I don't get what Novell is doing. Is all SuSE going to be open source and free from now on or will there be two versions (open and professional)? If it's the latter, what will be the difference? Will OpenSuSE quality be up to the standards of current suse professional editions? Thanks.

Cheers!

The info you need is available at opensuse.org.

Point me directly please, I can't find what I'm looking for.

http://www.opensuse.org/Frequently_A...nux_Desktop.3F

Yes, I've seen that. However, Novell makes Linux systems besides SuSE. But from what I cen tell by that, everything with the "SuSE" label will be completely open and free. Therefore, there'll be no need for SuSE professional. Do I understand that correctly?

The other side of the question then is will openSUSE be as polished and user friendly as the previous professional versions? When the free RedHat was replaced by Fedora, it wasn't nearly as polished and it was basically a brand new Linux system. Will this be happenning again here?

to me it's knda like Redhat's Fedora Core and enterprise linux. Both are good products, just one has a paid support program and the other is "community" release.

Greg Mancusi-Ungaro(Novell director of marketing for Linux) said Novell's move to open-source SUSE is different from the approach taken by rival Linux operating system vendor Red Hat Inc. with its Fedora project.

"Fedora's a really good open-source project. It's grown and become more independent [with the June establishment of the Fedora Foundation], but it has an inward focus with [a community of] technical users," he said. "OpenSUSE has a different goal; it's all about end-user success. We have to develop something that's so usable that it can be deployed by someone who's not technical."

OpenSuse and Suse will be identical except for commercial packages. Also you will be able to use official SUSE YOU/YAST repositories with opensuse.

Alright, that's good to know. Thank you very much.

OpenSUSE is not a distro but a project.

The distro is actually SUSE Linux 9.3, a 5 CD download with all the stuff in them except the non-free stuff.

OpenSUSE is the server infrastructure and the proyect comitted to deliver the SUSE CD's, just that.

As far as I have noticed Fedora is more of a testing platform for RHE, where as OpenSUSE is geared more twards the home user who wants a functional operating system for general use without the 'comercial' apps. In one way this makes it a bit more affordable in the retail relm and also freely available to download and install, like a lot of other distrobutions available.
Personaly I have found SUSE growing more and more favorable in my choice for a no-nonsense home user distro. More for someone who whats to get something done other than debate distro's on IRC or whatever forum is hosting a "pissing-contest" at any given time. Its a great way to break away from the linux-lifestyle that has sort of manifested over the last two or three years. I know so many "linux converts" around town that do nothing more than lurk in channels and break their systems, its any wonder why they bother using a computer at all. SUSE kind of brought me back to my old Mac mentality. Use it, figure out what you need to, walk away feeling like you have accomplished something outside of just fiddling around with the OS.

Sorry for morphing into a rant once again!

Cheers!

OpenSuse is actually a project that creates Suse Linux OSS edition which is then used as a basis for Suse Linux (i.e. Suse OSS with commercial apps). The first distro that was created was Suse Linux 10 OSS and not 9.3.

this is the contradiction (not your's but Novell's). Open SuSE "geared towards the home user" does not have support for multimedia, requires separate java install and so on. In fact OpenSuSE requires more experience than commeral version. So it is really difficult to say what opensuse is.

The only part of the project that is clear is Super OpenSuSE, experimental bleeding edge version of SuSE, this in fact resembles to a degree Fedora.

I understand that Novell can't add closed software to OpenSuSE, but then what is the point?

If someone is so paranoid and hates commersial SuSE, then simply do network install without java and multimedia and there you have it.

Hmmm, that's news. I thought the downloadable version would be a full blown SUSE...
Anyway that's no great trauma either, as you can point your YAST sources to a nice repository and get all the stuff, dog and goldfishes included.

The most important is to get a running distro, later you can use YAST to install what you want. And there are no specially abilities involved, as it's just point and click.

What does no support for multimedia mean? As in unable to play commercial DVDs and needing codecs?