This distribution has a long history (https://www.suse.com/company/history/). The journey started under the name of SUSE Linux in 1994. Later, in 2003, Novel bought SUSE and its brand and trademark. The company recognized the importance of the community and created openSUSE, preserving the open source philosophy.
Novel was acquired by The Attachmate Group in 2011 and SUSE became an independent part of the company business. In a nutshell, SUSE has two product lines:
- Commercial: SUSE Enterprise Server (SLES)
- openSUSE: an independent community project based on SLES source code
Microsoft officially supports SLES, but openSUSE is in that train also.