SUSE Going Public and Other SUSE/OpenSUSE News

Open-source enterprise software company SUSE is targeting a pre-summer initial public offering in a deal that may value the private equity-backed company with German roots at 7-8 billion euros ($8.3-9.5 billion), people close to the matter said.

The Linux specialist’s owner, buyout group EQT, has stepped up preparations for the deal and chosen a syndicate of banks to organise the deal, which is expected to kick off in May, they said.

The rumors were true. EQT, the Swedish-based private equity firm with €52 billion in assets, is getting ready to spin SUSE, the leading European Union (EU) Linux distributor, out in an IPO. The SUSE IPO, according to Reuters and ZDNet sources, will be worth €7 billion to €8 billion ($8.3 billion to $9.5 billion).

The SUSE IPO spinout has been in the works since late 2020. Prior to that SUSE has changed owners several times. First, it was acquired by Novell in 2004. Next, Attachmate, with some Microsoft funding, bought Novell and SUSE in 2010. This was followed in 2014 -- when Micro Focus purchased Attachmate and SUSE was spun off as an independent division. In its late move prior to the one coming up, EQT purchased SUSE from Micro Focus for $2.5 billion in March 2019.

Insync is an application I have been using since about 2013 to make my Google Drive files available to me on my Linux Desktop. I have previously written about my Insync experience and continue to use Insync but recently, I received a question about installing Insync on openSUSE Leap and I realized that the documentation on the InsyncHQ site has some missing bits of information. I was unable to point the requestor a proper solution. So, here is my latest list of instructions on how to get going with Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive sync on openSUSE.

Let’s gehts los! The openSUSE Project is one of about 200 mentoring organizations selected for this year’s Google Summer of Code.

The openSUSE Project has participated in several GSoC events since 2006 and the project’s mentors have helped more than 60 students become familiar with open-source software development.

openSUSE website dedicated to GSoC offers several projects for GSoC students. Projects are available for software testing with openQA, Artificial Intelligence development with Phoeβe and configuration and infrastructure management through the Uyuni Project. Some of the projects listed with the openSUSE organization within the GSoC program work with Kubernetes like the carrier project and Rancher.