OREANDA-NEWS. January 23, 2008. Russian OpenSuSE Research and Development Center was officially launched. The Center is supported jointly by Russian representative office of Novell, Inc. and ETegro Technologies, and is currently located at ETegro premises.

Among the main tasks assigned to R&D Center are: coordination of local-based team of OpenSuSE developers, maintainers and translators; localization of OpenSuSE – translations to Russian, Tatar and other national languages both in program interfaces and in OpenSuSE documentation; and users’ support in Russia and CIS countries. Currently, R&D Center has seven developers and three technical support engineers on boards; both ETegro and Novell plan to increaser number of developers in the nearest future.

The OpenSuSE project is a worldwide community program sponsored by Novell and AMD that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. The program provides free and easy access to OpenSuSE, which is one of the most popular distro around (according to DistroWatch.com). The goal of OpenSuSE project is to create and distribute the world's most usable Linux. OpenSuSE also provides the base for Novell's award-winning SUSE Linux Enterprise products. At the same time, OpenSuSE is developed in an open model – with public development builds, releases and sources are posted frequently on the web. OpenSuSE project provides Linux developers and enthusiasts with everything they need to get started with Linux. The growing interest in open-source systems development prompted Russian office of Novell Inc. to look deeper into idea to establish local support and development center for OpenSuSE products. ETegro Technologies was chosen as the vehicle for the project, while Novell has to provide technical and development expertise.

Making comments on the news, managing director of Novell CIS Konstantine Stowolosow, said, “We are delighted to see that our initial project turned into reality. Novell will focus the newly founded R&D Center on software development, which will boost OpenSuSE progress even further. I admit that Russian Linux community has wealth of expertise and experience in open-source development, and that makes us hope that these skills will be implemented in our Center”.

In his turn, Oleg Izumrudov, CEO of ETegro Technologies, said, “The appointment of our company as Novell OEM partner earlier this year, now followed by the establishment of software development center, clearly demonstrates our strengths in Linux solutions – both in open-source and enterprise segments. I do believe that the Center that was established by joint efforts of ETegro and Novell, will deliver new technologies for our businesses, create new opportunities for talented developers and will eventually strengthen OpenSuSE position as the best Linux distribution in the world.”