After have test SLED12 on my kitchen computer and 2.5 weeks on my ordinary laptop workhorse at work (mainly a MS environment) I came to some conclusions. It has “eating” everything that I have tested. It has the pros and cons of OpenSUSE13.2 for the moment. I haven’t been able to test the update function (test version of SLED12).
I fully recommend SLED12 at a company environment (at least 3 years of life span) where the desktop gui have little or non impact. I personally will continue to run openSUSE (KDE).
Enterprise Linux is making Gnome look more similar to Gnome 2 or some variation of it, probably to not produce the same shock-reaction as what happened when it was first released to non-enterprise Linux users. Red Hat was supposed to default to using the Gnome classic extension to make it look more like Gnome 2. I guess it is the way to from a “middle ground”.
Too bad there isn’t something like CentOS but for SUSE; a free variation of the enterprise version, as 100% compatible as possible, without paid support but repositories that stick with the enterprise versions of software rather than the latest-greatest as would be found in openSUSE.
Or if SUSE offered a cut-rate version for home users? Of course that may be cost prohibitive unless they get enough users to sign up. But I wonder if that could open the doors to trying to get pre-installed on systems not just geared towards enterprises and servers…?
Many many years ago there was a discussion about making some kind of open SLES but apparently that died out to Novell saying they wouldn’t like it and some developers being outright hostile towards even the idea.
In theory, legally speaking, you could buy a SLES subscription and distribute the source RPMs for the patches and software legally (except those with Novell / SUSE branding (?) IANAL ) if you wanted to but I guess no one wanted to open that can of worms.