SUSE Linux: 20 Years and Going Strong

06.04.2012
Red Hat may be celebrating its new role as the first open source company to in annual revenue, but it's not the only Linux provider to reach a key milestone recently.

SUSE Linux, in fact, is not just celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, but on Thursday it also announced that its customer base now numbers 15,000.

More than two-thirds of the global Fortune 100 now use , which is also the most widely used commercial enterprise Linux distribution in China, the company says. Walgreens, Sony, Office Depot, and the London Stock Exchange are all among its users, as are five of the top 10 global supercomputers.

"We have a lot to celebrate in 2012," said Nils Brauckmann, president and general manager for , which is now part of Attachmate. "SUSE just completed a strong fiscal year marked by accelerated growth and profitability. We are healthy, stable, and are continuing to invest in the future."

A Focus on Interoperability

Dating all the way back to 1992, SUSE shipped the first SUSE Linux distribution in 1994. SUSE Enterprise Linux Server launched in 2000, followed by the free, community-oriented openSUSE project five years later.