May I express my feeling on this subject? The price gone from S$80+ to S$120+ (1USD:S$1.75) since the release of SuSE7 Pro. The Personal version is still about S$80+ (S$88 last checked). It is clearly indicated that the price for the distro is up, I do not agree with taking the 7 Person version vs 6.x series which were sold around S$80+. as the contents are very different. SuSE is still my best choice, since 6.0 days, it was my first complete box version of Linux I started 18 months ago. I played with RH box(6.0~7.0), Mandrake box(6.x~7.1), Cardela box(edesktop & eserver), Turbo Linux eval, Storm Linux eval, Corel eval (1.0~1.2), but! I still prefer SuSE, why? I only like the best OS and as well as hardware. I gets a bit disappointed with the 7pro, as it was quite some time later than the release of Mandrake 7.1 and still don't have the latest this and that. I am using it now at work and play with it at home though. With the concern on KDE2 and 2.4 kernel, I am sorry but I think SuSE 7 is a bit too late to put on the shelf. I will still consider 7.1 if KDE2 and 2.4 kernel are in there or just wait. Overall, I would say that SuSE has done a decent job all this while, and we should support them, of course it is only fair if they put in more effect in future distro. :) I agreed that the manual may not be needed for most user (I still need them as I am still learning and lots more to learn), a strip down version may also be great for the gurus. But since they have done a great job on compiling the manuals, why not just support them. (they are human as well and need to eat and get paid for the work done). Maybe, instead of having a personal version and professional version, just have a standard version (profession version) with all the manuals and discs and a guru version which only have discs without manuals? Pricing also may need to reconsider, especially in places like Singapore, where the distributors here is selling them at high price. One last thing, the DVD idea also may need to think about it. I have done a comparison installation on my P3-866 box with 128mb, i815 board. By using the Pioneer 16x DVD, an 'almost everything' installation takes me about 10 hours (shock me!) where using the same drive (32x cd reading speed), the CD version takes only about 4 hours. Although the contents for CD is less? than the DVD installation, but the extra 6 hours are unbearable. Of course performance differ with different PC speed and memory. I tried on a twin 800 server with 1gb ram with the same DVD drive and it takes about 4.5 hours for the installation. I still prefer the DVD way as I don't have to attend to it, but the time needed is way too long. I will still with SuSE, but would like to see better progress in the next release. :-) Dennis @Singapore On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Timothy R. Butler wrote:
Glad to hear someone else feels the same way! It seems especially critical for SuSE to realize the need for this since broadband is becoming increasingly popular, and those of us who don't need $50 added to the price tag for books and support will be more likely to download in the future _unless_ there is a cheaper version with all of the power.
I don't particularly care whether the price is $50 or $10. But the
manual as it stands is starting to get in my way. What I _need_,
is the installation media, and a good specification of what they've
done since the last release. I don't want to have to read a manual
with 95% known information to find that.
Given a choice of a $50 edition with a book and a $10 edition with
that information sheet, I'd buy the latter. Heck, I'd buy the latter
if the prices were swapped, even. Anything to not have to browse
that book.