What does Zimbra have against OpenSUSE

[LMStone]

Hi John,

Thanks for asking the PM team to take a fresh look at supporting OpenSUSE. Almost all of the Zimbra installs we have done, NE and OSS, have been on SLES or OpenSUSE. We generally prefer SLES because of the longer life cycle. For some of our clients, the Microsoft-Novell patent protection deal is also perceived as a benefit from using SLES.

I confess while I understood your initial reasoning for dropping OpenSUSE as a supported platform (low download numbers as I recall), it did make me nervous that this might be the start of a slippery slope to dropping support for SLES eventually.

I would also like to point out that SUSE has a larger market share relative to RH in EMEA than here in the US, so I would expect it might be a little easier for Zimbra to make inroads faster in EMEA by supporting both SLES and OpenSUSE platforms in that market.

Thanks again, and best regards,
Mark

[dijichi2]

I would also like to point out that SUSE has a larger market share relative to RH in EMEA than here in the US, so I would expect it might be a little easier for Zimbra to make inroads faster in EMEA by supporting both SLES and OpenSUSE platforms in that market.

As a large user of enterprise linux in EMEA, I find that very, very difficult to believe. Are there any figures to show this?

[LMStone]

Originally Posted by dijichi2

As a large user of enterprise linux in EMEA, I find that very, very difficult to believe. Are there any figures to show this?

Just to make sure I was clear, I am NOT saying that SUSE has a greater share than RH in EMEA. I am saying that SUSE's market share in EMEA is higher than that here in the US; IOW, I am saying that SUSE is more popular in EMEA than here in the US relative to RH.

With best regards,
Mark

P.S. I am not trying to start a RH-SUSE flame war here; we support both platforms for our clients and both platforms are very good.

[uxbod]

How about a ZCS release for HP-UX on Itanium Sorry could not resist How long will a lot of these distros be around for ?

[dijichi2]

sorry, misread you. yes, it definitely has a bigger share here and was doing just fine until they went off the deep end and bent over for bill. apart from rhel4 it's still the best engineered distro, and opensuse knocks the socks off ubuntu, makes it look like a child engineered it in a toy break.

since the m$ debacle, opensuse has lost a lot of traction which is a real shame. i'm going to give it another go tonight cos i miss it, and apparently it's by far the best platform for kde4.

have to say, with all the whining on this thread, if you don't like opensuse builds being dropped by zimbra, it's simple economics. it's not downloaded/used enough. they're not removing support for it, so download the code and build it yourself and post to zimbra community builds site on sourceforge. it's not that difficult once you get into it. if there's enough call for it, I'll start the builds off with a build for opensuse 11.

[uxbod]

dijichi2 your the man

Commercially let Zimbra make a commercial stand ;: what is supported (now and for next 24 months) and for the future. End of story IMHO.

[tgx]

Originally Posted by dijichi2

community builds site on sourceforge. it's not that difficult once you get into it. if there's enough call for it, I'll start the builds off with a build for opensuse 11.

Well, actually, this is what I said much earlier was that if there was a true community that someone would pick it up and build binaries for those of us that don't have the skills but would nevertheless like to use it on these other distributions. 'not that difficult' is of course relative to your skillset. I don't think most of us here are programmers. I usually compile stuff just fine until it says 'errror'.

[dijichi2]

Well, actually, this is what I said much earlier was that if there was a true community that someone would pick it up and build binaries for those of us that don't have the skills but would nevertheless like to use it on these other distributions. 'not that difficult' is of course relative to your skillset. I don't think most of us here are programmers. I usually compile stuff just fine until it says 'errror'.

me too, i'm just very persistent at googling 'error'

gosh i've forgotten how good opensuse is, 11.0 is very nice, even with the instability of kde4.2. i'll start to produce documentation on building zimbra for opensuse to go with my other docs:
Welcome to varlogmessages
And i'll produce patches and binary installers for 11.0. It probably won't happen until my christmas break starting 3rd week Dec, so please don't expect anything instantly! Hopefully someone can then pick up the mantle and produce the opensuse stuff in the future. This is a perfect opportunity for the zimbra community to start doing community stuff

[LMStone]

Glad we are in sync now!

I think that's great that you are willing to compile rpms for OpenSUSE. Personally, though, I'd wait for 11.1, which is due to be released 18 December. A lot of good "fit 'n finish" work was accomplished between 11.0 and 11.1.

Also, you know about SUSE's Build Service, right? As I understand it, there is a tool set that helps you compile the rpms and get them up on the SUSE supported repositories (which are then mirrored across the world). More info at https://build.opensuse.org/ if you need it.

All the best,
Mark

[tgx]

Originally Posted by dijichi2

me too, i'm just very persistent at googling 'error'

gosh i've forgotten how good opensuse is, 11.0 is very nice, even with the instability of kde4.2. i'll start to produce documentation on building zimbra for opensuse to go with my other docs:
Welcome to varlogmessages
And i'll produce patches and binary installers for 11.0. It probably won't happen until my christmas break starting 3rd week Dec, so please don't expect anything instantly! Hopefully someone can then pick up the mantle and produce the opensuse stuff in the future. This is a perfect opportunity for the zimbra community to start doing community stuff

Wow that's awesome if you would do that. I'll be interested in helping out, but I'm booked through till next year as well. I'll follow you through and try and duplicate the build based on your docs. Maybe we can come up with a how to that everyone can understand.

Glad you are liking OpenSuSE. To me there really isn't another distro even close.
It has this feel to it that you can make it do anything or be anything. Pop in to opensuse.org if you need assistance with OS related stuff.

There's not an immediate rush on anything as the builds are good from Zimbra up through 5.0.12...One of the shames is that a number of my bug reports and enhancements are now being addressed, but they'll likely be rolled into a release that won't have a build for OpenSuSE...thus one of the reasons for my volatile reaction to this mess.