What does Zimbra have against OpenSUSE

[zimbuca]

Not wanting to bash or get under the skin but I've been looking at the specs for version 6 and noticed that OpenSUSE is being eol. It just seems very funny that politics (that's how it looks to me) can get in the way of anything.

OpenSUSE is one (if not #1) of only 3 or 4 distros in the world that are worth bothering to look at. SUSE ES 10.2 has been out for almost a year, is that supported on 6? In fact my first taste of SUSE was SUSE Linux 6.2 purchased at Fry's. I've tried and tested the top 10 distro's out there for years and find nothing as easy as OpenSUSE or SUSE ES. I recommend these to my customers. At home I've been running Zimbra on a Linux VM since 4.1. I will move to Ubuntu because the seemingly love affair Zimbra has with them.

Can someone at ZiHoo make any logical reason behind it or is it another stab at Novell?

I will continue to recommend Zimbra over Exchange to customers as it is far superior so keep up the good work.

[langs]

funny this should come up, as I was looking at the EoL list for release 6 and am a little miffed myself that RHEL 4 has been axed.

I find this bloody stupid, I don't intend on upgrading my production OS every 2 years. Did anyone from Zimbra consult their paying customers about this?

Instead you bring on support for a fanboy distro, but leave out the 4th most requested RFE,
Official Support for ZCS Network Edition on CentOS as Not Committed.

Who exactly is making these choices at Zimbra, and do they have any idea how their NE customers feel? Because the dozen others I have spoken to in Australia about this today don't understand it either.

[uxbod]

I kind of agree with you about CentOS and NE (hence voting for that bug) especially as so many people are using it including Zimbra employees (even though not supported). Personally I favour CentOS over Ubuntu as for a server I do not think it has been around long enough especially from a commercial perspective.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by zimbuca

Not wanting to bash or get under the skin but I've been looking at the specs for version 6 and noticed that OpenSUSE is being eol. It just seems very funny that politics (that's how it looks to me) can get in the way of anything.

I don't know what you mean by 'politics' but it's a rather disingenuous comment. The simple fact of the matter is it costs a lot of time, effort and money to produce a build for a particular distribution. If you'd searched the forums first you would have found the answer to your question, the openSUSE version has been downloaded 41 times in the past year - not exactly popular and that's the only reason it's been put on EOL.

[uxbod]

Bill,

I can understand about OpenSUSE but how about the comment

Instead you bring on support for a fanboy distro, but leave out the 4th most requested RFE,
Official Support for ZCS Network Edition on CentOS as Not Committed.

that seems a sound point with respect to the number of votes on the RFE.

[phoenix]

The answer to that question has been covered many times in the forums. The policy always has been: it is not supported because the vendor of the distribution does not provide support. Support being added via the RFE will have to run the normal course of approval, I have no input on that.

[langs]

Originally Posted by phoenix

it is not supported because the vendor of the distribution does not provide support.

You sure thats the statement you want to make? Please explain why Ubuntu is getting NE support then, as it's a community fork of debian with no vendor.
It has a commerical sponsor you can buy support off in Canonical, and they may well employ some of the leading dev team, but they don't totally control Ubuntu.
You can buy support for CentOS just as easily, hell I know people that have support on CentOS from Redhat here in Oz as they are totally compatable.

Anyway I didn't want to beat you up over centos support, rather moan about ditching RHEL4 support.. I still find that a rather silly conclusion on Zimbra's part. Even with Microsoft I get more then 2 years before they go and EoL support for a Platform. Out of curiousity whats the ratio of RHEL 4:5 been in the last 6 months?

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by langs

You sure thats the statement you want to make?

That is always the statement that's been made with regards to support for CentOS.

Originally Posted by langs

Please explain why Ubuntu is getting NE support then, as it's a community fork of debian with no vendor.[

The only supported version of Ubuntu for NE is the LTS version, the 'vendor' in this case does offer support for their version of the Distribution. That certainly isn't open to any other interpretation nor is my comment about support for CentOS. This subject has been covered in countless threads on the forum, I'm sure you've already seen them but feel free to check them again to verify the policy. Nothing has changed so far and until the RFE is implemented that will remain the policy.

[langs]

Originally Posted by phoenix

The only supported version of Ubuntu for NE is the LTS version, the 'vendor' in this case does offer support for their version of the Distribution.

LTS doesn't magically have vendor support, it comes from the exact same place as the non-LTS version. Canonical make that very clear, the support options are exactly the same for both, and both are community distros with a commerical sponsor that is all. LTS is just on a different track, the support options however are no different at all.

Don't quite see how you got that wrong.

Bill does this sound familar to you "We are not partnered with Red Hat, the list of supported operating systems is the ones we list on the web site. The reason for that is they are the ones we have done our testing on, that's the only reason we specify those systems."

I've just searched over 8 pages of CentOS threads and no where does anyone from Zimbra that I can see actaully state any reason for CentOS not being offically supported. Your claim that it's been said a million times doesn't stack up, all thats constantly repeated are two things a) CentOS is a great platform to use and b) it's not offically supported.

You've also said "The likelyhood of Zimbra being supported on operating systems that don't have vendor support is almost non-existent." and "There is also commercial support for CentOS as well." in previous threads, yet I see something different happening.

If you can argue Ubuntu has support via a 3rd party non distro controlling commerical entity the same can be said about CentOS, yes? You've said it yourself you can get commerical support for it.

To quote another moderator here "Clearly, customer demand, rated as votes for the bug and paying customers requesting support, will drive whether/when Zimbra begins official QA against CentOS"... I only wish that was true.

Where did the push come from for Ubuntu, I don't see a great RFE vote push for it and the last poll I saw had CentOS at like 72% of the install base for the FOSS version? So how come Ubuntu is the Zimbra golden child when no one is seemingly asking for it, or is it just flavor of the month over there.

Anyway who's great idea was it to dump a 2 year old release in RHEL4? Thats not a very good life cycle, and just plan idiotic imo.

[dijichi2]

Agree with Phoenix comments.

However, ditching support for RHEL4 is just plain stupid. Enterprises run stable OSs for many years and can take a long time to certify a new version - I still have thousands of RHEL3 and Solaris8 servers being used in anger. RHEL4 is vendor supported for many years yet.