History

The SUSE Linux distribution was originally a German translation of Slackware Linux. The Slackware distribution (maintained by Patrick Volkerding) was initially based largely on SLS. In mid-1992, Softlanding Linux System (SLS) was founded by Peter MacDonald, and was the first comprehensive distribution to contain elements such as X and TCP/IP.

S.u.S.E was founded in late 1992 as a UNIX consulting group, which among other things regularly released software packages that included SLS and Slackware, and printed UNIX/Linux manuals. S.u.S.E is an acronym for the German phrase "Software- und System-Entwicklung" ("Software and system development"). There is a rumour that the name is a tribute to the German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse. They released the first CD version of SLS/Slackware in 1994, under the name S.u.S.E Linux 1.0. It later integrated with the Jurix distribution by Florian La Roche, to release the first really unique S.u.S.E Linux 4.2 in 1996. Over time, SuSE Linux incorporated many aspects of Red Hat Linux (e.g., using RPMs and /etc/sysconfig). In a move to more effectively reach its business audience, SuSE introduced the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server in 2001, and consecutively changed the company name to SUSE Linux in September 2003 as a part of its overall new branding strategy, as announced by SUSE's marketing VP Uwe Schmid.^[3]

On November 4, 2003, Novell announced it would acquire SuSE.^[4] The acquisition was finalized in January 2004.^[5] J. Philips (Novell's corporate technology strategist for the Asia Pacific region) stated that Novell would not "in the medium term" alter the way in which SUSE continues to be developed.^[6] At Novell's annual BrainShare gathering in 2004, all computers ran SUSE Linux for the first time. At this gathering it was also announced that the proprietary SUSE administration program YaST2 would be released into the public under the GPL license.

On August 4, 2005, Novell spokesman and director of public relations Bruce Lowry announced that the development of the SUSE Professional series will become more open and within the community project openSUSE try to reach a wider audience of users and developers. The software, by definition of open source, already had their coding "open," but now the development process will be more "open" than before, allowing developers and users to test the product and help develop it. Previously all development work was done in-house by SUSE, and version 10.0 was the first version that had public beta testing. As part of the change, YaST Online Update server access will be complimentary for SUSE Linux users, and along the lines of most open source distributions, there will both be a free download available on the web and a boxed edition. This change in philosophy led to the release of the SUSE Linux 10.0 release on October 6, 2005 in "OSS" (completely open source), "eval" (has both open source and proprietary applications and is actually a fully featured version) and retail boxed-set editions.

The current mascot of SUSE is a gecko called Geeko, also known as the "SUSE Lizard"