SUSE, theLinux business once own by Novell and currently owned by MicroFocus, is going to be acquired by a Swedish firm called EQT Partners for the sum of $2.5 billion US dollars.

After Novell and MicroFocus, this is SUSE’s third acquisition and it looks to have a good impact on the Linux company, which will become an independent business once it’s acquired by EQT Partners, a development-focused investor that appears to have a vast experience in the software industry.

“Today is an exciting day in SUSE’s history. By partnering with EQT, we will become a fully independent business,” said Nils Brauckmann, SUSE CEO. “The next chapter in SUSE’s development will continue, and even accelerate the momentum generated over recent years.”

After the acquisition, which is supposed to happen sometime in early 2019, SUSE will continue to receive more investment opportunities that will expand their enterprise-grade business of selling Linux-based and open-source solutions to corporations of all sizes.

SUSE is currently known for developing a wide range of Linux enterprise products, starting with the well-known SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and Server (SLED and SLES) and continuing with SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time Extension, Live Patching, ARM Server, and SLES for IBM Systems z and LinuxONE.

SUSE recently announced the upcoming availability of the SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 operating system on mid-July 2018, on which the OpenSuSE Leap 15 distribution is based. The enterprise-ready, modular operating system designed for businesses comes accompanied by SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 and SUSE Manager 3.2.

openSUSE Project won’t be affected

The acquisition won’t affect the openSUSE Project, an open-source initiative sponsored by SUSE to create the openSUSE Linux operating system. openSUSE Chairman Richard Brown confirmed in a mailing list announcement that SUSE’s acquisition by EQT Partners will not have a negative impact on the openSUSE Project.

SUSE CEO Nils Brauckmann confirmed to Richard Brown that the relationship between SUSE and the openSUSE Project will suffer no changes as SUSE will continue to sponsor the open-source project that delivers the widely-used openSUSE Tumbleweed and openSUSE Leap GNU/Linux distributions to the Open Source community.