SAN FRANCISCO (LinuxWorld Conference & Expo)—
07 Aug 2007. On the second anniversary of the creation of the openSUSE™ project, the community program this week marked two new milestones – the availability of the first beta of openSUSE 10.3 and the continued growth of the openSUSE Build Service.
“We appreciate all the contributions the community has made to the
openSUSE project during the past two years,” said Michael Loeffler,
openSUSE product manager at Novell. “The goal of the openSUSE project
is to promote the use of Linux everywhere, and our strong community of
developers, testers, writers, translators, artists and users have been
instrumental in creating one of the world's best Linux distributions.
And as we seek to streamline and improve collaboration between all
Linux developers, the openSUSE Build Service has changed the way
packages have been built. The build service is quickly becoming a
center for building any Linux distribution.”
OpenSUSE Build Service Momentum
Now with more than 700 projects and 20,000 software packages, the
openSUSE Build Service is an innovative framework that provides an
infrastructure for software developers to easily create and compile
packages for multiple Linux* distributions. The development team today
released the first version of the end-user interface for the build
service, with which users of any openSUSE, SUSE® Linux Enterprise,
Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu or Mandriva distribution can easily search and
browse new software for their distribution. Users of the upcoming
openSUSE 10.3 can install their software with one click directly from
the Web interface. In the past four months, more than 13 million
packages have been downloaded from the openSUSE Build Service as
developers build packages for various distributions using the tool.
AMD has helped sponsor the progress of the openSUSE Build Service
with leading-edge hardware and development expertise. “AMD is helping
to ensure that the openSUSE Build Service continues to be an important
collaboration and development platform for developers of all
distributions,” said Terri Hall, AMD vice president of Commercial
Systems Marketing. “AMD recognizes the value of the open source
development model, and by providing hardware for the openSUSE Build
Service, we are able to actively participate in the continued
innovation for which the open source community is known.”
Developers who want to provide their software to a broader audience
of Linux users are often hampered when packages built for one
distribution will not work on other distributions. The openSUSE Build
Service is the only open source build system that helps developers
provide packages with the same high quality for multiple distributions
from the same source code. With the system imaging tool KIWI, open
source developers can more quickly build a Linux distribution that
meets their needs, rigorously test it to ensure product quality, and
easily package it for quick installation.
The openSUSE Build Service is completely open source, giving
developers and users free and full access to build their choice of
Linux packages, whether based on openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise,
Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu or other projects. An essential part of the
openSUSE project, the openSUSE Build Service is available at
www.opensuse.org/Build_Service [1]. The new end-user interface can be found
at software.opensuse.org.
First Beta of openSUSE 10.3
OpenSUSE 10.3 offers a state-of-the-art operating system based on
Linux kernel 2.6.22 with a large variety of the latest open source
applications for desktops, servers and application development. The
first beta of openSUSE 10.3 is now available at www.opensuse.org/download [2].
About Novell
Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers infrastructure software for the Open
Enterprise. Novell is a leader in enterprise-wide operating systems
based on Linux and open source and provides the enterprise management
services required to operate mixed IT environments. Novell helps
customers minimize cost, complexity and risk, allowing them to focus on
innovation and growth. For more information, visit www.novell.com [3].
Novell and SUSE are registered trademarks and openSUSE is a trademark
of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *Linux is a
registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other third-party
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.