In a controversial move (due to patent fears), SLED 11 included , the open-source implementation of .NET. This allowed businesses to run custom .NET applications on Linux without rewriting. Novell also provided Moonlight (a partial Silverlight clone), though it never gained traction.
When SUSE was sold to The Attachmate Group (2011) and later to EQT Partners, the desktop focus waned. SLED 12 (2014) switched to GNOME 3 and systemd, alienating traditional users. By 2020, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop was effectively phased into the “SUSE Linux Enterprise Workstation” extension—a secondary product. suse linux desktop 11