Summary: Some bits and pieces about OpenSUSE, which paints as "community" and "open" a rather proprietary product (SLE*) with Microsoft patent tax

OpenSUSE has been fairly quiet in December, with the exception of a new release. Google's funds for the projects have dried up by now (with exceptions) and some fixes/adaptations are late to arrive, so some people complained that OpenSUSE did not work on their hardware. There are derivatives/flavours like OpenSUSE Edu Li-f-e 12.1 or even this more obscure Live CD:

The third version of the Oyranos Colour Management LiveCD is based on openSUSE-12.1 and will run on x86_64 compatible PC€´s. I placed the ISO image yesterday after some preparations on the better accessible SourceForge site for download. The CD project starts into a instantly colour managed desktop, which is unique under Linux.

SUSE is looking for free testers for SLE* and various for-profit products [1, 2] including fog and proprietary. Uwe writes about SUSE Manager and Studio for instance. The OpenSUSE project is just an incubator for Microsoft Linux. Volunteers will sooner or later realise this and for one of them, Sascha, the reports are going PDF-only, which is a step back. Other SUSE enthusiasts who install the distribution may also realise that they can get the same elsewhere, without the Microsoft association. There are site changes ongoing at the incubator. There are hardly any SUSE bloggers left there (not active ones anyway). "Let's start to get an openSUSE running on the machine," wrote Danny, who later posted some progress updates [1, 2] that appeared in Planet SUSE. It's also where Masim's posts on openSUSE [1, 2, 3] have been appearing. The number of active SUSE bloggers declined over the years and it shows. We just don't have much to say and show about the project anymore. ⬆