Home / Enterprise Linux / Enterprise Linux

Enterprise Linux refers to the open source Linux operating system packaged with software tools and services designed for corporate, academic or business use (rather than consumer use). It is designed for servers, desktops, workstations, cloud services and mobile devices. Popular enterprise Linux distributions include SUSE Linux Enterprise, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu. Enterprise Linux distributions are built for corporate users who care more about the maintenance lifetime (patches and updates) and technical support (OS, hardware and Linux applications) than consumer Linux users.

Enterprise Linux distributions are available for x86, x86-64, Itanium and other computing architectures. Designed for high-end business and academic IT environments, enterprise Linux has more advanced features than consumer Linux distributions. It is open source, allowing any programmer to access its source code and modify it. Open source solutions such as enterprise Linux allow organizations more freedom to innovate and adapt to changing technology and future business needs. Many of today’s public cloud infrastructures are built upon enterprise Linux and open source solution stacks. Most enterprise Linux distributions use basically the same open source components; however, not all distributions support the business features, applications and hardware that large corporations may need.

Enterprise Linux can run mission-critical applications that demand security, high availability, geo clustering, live patching and full system rollbacks. Workloads such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and big data analysis that were formerly handled only by large proprietary systems can now be deployed on x86 servers running enterprise Linux. Such configurations are more cost-effective and agile than proprietary systems, while still providing the support, maintenance, security and reliability required by global enterprises. SUSE offers a variety of enterprise solutions for Linux, from servers to storage to cloud.


Related Topics