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Posted Mar 04, 2005
Where is the SuSE Community?
There is one major Linux player who continually flies under my radar. SuSE/Novell. Aside from the dynamic duo of Nat & Miguel I rarely see any articles, reviews, love letters, or many other forms of groundswell support from users. Scooby-doo where are you? To check my long and short term memory I consulted the internet's memory. Google. A search for SuSE and variations of community/forums and such only conjures up PlanetSuSE, which I was expecting, but other than that... a big dud. I was also expecting to see a large number of European sites since SuSE was a Euro distro before the Novell buyout. Nada. A search for Fedora, Mandrake, or Gentoo for instance and you have no problem finding forums, wikis, official and unofficial FAQs. Signs of life.
A few weeks ago I commented on Redhat getting back in the game with their community of everyday users. I wrote that when Redhat abandoned their freebie version a few years back that Novell and others had stepped in to fill that void. I'm starting to wonder if Novell in fact did so. The opportunity was there to scoop up a community of dedicated users. The timing was right. What happened?
I've tried out SuSE. It was a good package. No problems that I could see that turned me off.
So, what are your thoughts on SuSE/Novell? Is there a community that is simply in witness protection? What is keeping SuSE under your radar?
-Steve Mallett, Founder and Managing Editor - OSDir.com
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 1, Insightful)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 08:39 AM
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It's inertia: there were very few who disliked SuSE for YaST being non-Free to the extent of not wanting to use it; in the meantime, those of us who were so inclined went off and got happy with Debian and Gentoo instead. And now we're still happy, and while we think it's good that YaST was GPL'd, we're still too lazy to get around to considering SuSE. That plus a certain amount of circularity with your argument above: the name of SuSE has lost some publicity since the Novell takeover, so it doesn't occur to me that I might want to consider it for a reinstall of a box coming up, for example...
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 1, Informative)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 08:54 AM
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hmmm. Interesting you should have this obvservation. I had no problem finding SuSE sites at all. let me illustrate: suse forums http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=suse+forums&btnG=Google+Search
suse newsgroups revealed http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=suse+newsgroups&spell=1
a google search on SuSE reveals Results 1 - 10 of about 6,660,000 for suse http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=suse+&btnG=Search
6.6 million hits is hardly beneath any radar.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 1, Funny)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 09:17 AM
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Hi! My name is Harry and I'm a SUSE-User ;)
First of all I have to say, that the correct spelling is 'SUSE', i think since the takeover by Novell.
Yes, there is a lack on community sites, of course I don't no why. Maybe we're got by YAST so lazy that no one has zest to make a site. Ok, a forum won't be a such great work. So perhaps I would add at least a special area on my site for SUSE Linux (only for you).
An other reason could be, that we are all lone wolfs -- no thats nonsense. ^^
Ok, let's say we have no community, cause we need no, cause SUSE is nearly perfekt ;),
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 2, Insightful)
by WRW on Mar 04, 2005 - 10:32 AM
(User info | Send a message)
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"Within GERMANY!"
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 10:32 AM
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as one has already commented on, after redhat i started distro hopping. i landed on ubuntu and its community is a shining jewel. we use suse at work. would i change to something else if i had the choice? yes. where novell is doing much for software, i just don't see any reason to purchase thier goods and services. speaking personally they do not offer anything more than redhat does, albiet costs might be a bit lower. personally, they seem to offer nothing for the "community" distro. personally i would rather get behind a community push than a big corporate push. long live ubuntu.
i know ubuntu is owned by a corporation, but the business model is far and away different than novell.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 12:39 PM
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I bought SUSE profesional 9.2, I´m new to linux, and when i got problems I tried to get some help from SUSE/Novell, When you buy SUSE they promise free instaletion help, I posted for help on their site 3 times withinn the last 2 weeks and until now, NOTHING, checking for help everywhere I found more SUSE sites but mainly for older version of SUSE
Soren Nielsen Mexico
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 05:22 PM
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Actually there is still a little SuSE community left, I know of one small, but pretty good site called SuSELinuxSupport, it's URL is: http://slsupport.typo3-factory.net/index.php
They also have an OK forum, at http://slforums.typo3-factory.net/index.php
There are also a few very nice guys, making life eaisier for people like me who only like to hack around, and compile stuff in the weekends where I have some free time on my hands, doing RPMs for SuSE:
http://packman.links2linux.org/
http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/index.php
The SuSE community is there, it's just about finding it ;)
Another thing I noticed, Novell has been very busy putting out a beta of their new Open Enterprise Server. But where in the freaking world is the betas for the next SuSE Linux? Mandrake are already at the third beta of their 10.2 and Red Hat almost has Fedora Core 4 ready to go, and by the way KDE 3.4 is only about 1½ week away.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 1, Insightful)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 05:33 PM
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My Name is Joel and I'm a SUSE user. I had used sls, slackware, caldera, redhat, fedora, and looked at some of the debian-based distros, as well as suse. By version 9.1, suse was so good I was compelled to switch. 9.2 was an incremental improvement, and what I see of the 9.3 beta looks like further polishing.
It's nice to be able to use the same distro on my laptop or in the data center. Well, small businesses use suse pro in the server room, the big businesses tend to want the enterprise version, with its indemnification clause and 24x7 support options - the other nice thing about suse is that the pro and enterprise versions are extremely similar, and if an application works on one, it will most likely run just fine on the other.
They slao offer free downloads, and there is a thriving suse community, which started in europe but has been growing in the US since the Novell move. My company, which had been running redhat servers, is now standardizing on SUSE enterprise Linux.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 05:39 PM
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I just go to http://www.suseforums.net/ or http://www.linuxquestions.org/ for help. I look at Suse as that one underground, cool, but relatively out-of-the-way bar you brag about knowing how to find. Yes, I do like the movie "Swingers". Is it possible that the lack of apparent community support is actually because everything works?
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 05:40 PM
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Count me in as a very happy, long-time suse user. Wife, too. Son, too. Mom, too. Daughter, too.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 05:54 PM
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I am a long time user of SuSE. I run a Development lab where I install hundreds of
systems over and over on lots of different hardware. I became sold on SuSE once
Redhat started to require that you register your systems, create "demo" accounts
to get updates and patches, etc. I continually have problems with their network
tools if I change adapters or had new hardware to an existing system. Yet, if I
do the same kind of things on SuSE, I rarely have problems. Their software online
update is much better that RedHat, no user and/or system registration required
(except for the Enterprise versions). I have tried other version many times, but
I tend to always go back to SuSE...
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 06:22 PM
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I got a SUSE 9 Pro disk from a friend to use as a base for building LFS, and while LFS has fallen by the wayside as a hobby, SUSE has stayed on my desktop machine because "Things just work." Any program I've needed has been easy enough to get, install, and configure. And being able to use YaST from the command line makes remote administration a breeze. I just recently purchased 9.2 Pro and have been very happy with it. It's the first distro that has allowed me to easily (<-- that being the key word) get the same functionality out of my laptop as with Windows. Sure there are things that are tough with SUSE (Read=ATI 3D Drivers), but they aren't anything that anyone else isn't having trouble with also. The only time I've gone looking for a community site in the past, is when things don't work. Hence the noted absense.
Joe
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 06:36 PM
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As a SuSE user since 6.1, I think the reason you do not see a SuSE community is due to two factors. 1) Red Hat is very much a bate and switch buy our "operating system" and we will write the application you need to run your business. This places them in competition with VARS. SuSE on the other hand has concentrated on having at least 1 person coding for every major Linux project to further that project and give them insite into the project, so they know its capabilities. 2) I bought SuSE because I did not want to compile applications, SuSE had and still has nearly every application included on its disks. Yast makes it very windows like to install software and set things up and Yast has imporved over time.
There is no community because for the most part the product works. When you look at articles that mention it you will find it working on laptops before Red Hat even cared about laptops and tablet PCs. It's knowledgebase has answered my questions for the most part, so I do not need another forum.
It is still not an end user, grandma product yet, things like moving a CDRW to a different IDE cable so it is a different device still requires editing of the boot manager by hand, but they have come a long way and the enterprise version will continue to push them to fix these things.
What they and the Linux community have missed is the concept of eliminating the PC and making it easy to setup diskless terminals of various sorts and providing a GPL way for windows users to work graphically on a Linux server. The projects are there, they just need someone to pull them together.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 1, Informative)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 07:51 PM
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I have been supporting the Novell/SuSE community with many articles and answers to "newbie dumb questions" at Novell Cool Solutions. Maybe its a hard page to find for the inexperienced, so go to this link to see all my support writings.
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/author/1211.html
Once you've found this page you can go backwards to see all the hard work being done by other writers in support of readers of this helpful Novell publication.
Kind regards
Stomfi
Australia
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 07:53 PM
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Suse rulez dudes! No really, I've been using for years. I have not yet found a distribution as well formulated as SuSE. It has most of everything I need, it's quite stable and most of all YaST is a great admin tool. It's almost to the level of smit or smitty on AIX.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 08:28 PM
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I started with redhat 5.1 and stayed faithful up too redhat 9. Tried Mandrake then SUSE 7.2. Tried Knoppix, Ubuntu too. They are all nice and good distros but for me SUSE 9.2 is the shizzel. It all works, desktop, server. So yeah, I am a SUSE user!
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 04, 2005 - 09:05 PM
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I'm a happy user of suse linux - at work and at home, on the desktop, and in the server room. Work & play: web browsing, email/news, music, movies, 3D FPS internet gaming - you don't hear a lot about it because it just works.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 12:14 AM
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I am a long time SUSE user, and I believe the reason for the lack of a significant SUSE community is due to SUSE discouraging it for fear of losing support revenue. YAST's license meant that the community sort of person couldn't download the latest SUSE and so didn't bother.
In reality I think that SUSE would benefit financially from a strong community support. First the biggest support issue with regard to Linux and the most difficult to resolve is hardware compatibility followed by configuration issues. A strong community forum which could solve some of these easily solvable problems and referring only the real issues to SUSE would dramatically reduce SUSE's support costs and allow SUSE to provide a better service to customers. I don't think a community support forum is a substitute for commercial support, so those who would pay for it will pay anyway. SUSE should be actively encouraging a support forum as a means of first line support to reduce their support overhead so that easily resolvable issues can be resolved on the forum rather than taking up support staff time.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 1, Informative)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 12:26 AM
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The alt.os.linux.suse newsgroup is pretty active and a lot of questions get answered there. I have tried and still use various distros of Linux due to the various jobs I do so I can speak from experience. SuSE is one distro that I would be willing to give my grandma (if I had one). All the other distros I tried had something small wrong with them. I can and do fix those problems (I'm an IT professional after all) but your home user is just going to get turned off. SuSE is the one distro that pays attention to getting things right. The packages in the distro just work. Clashes are very rare.
The one thing I miss are lots of 3rd party software sites, but nearly everything you would ever need and some you have never heard of, is on the DVD. And you can legally install it as many times as you like. What a deal!
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 1)
by wudbaer on Mar 05, 2005 - 02:33 AM
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As someone already said further up: The SuSE community in the US may be still comparatively small, but SuSE is the predominant Linux distribution in Germany and likely other German-spoken countries. They tried a daring foray into the US market around 2000 which miserably failed and kept them being a mostly regional company for a long time (which obviously is no longer true after the Novell buyout). They certainly had and still have a much more closed development model than e.g. Redhat, and only under Novell all of SuSE Professional finally became GPLed. For that reason I also think that there still are no clones of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server opposed to the numerous RHEL clones (which I really would like to see).
But SuSE is one of the key employers for open source developers and has always invested heavily in the community. They also make in my eyes one of the most polished and innovative distros out there by early adopting new technologies and very recent versions of current Linux software as opposed e.g. to RedHat whose distros always seem to me a little bit stale (which sometimes also causes problems as from time to time they release really fucked-up versions of SuSE Pro; 8.1 and 9.0 are examples, but 8.2, 9.1 and the current 9.2 in my eyes really rock(ed). One blind spot they admittedly have (which is very surprising as Novell also aquired Ximian): Their support of Gnome is sorely lacking (they have Gnome, and it's also nice and polished, but usally at least one release behind the rest of the kids).
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 02:39 AM
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Everyone I know who uses Linux uses SUSE (50+ people), a few people also dabble with Debian and Gentoo as well. In the past, along with a lot of other people, I tried Red Hat, Slackware, Mandrake, but the number of problems just wasn't worth the effort. I think the main reason you don't see lots of SUSE sites is generally the stuff just works, so why would you need a support site? Plus you get just about every single package you could need on a SUSE distribution, so there isn't the same need for sites to help you with packages for x,y,z.
Regards,
Edward
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 03:04 AM
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I think we are here
Community links
(especially the section about "onofficiële hulpbronnen voor SUSE LINUX".
Missing links from the above
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 03:23 AM
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Most likely the majority is still in europe, mainly germany.
However, there are several interesting things to notice:
- Check the reviews of 64 Bit Linux Distributions on LWN, and you will find a surprised editor stating that of all tested distributions SUSE has the most additional packages (i.e. in user provided repositories) available, including multimedia packages etc.
- Also for 32 Bit there are high quality repositories available for additional SUSE packages, like the already mentioned packman.links2linux.de.
- We recently bought CA Arcserve for Linux, and supported are, among the more expensive ditributions, also SUSE Professional 9.0 and 9.1, which are both available for free (the only supported, free (as in beer) distros on the list).
- For me the killer feature is the apt4suse infrastructure, that brings apt to SUSE and makes integration of external repositories as painless as for Debian - and it incorporates also the official packages (also available for 64 Bit :-)) http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/home.html
So there are some very interesting developments to watch in SUSE land ;-)
Cheers
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 04:09 AM
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The reason you dont see much Suse activity online is that it doesnt need it. They have done a fantastic job at making a no-nonsense Linux distribution that many beginning to intermediate user can operate out-of-box without asking too many questions.
Kudos to them on that, but dont expect too much community activity. It doesnt require as much support, and those that are dedicated to supporting the community are supporting distributions that have a "more free" mindset.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 06:46 AM
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Where? Don't worry, we're out here.
We have 200+ student lab machines running SuSE 9.1 as well as a 128 node Opteron cluster running 8.2. When RedHat dropped support for RH9, we dropped RedHat. Fedora? Too unstable for us. YMMV.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 1)
by MMcCallister (workingwriterATprodigy.net)
on Mar 05, 2005 - 08:59 AM
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Not exactly hiding, but the SUSE user community is apparently thriving -- off the web. The SUSE-Linux-E (for English) mailing list is alive and well, and generating 100 posts a day, including a short thread on this item, headed "Where are We?" 8-)
This is just the biggest and broadest of the official SUSE lists. You can find them all here.
Unfortunately, when Novell redesigned the SUSE site, these lists were a little harder to find, and the support newsgroups are not as active. This has now been fixed, and a link to the lists is now on the SUSE Pro home page.
I'm pleased to learn about some of these other sites, and will point to a semi-active Yahoo Group, too: suselinuxusers@yahoogroups.com
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http://www.alionet.org/
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 09:34 AM
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Both French and Canadian users should try http://www.alionet.org/
So, as you can see, there a lot of people who are using suse/novell
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 10:48 AM
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The apparent lack of a SuSE community may indicate a shift in the the consumer base that is using this distribution. That is, SuSE is enough of a main streem comsumer product that those buying it are ordinary individuals such as myself who buy a computer product to do a job and have no motivtion to comment about the product as long as it does well the job for which it was purchased. I don't see a lot on Linux websites regarding Mandrake either, for that matter.
For instance, I enjoy woodworking. I recently bought a new random orbital sander for a project I was finishing. It is a tool that does the job for which it was purchased. The only time I would comment would be if it failed. Then I would have taken it back to the retailer, stated my problem and either asked for a refund or a replacement.
That is the same attitude I have regarding computer software. I purchase it to do a job. It is another tool. If it does the job to my expectations, I have no reason to make any comment.
Perhaps the leading Linux OS and software packages are becoming just one more dependable tool. This, I think, would speak to its maturation as an OS and its ability to do the job for ordinary computer users such as myself.
Michael M.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 11:11 AM
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just look at the comments...
Where is the SuSE Community?
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 11:20 AM
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There is a strong SUSE community at the alt.os.linux.suse newsgroup and (for English speakers) the English SUSE email list. The exchange on the newsgroup can get rough at times, but it is inhabited by some very knowledgable users who are very willing to help, if you are not too lazy to do basic research first. The last time I used the elist was around 2000, but SUSE staff did, at that time, watch the list and occasionally answer questions. But, like the newsgroup, most answers came from the list users themselves.
When I say that I have in my files over 20 invoices for SUSE, dating back to early 1998, you can correctly surmise that I have purchased almost every release SUSE has made since 1998. That statement will also identify me to many of you readers. Where I work is a Novell shop. The powers that be see Linux as the future and I'm part of a team that is even now installing Linux server test beds for our Oracle databases and web applications. The obvious Linux distro for our 25+ servers is SLES. SUSE will also be the obvious replacement for WinXX on our 400+ desktops, especially when Novell's directory services are as seamlessly integrated into the SUSE desktop as they are on the WinXX desktop.
On the SUSE newsgroup a few months ago there was a lot of stir about the new Novell EULA, which seemed to circumvent, or attempt to circumvent the GPL. When it seemed that SUSE was 'outlawing' GPL rights of making copies, multiple installions from a single CD set or giving away copies of the CD set I began looking at other distros. That misunderstand has been cleared up, but not before I encountered Debian and its Social Contract. It is know clear to me that Debian will become my home distro.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 03:25 PM
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I suggest you brush up on your German and head over to
www.linux-club.de
It's a thriving and bustling place full of new, intermediate and expert SUSE users. You can find comments aned answers in any issue relating to SUSE.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 04:52 PM
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I guess many SuSE users are just happy or use newsgroups.
Actually I can't think of any problem that I ever encountered, that was very SuSE specific.
Whenever I use packages that are stable I use yast and grab it from DVD or net.
When I use alpha or beta code I have to compile it myself anyhow.
But recently I can exchange vcards with my mobile out of the box, I run 20 workstations with scientific 3D apps at work, I get less than a call per week, for help...
... when somebody needs help it is a commercial application that is liked with GLIBC-2.0 and maybe even a buggy RH7 glibc, there is a simple solution, that can be reused.
I am not sure what you miss but communities form around a common interest create something usefull, thus I assume the application is where you should look for communities to improve everybodies user experience.
My little brother said Microsoft successfully emotionally involves you (mostly aggravation) and RH does so as well, but I am not sure if this is a good measure of their success. I didn't feel this way for SuSE and was ready to trade it in for RH in a big company environment and disgracefully stepped back from my commitment, because I realized a good OS/distro is one you almost don't notice. And we all have to get work done, besides installing and hatching linux.
thank you for allowing anonymous posts, a reason I usually prefer newsgroups, there is no new user for every group you go to, you can use 1 mail account to access them all.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 05, 2005 - 05:23 PM
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I have been using SuSe linux for about 7 years now, I tried Redhat and Mandrake and stuck with SuSe because it gave me the best use of shared libraries for the programs I wanted to compile. If your looking for love letters, I would advise you to stay away from linux, Because if you don't know already --- All the love is in the code.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 06, 2005 - 11:02 AM
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I think another issue with SuSE is they (in the past anyway) only allowed an install by FTP instead of making ISO's available like everybody else. If you wanted media, you had to buy the distro.
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 1, Interesting)
by Anonymous on Mar 06, 2005 - 11:42 AM
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Suse died with Novel, sure it tryed but instead of asking us the user the folk that payed for ever SUSE editition, Novel told us what we needed
( Bill Gates is great at that), No we do not need Novel we need to be listened to. Novel needs us without us no SUSE!
Sorry Novel you do not have it!
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Re: Where is the SuSE Community?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 06, 2005 - 09:52 PM
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I hear what you are saying about Novell - But I think its too early to say how it will all turn out - Remember flexability - freedom of choice - is one of the hallmarks of linux, If Novell takes this away, They just waisted their money, I hope they did not, If they did, They are only working for Microsoft in trying to kill linux. But it will never work, The SuSE users will just migrate to another platform - Red Flag linux - turbo linux - yelllow Dog linux - etc, etc etc - who knows.
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This is Journalism?
(Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Mar 06, 2005 - 11:25 PM
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I just had to quit the Suse Linux English list because it was overloading my inbox with hundreds of posts per day. What a stupid question - Where is the community? Did you think about asking a Suse user? And you should see the activity on the German list. Highly technical discussions, with fantastically knowledgeable posters on both the German and English lists.
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