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openSUSE 11.2– Incremental Updates, Plenty of Polish

“Choosing a Linux distribution from the list of available
options could be a daunting task for someone looking to try out
Linux for the first time. Ubuntu seems to get the lion’s share of
the press coverage with new releases twice a year (hence the
version numbers like 9.04 and 9.10 released in April and October,
respectively). SUSE Linux has a long heritage in the Linux
community and a heavy following in the European market due to its
German roots.

“With the purchase of SUSE by Novell many feared that the brand
would be subsumed into the corporate borg and contaminated with
proprietary add-ons. Novell did take the core of SUSE Linux and use
it as the basis for their SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) and
Server (SLES) offerings. These two products obviously targeted at
desktop and server environments form the basis of Novell’s
supported operating system offerings. In fact, both are sold on a
yearly subscription basis to include support and updates.

“On the flip side, Novell recognized the need to continue a
completely open source and free SUSE distribution. Out of that
recognition came openSUSE Linux. Novell contributes heavily to the
distribution and gets the benefits of continued community support
and development of the core operating system and applications. They
also take advantage of a much wider user base to test new releases
and to provide feedback for future improvements.”

Complete
Story

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