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SUSE is a major retail Linux distribution, produced in Germany and owned by Novell, Inc. SUSE is also a founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium. As of version 10.2 Alpha 3, the distribution is officially named openSUSE. The SUSE Linux distribution was originally
a German translation of Slackware Linux.The Slackware distribution (maintained by Patrick Volkerding) was initially based largely on SLS. In mid-1992, Softlanding Linux System (SLS) was founded by Peter MacDonald, and was the first comprehensive distribution to contain elements such as X and TCP/IP. S.u.S.E was founded in late 1992 as a UNIX consulting group, which among other things regularly released software packages that included SLS and Slackware, and printed UNIX/Linux manuals. S.u.S.E is an acronym for the German phrase "Software- und System-Entwicklung" ("Software and system development"), however in English speaking communities a rumour still circulates that the name is a tribute to the German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse, whose name in English has similar pronunciation.
They released the first CD version of SLS/Slackware in 1994,
under the name S.u.S.E Linux 1.0.
It later integrated with the Jurix distribution by Florian La Roche, to release the first really unique S.u.S.E Linux 4.2 in 1996. Over time, SuSE Linux incorporated many aspects of Red Hat Linux (e.g., using RPMs and /etc/sysconfig).
In a move to more effectively reach its business audience, SuSE introduced the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server in 2001, and consecutively changed the company name to SUSE Linux in September 2003 as a part of its overall new branding strategy, as announced by SUSE's marketing VP Uwe Schmid. On November 4, 2003, Novell announced it would acquire SuSE.
The acquisition was finalized in January 2004. J. Philips (Novell's corporate technology strategist for the Asia Pacific region) stated that Novell would not "in the medium term" alter the way in which SUSE continues to be developed.
At Novell's annual BrainShare gathering in 2004,
all computers ran SUSE Linux for the first time.
At this gathering it was also announced that the proprietary SUSE administration program YaST2 would be released
into the public under the GPL license. On August 4, 2005, Novell spokesman and director of public relations Bruce Lowry announced that the development of the SUSE Professional series will become more open and within the community project openSUSE try to reach a wider audience of users and developers.
The software, by definition of open source, already had their coding "open," but now the development process will be more "open" than before, allowing developers and users to test the product and help develop it.
Previously all development work was done in-house by SUSE, and version 10.0 was the first version that had public beta testing.
As part of the change, YaST Online Update server access will be complimentary for SUSE Linux users, and along the lines of most open source distributions, there will both be a free download
available on the web and a boxed edition.
This change in philosophy led to the release of the SUSE Linux 10.0 release on October 6, 2005 in "OSS" (completely open source), "eval" (has both open source and proprietary applications and is actually
a fully featured version) and retail boxed-set editions. The current mascot of SUSE is commonly referred to as a gecko called Geeko, but is actually a chameleon. Several desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME and window managers like Window Maker and Blackbox are included, with the YaST2 installer allowing the user to choose a preselection of GNOME, KDE, or no desktop at all.
SUSE ships with multimedia software such as K3b (CD/DVD burning), Amarok (audio playback), and Kaffeine (movie playback).
It contains OpenOffice.org, and software for reading and/or
creating other common document formats such as PDF.
Due to patent problems, the distribution lacks codecs for proprietary formats like avi, but these can be installed with packages available on the internet.
MP3s are handled in the fully capable graphical media studio Amarok with the Helix engine (part of RealNetworks' RealPlayer), when RealPlayer is installed.
This is due to an agreement between Novell and RealNetworks to ship RealPlayer with SUSE as a solution to MP3 patent problems. Starting with the 10.1 release, SUSE Linux includes a secondary installation program known as Zen-Updater, which can be used as a secondary means of installing software and replaces Suse-updater providing
notification of software updates on the desktop. SUSE has support for resizing NTFS partitions during installation which allows it to co-exist with existing Windows 2000 or XP installations.
SUSE has the ability to detect and install drivers for many common winmodems shipped with OEM desktop and laptop systems (such modems are designed to use Windows-specific software to operate). SUSE includes an installation and administration program called YaST2 which handles hard disk partitioning, system setup, RPM package management, online updates, network and firewall configuration, user administration and more in an integrated interface.
YaST also integrates with SaX2 to help users handle their graphics card and monitor, touch displays, and even additional monitors with Xinerama.
In more recent times, many more YaST modules have
been added including Bluetooth support. The openSUSE Build Service provides software developers with a tool to compile, release and publish their software for many distributions, including Mandriva, Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian.
It typically simplifies the packaging process, so developers can more easily package a single program for many distributions, and many openSUSE releases, making more packages available to users regardless of
and as a no-cost open source package.
In terms of software, there are major differences between the two packages (see Reference below), including the fact that the retail edition contains a number of proprietary components, such as Adobe Flash.
However users can download the non-OSS add-on disc or a DVD image which contains the same add-on disc included.
In addition, the retail package, available for 59.95 USD, includes a printed manual and limited technical support. openSUSE is available
to download freely from their website.
The retail and eval versions contain one DVD and six CDs,
while openSUSE now uses only one CD.
It is the second SUSE release to be called openSUSE, versions before openSUSE 10.2 were called SUSE Linux. Other varieties include dedicated server editions and groupware servers geared towards corporate networks and enterprises, along with a stripped-down business desktop which runs some software designed for Microsoft Windows out of the box by virtue of WINE. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) are Novell's branded version of SUSE targeted at corporate environments.
SUSE Linux Enterprise product line (SLES and SLED) include some proprietary software as well as technical support.
For instance, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (SLES 9) has fewer packages (around 1,000 packages) than the SUSE Linux Professional (consumer) distribution which has around 3,500 packages.
Most of the packages that have been removed are desktop applications which are more suited to consumers than to a business environment.
SLES has a guaranteed life cycle of 7 years and only the SLES products are certified by independent hardware and software vendors.
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