After I purchased SLED 10 SP-1 for one month, Novell asked me to pay $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. 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. 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 ok, although not absolutely 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 freezed 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 file. It doesn't even boot to safe mode. I called Novell. They told me since I passed one-month support period, I have to pay $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 the Linux communities. I did nothing wrong in update. I actually did nothing, simply clicked 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. 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. I have tried several times (about 8~10 times) to reinstall. I either got continuously reboots in cycles and never got me to a desktop or I was told “invalid partition” even though I used default partition. SuSe is so unstable with bugs, why should I pay them $800 per call? How many phone calls they need to fix their bugs? I have wasted a lot of time, computer freezes, crashes, reinstallations, searching web for solutions, and so on. Who is going to pay my time?

For end-users, Linux is nowhere near stable comparing with MS. I will either go back to Microsoft or try Ubuntu.