June 25, 2009, 5:31 am
At the top of the distribution table there are several big wigs. One of which is openSUSE. It wasn’t always “openSUSE” though, that is a more recent development. When the original German distro was first released in 1994 it was called “S.u.S.E”, which stood for “Software und System-Entwicklung”, or “Software and System Development” in English. With later releases it was shortened to just “SuSE”, and then later again to “SUSE Linux”.
The initial release was merely a German translation of Slackware Linux, the oldest surviving distro today. Soon thereafter the team decided they needed an installer and better system management tools, and so YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) was born. YaST is perhaps the single most defining aspect of the distribution, something which is still integral to the distribution today. From these early beginnings, SuSE has grown and matured into one of the most popular and indeed beloved Linux based operating systems in the world and is especially popular in Europe…
