As promised during its annual Build conference at Build 2017, Microsoft said that it is bringing Linux distros to the Windows Store. Now, we’re starting to see the first examples of this, as SUSE has brought both its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and openSUSE Leap to the Windows Store, available now for Windows 10 Insiders (via Neowin).
These are the first distros to arrive in the Windows Store, with Ubuntu and Fedora also expected to arrive in the future. Both SUSE distros come in at around 200MB, available for Windows Insiders on Windows 10 build 16190.0 or later.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 recommends 4GB of RAM, and the Store description reads:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a world-class, secure open source server operating system, built to power physical, virtual and cloud-based mission-critical workloads. To register your free, 1-year developer subscription of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server […] Designed for mixed IT environments, it offers best-of-breed performance with reduced risk of technological obsolescence or vendor lock-in. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 is a modular, general-purpose operating system and runs on all major processor architectures. It is optimized to run on leading hypervisors and supports an unlimited number of virtual machine guests per physical system with single subscription, making it the perfect guest for virtual and cloud computing.
On the otherhand, openSUSE Leap 42 requires only 2GB of RAM, with the description as follows:
The openSUSE distribution is a stable, easy to use and complete multi-purpose Linux distribution. It is aimed towards users and developers working on the desktop or server. It is great for beginners, experienced users and ultra geeks alike, in short, it is perfect for everybody! The latest release, openSUSE Leap 42.2, features new and massively improved versions of all useful server and desktop applications. It comes with more than 1,000 open source applications. openSUSE is also the base for SUSE’s award-winning SUSE Linux Enterprise products. That’s right. After basing openSUSE Leap 42.1 on SLE (SUSE Linux Enterprise), Leap 42.2 gets even more source code from the release of SLE 12 Service Pack 2. New technologies such as NVDIMM, OmniPATH, Data Plane Development Kit with openVSwitch are backported for the release. XEN no longer requires its own kernel and is supported by the default kernel. Along with the shared SLE codebase, openSUSE Leap 42.2 gets packages, maintenance and bug fixes from the openSUSE community and SUSE engineers. The 42 series of Leap achieves at a minimum 36 months of maintenance and security updates starting from 42.1.
With these distros in the Windows Store, there will be no need to dual-boot. They will run in a sandboxed environment, but act as if they’re a standalone installation.
You can view SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 here or openSUSE Leap 42 here, both in the Windows Store.
