openSUSE is a free, open project. Although Novell sponsors it heavily, the project belongs to the openSUSE community. Things were not always this way; before Novell's acquisition of SuSE, SuSE internally managed the course of the distribution, with little input or participation from the user community.

To strengthen the openSUSE project we’re looking for an enthusiastic Chief Evangelist to: promote and spread the adoption of openSUSE; be a public face for the project on conferences and events; act as voice of the community back to Novell’s leadership team; develop and nurture the openSUSE communities; pro actively drive openSUSE marketing;

It’s official: the openSUSE project Guiding Principles are now in force. The Guiding Principles are a framework for the project and give everyone a clear view of who we are, what we stand for, what the project wants and how it works. The Guiding Principles document was created by the openSUSE community and is embraced by Novell - the founder and largest sponsor of the openSUSE project.

A few weeks ago, the OpenSUSE Project announced the release of OpenSUSE 11.0, the "community" edition of SUSE Linux, Novell's commercial Linux distribution. Like most recent distributions, OpenSUSE is made up of the usual suspects, including GNOME and KDE-based desktops, Live CD and full DVD installation options, and an online repository of software that can be installed using a GUI tool.

The openSUSE Education Project is an effort to support schools using Linux and to provide an openSUSE-based Live DVD that can be used to set up a quick educational environment without installing any software.

Over the course of a few years, and after openSUSE was launched, the relationship of openSUSE internally has been one of constant rediscovery and also lethargy. openSUSE heaveily relies on the power of the community and their votes on certain issues, features, etc. Simply put, openSUSE is democratic.

As part of a Novell Open Audio series on openSUSE, they will be interviewing various openSUSE developers to find out more about the project, particular involvements and new technologies in the distribution. Today’s interview features a talk with Martin Lasarsch, an openSUSE evangelist.

When you're talking Linux, three big names always pop up: Canonical's Ubuntu, Novell's openSUSE and Red Hat's Fedora. Ubuntu has ridden a groundswell of both consumer and commercial support to its current ranking as the most popular Linux distribution. OpenSUSE, with its business underpinnings, has always been popular in Europe and has been making inroads in the U.S.

Schools need open source. They need it to save money and they need it for reliability an flexibility. The problem is there aren’t many distributions geared towards educational institutions. Because of the OpenSuSE Education distribution, a plethora of distributions isn’t necessary. But does this promising distribution fill all the gaps?