62.95 in stock SuSE Linux 7.0 Alpha Edition - new! D000-120 Linux $47.95 in stock SuSE Linux 7.0 PowerPC Edition - new! D000-118 Linux $44.95 in stock Make your own conclusions (personnally I think it is resonably priced, SuSE does not have a Publishing company to back them up financially either). I agree that Yast1 and Yast2 should be Open Source, it was really annoying getting the updated lilo and not being able to effect the llba32 option via Yast. Funny you should mention Whistler....What makes you think it will be $89 for the upgrade? Even if it is, I would not ever want it. I occaisonly upgrade my computer with new hardware, its going to be totally annoying having to call MS to get a new key and to prove I am the real user (and to stop me from installing it on any other computer). Almost forgot about the new licensing, you're gonna have family licensing, small business licensing (and many others). If the upgrade (just an upgrade, one CD with no manuals, probably no support) is $89 that will be for just one license.... Why are you taking all the credit for making Linux popular? Who cares! The people who made Linux did it just for fun, they never actually set out to chamge the world. Really, what made Linux popular was not just the small business people, but programmers who spent countless hours doing free work...And others who just enjoyed hacking around the system. Yes We all like Linux, all this bickering is no good. Yes, what has happened over the last few days was terrible, but Ben's words ring true...Have fun! What is done is done, only time will tell if SuSE took the right or wrong decision. Please lets get back to being techs ok? People are coming here for help, lets give them the best Open Source assistance we can and make Linux work and achieve what everything we want it to. Matt On Thursday 08 February 2001 06:37 pm, Timothy R. Butler wrote:

Well put Samy!!!! Common sense says that you don't take a product that is developed mostly by other developers (for no cost to SuSE - note I say _mostly since SuSE does have the KDE, ALSA, X, and Reiser guys) and charge the same price that Microsoft charges. Maybe instead of everyone writting Microsoft as M$, they should write SuSE as $u$E. I mean, Win2k is pretty stable, and well polished - why is the average stability nut or anyone else going to pay $70 for SuSE, when Whistler (which should be as stable as Win2k) will probably retail for $89 (upgrade)? To me, I challange SuSE to consider the following:

1.) Mandrake, a much more popular distro, includes more software for $10 _less_ than SuSE's Pro edition. 2.) If Linux is going to cost the same as Windows, every thing should work (Windows crashes, but everything works) just like Windows. 3.) SuSE should contribute back it's most integral tool (YaST/YaST2) as open source. If RedHat had done like SuSE with RPM - wouldn't that be horrible? If Linus had done this kind of thing with Linux - we wouldn't have Linux. If Richard Stallman had done that with the GNU Project- there wouldn't be open source as we know it. The simple fact is, if you make your living off of open source, your code should be open source. 4.) If you want to charge $70 or so dollars for the pro edition, you should offer a non-supported edition for those of us who don't enjoy spending our hard earned money on support we will never use. 5.) Don't forgot your loyal SOHO/Small Business Customers. We created Linux's popularity, and brought it to the attention of big business.

-Tim

----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks Information Tech. Consultant Christian Web Services Since 1996 ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm An Authorized IPSwitch Reseller tbutler@uninetsolutions.com http://www.uninetsolutions.com ============== "Information Powered by Innovation" ==============

...

-----Original Message----- From: Samy Elashmawy [mailto:samelash@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 1:39 AM To: Michael Hasenstein; joe Cc: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] SuSE Inc. Lay offs?

How meny boxes at $79.99 do you expect a typical non comercial user to buy a year at M$ type pricing. At $29.99 I have no problem buming up at each dot version , but at $79.00 I will realy look closely at the product. If I hade a big fat internet pipe I would just download it , but with dial up that is not an option.

Shucks if you put the boxes in comp usa , best but , and aall the other consumer retiual outlets , you are not going to get the big coperate guys buying them there. You instead end up having your typical "joe blow" aho knows little about linux getting phreaked out by sticker shock.

This is not MS it is LINUX. Freely aviualable and GPL. The chain stores want to move product and mark it up based on traffic , and with 4 reviosons / dot versions a year , the wont keep the stock on the shelf , as soon as the new one is released theey will mark down the older one.

$79.99 is to expensive , shucks , you can go down to the book store and buy a good quality linux book with the distro on cd for half the $79.99 price of the boxed set. Spliting it into two diffrent version was not to my likeing. Most peaple will feel they are missing something in the standard vversion , and feel they are paying to mucg for the deluxe version , just to make sure they got every thing.

I bought my first version 5.3 for $69.99 retial at borders , and a real short time it was obsolete as the newer veersi0on came out. Linux is now getting just as expensive as M$ from looking at the retial shelevs.

At 02:36 PM 2/7/2001 -0800, Michael Hasenstein wrote:

...

joe wrote:

...

My guess is the sudden change to two different releases and raise in

prices by

...

...

SuSE was to offset lower than expected sales. A lot of other linux

companies

...

No. The sales have climed steadily. It's just that when suse started in the us people thought they'd add an incentive for retail by selling the box cheap to them, so that they could add a huge markup and make a nice profit. It turned out they only added a very small markup and suse linux was WAY too cheap in this country.

...

will suffer the same fate. Times have changed, the ecomomic climate for

linux in

...

...

America is not the same as it was a year ago.

Actually, the business climate is still very good. All the big guys are moving into Linux rapidly. It's just that the consumers don't buy as many boxes here, plus the market is split much more than anywhere else - because EVERYONE wants to be in the us market so here's the most competition for box sales.

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Thanks for reading through each section carefully :-). We're seeing it dfferently, but I know about SuSE's support fo the communitiy too and appreciate (much unsung) help with developing Linux. To me those manuals have helped me, and as someone mentioned they are easier to read than PDF. Plus I can read them on the BART..... What are the manuals like in Mandrake? Also, about the amount of software people have complained that SuSE is bloatware too... The biggest problem I have with Whistler is whether to believe any of it, in fact I have heard all this before...I do not want to totally destroy MS, but would like there market share much reduced. And I know of some businesses where it would crash every 3 months (could be a config problem) but said it was a lot better than NT.... As note I am seeing the same sort of things happening over at Lokigames (please, if you like games buy at least 1 title from them, if there sales do well then more game companies will release to Linux and the battle of the desktop will turn in favor of Linux). Can you comment on the security features of Mandrake, compared to SuSE? This should be a big thing for anyone <G>. We have choices in Linux, that can only be a good thing right? :-) Matt On Thursday 08 February 2001 07:52 pm, Timothy R. Butler wrote:

...

Linux-Mandrake OS 7.2 Powerpack Deluxe snipped<

Whoever said that the cost of SUSE is too high is having a laugh. I may not be able to afford every version of Suse though I have most, and last time I bought Personal. But, that doesn't mean its too expensive. I will be buying Pro 7.1 and probably skip a few after that. Compare SuSE to what Photoshop, w2k, ms-office cost .... Now the pricing on the Kylix from Borland, that is a joke. Free edition GPL <- great, but then massive prices of $999 for a desktop version for non-gpl projects. Now that is expensive. dids

Whoever said that the cost of SUSE is too high is having a laugh. Rock on Dids!

Compare SuSE to what Photoshop, w2k, ms-office cost ....

Plus the comparisons some have been making with MS look pretty weak if you remember that you can put SuSE on as many machines as you can get hold of without paying them a bean. Try that with MS.

At 10:37 AM 2/9/2001 -0000, dids wrote:

Whoever said that the cost of SUSE is too high is having a laugh.

I may not be able to afford every version of Suse though I have most, and last time I bought Personal. But, that doesn't mean its too expensive.

I will be buying Pro 7.1 and probably skip a few after that.

Compare SuSE to what Photoshop, w2k, ms-office cost ....

Supply and demand ? how meny rad tools ala delphi ? Tons of linux distros to cjhoose from , hence the lower price. To be honest ( now I realy need to put on the asbestos underwear after starting this ranting flame war) I would pay the $999.99 as it would allow me to move several apps ro linux and dithc windows far all but one app that I can slap on and older P166 as its used only once a week. Now that will help save my sanity of upkeep and dealing with the three MS4 boxes we have. Linux is just much more stable and reliable.

Now the pricing on the Kylix from Borland, that is a joke. Free edition GPL <- great, but then massive prices of $999 for a desktop version for non-gpl projects. Now that is expensive.

dids

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"Well put"???? Hardly.... If all you are getting was the kernel and the GNU tools to make a simple OS then perhaps your comments would be accurate. But, I do believe you are 'forgetting" to consider most of the features that make SuSE the finely engineered product that it is. Perhaps if you were to go play with RH for a while you might appreciate YaST, the excellent manuals, and the fine collection of software present on the 6 CDs, most of which have been tailored to be automatically installed (or uninstalled) in/on all appropriate config files, menus, man pages, etc... If putting together a high quality distro is so cheap and easy then by all means stop bothering folks on this list and go to http://linuxfromscratch.com and build your own. Think of all the money you will save.... and all the time you will lose. JLK On Thursday 08 February 2001 20:37, Timothy R. Butler wrote:

Well put Samy!!!! Common sense says that you don't take a product that is developed mostly by other developers (for no cost to SuSE - note I say _mostly since SuSE does have the KDE, ALSA, X, and Reiser guys) and charge the same price that Microsoft charges. Maybe instead of everyone writting Microsoft as M$, they should write SuSE as $u$E. I mean, Win2k is pretty stable, and well polished - why is the average stability nut or anyone else going to pay $70 for SuSE, when Whistler (which should be as stable as Win2k) will probably retail for $89 (upgrade)? To me, I challange SuSE to consider the following:

1.) Mandrake, a much more popular distro, includes more software for $10 _less_ than SuSE's Pro edition. 2.) If Linux is going to cost the same as Windows, every thing should work (Windows crashes, but everything works) just like Windows. 3.) SuSE should contribute back it's most integral tool (YaST/YaST2) as open source. If RedHat had done like SuSE with RPM - wouldn't that be horrible? If Linus had done this kind of thing with Linux - we wouldn't have Linux. If Richard Stallman had done that with the GNU Project- there wouldn't be open source as we know it. The simple fact is, if you make your living off of open source, your code should be open source. 4.) If you want to charge $70 or so dollars for the pro edition, you should offer a non-supported edition for those of us who don't enjoy spending our hard earned money on support we will never use. 5.) Don't forgot your loyal SOHO/Small Business Customers. We created Linux's popularity, and brought it to the attention of big business.

-Tim

----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks Information Tech. Consultant Christian Web Services Since 1996 ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm An Authorized IPSwitch Reseller tbutler@uninetsolutions.com http://www.uninetsolutions.com ============== "Information Powered by Innovation" ==============

...

-----Original Message----- From: Samy Elashmawy [mailto:samelash@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 1:39 AM To: Michael Hasenstein; joe Cc: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] SuSE Inc. Lay offs?

How meny boxes at $79.99 do you expect a typical non comercial user to buy a year at M$ type pricing. At $29.99 I have no problem buming up at each dot version , but at $79.00 I will realy look closely at the product. If I hade a big fat internet pipe I would just download it , but with dial up that is not an option.

Shucks if you put the boxes in comp usa , best but , and aall the other consumer retiual outlets , you are not going to get the big coperate guys buying them there. You instead end up having your typical "joe blow" aho knows little about linux getting phreaked out by sticker shock.

This is not MS it is LINUX. Freely aviualable and GPL. The chain stores want to move product and mark it up based on traffic , and with 4 reviosons / dot versions a year , the wont keep the stock on the shelf , as soon as the new one is released theey will mark down the older one.

$79.99 is to expensive , shucks , you can go down to the book store and buy a good quality linux book with the distro on cd for half the $79.99 price of the boxed set. Spliting it into two diffrent version was not to my likeing. Most peaple will feel they are missing something in the standard vversion , and feel they are paying to mucg for the deluxe version , just to make sure they got every thing.

I bought my first version 5.3 for $69.99 retial at borders , and a real short time it was obsolete as the newer veersi0on came out. Linux is now getting just as expensive as M$ from looking at the retial shelevs.

At 02:36 PM 2/7/2001 -0800, Michael Hasenstein wrote:

...

joe wrote:

...

My guess is the sudden change to two different releases and raise in

prices by

...

...

SuSE was to offset lower than expected sales. A lot of other linux

companies

...

No. The sales have climed steadily. It's just that when suse started in the us people thought they'd add an incentive for retail by selling the box cheap to them, so that they could add a huge markup and make a nice profit. It turned out they only added a very small markup and suse linux was WAY too cheap in this country.

...

will suffer the same fate. Times have changed, the ecomomic climate for

linux in

...

...

America is not the same as it was a year ago.

Actually, the business climate is still very good. All the big guys are moving into Linux rapidly. It's just that the consumers don't buy as many boxes here, plus the market is split much more than anywhere else - because EVERYONE wants to be in the us market so here's the most competition for box sales.

-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com

Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

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Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

-- "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are a gift of God? Thomas Jefferson - 1781

Tim, They have already stated many times that making manuals here and even burning from a master CD (even one downloaded via FTP) is still more expensive than having the manuals and CD's made here. Why do you keep driving this case on this particular issue? They say its not cheaper so lets leave it at that. Onto the issue about having a $25-$30 CD set, how are you going to fit 7 CD's and a DVD onto a Jewel Case? The biggest I have seen only takes 4...If they could sort out the packaging issue, how much saving would this bring to SuSE? Not selling the manuals does not mean that expense has been spared with releasing the cheaper version for $39. The expense is still there and needs to be coevered. I do very much disagree that SuSE should even be thinking about IPO at this time. However, even a private organisation still needs to show growth for it to get the funding capital it needs to continue onwards and upwards. Last month was bad, way bad across the board for Technology companies, most are being forced to consilidate.... SuSE are the only ones to offer decent manuals....And to have a really stable system, at least they did not introduce a beta GCC compiler, now that was really stupid (and people pay way more for less; less and broken too). Matt On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Timothy R. Butler wrote:

...

"Well put"???? Hardly....

I disagree.

...

If all you are getting was the kernel and the GNU tools to make a simple OS then perhaps your comments would be accurate. But, I do believe you are 'forgetting" to consider most of the features that make SuSE the finely engineered product that it is. Perhaps if you were to go play

To be honest, 7.0 didn't sound like a well engineered product. It sounded down right buggy on this list. BTW, I'm not implying that SuSE should cut the price on every version, simply that the current upgrade price isn't an adequate solution. Here is my idea of a good upgrade:

- 7 CD's + DVD - NO Manuals. - No Support - In a jewel case, no box. - $30-$35

Now, that is perfect. That would draw the Linux users who never need help, or those like me who just write into a Linux list (like SLE) rather than contact support. Additionally, I have no need to pay for a bunch of manuals, my 6.4 manuals are sitting in the box, and haven't been glanced at since the day I bought it (and only briefly then, out of curiousity to see what was new in the manual).

...

with RH for a while you might appreciate YaST, the excellent manuals,

I have used RH, I don't like it. Although, funny you should mention YaST here, at least RH's installer is open source.

...

and the fine collection of software present on the 6 CDs, most of which have been tailored to be automatically installed (or uninstalled) in/on

That's what I like about SuSE. I'm not sure that I like it $70 worth, but I do like it say $40-$50 worth. I don't have an endless cash supply - that is why I suggest the idea above. According to Michael Hasenstein, IIRC, much of the price hike was due to extra tech support. Well if that's true, and I never used the 30-days from 6.1 and 6.4, I'd really like to avoid paying for 90-days and 6 manuals I'll never use.

...

all appropriate config files, menus, man pages, etc...

Granted.

...

If putting together a high quality distro is so cheap and easy then by all means stop bothering folks on this list and go to http://linuxfromscratch.com and build your own. Think of all the money you will save.... and all the time you will lose.

I'm not suggesting that. I _am_ suggesting there are better ways to reduce costs. Now, I'm not sure if this is a rumor or not, but I heard on this list last night that SuSE ships all the US packages here from Germany. If that is true, right there they could save loads. Ship the master copy over to the States (or save even more and do the work in Mexico), and print 'em here. Pass those savings to the customers. Secondly, the suggestion above is perfect. I have a cable connection, so I can download the CD's off the 'net, but I would like to support SuSE. But I don't see the need to give that much money to them for stuff I don't need. But if they offered a bare bones package like the one above, I could (1) support SuSE, (2) save time, (3) get the DVD still. It would also cost SuSE less to produce (no manuals, box, or support), so it would be a win/win situation.

-Tim

----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm Christian Web Services Since 1996 tbutler@uninetsolutions.com http://www.uninetsolutions.com ============== "Information Powered by Innovation" ==============

"If the atheists are right, I'll never know, but if I'm right, they definitely will know!"

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**strings of ones and zeros arranged themselves into a message from Nick Zentena on Fri, 9 Feb 2001 17:09:44 -0500 which said... **What I want to know is why are people upgrading? Well, for the new kernel and the better implications that has for firewalling. Since I once pid about the same amount just for a firewall, it seems a spiffy deal to me. And while I could just upgrade , I also would like the updated products and the other securety stuff ( better encryption etc) that was left out of hte origional 7.0 distro ( my first Suse ) Seems money well spent as well, after this, depends on the situationi I guess, adn what my budget will make <G> ( after all IT budgets also have limitations <g>) All in all, w/ both full packs, I've managed to get this small group a stable lan platform, where old windwos docos can still be read w/o a reboot, and we can put it on eveyr pc in the place for the onetime price ... and I'm still underbudget for os repacement. More cafine in the fridge and better muchies for all nighters! yay!!!! <VBG> ( around here, as I supect at suse, everyone seems to have more than one job and 85 hour work weeks are not unknown, tho fortunately it's not every week , it just seems that way some times;-) j afterthought: Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

m'gosh, I forgot the most important thing: Kernel 2.4! Yes, some people (like me) actually want an RPM that's made for SuSE and has SuSE's patches. At 04:37 PM 2/9/2001 -0600, you wrote:

At 05:09 PM 2/9/2001 -0500, you wrote:

...

What I want to know is why are people upgrading? If it's because you need something new thats one thing but I get the impression alot of the upgrading is just to stay up with fashion. If it isn't broke don't fix it. Unless you need something major like glibc why not just grab the odd thing that really needs to be upgraded?

1. Newly supported hardware (don't kid yourself, new hardware comes out all the time) 2. Ever tried to get something like GNUcash working on SusE? it's more then a causal rpm -ihv. Somethings just don't work good. New SuSE means new packages that you didn't have before. Not everyone can fight through dependencies, and even fewer want to. 3. Updates to YaST. Yes, it really matters 4. Updates to XFree86 means more sported video cards, and new features, like, in 7.0's case, the first version of X 4.x with multiple monitor support, and in 7.1's case, many bugfixes to the "new" X version 4, plus new anti-aliasing fonts (er..right? I hope so)....yes, that matters to people like artists. 5. First time SuSE comes with KDE2 all set up. Nor more installing, then downloading 200 MB of updates and patching away for an hour or so before you can get to real business 6. New version == new version of most packages (how many times have we seen people scream for perl 5.6 on this list?). Yes, people want new versions of packages because they'll have bug fixes and usually new features 7.If you upgrade something as major as glibc you'll often have trouble with other packages. Same with, say, a new versino of gcc. it's best to upgrade everything at once.

I'm sure there's more reason but I'm out of time..... new books and manuals...another box for your private SuSE collection (I have every one since 6.3)....oh, and new stickers!!! :-)

...

Nick

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---------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Wilson System Administrator

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Central Texas IT http://www.centraltexasit.com

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---------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Wilson System Administrator Cedar Creek Software http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com Central Texas IT http://www.centraltexasit.com

Generally speaking I upgrade every other release. I've recently moved from 6.3 to 7.0. My main motivation for that was: 1) To get up to date with security fixes (I know I should have loaded them from the net) 2) Because I have an OnStream D130 tape drive and wanted a boot CD that supported it natively (gives me a nice warm feeling of security :-) The next time I upgrade will most likely be to load a distribution that contains a more mature version of 2.4, KDE 2.1.*, native support for AA fonts and Alphablending. So I'll most likely skip 7.1. John -----Original Message----- From: suse-linux-e-return-46923-john=jmtl.com@lists.suse.com [mailto:suse-linux-e-return-46923-john=jmtl.com@lists.suse.com]On Behalf Of Nick Zentena Sent: 10 February 2001 15:14 To: Jonathan Wilson; suse-linux-e@ns2.suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] SuSE is too High! (was RE: [SLE] SuSE Inc. Lay offs?) On February 9, 2001 05:37 pm, Jonathan Wilson wrote:

1. Newly supported hardware (don't kid yourself, new hardware comes out

all

the time)

Fair enough but if you have a stable system then your hardware is likely supported. Not to mention waiting for a new release means around three months or so. That assumes they actually include your hardware in the upgrade. It can be much faster to just grab what you need. 2. Ever tried to get something like GNUcash working on SusE? it's

more then a causal rpm -ihv. Somethings just don't work good. New SuSE means new packages that you didn't have before. Not everyone can fight through dependencies, and even fewer want to.

Not Gnucash but plenty of other things. Most tend to be ./configure make. Tarballs are often less hasle then the rpms. Too many RPMS are redhat centric with all the problems that brings.

4. Updates to XFree86 means more sported video cards, and new features, like, in 7.0's case, the first version of X 4.x with multiple monitor support, and in 7.1's case, many bugfixes to the "new" X version 4, plus new anti-aliasing fonts (er..right? I hope so)....yes, that matters to people like artists.

All things many of us already have. I've been running 4.0.2 since the week it was released. The tarball from xfree86 was a breeze to install. From what I hear the rpms weren't that easy to install.

6. New version == new version of most packages (how many times have we seen people scream for perl 5.6 on this list?). Yes, people want new versions of packages because they'll have bug fixes and usually new features

IMHO SuSE will always to be a little behind in most versions. They try and test things. Throw in the CDs need to get burned and the version SuSE releases can't be the latest and greatest. If you need the current version it is often best to just get it. You don't need to do that for everything but for the things that matter to you.

7.If you upgrade something as major as glibc you'll often have trouble with other packages. Same with, say, a new versino of gcc. it's best to upgrade everything at once.

Gcc isn't bad glibc can cause serious problems. Been there-)) I still say most people don't really need to upgrade. Every release people complain that there isn't anything new in the release. To me that means they've upgraded too soon. I'm not saying don't upgrade but I get the impression plenty of people feel they must upgrade and that often isn't the case. Nick -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

On Friday 09 February 2001 14:41, Timothy R. Butler wrote:

...

"Well put"???? Hardly....

I disagree.

Then we both agree to disagree. That's what makes the world go around....

...

If all you are getting was the kernel and the GNU tools to make a simple OS then perhaps your comments would be accurate. But, I do believe you are 'forgetting" to consider most of the features that make SuSE the finely engineered product that it is. Perhaps if you were to go play

To be honest, 7.0 didn't sound like a well engineered product. It sounded down right buggy on this list.

You are making assumptions. There are basically two kinds of folks on this list: those with problems seeking solutions and those who donate their time offering solutions. The member ship of this list isn't mapped to the total number of SuSE users. Many, if not most SuSE users, have no problems installing and using SuSE, nor do they want to spend time helping those who do have problems. (That is obvious because the number of boxes of SuSE sold far exceed the number of folks who visit this list with problems.) Nor will they simple sign on to praise the product. It stands to reason that because this list exists to help those with problems it doesn't represent or make any statement about SuSE quality, one way or the other. Unlike M$drones, Penquins are generally not in the habit of using successive releases of a poor quality distro, and you will notice that many folks, like myself, have been with SuSE since the 5.x days.

BTW, I'm not implying that SuSE should cut the price on every version, simply that the current upgrade price isn't an adequate solution. Here is my idea of a good upgrade:

- 7 CD's + DVD - NO Manuals. - No Support - In a jewel case, no box. - $30-$35

Now, that is perfect.

That would draw the Linux users who never need help, or those like me who just write into a Linux list (like SLE) rather than contact support. Additionally, I have no need to pay for a bunch of manuals, my 6.4 manuals are sitting in the box, and haven't been glanced at since the day I bought it (and only briefly then, out of curiousity to see what was new in the manual).

So, now you have a business model. Execute it. See if your theories match reality. Before you go off trying to convince others of the value of your distro, perhaps you should stop using M$ tools and start using Linux and GNU tools to do email and the rest. i.e., practice with what you intend to sell. You'll be more convincing.

...

with RH for a while you might appreciate YaST, the excellent manuals,

I have used RH, I don't like it. Although, funny you should mention YaST here, at least RH's installer is open source.

So what? When you cut your M$ umbilical then you can start preaching the strict gospel of GPL...

...

and the fine collection of software present on the 6 CDs, most of which have been tailored to be automatically installed (or uninstalled) in/on

That's what I like about SuSE. I'm not sure that I like it $70 worth, but I do like it say $40-$50 worth.

Then buy some distro that gives everything SuSE gives but does sells it for $40. Just stop bitching about SuSE.

I don't have an endless cash supply - that is why I suggest the idea above. According to Michael Hasenstein, IIRC, much of the price hike was due to extra tech support. Well if that's true, and I never used the 30-days from 6.1 and 6.4, I'd really like to avoid paying for 90-days and 6 manuals I'll never use.

...

all appropriate config files, menus, man pages, etc...

Granted.

...

If putting together a high quality distro is so cheap and easy then by all means stop bothering folks on this list and go to http://linuxfromscratch.com and build your own. Think of all the money you will save.... and all the time you will lose.

I'm not suggesting that. I _am_ suggesting there are better ways to reduce costs.

Now, I'm not sure if this is a rumor or not, but I heard on this list last night that SuSE ships all the US packages here from Germany. If that is true, right there they could save loads. Ship the master copy over to the States (or save even more and do the work in Mexico), and print 'em here.

Really? And how many businesses are you running right now, or have run in the past? Are you self-employed? Have you every developed a business plan or other exercises in Operational Analysis. Do you suggest that the SuSE folks are so stupid they can't figure out the most economical way to make and distribute boxes of their product? Have you access to their productions and distribution cost data? Do you know what it costs to bulk ship pallets of SuSE by air or by ship? Doesn't sound like it to me. JLK

* Samy Elashmawy (samelash@ix.netcom.com) [20010208 17:36]:

$79.99 is to expensive , shucks , you can go down to the book store and buy a good quality linux book with the distro on cd for half the $79.99 price of the boxed set.

Yes, you could do that and would get much less then what we offer. Less in terms of software on CD and less in support (actually none). Now support may not be so interesting for someone who uses Linux as long as you do, but still I think it's a fair price we're asking for. We do much development that the rest of the Linux community directly benefit from, like glibc, kernel, XFree86 and KDE, just to name a few. And as Michael said, sales didn't deminish a bit after going up with the price. So it seems people do still think they get value for their money. Philipp -- Philipp Thomas Development, SuSE GmbH, Schanzaecker Str. 10, D-90443 Nuremberg, Germany Penguins shall save the dinosaurs -- Handelsblatt about Linux on S/390

On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 01:48:56AM -0500, phoenix wrote:

The word is "many" not "meny" and to answer your question. I buy each time SuSE upgrades. = AND = The Borders near me no longer carries SuSE Linux so I order by phone from SuSE INC !

<snip> Can you try and get your MUA to cut lines at around 72 please. Thanks Cliff

I too will prolly do the same and switch to Debian. I switched to Suse when Redhat started moving their prices up. I have been running linux for 6 years now and SuSE is by far the best I have used. I bought 7.0 Professional, but I don't think I will buy 7.1. It starts to hurt when you are spending $60.00+ 2-3 times a year because you love Linux. I didn't mind to support the Linux community at $30.00. But it's getting too close to the $100.00 range. BTW, I don't use the books, just a CD set would be nice, like I used to buy from infomagic... On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 07:24:07AM +0000, Samy Elashmawy wrote:

all the more reason to keep the BS factor and smoke and mirrors stuff to a minimum. The reason I continue to buy suse is the rock solid product , the new two tone pricing structure does not make me happy. I have bought every version since 5.3 most of them for $29.99 and am not happy with being hit for M$ type pricing of 7.0 / 7.1

That and there new "strategy has turned off a LOT of LOYAL suse useres who put them there.I seems that they want to go closer to the enterprise big corperate customer and not there mainstay linux users of the past. If that does contimnue , I will look into another distro , most likely Debian.

I am trully sorry for the layoffs , but to be frank , it comes as no surprise.

At 04:49 PM 2/7/2001 -0500, joe wrote:

...

My guess is the sudden change to two different releases and raise in

...

SuSE was to offset lower than expected sales. A lot of other linux companies will suffer the same fate. Times have changed, the ecomomic climate for

prices by linux in

...

America is not the same as it was a year ago.

joe

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...

Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

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-- _ _ __ _____ _____ ___| |_ | '__| / __\ \ /\ / / _ \/ _ \ __| | | _ \__ \\ V V / __/ __/ |_ |_|(_) |___/ \_/\_/ \___|\___|\__| rsweet@socal.rr.com "unix soit qui mal y pense."

a) there's a $49 update edition

Hardly a good deal. You would end up paying, what $6 in S&H plus tax, so you end up saving between $10-$15 and you don't even get as much support or manuals. I don't want to pay for support, but I know it's worth more than $15 - the update should be around $30-$35 tops, IMO. -Tim ----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks Information Tech. Consultant Christian Web Services Since 1996 ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm An Authorized IPSwitch Reseller tbutler@uninetsolutions.com http://www.uninetsolutions.com ============== "Information Powered by Innovation" ==============

Robert Sweet wrote:

...

I too will prolly do the same and switch to Debian. I switched to Suse when Redhat started moving their prices up. I have been running linux for 6 years now and SuSE is by far the best I have used. I bought 7.0 Professional, but I don't think I will buy 7.1. It starts to hurt when you are spending $60.00+ 2-3 times a year because you love Linux. I didn't mind to support the Linux community at $30.00. But it's getting too close to the $100.00 range. BTW, I don't use the books, just a CD set would be nice, like I used to buy from infomagic...

a) there's a $49 update edition b) why do you think you HAVE to buy three editions per year??? - or none at all? from extreme to extreme I have yet to see the update version. I like to buy the

On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 09:44:22AM -0800, Michael Hasenstein wrote: product because I know it furthers linux developement. Why do they come out with new versions every 6 months? It is nice to have the latest features and be up to date. I know you don't have to upgrade a stable box, but I like to keep my box at home current. -- _ _ __ _____ _____ ___| |_ | '__| / __\ \ /\ / / _ \/ _ \ __| | | _ \__ \\ V V / __/ __/ |_ |_|(_) |___/ \_/\_/ \___|\___|\__| rsweet@socal.rr.com "unix soit qui mal y pense."

Robert Sweet wrote:

I too will prolly do the same and switch to Debian. I switched to Suse when Redhat started moving their prices up. I have been running linux for 6 years now and SuSE is by far the best I have used. I bought 7.0 Professional, but I don't think I will buy 7.1. It starts to hurt when you are spending $60.00+ 2-3 times a year because you love Linux. I didn't mind to support the Linux community at $30.00. But it's getting too close to the $100.00 range. BTW, I don't use the books, just a CD set would be nice, like I used to buy from infomagic...

Why not buy the Personal Edition and when the FTP version is available set your installation medium to point to that? How's that for a compromise? I know, I tend to buy the Professional Edition out of habit, (and I expect I *will* buy the 7.1 Professional Edition because I swiped the last two releases when work got them instead of buying my own and I *do* like to show support - I'll also be getting a boxed 7.1 for my Dad, who's finally given up with Windows and the crappy Tiny computer he bought and asked me to make a system for him) but truth be told the main stuff I use that isn't in the Personal Edition doesn't come in the Professional Edition either, or at least not installed in a way that I like it (Tomcat 3.2.x, Java 1.3, KDE 2.1 betas, Moz latest milestones or nightlies, and I generally build my own kernels and Apache etc. anyway). -- Rachel

Hi Samy, On Thursday, February 08, 2001, 1:24 AM, you rearranged your electrons about "[SLE] SuSE Inc. Lay offs?": S> all the more reason to keep the BS factor and smoke and mirrors stuff to a S> minimum. The reason I continue to buy suse is the rock solid product , the S> new two tone pricing structure does not make me happy. I have bought every S> version since 5.3 most of them for $29.99 and am not happy with being hit S> for M$ type pricing of 7.0 / 7.1 $69 is far from MickySoft type pricing. Have you checked out what the W2K servers are going for, starting at lease $2000+ for small licenses ... and any upgrade from M$ is costs more than far more than a full distro. Linux is not only a desktop application, but several other things rolled into one, i.e. NFS, webserver, firewall, DNS server, router, mail server, etc. You pay *extra* for all of these, in M$. SuSE's pricing is right in line with the other distros, unless you want the RH Pro which is $159 to $179 US - that is without hardly any software... You mainly get a web server and SSH... big deal. S> That and there new "strategy has turned off a LOT of LOYAL suse S> useres who put them there.I seems that they want to go closer to S> the enterprise big corperate customer and not there mainstay linux S> users of the past. If that does contimnue , I will look into S> another distro , most likely Debian. I disagree with you here about their pricing strategy. It is directly in line with any other distro on the store shelves... Check out Best Buy, or Office Max, or any of the others, $69 is the going rate here in the US for a powerpack or Pro version, and most don't have the complete manuals that SuSE has. Getting closer to enterprise, is the money backbone for any Linux company, as retail sales worldwide will not sustain corporate earnings. Profit comes from service. Linux per se is now in a position to really do damage to M$ enterprise corporate users because of the new 2.4 kernel. Memory is now fully supported up to 6.5 Gb, instead of 2MB, cluster and load balancing is enhanced, and most importantly the use of multiple processors is now fully supported, which enterprise has always used and needed. I believe that now up to 13 processors (from my poor memory) are now supported, and some have used far more with success... -- Best regards, Gary Today's thought: The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.

I can't figure out why these detractors jump on the price of SuSE Professional, comparing it to M$. Invariably they make the comparison based on the lowly client version of Win98. In truth, they should be comparing it to Windows 2000 Data Center, especially now with the 2.4 kernel. How much does Microsoft charge for unlimited seats on that software, complete with all tools to manage the enterprise? With "Open Licensing?" Let's not forget that the customer is free to put Linux on as many boxes as desired, and burn as many CDs as necessary to accomplish the job, for $79.99. All they can't do is take YaST, recompile it with their own name, and sell the result as their own distribution. That's it. Samy Elashmawy wrote:

The high price of M$ is what lead me to linux , The other distros are mostly two cd distros and not as packed as the suse distro. I ahvvve used them since 5.3 and with there $79.99 pricing will most likely NOT update at each new incremental release , but only on the major full relase and not the dot relaese

...

Hi Samy,

On Thursday, February 08, 2001, 1:24 AM, you rearranged your electrons about "[SLE] SuSE Inc. Lay offs?":

S> all the more reason to keep the BS factor and smoke and mirrors stuff to a S> minimum. The reason I continue to buy suse is the rock solid product , the S> new two tone pricing structure does not make me happy. I have bought every S> version since 5.3 most of them for $29.99 and am not happy with being hit S> for M$ type pricing of 7.0 / 7.1

$69 is far from MickySoft type pricing. Have you checked out what the W2K servers are going for, starting at lease $2000+ for small licenses ... and any upgrade from M$ is costs more than far more than a full distro. Linux is not only a desktop application, but several other things rolled into one, i.e. NFS, webserver, firewall, DNS server, router, mail server, etc. You pay *extra* for all of these, in M$. SuSE's pricing is right in line with the other distros, unless you want the RH Pro which is $159 to $179 US - that is without hardly any software... You mainly get a web server and SSH... big deal.

S> That and there new "strategy has turned off a LOT of LOYAL suse S> useres who put them there.I seems that they want to go closer to S> the enterprise big corperate customer and not there mainstay linux S> users of the past. If that does contimnue , I will look into S> another distro , most likely Debian.

I disagree with you here about their pricing strategy. It is directly in line with any other distro on the store shelves... Check out Best Buy, or Office Max, or any of the others, $69 is the going rate here in the US for a powerpack or Pro version, and most don't have the complete manuals that SuSE has. Getting closer to enterprise, is the money backbone for any Linux company, as retail sales worldwide will not sustain corporate earnings. Profit comes from service. Linux per se is now in a position to really do damage to M$ enterprise corporate users because of the new 2.4 kernel. Memory is now fully supported up to 6.5 Gb, instead of 2MB, cluster and load balancing is enhanced, and most importantly the use of multiple processors is now fully supported, which enterprise has always used and needed. I believe that now up to 13 processors (from my poor memory) are now supported, and some have used far more with success...

--

Best regards, Gary

Today's thought: The right half of the brain controls the left half of the

At 11:11 AM 2/8/2001 -0600, Gary wrote: body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.

...

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-- WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL: Firings will continue until morale improves.

**strings of ones and zeros arranged themselves into a message from "Timothy R. Butler" on Fri, 9 Feb 2001 14:20:18 -0600 which said... **Well, that is TRUE. But I remeber a year or two ago other Linux people **were always jumping on Micrsoft - they are soooo expensive. The OS is **$89.99! OS for microsoft is NOT 489 an UPGRADE , meaning you already bought the thing once was $89 Windwos 2000 pro ( not ME which is only souped up 98) is NOT $89 I paid $139 for an UPgrade, which was to have ben reduced by a still waiting for it "rebate" to $100 ... I bought the thing from M$ after tehy made a "special offer" for beta testers bah! Upgrades for suse linux are $40 including the unlimited install anywhere , something that is about to be abolished in the "new" M$ "piracy protection" scheme, which will limit every product they have to two installs, and tie them to teh computer's MAC and any other internal id system ( like a vin number on a car)If you need to install it more than two times ( say the os eats itself) you get to buy the Lisence all over again, Look at full prices of M$ oses to comaper w/ full price of suse or any other distro compare M$ upgrade prices to suses upgrades, you still got waaaay cheaper up and running system w/ Suse j afterthought: Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

Brian Galbraith wrote:

On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 02:20:18PM -0600, Timothy R. Butler allegedly said:

...

and frankly the hobbist part says $79.99 is way too expensive for a hobby.

Well Personally I disagree..... 5 months of fun for less than I would spend on a night out.

Quite right. Further, a comparison of SuSE's price for the Pro. version to MickySoft's $89.95 for 'Bloze98SE is BOGUS, at best! Consider that 1 is incredibly stable, the other isn't, and one comes with THOUSANDS of $$ worth of software that has been TESTED for that release and the other hasn't, and the argument is clearly "apples and oranges." Fred -- ----/ / _ Fred A. Miller ---/ / (_)__ __ ____ __ Systems Administrator --/ /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / Cornell Univ. Press Services -/____/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ fm@cupserv.org

And at least you *remember* what you paid for when you buy SuSE software! Last time I could afford to have a decent night out I cannot remember where all my money went... Matt On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Brian Galbraith wrote:

On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 02:20:18PM -0600, Timothy R. Butler allegedly said:

...

and frankly the hobbist part says $79.99 is way too expensive for a hobby.

Well Personally I disagree..... 5 months of fun for less than I would spend on a night out.

Regards

Brian

-- Brian Galbraith [ Mutt 1.3.14i]| GnuPG 1.0.4d | SuSE Linux 7.0 ] Encrypted Mail Preferred NEW KEY from 7thJan 2001 http://seattle.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x98A102F3 Hushmail Secure Webmail: bgalbraith@cyber-rights.net

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"Timothy R. Butler" wrote:

Tim,

...

I can't figure out why these detractors jump on the price of SuSE

Detractors - you make us sound like a hostile terrorist group or something.

...

Professional, comparing it to M$. Invariably they make the comparison based on the lowly client version of Win98. In truth, they should be comparing it to Windows 2000 Data Center, especially now with the 2.4 kernel. How much does Microsoft charge for unlimited seats on that

Well, that is TRUE. But I remeber a year or two ago other Linux people were always jumping on Micrsoft - they are soooo expensive. The OS is $89.99! Well, I don't hear any of them now, do you? Why is that? It's because Linux is now the same price - to me it's fair to do the same comparison Linux users were doing. I'm not saying Linux isn't cheaper - but it ought to be for crying out loud. I would guess that at least 95% of the code contained in is developed by other people for no cost to SuSE. Now, I'm not saying SuSE isn't worth $79.99 or what ever price it is tomorrow. But! I think there are definately ways to make it more affordable for hobbists.

They do make it more affordable for hobbyists. The Personal edition is only $30.

For instance, I run a small consulting company, and keep a copy of Linux on my computer partially as a hobby, and partially because it's useful. However, the useful part doesn't demand me going out and buying every release,

okay, so no one is forcing you, right? No Gates to raise the price on the old version to make you go out and buy the new version? No updated applications purposefully made to break on the old version so you will be forced to buy the new?

and frankly the hobbist part says $79.99 is way too expensive for a hobby.

Debian is zilch. Now _there's_ a hobby!

...

accomplish the job, for $79.99. All they can't do is take YaST, recompile it with their own name, and sell the result as their own distribution. That's it.

That's it? What do you mean "that's it"? That's one of the tenets of open source software. EVERY OTHER major distribution offers it's installer as open source (under the GNU Free Software definition), IIRC. Personally, this is disturbing to me.

-Tim

I think they're entitled; it's their distro. If I were in this business I'd be a little upset if, say LinuxOne took my distribution, changed the splash screen on the install and administer utility, and used the result to compete with me, as did Mandrake to Red Hat. -- The Advertising Agency Song: When your client's hopping mad, Put his picture in the ad. If he still should prove refractory, Add a picture of his factory.

Jerry,

The more I read your posts, Tim, the more I'm beginning to believe that you are an M$ troll, or cursed with an extremely short of memory.

Neither, thank-you very much. I am an active open source programmer, and Linux user - not a Microsoft troll.

For the umpteenth time (are you paying attention?): Compare what you get for $90 from M$ to what your get for $70 from SuSE. Or stated another way: HOW MUCH WOULD YOU HAVE TO PAY TO BILL GATES TO GET WHAT COMES IN A SUSE BOX?

True. But my main point is about the fact that SuSE doesn't even develop - say 80-95% of the stuff included. This is obviously something I don't think I'm going to convince you on, nor will you convince me. Let's just agree to disagree on this too, eh?

Want to setup a 5 client server? Sorry that's an extra $600 for Bill. No extra charge with SuSE. 25 Clients? $,2400 more to Bill, please. SuSE? nada. 300 clients? Bill requires over $25,000 but I'm sure he'll cut you a small deal. This is to say nothing of the other software and hardware that you will have to 'upgrade' when ever Bill decides to tweek a format or extend a protocol. Changed your hardware or had a crash and reinstalled Win2K and tried to install Win2K for the 3rd time? Bill thinks your a pirate and you have to buy another copy of Win2K.

Not true. I'm pretty sure this is the case on WinME, but Win2k doesn't need to get permission to run from a MS server. I've already installed it 4 or 5 times while I tried to tweak my partition scheme to make Win2k and Linux happy.

Now, Tim, what part of this picture don't you understand that requres us to repeat it to you over and over?

I might mention once more, most of this isn't SuSE's doing - any more than it is RedHat's or Caldera's doing. It is the community's doing. And, as I've said over and over - I simply want SuSE to offer a version without support and manuals. If we say that 3 manuals and 30 days support costs $20 (i.e. the price difference between the Upgrade with 3 manuals and 30 days support and the Pro with 6 manuals and 60 days support), than if you get rid of ALL the manuals, you should be able to reduce the price by $30-$40 (i.e. $30-$40 as the MSRP) and still turn a profit.

If your small company is uninetsoulutions.com, then how come you're running your web site on a Linux OS? Is your web site "partly a hobby"?

No it is not "partly a hobby." I wouldn't every have a server that didn't run Linux or BSD (my last host used FreeBSD). I like running on open source software. However, the copy of Linux on my hard disk on my desktop IS partly a hobby.

Your concern about Linux purity is interesting. Why does your site specialize in selling PROPRIATARY software for the NT (and Win2000) OS? Why is your server running a mod_frontpage service? Why do you use Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) for your email package?

Doing a little investigation, eh? Let me answer each good question with a good answer: 1.) I don't specialize in selling NT software, although I do make a commission if and when a copy is sold. The reason I offer IPSwitch's server stuff, is because I wanted to offer WS_FTP (a good way to upload files on Windows), and it all came in one package (so why not offer it?). 2.) I don't use frontpage, the hosting company simply includes it. To be honest, I despise WYSIWYG HTML editors with a passion. I hand code each line of my site carfully from within a text editor (UltraEdit32). 3.) Because I'm waiting for Magellan to come out, and my Linux setup is fried from a wee bit too much partition tweeking. BTW, I have nothing against proprietary software, simply if it comes from a company that makes it's money from open source. Good answers? -Tim ----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm Christian Web Services Since 1996 tbutler@uninetsolutions.com http://www.uninetsolutions.com ============== "Information Powered by Innovation" ============== "If the atheists are right, I'll never know, but if I'm right, they will definitely know!"

I likewise usually don't agree with posts asking people to end their discussion -- it's easy enough to delete/filter. However, this time a threshold has indeed been crossed and the discussion is starting to affect the tenor of the list. So, gentlemen, I second the request that you take the discussion off-list, if you don't mind. Corvin -- Corvin Russell

You just dont get it , not every suse customer is a corperate big wig wanting to put up a clinet SERVER , there are a whole bunch of us using it in the low end area as well as on the desktop with older hardware. Thats all I was pionting out , as well as how I got into linux. At 09:20 PM 2/8/2001 -0800, Tim Hanson wrote:

I can't figure out why these detractors jump on the price of SuSE Professional, comparing it to M$. Invariably they make the comparison based on the lowly client version of Win98. In truth, they should be comparing it to Windows 2000 Data Center, especially now with the 2.4 kernel. How much does Microsoft charge for unlimited seats on that software, complete with all tools to manage the enterprise? With "Open Licensing?" Let's not forget that the customer is free to put Linux on as many boxes as desired, and burn as many CDs as necessary to accomplish the job, for $79.99. All they can't do is take YaST, recompile it with their own name, and sell the result as their own distribution. That's it.

Samy Elashmawy wrote:

...

The high price of M$ is what lead me to linux , The other distros are mostly two cd distros and not as packed as the suse distro. I ahvvve used them since 5.3 and with there $79.99 pricing will most likely NOT update at each new incremental release , but only on the major full relase and not the dot relaese

At 11:11 AM 2/8/2001 -0600, Gary wrote:

...

Hi Samy,

On Thursday, February 08, 2001, 1:24 AM, you rearranged your electrons about "[SLE] SuSE Inc. Lay offs?":

S> all the more reason to keep the BS factor and smoke and mirrors

stuff to a

...

...

S> minimum. The reason I continue to buy suse is the rock solid product , the S> new two tone pricing structure does not make me happy. I have bought every S> version since 5.3 most of them for $29.99 and am not happy with being hit S> for M$ type pricing of 7.0 / 7.1

$69 is far from MickySoft type pricing. Have you checked out what the W2K servers are going for, starting at lease $2000+ for small licenses ... and any upgrade from M$ is costs more than far more than a full distro. Linux is not only a desktop application, but several other things rolled into one, i.e. NFS, webserver, firewall, DNS server, router, mail server, etc. You pay *extra* for all of these, in M$. SuSE's pricing is right in line with the other distros, unless you want the RH Pro which is $159 to $179 US - that is without hardly any software... You mainly get a web server and SSH... big deal.

S> That and there new "strategy has turned off a LOT of LOYAL suse S> useres who put them there.I seems that they want to go closer to S> the enterprise big corperate customer and not there mainstay linux S> users of the past. If that does contimnue , I will look into S> another distro , most likely Debian.

I disagree with you here about their pricing strategy. It is directly in line with any other distro on the store shelves... Check out Best Buy, or Office Max, or any of the others, $69 is the going rate here in the US for a powerpack or Pro version, and most don't have the complete manuals that SuSE has. Getting closer to enterprise, is the money backbone for any Linux company, as retail sales worldwide will not sustain corporate earnings. Profit comes from service. Linux per se is now in a position to really do damage to M$ enterprise corporate users because of the new 2.4 kernel. Memory is now fully supported up to 6.5 Gb, instead of 2MB, cluster and load balancing is enhanced, and most importantly the use of multiple processors is now fully supported, which enterprise has always used and needed. I believe that now up to 13 processors (from my poor memory) are now supported, and some have used far more with success...

--

Best regards, Gary

Today's thought: The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.

...

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-- WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:

Firings will continue until morale improves.

Good points.... Although I think your finger slipped on a decimal point when accounting the maximum memory of the 2.4 Kernel. Its at 64GB, kind of better than the previous 2GB limit, although not going to effect me for quite some time! I only make $32.5K a year in the bay area! Behind the scenes the 2.4 is literally a whole new re-write, the base of it is set out totally differently from 2.2, this led to some pains when I did an upgrade.... Matt On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Gary wrote:

Hi Samy,

On Thursday, February 08, 2001, 1:24 AM, you rearranged your electrons about "[SLE] SuSE Inc. Lay offs?":

S> all the more reason to keep the BS factor and smoke and mirrors stuff to a S> minimum. The reason I continue to buy suse is the rock solid product , the S> new two tone pricing structure does not make me happy. I have bought every S> version since 5.3 most of them for $29.99 and am not happy with being hit S> for M$ type pricing of 7.0 / 7.1

$69 is far from MickySoft type pricing. Have you checked out what the W2K servers are going for, starting at lease $2000+ for small licenses ... and any upgrade from M$ is costs more than far more than a full distro. Linux is not only a desktop application, but several other things rolled into one, i.e. NFS, webserver, firewall, DNS server, router, mail server, etc. You pay *extra* for all of these, in M$. SuSE's pricing is right in line with the other distros, unless you want the RH Pro which is $159 to $179 US - that is without hardly any software... You mainly get a web server and SSH... big deal.

S> That and there new "strategy has turned off a LOT of LOYAL suse S> useres who put them there.I seems that they want to go closer to S> the enterprise big corperate customer and not there mainstay linux S> users of the past. If that does contimnue , I will look into S> another distro , most likely Debian.

I disagree with you here about their pricing strategy. It is directly in line with any other distro on the store shelves... Check out Best Buy, or Office Max, or any of the others, $69 is the going rate here in the US for a powerpack or Pro version, and most don't have the complete manuals that SuSE has. Getting closer to enterprise, is the money backbone for any Linux company, as retail sales worldwide will not sustain corporate earnings. Profit comes from service. Linux per se is now in a position to really do damage to M$ enterprise corporate users because of the new 2.4 kernel. Memory is now fully supported up to 6.5 Gb, instead of 2MB, cluster and load balancing is enhanced, and most importantly the use of multiple processors is now fully supported, which enterprise has always used and needed. I believe that now up to 13 processors (from my poor memory) are now supported, and some have used far more with success...

--

Best regards, Gary

Today's thought: The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.

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Matt, What do you do in computers/programming that pays that low? The cost of living must be eating you alive in the bay area... JLK On Thursday 08 February 2001 11:28, Matthew wrote:

Good points....

Although I think your finger slipped on a decimal point when accounting the maximum memory of the 2.4 Kernel. Its at 64GB, kind of better than the previous 2GB limit, although not going to effect me for quite some time! I only make $32.5K a year in the bay area!

Behind the scenes the 2.4 is literally a whole new re-write, the base of it is set out totally differently from 2.2, this led to some pains when I did an upgrade....

Matt

On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Gary wrote:

...

Hi Samy,

On Thursday, February 08, 2001, 1:24 AM, you rearranged your electrons about "[SLE] SuSE Inc. Lay offs?":

S> all the more reason to keep the BS factor and smoke and mirrors stuff to a S> minimum. The reason I continue to buy suse is the rock solid product , the S> new two tone pricing structure does not make me happy. I have bought every S> version since 5.3 most of them for $29.99 and am not happy with being hit S> for M$ type pricing of 7.0 / 7.1

$69 is far from MickySoft type pricing. Have you checked out what the W2K servers are going for, starting at lease $2000+ for small licenses ... and any upgrade from M$ is costs more than far more than a full distro. Linux is not only a desktop application, but several other things rolled into one, i.e. NFS, webserver, firewall, DNS server, router, mail server, etc. You pay *extra* for all of these, in M$. SuSE's pricing is right in line with the other distros, unless you want the RH Pro which is $159 to $179 US - that is without hardly any software... You mainly get a web server and SSH... big deal.

S> That and there new "strategy has turned off a LOT of LOYAL suse S> useres who put them there.I seems that they want to go closer to S> the enterprise big corperate customer and not there mainstay linux S> users of the past. If that does contimnue , I will look into S> another distro , most likely Debian.

I disagree with you here about their pricing strategy. It is directly in line with any other distro on the store shelves... Check out Best Buy, or Office Max, or any of the others, $69 is the going rate here in the US for a powerpack or Pro version, and most don't have the complete manuals that SuSE has. Getting closer to enterprise, is the money backbone for any Linux company, as retail sales worldwide will not sustain corporate earnings. Profit comes from service. Linux per se is now in a position to really do damage to M$ enterprise corporate users because of the new 2.4 kernel. Memory is now fully supported up to 6.5 Gb, instead of 2MB, cluster and load balancing is enhanced, and most importantly the use of multiple processors is now fully supported, which enterprise has always used and needed. I believe that now up to 13 processors (from my poor memory) are now supported, and some have used far more with success...

--

Best regards, Gary

Today's thought: The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.

-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq

-- "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are a gift of God? Thomas Jefferson - 1781

Have to agree with you, Gary. SuSE's new pricing structure is sound. Three levels: $30 $49 (upgrade) $79 Pro. Those 6 CDs are stuffed to the brime. A collection of M$ software that would do the same would around $10,000, if not more.... JLK On Thursday 08 February 2001 11:11, Gary wrote:

Hi Samy,

On Thursday, February 08, 2001, 1:24 AM, you rearranged your electrons about "[SLE] SuSE Inc. Lay offs?":

S> all the more reason to keep the BS factor and smoke and mirrors stuff to a S> minimum. The reason I continue to buy suse is the rock solid product , the S> new two tone pricing structure does not make me happy. I have bought every S> version since 5.3 most of them for $29.99 and am not happy with being hit S> for M$ type pricing of 7.0 / 7.1

$69 is far from MickySoft type pricing. Have you checked out what the W2K servers are going for, starting at lease $2000+ for small licenses .... and any upgrade from M$ is costs more than far more than a full distro. Linux is not only a desktop application, but several other things rolled into one, i.e. NFS, webserver, firewall, DNS server, router, mail server, etc. You pay *extra* for all of these, in M$. SuSE's pricing is right in line with the other distros, unless you want the RH Pro which is $159 to $179 US - that is without hardly any software... You mainly get a web server and SSH... big deal.

S> That and there new "strategy has turned off a LOT of LOYAL suse S> useres who put them there.I seems that they want to go closer to S> the enterprise big corperate customer and not there mainstay linux S> users of the past. If that does contimnue , I will look into S> another distro , most likely Debian.

I disagree with you here about their pricing strategy. It is directly in line with any other distro on the store shelves... Check out Best Buy, or Office Max, or any of the others, $69 is the going rate here in the US for a powerpack or Pro version, and most don't have the complete manuals that SuSE has. Getting closer to enterprise, is the money backbone for any Linux company, as retail sales worldwide will not sustain corporate earnings. Profit comes from service. Linux per se is now in a position to really do damage to M$ enterprise corporate users because of the new 2.4 kernel. Memory is now fully supported up to 6.5 Gb, instead of 2MB, cluster and load balancing is enhanced, and most importantly the use of multiple processors is now fully supported, which enterprise has always used and needed. I believe that now up to 13 processors (from my poor memory) are now supported, and some have used far more with success...

-- "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are a gift of God? Thomas Jefferson - 1781

THere is also that interesting attitude about "Cheap" getting no respect and if something is expensive it must be good. Go figure. JLK On Thursday 08 February 2001 15:59, Gary wrote:

On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 03:25:40PM -0600 or thereabouts, Jerry Kreps wrote:

...

Have to agree with you, Gary. SuSE's new pricing structure is sound. Three levels: $30 $49 (upgrade) $79 Pro. Those 6 CDs are stuffed to the brime. A collection of M$ software that would do the same would around $10,000, if not more.... JLK

Hi Jerry, Thanks, it really makes sense, as this is the way other distros have gone, but many take for granted, perhaps, the value of the distro, as what it is totally capable of, as well as the superb manuals that others do not have in their distros. I think to a large degree, price points are also dictated by market acceptance, and what competition is doing, except for RH of course, they are so far out of it... one of the problems when having to report to shareholders...<g> Did you know that RH certification costs about $2500? $1900 for the 4 days prior to the test, in class, and then the rest for the test itself... What a rip.

-- "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are a gift of God? Thomas Jefferson - 1781

I disagree with you here about their pricing strategy. It is directly in line with any other distro on the store shelves... Check out Best

But SuSE isn't any other distro! They are what number 4 or 5 now? Good business practices say you shouldn't charge the same as the companies with a better name (i.e. RedHat or Caldera - eDesktop actually goes for $40 or so, IIRC), or with more market share. When a company wants to increase market share, you create an excellent product for _less_ than the other guys. It's funny, Mandrake - a much more popular distro - offers more programs for less money. Hmm.... -Tim ----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks Information Tech. Consultant Christian Web Services Since 1996 ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm An Authorized IPSwitch Reseller tbutler@uninetsolutions.com http://www.uninetsolutions.com ============== "Information Powered by Innovation" ==============