SUSE Studio Merges Open Build Service to create SUSE Studio Express
If you’ve never heard of SUSE Studio, it’s a service offered by SUSE that allows users to create their own respins of their GNU/Linux Operating System; OBS, is a tool designed for easing package distribution. Both tools use the same engine, and so SUSE has decided to merge the two into one product and rebrand the system, “SUSE Studio Expressâ€
Andreas Jaeger, an author for the SUSE blog published an article the merger.
In it, Jaeger writes, “Reviewing these offerings and the way the image build situation has evolved, we have decided to merge the two online services, OBS and SUSE Studio, into a common solution.
Looking at the feature requests for SUSE Studio on image building and looking at our technologies, we decided to use OBS as the base for our image building service. Since OBS already builds images for various environments, we will first add a new image building GUI to OBS. This combined solution will now be delivered as “SUSE Studio Expressâ€.
Some of the features listed on the post for the new SUSE Studio Express are:
- Collaboration on image building: You can do the usual clone, change, submit, and review cycle to update an image and send it back to the original owner. This also works for image templates that others use as a base.
- Support for additional architectures: SUSE Studio only handled x86-64. With the SUSE Studio Express, you will build images for all SUSE architectures – not only for Intel/AMD x86-64 but later also for ARM, Power and z Systems.
- Open Development: The complete source code is available and the development team is blogging about their sprint reports. If you would like to contribute code to the new UI or add image templates, go ahead!
- We expect OBS will be more flexible, being able to support further imaging tool chains.
- The development of new images can be done as part of the distribution development, so that images work directly at release of a product. This also allows us to support these images with maintenance updates in the future. In addition, building of images for not yet released distributions will possible.
Closing Words
SUSE Studio has been something I have played with in the past, although I never sat down and went deep into making my own respin, but I can say that the customization and power behind the tool is pretty awesome, and surprisingly easy to use. I may one day take a look at this new offering and play around with it myself.
What about you? Have you ever used SUSE Studio? Does this new offering sound like something you would be interested in checking out? Let us know in the comments what your thoughts are!
Wants me to sign in or create an account to use it. Nope.
It’s been a while (years) since I checked SUSE Studio. From memory… I found NOTHING worthwhile. Browsing, wading through pages… the descriptions were terse / unenlightening & the offerings (downloads created by others) reminded me of “fridge art” — look Ma, I changed da wallpaper and created my own “distro”. Anything (build recipe, or downloadable item) listed older than 6mos (3mos?) is probably undesirable, right? Nonetheless, prior builds and recipes remain archived and clutter (pollute) the search results.
Open Build Service, on the other hand, I recognize its merit. I’ve used several applications which are built there, including the linux PaleMoon build.
I’ve used SUSE Studio in more recentish times, recent enough that you had total control over package selection etc, giving a much more ‘your distro’ feel than the fridge art. If it’s something you like the idea of, can’t hurt to check it out :)
when i think of the name OBS i think of Open Broadcaster Software…
lol me too. it’s even in the first result in google