Zimbra dropping OpenSuSE support

English Soapbox
#1

I found it odd that Zimbra was dropping support for
OpenSuSE yet supportting Ubuntu and Fedora. Perhaps
this thing about OpenSuSE losing out to Ubuntu/Fedora is
gaining some traction or a least a level of truth? Just seems strange,
that a mixed source commercial vendor would drop support of
what I thought would be a tier 1 distro.

#2
  • GofBorg wrote, On 11/26/2008 05:11 PM:
    > I found it odd that Zimbra was dropping support for
    > OpenSuSE yet supportting Ubuntu and Fedora.

Source?

Uwe

#3

a quick google and it is clear why they made the decision

Yahoo layoffs. - Zimbra - Forums

  1. OpenSuSE is NOT getting canned because of that, and such speculation is really in bad form. There just isn’t much interest in it. We track download and install numbers for when people notify us. Suse has only been installed 41 times since the beginning of the year. Compare this with RHEL which is well over 1k or Mac which is a little less. (See screenshot of reporting console)
#4

That is pure BS.

According to Distrowatch, there has been 1547 hits in the last 7 days.

Wait until tomorrow when 11.1 rc1 hits the boards;)

Have fun:)

#5

no, what they mean is Zimbra has only by their records been installed 41 times onto SUSE, not how many people have installed suse, I think, not sure, never heard of zimbra before today.

#6

>> I found it odd that Zimbra was dropping support for
>> OpenSuSE yet supportting Ubuntu and Fedora.
>
> Source?

Official sources…and a live thread on Zimbra forum.
Problem as they see it, only 41 downloads of SuSE version
in the last year = loser distro and eol.

http://www.zimbra.com/forums/installation/24503-what-does-zimbra-have-against-opensuse.html

#7

> no, what they mean is Zimbra has only by their records been installed
> 41 times onto SUSE, not how many people have installed suse, I think,
> not sure, never heard of zimbra before today.

Yah, this is my point and argument. They haven’t even gained mindshare and
they are dropping distros.

#8

Hmmn, kinda you introduced zimbra for us that don’t know about it in another form.:wink: Nice advertisement for them. Now that we know download and request might improve and they might reconsider their decision of dropping suse.:slight_smile:

#9

Ah, that makes sense. A pity, though, but actually I think they are right when they don’t support these “short term support” distros for a server application.
Thanks!

Uwe

#10

Doesn’t Zimbra pretty much take over the whole machine and so it really doesn’t matter if you run it on Ubuntu, Fedora or what have you since you have to dedicate a server to it?

#11
  • ken yap wrote, On 11/27/2008 10:06 AM:
    > Doesn’t Zimbra pretty much take over the whole machine and so it really
    > doesn’t matter if you run it on Ubuntu, Fedora or what have you since
    > you have to dedicate a server to it?

Dunno, I use Groupwise :slight_smile:

Uwe

#12

Yeah. Apache, postfix, etc, have to be stopped before even installing zimbra.

And…

Installation = running single script.
Admin = web page.

So… I doubt it really matters which distro you run it on.

#13

In that case I would probably choose a longer lived distro like the SLES, RHEL, Ubuntu LTS, or Debian to run Zimbra on. I can understand that 2 years might be too short a support period.

#14

> In that case I would probably choose a longer lived distro like the
> SLES, RHEL, Ubuntu LTS, or Debian to run Zimbra on. I can understand
> that 2 years might be too short a support period.
>
>
Nice theory, except they support Fedora.

#15

I’m sure the handful of people who downloaded it for OpenSUSE are now jealous of Fedora. So move to Fedora for this machine, then. It’s hardly an OpenSUSE machine by the time you’ve installed Zimbra (I’m sure the bleeding edge KDE4.1 is sorely needed for ZImbra ;)), it’s no great loss.

#16

> I’m sure the handful of people who downloaded it for OpenSUSE are now
> jealous of Fedora. So move to Fedora for this machine, then. It’s hardly
> an OpenSUSE machine by the time you’ve installed Zimbra (I’m sure the
> bleeding edge KDE4.1 is sorely needed for ZImbra ;)), it’s no great
> loss.

Zimbra is totally self contained in /opt/Zimbra. Yes you have to tweak
Postfix so it doesn’t get cranky but it works and updates just like any
OpenSuSE box. Been running it stable for 2 years now…which is why I’m
po’d that they are dropping it. Nobody is jealous of Fedora, but you should
be concerned when apps like this get dropped so yes, it is a loss.

Just because OpenSuSE is considered ‘bleeding edge’ doesn’t mean it has to
be used or even marketed solely in that fashion. OpenSuSE is a terrific
general purpose OS and it can be configure at install time to be whatever
you need, even to the point of leaving off the GUI altogether. OpenSuSE is
actually excellent as a server OS. See my post on OpenSuSE LTS.

#17

After two years you don’t get any updates to the kernel and any libraries that might be needed by Zimbra. Or openssh. Or lots of other things. Maybe it does not matter if you have it on a secure LAN but still… So while it certainly is a good GP platform, I would be wary of putting anything that needs LTS on OpenSUSE, unless you’re willing to upgrade. Should be easier now that zypper can do dup over the net, but still, something might break.

#18

> After two years you don’t get any updates to the kernel and any
> libraries that might be needed by Zimbra. Or openssh. Or lots of other
> things. Maybe it does not matter if you have it on a secure LAN but
> still… So while it certainly is a good GP platform, I would be wary of
> putting anything that needs LTS on OpenSUSE, unless you’re willing to
> upgrade. Should be easier now that zypper can do dup over the net, but
> still, something might break.

Can’t really go through life worrying if something will break.
Inevitably it does, doesn’t matter which OS you use. As an administrator
it just comes with the territory. Having a response plan is the key
to success.

#19

It makes sense that they are continuing support for SLES and RHEL/CentOS and Ubuntu Server (assume LTS).

Both Fedora and openSUSE are more desktop orientated so that does kinda make sense. Perhaps the RHEL/SLES versions will then be trickled down to Fedora/openSUSE?

#20

> It makes sense that they are continuing support for SLES and RHEL/CentOS
> and Ubuntu Server (assume LTS).

Ah but you see it doesn’t make sense…They ARE supporting Fedora and
OpenSuSE was supported for the last year and a half.

They cite download figures. In their longterm chart they
are showing End of Life for SLES at version 6 if download numbers do not
improve. Doesn’t matter, I’m either moving to CentOS or Ubuntu. Haven’t
decided yet.