Thursday, August 04, 2005

Novell is planning to open up a version of its Suse Linux operating system to users and developers, unveiling its OpenSuse project at the LinuxWorld show next week in San Francisco, a company executive confirmed Wednesday.

"We're making OpenSuse available for anyone anywhere," said Greg Mancusi-Ungaro, director of marketing for Linux and open source at Novell (Profile, Products, Articles). "We've learned from customers that it's still very, very hard to get Linux unless you're a technical user."

Novell will rename its Suse Linux Professional flavor of Linux, Suse Linux, and will open source the operating system, hosting those efforts at a new Web site, according to Mancusi-Ungaro. "We're moving from a closed model where the code was tested in-house to a completely open and transparent model" where developers will have access to the source code and their input will be welcomed, he added.

At LinuxWorld, Novell will release its first public beta of Suse Linux, version 10.0, Mancusi-Ungaro said. In 2006, the company intends to establish a public code repository and a public build server for the open-sourced operating system, he added.