The purpose of this guide is to provide new users with everything they need to know to get started using openSUSE as a home user/small office desktop operating system - quickly and easily.

Reading this guide should save you a lot of time in the long run. The appendix at the end is targetted at particularly enthusiastic readers.

Note that this guide is not officially related to the openSUSE project or Novell, Inc.

Have a lot of fun!

openSUSE is a PC operating system based on GNU and Linux. It's a free/open source and gratis alternative to e.g. Microsoft Windows with many advantages. openSUSE is suitable for laptops, desktops, netbooks, servers and multimedia center PCs at home or in small offices.

openSUSE is among the leading GNU/Linux distributions and is also one of the oldest existing ones. New versions of openSUSE are released every 8 months, supporting many languages - each release is provided with security updates for a period of 18 months.

openSUSE is a joint effort by Novell, inc. and a few other sponsors and community volunteers, and it provides the codebase for Novell's GNU/Linux based enterprise products - SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Novell Open Enterprise Server.