On Sat, 26 Oct 2002 17:10:29 +0200 "David List" <david@davidlist.dk> wrote:

On Friday 25 October 2002 16:32, Fred A. Miller wrote:

...

David List wrote: | I have seen postings from other users about their installation and | usage of SuSE Linux 8.1 for quite some time now. [...] | | This is not the first time SuSE is dragging Danish dealers around by | their noses. In fact it´s the same scenario each and every time | SuSE releases a new version. What´s going on?

...

David, it was supposed to be at Best Buy here in Ithaca, NY, home of Cornell Univ., on Oct. 7th. It STILL isn't here nor in any other store!

Strange. I got the impression that shippings of SuSE Linux 8.1 had been sent to the US. Where is the bottleneck in your case?

If it's any consolation, the Canadian retailer from which I had ordered 8.1 (weeks ago, and because I could not find it on local retail shelves...) told me on Thursday that their shipment had finally arrived, and they'd be sending out my package for delivery on Monday. So, even if you (Denmark) are alone, it's not as extreme an isolation as it might have appeared. Well, at least not quite yet. If you still don't have 8.1 in November, I'd begin to wonder... :-) I get the impression that SuSE lost a key person who was repsonsible for dealer agreements and fulfillment, and haven't replaced that person (or persons), yet. In Canada, it seems there's something political going on about Linux in general, as people have also reported delays finding Red Hat and other major distributions at local retailers. It may be that we see a greater problem with SuSE availability just because we happen to want that distro and don't care much about the others. It would be nice if a credible SuSE honcho could just speak up and tell us: a) what is supposed to go on during/after release b) what is actually going on c) why the difference (if any) d) what we can expect i) this time ii) generally. It does, after all, take time to have CDs labelled and burned, documents and packages translated and printed, and volume assembly and transportation achieved. It doesn't all get done in one place. A lot of co-ordination is required. The companies who DO produce CDs and who print and bind documents (in several languages) and who print and stuff boxes, are scattered around the world. They do the same work for hundreds or thousands of other companies, many of them far bigger than SuSE. That means, printers and packagers -- if they are successful, well-run companies, themselves -- have pipelines full of huge orders. SuSE has the choice of either waiting for a schedule opening or paying premiums for accelerated scheduling. Guess who would pay more for the product, if SuSE decided to pay for preferential treatment with their production contractors? But, for individual cases and individual countries, we can only speculate as to the reasons for the timing of our copies... unless SuSE decides to tell us. All it would take is a couple of minutes to compose an e-mail (to this list, among others). Meanwhile, I'll pass along a rumor that's been refusing to die in some Canadian circles: It's alleged that there was basically one major "regional" software distributor for most/all of Canada (i.e., the middleman between various software vendors on one side, and the local retailers on the other). It's further alleged that a certain very large OS-and-software company had put pressure on that distributor approx. two years ago, and that the shaky state of Linux distro availability has been the result, since then. It's plausible, I guess, but I can't confirm it. /kevin Ottawa, Canada