OpenSUSE

openSUSE (pronˌoʊpənˈsuːzə) is a free and open source RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. Additionally, the project creates a variety of tools, such as YaST, Open Build Service, openQA, Snapper, Machinery, Portus, KIWI, and OSEM. In the past, the SUSE Linux company has focused on releasing the SUSE Linux Personal and SUSE Linux Professional box sets which included extensive printed documentation that was available for sale in retail stores. The company's ability to sell an open-source product was largely due to the closed-source development process used. Although SUSE Linux had always been a free software product licensed with the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), it was only freely possible to retrieve the source code of the next release 2 months after it was ready for purchase. SUSE Linux' strategy was to create a technically superior Linux distribution with a large number of employed engineers, that would make users willing to pay for their distribution in retail stores. Since the acquisition by Novell in 2003 and with the advent of openSUSE, this has been reversed: starting with version 9.2, an unsupported one-DVD of SUSE Professional was made available for download. The FTP server continues to operate and has the advantage of "streamlined" installs, allowing the user to download only the 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 initial stable release from the openSUSE Project, SUSE Linux 10.0, was available for download just before the retail release of SUSE Linux 10.0. In addition, Novell discontinued the Personal version, renaming the Professional version to simply "SUSE Linux," and repricing "SUSE Linux" to about the same as the old Personal version.