SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) is a Linux distribution supplied by Novell, targeted at the business market. It is targeted for servers, but can be installed on Desktop computers for testing as well. New versions are released at an interval of 18-24 months. SLES receives much more intense testing than other SUSE Linux products with the intention that only mature, stable versions of the included components will make it through to the released product.

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, 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"), however in English speaking communities a rumour still circulates that the name is a tribute to the German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse, whose name in English has similar pronunciation. 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 commonly referred to as a gecko called Geeko, but is actually a chameleon.

         SLES has been developed based on SUSE Linux by a small team led by Marcus Kraft and Bernhard Kaindl as principal developer who was supported by Joachim Schröder. It was first released on 31 October 2000 as a version for IBM S/390 machines. ^[1] In December 2000, the first enterprise client (Telia) was made public.^[2] In April 2001, the first SLES for x86 was released.

        SLES version 9 was released in August 2004. Service Pack 3 was released in December 2005. It is supported by the major hardware vendors - IBM, HP, Sun Microsystems, Dell, SGI and Fujitsu Siemens Computers.

        SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 was released in July 2006^[3], and is also supported by the major hardware vendors. The SLES 10 codebase is the foundation of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (formerly Novell Linux Desktop) - Novell's desktop distribution for business use.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 will be released in 2008

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED), formerly Novell Linux Desktop, is a desktop-oriented Linux distribution supplied by Novell and targeted at the business market.

The current version is SLED 10, which is developed from a common codebase with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as well as 1.5, Novell Evolution 2.6 and many other popular open source packages as well as some proprietary software such as Flash Player and RealPlayer.

openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise

Novell offers SUSE Linux under two major branches, openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise. The former, openSUSE, is a freely available, community-oriented distribution project that releases on a comparatively frequent basis and generally uses more recent versions of the various open source projects that it includes. The SUSE Linux Enterprise branch is Novell's commercial edition of SUSE Linux, which Novell releases much less frequently in order to offer long term support more effectively for enterprise production deployments.

Novell typically uses a version of the openSUSE distribution as a basis for creating SUSE Linux Enterprise. For example, SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 was derived from the foundation set by SUSE Linux 10.1 (now known as openSUSE 10.1). Novell states that the reduced number of packages is preferred for enterprise use, whereas general community users generally prefer a less specialized distribution with extensive options.

SUSE Linux Enterprise: Server and Desktop

Within the commercial SUSE Linux Enterprise line, the two major offerings from Novell are SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Each of these distributions has been selectively pared down to include the open source packages for its specific purpose. For example, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop does not include the Apache Web Server, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server does not include Xgl/Compiz.

References

^ SuSE: "SuSE Linux for S/390 available today"

^ silicon.com: "Linux mainframe ousts Sun servers at Telia"

^ "Novell Delivers Next-Generation Platform for the Open Enterprise"

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