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SUSE Linux

SUSE (properly pronounced /susə/, but frequently and incorrectly pronounced /suzi/) is a major retail Linux distribution, produced in Germany. The company is owned by Novell, Inc. SUSE is also a founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium.

Features

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.

Starting with the 10.1 release, SuSE 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).

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 mp3 or avi, but these can be installed with packages available on the internet.

Versions

Major Versions

1.0 - March 1994
2.0 - 1994/1995
3.0 - 1995
4.0 - 1996
4.2 - May 1996
4.3 - September 1996
4.4 - May 1997
5.0 - June 1997
5.1 - November 1997
5.2 - 23 March 1998
6.0 - 21 December 1998
6.1 - 7 April 1999
6.2 - 12 August 1999
6.3 - 25 November 1999
6.4 - 27 March 2000
7.0 - 27 September 2000
7.1 - 24 January 2001
7.2 - 15 June 2001
7.3 - 13 October 2001
8.0 - 22 April 2002
8.1 - 30 September 2002
8.2 - 7 April 2003
9.0 - 15 October 2003
9.1 - 23 April 2004
9.2 - 25 October 2004
9.3 - 16 April 2005
10.0 - 6 October 2005
10.1 - 11 May 2006

The latest release, SUSE Linux 10.1 is available as a retail package and a free, open source package, referred to as SUSE Linux OSS. In terms of software, the two are nearly identical. The major difference between the two is the retail edition contains some proprietary components, such as Macromedia Flash. In addition, the retail package, available for 59.95 USD, includes a printed manual and limited technical support. SUSE Linux OSS is available to download freely from their website. The retail and eval versions contain one DVD and six CDs, while SUSE Linux OSS uses five CDs.

Other flavours 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 5 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 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 announced that SUSE Linux will be renamed to openSUSE starting from 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 LiveDVD 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., a Linux newbie 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.

_{^{All text used in this article is
available under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from
the Wikipedia article "SUSE Linux".}}