openSUSE offers Leap, an LTS-style distribution that shares the code base SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE), effectively making Leap a non-commercial version of its enterprise-grade operating system. Users that prefer more up-to-date free software can use its rolling release distribution Tumbleweed. Users can also use the Open Build Service. Moreover, the flexibility of openSUSE makes it easy to re-purpose for specific goals like running a web- or mail server.
Like most Linux distributions, openSUSE includes both a default graphical user interface (GUI) and a command line interface option. Users of openSUSE may choose several desktops environments GUIs like GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, LXQt, Xfce. openSUSE supports thousands of software packages across the full range of free software / open source development.
The operating system is compatible with a wide variety of hardware on numerous instruction sets including ARM-based single-board computers. Examples include the Raspberry Pi 3 and Pine64 on the ARMv8 platform also known as aarch64, the Banana Pi and BeagleBoard on the ARMv7 instruction set, and the first iteration of the Raspberry Pi on the ARMv6 ISA. RISC-V, PowerPC (PPC64 and PPC64le) and S390 are supported as well.
The goals of the openSUSE project are:
- Make openSUSE the easiest Linux distribution for anyone to obtain and the most widely used open source platform.
- Provide an environment for open source collaboration that makes openSUSE the world’s best Linux distribution for new and experienced Linux users.
- Dramatically simplify and open the development and packaging processes to make openSUSE the platform of choice for Linux hackers and application developers.
With the launch of the openSUSE project, openSUSE is now developed in an open model – public development builds, releases, and sources will be posted frequently here and you will have access to our Bugzilla database for defect reporting. You can also sign up on special interest mailing lists to make sure that you are always getting the most recent news on the openSUSE project and the openSUSE distribution.
openSUSE tools:
- Open Build Service (OBS)
- Our build tool, building all of our packages as well as ones for SUSE Linux Enterprise, Arch, Debian, Fedora, Scientific Linux, RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, and more.
- openQA
- Automated testing for *any* operating system, that can read the screen and control the test host the same way a user does.
- YaST
- The best/only comprehensive Linux system configuration & installation tool.
- Kiwi
- Create Linux images for deployment on real hardware, virtualisation, and now even container systems like Docker. Kiwi is the engine that builds the openSUSE release images.
