SUSE Linux Becomes openSUSE

A user writes "With the anouncement of the release of SUSE Linux 10.2 Alpha 2 there is also an anouncement that SUSE Linux will be renamend to openSUSE. A very logical step to clear things up. The name went from S.u.S.E over SuSE to SUSE Linux and for many people it was not clear what the name realy was. It also points out the importance Novell gives the the openness of the whole openSUSE project."

I could swear that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I could swear that it's been called that for a little while now. I downloaded it a few weeks ago, and it was reffered to as "openSUSE" on their website then. Old news?

Re:This doesn't affect SLED and SLES

[Azarael]

Which was why in my mind they should have just kept the Ximian name in the first place.

What are the ramifications?

[kimvette]

Does this mean that the following will no longer be bundled and have to be downloaded separately?

  - Real Player
  - Planmaker
  - Textmaker
  - Java (and dependent packages)
  - Opera]
  - ATI drivers
  - NVidia drivers

Yeah, I know, CD #6 contains some of the extras, but it sure is nice to get them all on one DVD like the retail SuSE has offered. It's more convenient than OpenSuSE has been.

I've been buying the retail version of SuSE for a few years now, and really like it, even with the problems the distribution has had from time to time. I hope that this move doesn't change anything for the worse.

Re:This doesn't affect SLED and SLES

[michael path]

That's a lot different - most people were first introduced to Firefox, not its previous incarnations. Moreover, most people didn't have to invest money or remarkable effort to find out what Firefox was all about - being a free download for Windows and all.

If a product is important enough, it can obviously survive a change in name. I have a hard time believing that the latest Novell line of Linux solutions are going to prove as important or interesting as Firefox has unless it becomes THE flagship OS for new servers and desktops.

Re:CapitalizAtion

[dhfx]

The lower-case 'u' came about because in German it's the abbreviation for 'und' - the equivalent of an ampersand. So when you see SuSE you can think S&SE.

I hadn't realised...

[HaloZero]

...that it was called S.u.S.E. at one point. Did it stand for something?

Re:I could swear that...

[Chaotic Spyder]

yes yes.. It has been using the same name since 10.0

Re:CapitalizAtion

[Kelson]

The "confusion" I was referring to was in terms of spelling. FireFox is misspelled. Firefox is spelled correctly. When people are used to mixed case, they can get confused as to whether a particular name is spelled with conventional (just one capital) rules, camel case, rules from another language (as another poster pointed out, the original S.u.S.E. capitalization comes from German). "I know one of the letters in SUSE isn't capitalized, which one is it?"

When I'm writing formally, I still can't decide what to do with names like iMac, eBay, etc. at the beginning of a sentence -- and those are names I know how to spell.

So no, I'm not saying that people calling it "FireFox" get confused by people calling it "Firefox." You could probably write "Fyrefawkes" and still get the idea across. But the large number of mixed-case names in the computing field has led to confusion about how the name is spelled.

As it is, I think making the "open" part lowercase is still asking for trouble, but "openSUSE" is at least a bit more standard than "openSuSE." Me, I would have gone for "OpenSUSE" or even "Open SUSE."