Mandriva Kiosk now on-line for club members

[Tsuroerusu]

How's SuSE's customer support? I don't know as I can't get the darned thing installed on my test box.

If they had good customer support for their free distros, then THAT would be something!

I don't know how it is, as I have never tried it, I have no need for it.
SUSE's support options for their more-or-less consumer distro (The SUSE Linux now developed in the openSUSE project) are quite simple, if you buy the retail boxed version, you get 90-days of installation support, I think you can get support for the distro itself by calling a number stated in the manual and the cost of that gets onto your phone bill.

Since Novell focuses on Linux in business, the consumer support options are minimal, which is something that annoys me a little because SUSE is in my mind, along with Mandriva, one of the best Linux distros to give to a newbie, because the way you do things are somewhat familiar to someone coming from Windows, and are very sophisticated for us advanced users (Check out YaST's Sysconfig editor, there are a crapload of options in there for changing all kinds of stuff, for example which kernel modules should be loaded on boot or put into an initrd).

[Judland]

Since Novell focuses on Linux in business, the consumer support options are minimal, which is something that annoys me a little because SUSE is in my mind, along with Mandriva, one of the best Linux distros to give to a newbie, because the way you do things are somewhat familiar to someone coming from Windows, and are very sophisticated for us advanced users (Check out YaST's Sysconfig editor, there are a crapload of options in there for changing all kinds of stuff, for example which kernel modules should be loaded on boot or put into an initrd).

That's kind of too bad, really. It wouldn't be that difficult for SuSE/Novell to set up an "official" user support forum and employ a couple of moderators to help field questions.

Even Mandriva does this for free customers and paying customers alike. Hence another reason why Mandriva needs to consider their bottom line from time to time.

For intimidated newbies, I think a system like this is important. It also shuts up those IT guys that say Linux offers no support to its users. Those clueless zombies.

[Patrick]

That's kind of too bad, really. It wouldn't be that difficult for SuSE/Novell to set up an "official" user support forum and employ a couple of moderators to help field questions.

Suse forums:
http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/
http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?

[Judland]

Ah, okay. That makes more sense. Thanks, Pat.

Just curious again.... are those "official" Novell SuSE boards, or are they simply driven by the "community"?

[Judland]

Ah... did a bit of poking around myself.

At the first site you linked to, I found this:

First of all, we are not affiliated with the SuSE in any way, this site is made by Linux users for Linux users.

Hmmm...

Not sure about the second link you posted. Doesn't look "official" to me. So, I guess I'll still assume that SuSE/Novell does not offer support to free users.

And please don't mis-read what I'm saying here. I'm not intentionally trying to de-value SuSE. I'm just trying to get the facts. I'd like to know what I'm talking about at our next office LUG if these sort of questions come up. That's all.

[Tsuroerusu]

That's kind of too bad, really. It wouldn't be that difficult for SuSE/Novell to set up an "official" user support forum and employ a couple of moderators to help field questions.

Even Mandriva does this for free customers and paying customers alike. Hence another reason why Mandriva needs to consider their bottom line from time to time.

For intimidated newbies, I think a system like this is important. It also shuts up those IT guys that say Linux offers no support to its users. Those clueless zombies.

This was discussed during an openSUSE FOSDEM presentation, Sonja Krause-Harder from SUSE mentioned that they had gotten requests for an offical discussion board, and their issue was that the community had for a few years already had very good SUSE related forums like the ones Pat just mentioned, with a lot of active users hanging around, case in point, forums.suselinuxsupport.de has over 22,000 registered users. So the openSUSE project's issue was that they didn't want to duplicate the work that their user community had already done so well. Although they did take notice of the request and there are now Novell-hosted official newsgroups for the openSUSE project for discussions of stuff.

I think I need to write something on support options for the different distros, which could be helpful to new users, because both SUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu and others have wonderful user communities that provides more support than you could EVER get out of Microsoft.

[Tsuroerusu]

Not sure about the second link you posted. Doesn't look "official" to me. So, I guess I'll still assume that SuSE/Novell does not offer support to free users.

The newsgroups are official, you can find information regarding those right here: http://en.opensuse.org/Communicate
You'll notice that, that wiki page also has links to the forums Pat mentioned, and a crapload of other good resources.

And please don't mis-read what I'm saying here. I'm not intentionally trying to de-value SuSE. I'm just trying to get the facts. I'd like to know what I'm talking about at our next office LUG if these sort of questions come up. That's all.

I see where you're going, I've asked the same questions in the past.

But Jud', do me a favor and don't use the phrase "I'm just trying to get the facts.", will ya?

[Judland]

But Jud', do me a favor and don't use the phrase "I'm just trying to get the facts.", will ya?

Sorry, Man. Didn't even realize. Thanks for the advice, too. I'm asking because yesterday one of the Project Managers in our office was asking be a bit about SuSE (he heard or read the name somewhere).

As I don't use SuSE, I don't want to mis-lead him.