I noticed that SuSe does not allow FTP of it's iso's. It charges for
them on CD/DVD, but does allow free FTP install. They explain that this is how they help keep their costs covered to do 24mos. support.
I would find something like this quite acceptable in my case. That would give me 2yrs. between upgrades (which is where my time-cost is)
and the cost is lower ($40-$80 per set, IIRC) than the RHE
offerings.
I find it so acceptable that I'm going to buy it today. (I'm going to try to get my company to buy it, but I will if I have to.) I have said this before, but I think Red Hat ought to be doing the same thing. It's an easy way to be reimbursed for the work of integrating their product. Obviously, the GPL makes some conditions on them, and they offer the ability to download the whole distro, but at about 7 or 8 GB (including source), that's pretty inconvenient. To me, it's an easy decision to spend $40 (basic) or $60 (pro w/o manuals) or $80 (pro) for the boxed sets, even just to try.
I've never used SuSe, so maybe it's as good or better than RHL, but I'm comfortable with RHL and I'd like to stick with it...
I have. Ages ago, I bought 6.2. It was too... German for my taste. (Even now, the mailing list page at SuSE's site has a header that reads "mailinglisten.") (And not that I have anything against German; I took 3 years. It's just that I don't want to see any German docs.) I just tried 8.1, and I have to say it was a major disappointment. The install was really borked on my dual-Athlon SCSI system. Even after I managed to get it installed, I had to give it some strange kernel parameter so that it would boot. But they did offer packages to install the latest X, KDE, and Gnome 2 on 8.1... But I blew up my machine. (I'm sure it was PEBCAK.)
Red Hat -- from whom I've never bought a boxed set over 5 years -- should take note that I am willing to spend $80 of my money to *try* SuSE -- even in the face of disappointing experiences with them -- because I want a stable consumer Linux distro with two years of updates.
dk
