Re: What is the relationship between OpenSuse and SLED

Chris Cox wrote
Günther Schwarz wrote:
Chris Cox wrote:

Günther Schwarz wrote:
Chris Cox wrote:
...

In this case (buying a used notebook) I suspect that there is no
support at all. Unlike other desktop operation systems, the OS is
free of charges, but support and security updates come only with a
service contract. See Novell's web pages for details.
Support comes in many forms. By "support" I mean that Novell will
provide updates/patches for many, many years.

But not without having a working relationship with them or one of
their partners. I'm not sure how it works with a single licence. But
in my case access to the update server is tied to the proper IP
range. Thus selling a computer and relocating it will cut it off from
any patches immediately.

No. This is all fixable. The key is the ... well.. key that
you register.

It all depends on the details of the contract. In my case this won't be
fixable. I do not have to register, and I do not get anything from
Novell. Moving the machine away from my network means cutting if off
from updates.

So in case the OP does not want to pay for support it might be
advisable to replace the installation with OpenSuSE or any other of
the many free Linux distributions.
I think he was asking for that very reason. openSUSE lifetime is
about 2 years of support (updates/patches) from GM.

This is the price one has to pay. It might be worth having a look at
Debian stable or the LTS variants of Ubuntu which are also free and
do have a longer life cycle.

Yes... you could go with community support. However, there isn't
anything magical about the Debian/Ubuntu universe. People working
on problems part time essentially... if it's not interesting to them,
don't expect to get any fix. Possibly never (well, the fix will
ultimately from from Red Hat or Novell which care about enterprise
environments, just have to wait for Debian/Ubuntu to wrap their
arms around the patches).

Don't underestimate what you get for those hundreds of dollars
you pay for support from Novell or Red Hat.

I do appreciate that. But I'm also aware of many people who expect a
Linux distribution to be free of charges. It's your choice, and you'll
get what you pay for. But then quite often the community support
(Debian or just the cosy chatting in this news group) is just as good
as professional support. So this 'you'll get what you pay for' is not
the whole story when it comes to Linux and it's applications.

You're getting real
people that will try to replicate your problem and will try
to deliver a patch. A day hardly passes where I don't get notified
by Red Hat and Novell about a patch (and I'm not talking about
just security fixes).

If you follow how security fixes make their way through the various big
Linux distributions you might have noticed that it is hard to predict
the order in which they arrive. Sometimes Novell or Red Hat are first,
but quite often Debian will react faster than the commercial teams.
As for bugs and simply bad software: Novell does get away since years
with questionable solutions for updates. While rug used in the
enterprise version is better than zypper it is still using much to much
ressources and has proven to lack in usability and failproof
functioning in my case. So there is still much room for improvements,
and thumbs up for cron-apt and Debian as far as automatic updates are
concerned.

Günther
.

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