Friday, 11 August 2006

Novell Renames Community Linux Distribution 'openSUSE'

Novell has announced that it is rebranding its consumer version of SUSE Linux to openSUSE to make it easily recognizable and visible to the open source community. The company said the new name would be able to complement the name of the Novell-sponsored open source Linux project, openSUSE.org.

"The new name 'openSUSE' distinguishes our community distribution from our enterprise products, helping us maintain clear brands for our two main Linux constituencies," said John Dragoon, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Novell.

openSUSE is not intended for business deployments but provides Linux enthusiasts and corporate evaluators with a first look at the latest Linux and other open source technologies. Technologies previewed in openSUSE, when refined and fully supported, may appear in future Novell enterprise Linux offerings. The current version is 10.1, and openSUSE 10.2 is scheduled to ship in late 2006.

The openSUSE.org project has more than 30,000 registered members, and SUSE Linux 10.1 (now openSUSE) recently topped 350,000 verified installations since its launch in May.

"The spotlight is shining on Novell's Linux offerings, as shown by the great success of the year-old openSUSE project and the tremendous reviews received by our SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 products," said Dragoon.