I tried 10.3 when that came out but that was no good. 11.0 KDE 4, no good. SLED – too restrictive.
I tried 11.1 KDE 4 live CD, its getting there but usability for my installation choices regresses. I think 11.0 or 11.1 with KDE 3.5 would have not been a regression but really I should try to move to KDE 4 as the life of 3.5 is up in the air.

So may be by November 11.2 with KDE4 will be able to replace my 10.2.

The discussion is on life cycle, I use SUSE in business on a number of machines and wish to continue so. It does not need to be leading edge but I would expect (for business and to attract corporate confidence) that I could update without regression and that I would have support (at least security maintenance) between updates. I can fart about a bit on my PC but I can’t spend time tinkering with every other users PC too often or when upgrades don’t move forward.

Hence this leads to my argument that there should be “locked in” releases with longer support, support that carries the locked in release to the next release that does not regress. In my laptops case support of 10.2 to say 11.2 (having tried 11.1 and read about the improvements on that for 11.2 I am confident this will be able to replace my 10.2).
10.2 would then be “locked in” until 2+ years down the line a version is released without regression.

This locking in is for the benefit of users who chase reliability and dependability rather than leading edge. Which version to lock in only needs to be made before support is dropped for that version. I found, and so did many others, that 10.2 – KDE 3.5 caused less hassles than 10.3 and generally 11 – KDE4, so it may not be necessary to nominate a release for long term support until 2 releases after that release, when its realized that the current release is not corporate ready.

Cheers

As for me, it could be even once a year new version, just to make thorough testing and release really stable, because for me, 11.0 or 11.1 were not so much stable just after install, without doing some tricks.

So, I really like this change and I hope it will make positive consequences.

Regards !

I would also be in favor of a six month service pack, if I could still use “yast” or “you” to maintain the security patches. If I can’t easily maintain the security updates, I tend to fall behind in applying them. Remember, “KISS”, Keep It Simple S…

What would be good is an extended support release, may be 11.2 or 11.3 with 5 years or minimum 3 years to work around hardware upgrades. Updating SUSE has never been easy (it’s never been stick a disk in, click update, and its done), in fact I have found I rarely ever update until I update hardware because updating is too time consuming for a business, resolving non distribution package updates and dependancies.