After I purchased SLED 10 SP-1 for one month, Novell asked me to pay almost $800 for them to fix their bugs on my computer. SuSe is much worse and much greedy than Microsoft (MS)!!!
Here is the full story. I have been a MS user for a long time. Since there has been a Linux fashion these days, due to curiosity, one month ago, I decided to give Linux a try and to start with SuSe. Since I am a newbie, I decided to purchase a commercial package. When I called SuSe, the lady suggested me to buy SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) instead of OpenSuSe. So, I purchased SLED 10 SP-1 with $58 including tax and shipping. The price is reasonable. When I received the package, I was surprised that I didn't get any manuals. During the installation, I made several phone calls. The support people are reasonable and friendly. With my purchase, I should get one-month phone support and one-year auto-update. I assume the one-year auto-update should be bug-free and stable, just like MS window. Only a few days after one month I purchased, I updated my OS by clicking the orange update button at the bottom of my screen.initially the installation was smooth, but when the installation progressed to 42%, it was freeze without any progress for several hours. Finally, I had to stop it. After I stopped it, I restarted my computer. It was a disaster. The computer cannot boot! It said missing files. It doesn't even boot to the safe mode. I called Novell. They told me since I passed one-month support period, I have to pay almost $800 for each phone call! They refused to answer any of my questions, unless I pay them.
Why should I pay them? I already paid the software that was mostly developed by volunteers in Linux communities. I did nothing wrong in update. I actually did nothing, simply clicking the update button. The installation freezes my computer for several hours! What can I do when the computer freezes? I have used MS for more than 10 years, the auto-update in MS never crash my computer. I use SuSe for only one month, its auto-update crashed my computer badly, I cannot even reboot!
Even worse, I cannot reinstall SuSe with my original CDs. I don't know why. I have tried several times (about 8~10 times) to reinstall. I either got repeatedly reboots and never got me to a desktop or I was told "invalid partition" even though I used default partition. After I googling, I found other people have found similar problem, i.E. SuSe can only be installed on a fresh disk, if you install SuSe on the same disk for several times, the installation will fail. SuSe is so unstable with bugs, why should I pay Novell $800 per call to help them to fix bugs? How many phone calls they need to fix their bugs? I have wasted a lot of time, computer freezes, crashes, reintallations, searching web for solutions, and so on. Who is going to pay my time? So far, I have never experienced commercial software as bad and unstable as SLED. I paid $58 that can only be used for one month! Novell is not responsible for their product. If you are going to do busyness to make Linux commercial software, you should do a thorough test before release or update your software. You should not ask your customer to pay you big money and meanwhile to do the test for you.
Now I understand how much Microsoft has been done to make their product reliable and trouble-free for end users. My experience with Linux makes me really start to appreciate the good quality of MS window has been delivering to their customers over the pass 10 years. For end-users, Linux is nowhere near stable comparing with MS window. I will either go back to Microsoft or try Ubuntu for curiosity.
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