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SUSE Linux
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SUSE (German: ) is a major retail operating system, produced worldwide and supported 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.
Features
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.
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Encyclopedia
SUSE (German: ) is a major retail operating system, produced worldwide and supported 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.
History
Features
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 their patented nature, the distribution does not install codecs for proprietary formats like avi by default, 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).
Administration settings (YaST)
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.
Xgl and Compiz
In January 2, 2006, SUSE developer David Reveman announced Xgl, an X server architecture designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers, layered on top of OpenGL via glitz. Compiz, one of the first compositing window managers for the X Window System that is able to take advantage of this OpenGL-acceleration, was also released.
Desktop innovations (KDE)
SUSE has been a leading contributor to KDE for many years, and now SUSE sponsors more developers to work directly on KDE than any other distribution. Hence, SUSE's contributions in this area have been very wide-ranging, and affecting many parts of KDE such as kdelibs and kdebase, kdepim, and kdenetwork. Other notable projects include:
Desktop innovations (GNOME)
The Ximian group became part of Novell, and in turn made and continued several contributions to GNOME with applications such as F-Spot, Novell Evolution and Banshee.
The Gnome desktop now uses the slab instead of the classic double-panelled gnome menu bars.
Build Service
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 what distribution version they use. It is published under the GPL.
Versions
| Major Versions |
|---|
| 1.0 | |
| 1.0.9 | |
| 11/94 | |
| 4/95 | |
| 8/95 | |
| 11/95 | |
| 4.2 | |
| 4.3 | |
| 4.4 | |
| 4.4.1 | |
| 5.0 | |
| 5.1 | |
| 5.2 | |
| 5.3 | |
| 6.0 | |
| 6.1 | |
| 6.2 | |
| 6.3 | |
| 6.4 | |
| 7.0 | |
| 7.1 | |
| 7.2 | |
| 7.3 | |
| 8.0 | |
| 8.1 | |
| 8.2 | |
| 9.0 | |
| 9.1 | |
| 9.2 | |
| 9.3 | |
| 10.0 | |
| 10.1 | |
| 10.2 | |
| 10.3 | |
| 11.0 | |
| 11.1 | |
The latest release, openSUSE 11 is available as a retail package 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.
Distribution
In the past SUSE first released the Personal and Professional versions in boxed sets which included extensive printed documentation, then waited a few months before it released versions on its FTP servers. Under Novell and with the advent of openSUSE this has been reversed: SUSE Linux 10.0 was available for download well before the retail release of SUSE Linux 10.0. In addition, Novell has discontinued the Personal version, renamed the Professional version to simply "SUSE Linux", and repriced "SUSE Linux" to about the same as the obsolete Personal version. Now Novell has also renamed SUSE Linux to openSUSE with version 10.2 of the distro.
Starting with version 9.2, an unsupported 1 DVD ISO image of SUSE Professional was made available for download as well as a bootable Live DVD evaluation. The FTP server continues to operate and has the advantage of "streamlined" installs: Only downloading packages the user feels they need. The ISO has the advantages of an easy install package, the ability to operate even if the user's network card does not work 'out of the box', and less experience needed (i.e., an inexperienced Linux user may not know whether or not to install a certain package, and the ISO offers several preselected sets of packages). The retail box DVD supports x86, and x86_64 installs, but the included CD-ROMs do not include x86_64 support.
OpenSUSE 10.3 is available for download as a DVD iso-image. This image is also available in a 32-bit or 64-bit version. It can be freely accessed at the Novell website. It can be downloaded either by BitTorrent or HTTP. Of course it is also available as a download to CD-ROM. It too is available for a 32 or 64-bit system.
See also
External links
Guides and Support
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- [irc://irc.freenode.net/suse #suse] on freenode
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