W e’re setting out to explore the SUSE ALP initiative. Before we do so, however, let’s explore SUSE, its history and some of the other software it develops. SUSE was founded in 1992 and was one of the first companies to commercialise Linux for enterprise. Linus Torvalds released the first version of the Linux kernel in 1991, which shows how early this offering was to businesses. The first release by SUSE was an extension of Slackware Linux and was provided on 40 floppy disks.
SUSE is one of the oldest Linux distribution producers and was started at around the same time as Slackware. Debian then followed shortly afterwards and Red Hat shortly after that.
Over the last 30 years or so, SUSE has innovated in many ways. When this author started to use Linux 20 years ago, the primary goal was to share a dial-up internet connection with a number of devices around the home. This was accomplished via the expertise of friends and Slackware Linux, using an old 486 and the command-line interface. Fast-forward a few years and your author used SUSE for the first time – the main draw was the tool, which stands for provides a one-stop shop for your distro’s settings and it can make a new system seem less daunting to new users. Today, distros provide lots of setup tools, but at the time, was almost unique.
