4:33 PM

I was actually only kidding about downloading another linux distro. Looks like I’ll have to do it anyway, as Novell frees SUSE Professional under new branding:

Novell is renaming SUSE Professional and releasing it as 100% open source. Novell spokesman and director of public relations Bruce Lowry says his company is “pushing” to make SUSE Linux available to anyone who wants it. According to sources close to the company, SUSE Professional is to be rebranded as OpenSUSE.

Lowry says Novell is will make SUSE freely available, starting with the 10.0 beta, at the Linux World Conference next week. “We really are focused on pushing Linux adoption as aggressively as we can, and think opening up SUSE Linux to users and developers is a good way to do this,” he says. “We’re opening up the development process up front.” Sources say Novell hopes its flagship Linux product, SUSE Enterprise, will benefit from community development.