Hello,

Sorry if I am in the wrong place for this question but it's been a very long time since I have posted here.

Background: I am currently using Manjaro on my work laptop ( dell xps ) and I love it. The only problem I have is that it does not offer paid support. \
I have 2 problems, Virtualbox is not working and I have issues with the 2 graphics cards.
I have done everything I can but no luck.
I don't want to lose time anymore with these kind of issues. I am capable of solving 90% of issues myself but sometimes there are issues I can't solve and I just don't have time for that.

Question: I was looking into paid support distro's to solve this. I found that Ubuntu and Suse offer this ( maybe others? ) but have some questions.
I install Opensuse or Ubuntu and just pay the subscription can I just mail/call them for any issue I have ( for example an error in virtualbox ) and they will help me solve it? For Suse, do I need to start from their Enterprise distro?
I am not a company just a private person, is this accepted by them?

If you buy support you need to check the conditions.
But you may get faster support here, at LQ (probably), without paying.

You can read a lot about VirtualBox on their pages...

1 members found this post helpful.

This decision is up to you.

If you like to tinker and learn, and/or have time to spare, then Internet resources (forums, tutorials, videos) are a great bet. Tutorials and videos are on-the-spot great for general info. Forums, while not always immediate, are good for deeper, more precise discussion about your issues, especially if you ask your questions smartly.

If you don't care to spend the time, then maybe paid support is good for you, where specialists can work with you through your issues live. As you've already alluded, paid support kind of limits you to a very small list of distro options.

1 members found this post helpful.

I looked into the Ubuntu support many years ago as part of a large corporate rollout, Ubuntu Advantage, and it seemed decent. But you do have to trust them with root/remote access to your system. And as stated above, read the terms and conditions and reviews of users.

1 members found this post helpful.

Bolded a line in what you posted for emphasis only.

Honestly, for an individual, I'd say it's overkill. You'd be far better off to find a local consultant/company and use them on an as-needed basis. And you most likely won't need them much at all.

For business purposes, it also depends. We usually recommend to our clients that they use a 'free' Linux like CentOS, Ubuntu, openSUSE, etc., in their lab and development environments that aren't mission critical. But ALWAYS get Red Hat, Suse Enterprise, or some other pay-for support distro on the production servers. At 2 AM when your systems die, you *DO NOT* want to post to a forum and hope for the best...I want a person on the phone who can assist in working the problem.

1 members found this post helpful.

A lot of places have "levels" of support. It may unfeasible to get 24 hour support without great cost to you. I'd research what they offer before you buy. Personally I don't recommend you buy at all, for two reasons, (1) worth of the product as well as your own efforts to work with them to solve your problem (2) they'll likely help you with their distro and help you get an application running, but they'll defer application questions to that application's support channel, if any.I do not know.Spend enough money and someone will accept payment. Whether or not you get any value out of it is a different story. Mind you, even if someone has no qualms about spending lots of money, with the caveat of "so long as they get what they want", one still has to be prepared for non-delivery of goods and services where you'll have to manage your vendors sometimes. And sometimes it works out great.

I've never participated in, or sought the help from a Linux User's Group, but they exist, and also this site. There are also consultants one can hire for broadly scoped tasks, like install, set-up, and maintain a Linux distribution, and also provision all the applications and set them up in a way you can use them effectively seems something a journey-person consultant could help with. Yes, likely more costly than paying for support, but I've said earlier that I'm not sure paid support will garner you much in the way of results. Or also that is, where you won't do a lion's share of the work in addition to paying.

Just my opinions.

Support is not cheap. Ubuntu is probably the cheapest: pricing. So, you'd be looking at the equivalent of $150 a year for a weekdays only service.

From what I gather the opinion here is that it is a little much for a person to go the paid support route.
I am still considering it because I had some issues that I tried to solve ( also via the Manjaro forums ) that took me over 12 hours of work without a solution and I really just don't have the time.

I will try and find the conditions as recommended and look into local support channels ( if they exist in Belgium ).
But honestly 150 Dollar a year might be worth it for me, I will give it some further thought. Thanks all for the feedback.

You could also consider payed per-incident support that is independent of your distro; I often hear stories about people who brought their Linux machines to a local IT (repair) shop, and received the help they needed. Yes, software help, not hardware.

You could also try RHEL (Redhat).

Or, look here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/9141...ort-for-ubuntu