One last SuSE question.

[Bill Brock]

The product portal says FOSS will be supported on Open SUSE ES 10. I don't think there is such an animal. Is this actually supposed to be SLES 10?

And if so, then if I purchase SLES 10 from Novell should I be able to continue with ZCS FOSS for future releases?

[tgx]

The product portal says FOSS will be supported on Open SUSE ES 10. I don't think there is such an animal. Is this actually supposed to be SLES 10?

And if so, then if I purchase SLES 10 from Novell should I be able to continue with ZCS FOSS for future releases?

I had heard that the roadmap for SLES10 was anticipation of termination at the end of 6.0.
FWIW, I've successfully tested migration to CentOS5.2. Completed it yesterday, documenting today. I will wait for OpenSuSE to EOL before I commit the move as I still feel that Zimbra performs better and is easier to manage under OpenSuSE.

[Bill Brock]

You agree that Open SuSE ES 10 is actually SLES10? And it will at least work through version 6 of Zimbra?

If this is the case I will probably buy SLES 10 and roll on with Zimbra. If it isn't the case I'll probably go back to 602Lan Suite on Windows. They have added a lot of collaboration features since the 2004 version which I was running prior to Zimbra. Plus it will cost me for a license that doesn't expire what one year of Zimbra would cost.

[tgx]

You agree that Open SuSE ES 10 is actually SLES10? And it will at least work through version 6 of Zimbra?

If this is the case I will probably buy SLES 10 and roll on with Zimbra. If it isn't the case I'll probably go back to 602Lan Suite on Windows. They have added a lot of collaboration features since the 2004 version which I was running prior to Zimbra. Plus it will cost me for a license that doesn't expire what one year of Zimbra would cost.

I do believe that they mean SLES10. However, I would consult with a sales rep as they may have additional information. What kind of pricing have you gotten on SLES10? SLES11 is right around the corner btw, and might be interesting to see if there is any SLES 11 commitments coming out of Zimbra. I tend to think not as OpenSuSE 11.1 is the testbed release for SLES11 and obviously there's no work on that front.

[Bill Brock]

I believe their web site showed a basic 3 yr subscription was $964 or 3 something/year.

[LMStone]

I believe their web site showed a basic 3 yr subscription was $964 or 3 something/year.

"Street" prices for a 1-year SLES maintenance subscription are under $250 and the three-year package is around $700, at least the last time we bought a bunch for our own use.

Hope that helps,
Mark

[Bill Brock]

I notice you are running SLES10. I'm running Open SuSE 10.2. Can you think of any reason why I shouldn't migrate to SLES10 so I can continue to run ZCS FOSS?

Since all of my Linux servers are SuSE I have no intention of going with a different distro just to run a mail program. But if SLES 10 is a good solution it will make life easier.

[dijichi2]

I've been running OpenSUSE 11.0 on my home desktop as an experiment to re-aquaint myself with the OS, and to produce a zimbra port. I have the port in testing and I will release the patches/binaries at some point when I get some free time.

However, my thoughts are this:

<rant>

The Gnome version of OpenSUSE 11.0 (the default version) runs like a dog and several of the default gui programs are very unstable and lack basic features. The reason for this? The Ximian remnants who have gained control of Novell SUSE strategy are still clearly plugging away with their M$ agenda. Mono and it's dog crap programs are widespread. There are multiple .exe processes running in the background (frequently crashing or consuming large amounts of resources). Moreover for 11.0 Mono is actually a dependency to run the basic GUI at all (I belive this is fixed in 11.1). I am astounded they are so stupid to follow this strategy - lots of people are simply horrified/offended at finding .exes running on their nice Linux box, quite apart from the obvious patent issues.

So, I wiped that and installed the KDE version. Much better. Nice OS.

However, while OpenSUSE used to be a much better engineered OS than other distros, I think while they've spent much effort fixing the zypper debacle and developing more mono/ooxml crap, the others have caught up. Ubuntu has a much more stable/polished feel than it used to, and I find myself going back to it as a desktop. Fedora is likewise a nice desktop these days, and RHEL most certainly is a 'better' server. The only reason I like SUSE over the others is YAST, but unfortunately development of this has not progressed much lately and each component is not as flexible/complete to make it that useful - I still find myself dropping down to config files. Samba is so slow to remote vista clients it's unusable.

Zimbra, for better or worse, is designed to be used mostly on it's own on a server. It's also in this day and age a critical primary communication/collaboration system for a company - not just a 'mail program'. There are several platforms that are very well supported, if your particular choice isn't, you can do one of a few choices:
1) Submit bugfixes/patches, contribute.
2) Move to a better supported platform.
3) Move to a different software.
There are very few distros that do everything well, corporate infrastructures should be flexible enough to cope with this.

Continually complaining without actually being constructive or helpful isn't really very useful.

</rant>

[LMStone]

I've been running OpenSUSE 11.0 on my home desktop as an experiment to re-aquaint myself with the OS, and to produce a zimbra port. I have the port in testing and I will release the patches/binaries at some point when I get some free time.

However, my thoughts are this:

<rant>

The Gnome version of OpenSUSE 11.0 (the default version) runs like a dog and several of the default gui programs are very unstable and lack basic features. The reason for this? The Ximian remnants who have gained control of Novell SUSE strategy are still clearly plugging away with their M$ agenda. Mono and it's dog crap programs are widespread. There are multiple .exe processes running in the background (frequently crashing or consuming large amounts of resources). Moreover for 11.0 Mono is actually a dependency to run the basic GUI at all (I belive this is fixed in 11.1). I am astounded they are so stupid to follow this strategy - lots of people are simply horrified/offended at finding .exes running on their nice Linux box, quite apart from the obvious patent issues.

So, I wiped that and installed the KDE version. Much better. Nice OS.

However, while OpenSUSE used to be a much better engineered OS than other distros, I think while they've spent much effort fixing the zypper debacle and developing more mono/ooxml crap, the others have caught up. Ubuntu has a much more stable/polished feel than it used to, and I find myself going back to it as a desktop. Fedora is likewise a nice desktop these days, and RHEL most certainly is a 'better' server. The only reason I like SUSE over the others is YAST, but unfortunately development of this has not progressed much lately and each component is not as flexible/complete to make it that useful - I still find myself dropping down to config files. Samba is so slow to remote vista clients it's unusable.

Zimbra, for better or worse, is designed to be used mostly on it's own on a server. It's also in this day and age a critical primary communication/collaboration system for a company - not just a 'mail program'. There are several platforms that are very well supported, if your particular choice isn't, you can do one of a few choices:
1) Submit bugfixes/patches, contribute.
2) Move to a better supported platform.
3) Move to a different software.
There are very few distros that do everything well, corporate infrastructures should be flexible enough to cope with this.

Continually complaining without actually being constructive or helpful isn't really very useful.

</rant>

All that Ximian/Mono/Beagle stuff doesn't get installed by default on the SLES builds BTW.

I'm now running Gnome on OpenSUSE 11.1 after having run KDE for years (on the same hardware). Gnome is much improved in 11.1, and if you uninstall all the Beagle bits, it is noticeably faster than KDE (3.5 or 4.1). The zypper stuff got fixed too; it pulls repository updates much more efficiently in the background now.

YaST is one of SUSE's strong points I agree, but so are all the myriad SuSEConfig scripts that keep the system internally consistent.

With Ubuntu, the bar has definitely been raised, and even Fedora is much more stable and consistent than it used to be (I always preferred OpenSUSE's stability to Fedora's slightly more "bleeding edge" character, but their personality differences have narrowed of late for sure).

Hope that helps!
Mark

[Bill Brock]

I've been running OpenSUSE 11.0 on my home desktop as an experiment to re-aquaint myself with the OS, and to produce a zimbra port. I have the port in testing and I will release the patches/binaries at some point when I get some free time.

However, my thoughts are this:

<rant>

The Gnome version of OpenSUSE 11.0 (the default version) runs like a dog and several of the default gui programs are very unstable and lack basic features. The reason for this? The Ximian remnants who have gained control of Novell SUSE strategy are still clearly plugging away with their M$ agenda. Mono and it's dog crap programs are widespread. There are multiple .exe processes running in the background (frequently crashing or consuming large amounts of resources). Moreover for 11.0 Mono is actually a dependency to run the basic GUI at all (I belive this is fixed in 11.1). I am astounded they are so stupid to follow this strategy - lots of people are simply horrified/offended at finding .exes running on their nice Linux box, quite apart from the obvious patent issues.

So, I wiped that and installed the KDE version. Much better. Nice OS.

However, while OpenSUSE used to be a much better engineered OS than other distros, I think while they've spent much effort fixing the zypper debacle and developing more mono/ooxml crap, the others have caught up. Ubuntu has a much more stable/polished feel than it used to, and I find myself going back to it as a desktop. Fedora is likewise a nice desktop these days, and RHEL most certainly is a 'better' server. The only reason I like SUSE over the others is YAST, but unfortunately development of this has not progressed much lately and each component is not as flexible/complete to make it that useful - I still find myself dropping down to config files. Samba is so slow to remote vista clients it's unusable.

Zimbra, for better or worse, is designed to be used mostly on it's own on a server. It's also in this day and age a critical primary communication/collaboration system for a company - not just a 'mail program'. There are several platforms that are very well supported, if your particular choice isn't, you can do one of a few choices:
1) Submit bugfixes/patches, contribute.
2) Move to a better supported platform.
3) Move to a different software.
There are very few distros that do everything well, corporate infrastructures should be flexible enough to cope with this.

Continually complaining without actually being constructive or helpful isn't really very useful.

</rant>

Choice number 2 is actually what I am trying to do. That is why I have posed questions regarding SLES10.

By the way, ranting isn't very constructive or useful either.