long term support

[thetank]

is there extended support, as in updates, for opensuse? Also, is there phone subscription support? If yes to these two questions... If I became a direct seller of opensuse, how would I budget it?

[microchip8]

opensuse has a support/life time of 2 years. If you want more, then get SLED or SLES

[oldcpu]

is there extended support, as in updates, for opensuse? Also, is there phone subscription support? If yes to these two questions... If I became a direct seller of opensuse, how would I budget it?

As noted, SLED and SLES are the Novell products which are positioned in the market for longer term support. There is a Novell forum as well that is specific to those products:

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) : SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) - NOVELL FORUMS
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES): SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) - NOVELL FORUMS

If it was openSUSE (which has a 2 year life cycle) that you were interested in, then there is detail on the openSUSE community support here: Communicate - openSUSE where that includes:

• our community online forums;
• the community IRC chat channels
• the community Mailing lists
• various web blogs of community members,
• various social networks with sub-areas about SuSE (twitter, facebook ...etc ...)
• News portal
• other ....

In terms of Novell Support, there is limited support that comes with the openSUSE boxed DVD set, as documented here for openSUSE-11.1 : OpenSUSE 11.1 - openSUSE where it is noted that there is free 90 day phone and email support from Novell (although that support is limited in that it has many caveats as to its scope). You can read those caveats for phone support from Novell here: NOVELL: openSUSE: Support Requirements and here: http://support.novell.com/products/o..._overview.html

The Novell site lists the support numbers here: NOVELL: openSUSE: Contact Information

Note there is an active community supporting openSUSE, with many wiki and many volunteers , and many 3rd party applications packaged for openSUSE. Its because of that community, with the support given, that I myself prefer the openSUSE product over the SLED/SLES. Having typed that, some users do not like the 2 year openSUSE life cycle.

One thing that many MS-Windows users (and also many MacIntosh users) do not realize when moving to openSUSE, is the importance of the openSUSE community. The openSUSE community is a key part as to the quality of the end product, and if the community do not participate in the developement process of openSUSE, then the end product that is released is not as good. For example, the past few years, where I have been maintaining openSUSE on relative(s) computers, I have started participating in the development process, where I did not before. That is so that I can be certain that the applications that I support for my relatives, and the applications that I need to support my relatives, function in the final GM (gold mastered) release of openSUSE. .... While users are encouraged to process in the beta cycle of MS-Windows, IMHO it is much more important in Linux (than in Windows) that there is user participation.

You can read up on some openSUSE concepts here: http://en.opensuse.org/Concepts

Again, note I am referring to openSUSE, and NOT to SLED nor SLES.

[steveedmonds]

I looked at SLED in place of openSUSE. It was more restrictive in package availability, I don't use gnome and the usability did not approach openSUSE. Our company uses thunderbird across all platforms, not evolution so that is not a plus.
To replace windows we also need to have a lower cost than windows, that is the cost compared to a windows pre-install and 3+ years windows updates, I don't think SLED achieves this.

So although SLED is trying hard, but for business openSUSE with a release with 4-5 years support every 3 years would be my ideal. In fact I would be willing to subscribe to the longer support for the extended support release (make it 2 yrs standard support, subscribe $30 p.a. over 2 yrs).

Ubuntu offer Long Term Support (LTS) for set versions, this is the type of thing that will attract better adoption of openSUSE. If we want to see openSUSE preinstalled by PC vendors, its got to go the life of the machine, the general public could not perform a SUSE update, I still find it challenging after many many years.

[john_hudson]

If you want to get into making money out of open source, you need to follow the IBM model and offer services like custom installation and custom program development; you are most likely to be successful in that area if you focus on a particular area that you - and potential clients - are interested in.

All consultants have their own specialisms - I wouldn't hire IBM to help me with music software - and you need to decide what USP (unique selling proposition) you have that you can offer to potential clients, whether current or potential users of open source.

[dragonbite]

How easy is it to move from openSUSE after 2 years into SLED to be supported? Major re-installation or simple change and *viola!* you're supported?

[ken_yap]

Well openSUSE and SLED are different products. You cannot convert an openSUSE install into a SLED install just like that. The repositories are different, the software might differ slightly in version, some software might not be officially supported in SLED, and so forth. So it's not a downtime-free conversion.

However given the family similarities you can probably reuse a lot of your config files in /etc.

[Zami2]

Hi,

I think the idea of an OpenSUSE LTS version should not be discarded just like that. There are other community distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint who are offering LTS versions, so why should we not even think about it?

In my opinion an LTS version would be a good alternative for small businesses who cannot afford SLES yet. Keep in mind this might change when they grow larger over time. Also there are private ( esp. "average joe") users who would like to have their os supported for a long period of time. It would certainly be a good thing for everybody involved in the SUSE brand (that includes Novell) to try to keep this people and companies SUSE users.

Please note that the longer an operating system is supported, updated and fixed, the more stable and complete it will become. I don't know about you, but 11 and 11.1 have not been very stable on my systems, sometimes it felt really buggy. A stronger focus on stability could be just the right thing for our distro right now.

So to me, the question is not if we should create an LTS OpenSUSE, but if we can. Do we have the human ressources, is the community active and big enough? I don't know, but if so, I think we should start working on it.

An alternative would perhaps be a SUSE equivalent to CentOS, which has been talked about many times in recent years but sadly never seriosly worked on, at least not to my knowledge.

Thanks for reading.

[bigbearomaha]

In my opinion an LTS version would be a good alternative for small businesses who cannot afford SLES yet. Keep in mind this might change when they grow larger over time

Not only for small businesses, who might over a successful financial period make a move to SLES/SLED, but what of schools and non-profit groups who are out there doing good work in the community and needing all the help they can get in return to aid them?

an LTS type release would be a terrific thing for those market groups and would also go along way to encouraging adoption of Linux in respected user markets.

Big Bear

[ken_yap]

So to me, the question is not if we should create an LTS OpenSUSE, but if we can. Do we have the human ressources, is the community active and big enough?

That's the rub isn't it? Maintaining a LTS distro is a lot of work, to keep up with just security patches, let alone normal bug patches. It's no good having a whole bunch of users, you really need enough developers with enough time to work on it. Since there is no rich sponsor, it's all volunteer work.

However the OBS could be seen as a step towards making volunteer support easier. I can see that some packages like squirrelmail have been spun off to there.