SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Released

MrHoolio writes "SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 has been officially released. This long-awaited/anticipated release is a make-or-break release for Novell. It promises not only a new sleek improved interface but also increased productivity with stability and less worry about viruses and the like. The pricing for the Desktop is $50 a year if you want product updates and support. Otherwise ... like other linux distros you can download it for free, but with no support."

Comments

hmm?

[nukem996]

Ive been running SUSE 10 on vmware for about 2 weeks now, but havnt gotten any updates. Do I have to pay for updates? Anyway I still like Gentoo more.

Re:hmm?

[What'sInAName]

No, you get updates for 60 days as part of the trial offer. After that you have to pay to continue getting updates.

As usual, Novell has been playing 'rename the product.' Does anyone know how SLED 10 compares to OpenSUSE 10.1?

Re:hmm?

[tomstdenis]

Oh come on, you don't like using out dated packages on a box you refuse to pay to upgrade? It's fun!!!

I get to use GCC 3.3.3 every day at work. It's simply a pure bundle of joy.

Tom

Re:hmm?

[What'sInAName]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but you should look at http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/eval.html. It looks like you have to register and get an activation code to get the 60 days of updates.

Re:hmm?

[nukem996]

I installed it and got updates only the day I installed. Well im just using it for another couple of weeks before this job is over.

Re:hmm?

[Da Stylin' Rastan]

SLED 10 is to OpenSuSE 10.1 as NLD9 was to SuSE Pro 9. The primary difference is the long release cycles and longer support cycles for the Enterprise version. OpenSuSE these days is basically becoming the proving ground for future SLES/SLED releases.

Re:hmm?

[areguly]

Indeed some packages are missing, like orarun and LDAP server support in YaST.

you can't find those on opensuse.

You have to pay for updates?

[gforce811]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but do you have to pay for updates to the system? It mentions a 60-day support time for the desktop version...am I missing something?

What's different about Enterprise Linux

[ben there...]

Excuse my ignorance, but why do enterprises seem to most frequently use RHEL, or something like this SuSE LE 10?

Most of my experience on the desktop is with Gentoo. I've been considering Ubuntu. For the web server I use Debian.

What I like the most about them is package management, and that the install allows a truly stripped down system, with only the packages I want. (less to go wrong, imo)

Is it just for the support that they use an "enterprise" linux, or are there other differences?

Re:What's different about Enterprise Linux

[lbmouse]

"...why do enterprises seem to most frequently use RHEL, or something like this SuSE LE 10?"

Because many decisions in enterprises (like mine) are relationship driven.

We have a strong relationship with Oce and Oce has a strong relationship with SuSE (both with German roots). So, our Oce print servers all run SuSE.

On the app hosting side, our IT department has always had good relationships with RTP companies, so they prefer RedHat.

Re:What's different about Enterprise Linux

[Kelson]

Mainly it's support (managers like having official channels better than posting on Ask Slashdot), but there's also issues of product lifecycle and (for those who want them) the inclusion of non-FOSS apps and drivers.

The lifecycle generally goes like this:

1. Test releases of the free version
2. Full release of the free version
3. Repeat 1-2 a couple of times.
4. Release of an enterprise version

Stability improves at each stage, so by the time you get to SUSE Enterprise, or RHEL, etc., you've got something much more stable than openSUSE or Fedora Core.

Then you get 5-7 years (depending on the company) of guaranteed updates without having to worry about upgrading your system. Sure, you can usually perform an online upgrade to a new release using apt-get or yum, but upgrading from Release N to Release N+1 is always more risky than updating components within a release.

Re:What's different about Enterprise Linux

[Driador]

My personal experience is that it's usually the suits upstairs cringing about that keyword "free." To them it dosen't matter that you have qualified sysadmins that can handle most anything short of catastrophic, or whatnot. In their eyes, free equates something of low quality and no quick guarantee that things will be back to normal in 20 minutes.

Re:What's different about Enterprise Linux

[hitchhikerjim]

In the environments I run, it's entirely due to the release cycle. Once I've installed RHEL 4, I'm guerenteed that they'll keep doing security and bug-fix patches for 5-7 years. And those will be REAL patches, not forced upgrades (RedHat backports fixes to the old versions rather than forcing packages to new versions.)

This means that my company doesn't have to constantly pay to re-test and re-verify the software we write every time someone feels like adding a nifty new feature, yet I can still keep the systems patched and secure. Re-doing QA is really expensive.

I run fedora on my desktop at home. But every time I install a new version, I end up with things breaking that I've got to fix. Imagining doing that with all of the hundreds of machines i run, and then having to explain to management why so many of our applications had downtime down due to a little OS upgrade... that gives me nightmares. I'll stick to enterprise-level stuff on the job.

Re:What's different about Enterprise Linux

[Proteus]

Is it just for the support that they use an "enterprise" linux, or are there other differences?

There are other differences.

Plenty of people have pointed out the different life cycle of the Enterprise editions, so I won't belabor that point. Besides, it's something I consider sort of moot given the stability of Debian's Stable branch.

More importantly, IMO, is that RHEL and SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) include some semi-proprietary or fully-proprietary code that's useful for integration with other systems. Additionally, a lot more time has been invested in creating an environment that allows the sort of point-and-click administration that Windows admins and PHBs are accustomed to using and seeing (respectively). This is actually incredibly nice for organizations that are just beginning to build Linux expertise.

Additionally -- and perhaps most importantly -- you're paying for access to specific update servers that have a guaranteed availability -- something you simply can't get with "lesser" versions of these products. This single point is what keeps my clients buying RHEL and SLES instead of implementing Debian. Of course, one can argue that Debian's extensive world-wide mirror system is probably more stable than the centrally-controlled RHEL and SLES servers, but explaining the advantages of decentralized controls to PHBs can be challenging at best. ;-)

No support?

[RedOregon]

No support? Puhleeze! I'm guessing you'll get as much support, if not more, from the Community out on the net as you would from the company!

Speaking, of course, of support as in configuration, etc., as opposed to support as in code rewrites...

But still, that's a far shot from "no support unless you pay".

Support the fallen, block the idiots
http://www.patriotguard.org/

Re:No support?

[Sierran]

This is a common and regrettably still widespread misunderstanding. The term 'support' when applied to an enterprise product does not mean simply 'availability of assistance with and information regarding the product.' It means, specifically, the availability of a legal entity with whom a manager can sign a legal contract which specifically assigns certain responsibilities. In other words, companies use Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell/Suse Linux Enterprise Server/Desktop because they can sign a contract with those organizations which makes those organizations (or their designated proxies) legally (ina contractual sense) responsible for providing security updates, technical assistance, and the like to their users.
"Better support from the community" may be true in that there is 'cheaper' support available; it may be true in that there are more knowledgeable people available (if you can find them, and they're willing to talk to you, and...etc.). However, that's not what 'better' means in the enterprise world. 'Better', to an IT manager, means that their department has done everything possible to mitigate risk and can show that in quantifiable terms, with legally guaranteed response times and effort levels, along with predictable costs.

That's what 'Enterprise support' means. For the home user? Nope, not necessary. For someone who has to budget the cost of running a thousand user desktops on linux six to eight months before the year of run begins? Critical.

Re:No support?

[RedOregon]

That's what 'Enterprise support' means.

Oh. I guess I missed that "Enterprise" in the summary.

Re:No support?

[neurovish]

Of course, as an enterprise linux admin, the managerial definition of "support" and my definition of "support" seem mutually exclusive. Of the (very) few times where I did not get support from the community (as in 'this is broken, how do I fix it' or 'we need to do x, what product is best, and how is it installed'), the vendor was even less helpful. At least the community will say "I don't know, and you're insane for trying", etc. A vendor will say "Yeah, we can totally do that, let me go find an engineer for you". After which, you will either continue to hear "Yeah, we can totally do that, let me go find an engineer for you" until you give up or your support representative is fired, or the engineer will lead you around in circles for two weeks and waste your time for something that really, in the end, cannot be done. Sure you might have "accountability", "responsibility", "contractual obligation", etc, but none of those things will make your widget work or keep it working.

On the "providing updates", "security fixes", etc. side, you'd think that would be the easy part: 1. Updates available, 2. Log into server, 3. Download updates, 4. Install updates. I've seen Novell fail to progress from step 1 to 2 for four months, and the reason given was because they didn't have administrative control over the server hosting their updates, and nobody could talk to the Germans that did control it. I think I "updated" my gentoo boxen at home about 20 times before gaining access to the updates for which we were paying Novell.

Re:No support?

[Arker]

But you can get what you're calling 'Enterprise support' for Debian - from multiple vendors. From names like IBM and HP, for instance, both of whom will provide this level of support for large customers that choose to run Debian on hardware bought from them.

I have been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been waiting for this. I bought a license (their license system is still processing licenses, telling me that it's a pre-order). I have it installed with a 15 day limit. I hope they email me the e-license soon!

This is one of the best days for Linux since its inception in 1991. This is by far the most stable and polished Desktop offering (I am talking about the Desktop release here) I have seen in all of my 10+ years of using Linux.

Congrats to everyone, this is a milestone, one that will no doubt leave a check in my book of amazing and historic events of the 21st Centry.

Re:I have been waiting for this.

[poulbailey]

Is it really that bad?

Re:Torrent

[VikingThunder]

You want to hear about frustration? I just downloaded SLED10 RC3 two days ago. There was only a 5CD version, and I only had DVDs (couldn't get makeSUSEDVD to work correctly). To save on DVDs, I used my single rewriteable DVD to burn each CD one at a time during the installation (yes, two floors of walking in between). Oh well, at least it was good exercise.

The hell...

[Txiasaeia]

I click on the link, go to buy it, and I get this message:

Exception thrown by getter for property allVariations.size of bean product

I hope the documentation isn't written by the guy who came up with this...

Favorable Review

[Compulawyer]

I had the privilege of using this through the beta versions and have to say that the desktop provides a great interface that even rivals OS X. It has elements that are similar to both XP (access to programs through a Start button-type feature) and OS X (a portion of the function of Expose is recreated). IMHO, this desktop fits in well with what corporate users are used to. Also, the Novell distribution of OpenOffice is very stable and handled every doc created with MS office apps that I threw at it. Installation and configuration were a little more complex than Mac OS X but aproximately on par with a clean Windows install. I strongly recommend taking the time to check it out.

What's different about Enterprise Linux

[ErikTheRed]

The difference lies in what businesses want vs. what enthusiests want. Businesses want a stable platform that will undergo minimal change - generally, security and driver updates only in the Kernel and major packages. The reason is that they sometimes run closed-source (gasp) packages on top on Linux (such as Oracle, Domino, etc.) that can't be recompiled if something significant changes. The vendor (Red Hat or Novell) will take care of back-porting appropriate patches to the previous kernel versions, etc., and continue to provide a "stable platform" for at least two years. This way, your IT staff and third-party suppliers (IBM, Oracle, etc) can have a slowly-moving target for their applications and not waste a lot of time figuring out which kernel structure changed to break such and such application. Enterprise hardware vendors (HP, IBM, Sun, etc) can develop, test, and certify their device drivers (let's face it, not many enthusisasts own $10,000 - $500,000 servers) against a stable platform as well.

Most of use that support these servers are happy to trade being a year or so behind the latest and greatest features for the joy of not worrying over whether some update or other is going to break our critically important (at least to our companies and our carreers :-) ) systems. When we do have problems (which is reasonably rare), we don't have to go into endless discussions over the astronomically huge possible combinations of patches and updates and which combinations are functional. 99.99% of the time everything Just Works (and the other .01% is usually because you did something out-of-spec).

This isn't to knock community-developed distributions - all of my personal systems run them, and I've used them on occasion in enterprise environments where we were just running stuff included in the distro. But like most things, you need to choose the write tool for the job...

Fewer Viruses

[lyz]

I am really stoked that there will be fewer viruses with SUSE 10. My virus plagued installation of SUSE 9 was really getting to me.

Re:Fewer Viruses

[Patented]

Just wait... OpenSUSE is coming, which I am sure will become a festering cesspool of illegal activities and breeding ground for virus development, because of the inherent danger in using the word "Open" in a software title.

Can download it for free?

[johansalk]

Is there a catch?