SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) is a Linux distribution supplied by Novell, targeted at the business market. It is targeted for servers, but can be installed on desktop computers for testing as well. New major versions are released at an interval of 24-36 months, while minor versions (called service packs) are released every 9-12 months. SUSE Linux Enterprise products, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, receive much more intense testing than the openSUSE community product, with the intention that only mature, stable versions of the included components will make it through to the released enterprise product.

History

SLES has been developed based on SUSE Linux by a small team led by Marcus Kraft and Bernhard Kaindl as principal developer who was supported by Joachim Schröder. It was first released on 31 October 2000 as a version for IBM S/390 mainframe machines. [SuSE: [http://web.archive.org/web/20010605154144/www.suse.de/en/produkte/susesoft/s390/S390release.html "SuSE Linux for S/390 available today"] ] In December 2000, the first enterprise client (Telia) was made public. [silicon.com: [http://hardware.silicon.com/desktops/0,39024645,11021413,00.htm "Linux mainframe ousts Sun servers at Telia"] ] In April 2001, the first SLES for x86 was released.

SLES version 9 was released in August 2004. Service Pack 4 was released in December 2007. It is supported by the major hardware vendors - IBM, HP, Sun Microsystems, Dell, SGI, Lenovo, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 was released in July 2006 [ [http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1031 "Novell Delivers Next-Generation Platform for the Open Enterprise"] ] , and is also supported by the major hardware vendors. SLES 10 shares a common codebase with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 - Novell's desktop distribution for business use - and other SUSE Linux Enterprise products.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 is planned to be released in the first half of 2009.

Product integration and bundles

SLES is also an important part of Novell Open Enterprise Server, which brings all the networking services that were previously available only on NetWare to the Linux platform.

SLES 10 uses:
* GLibC 2.4.x
* Xen 3.2

Criticism

: See: Novell's patent agreement with Microsoft.

See also

* Comparison of Linux distributions
* SUSE Linux distributions

References

Further reading

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External links

* [http://www.novell.com/products/server/ SUSE Linux Enterprise Server product page]
* [http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/sles/ SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Cool Solutions] - tips & tricks, guides, tools and other resources submitted by the SUSE Linux Enterprise community