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OpenSuse LEAP had SLES components rolled in on version 42.1, which was superseded by version 15.

LEAP has support for 36 months (major versions) and 18 months (minor releases). It's a different upgrade cycle then CentOS or RH. In RH, if you just pull from the repos, you will automatically roll from minor to minor release. This is not the case with OpenSuse. For example, 15.0 repos are distinct and separate from 15.1. In RH, both versions would be in the same repo and Yum finds the most current.

This gives you a bit more control, you have 6 months to upgrade between minor version as they are generally release every 12 months and supported for 18. You have to run a different command to upgrade the version zypper dup vs zypper up. In RH your version will increment without you noticing if your not paying attention.

IMHO, the biggest differentiator is the the Kernel Version.
RedHat's is pretty old, the newest kernel the ship is 3.10.0-957.
The SLE kernel (note the change from SLES 12 to SLE 15 - to track OpenSUSE better) is 4.12.14-23.1.

You have to go all the way back to 2014 to get a 3.12 kernel on SuSe.
I'm a big fan of SUSE, I use OpenSUSE at home and have managed some HPC systems that use SLES 11/12, but most systems I manage us RH at work.

Yes. https://www.microfocus.com/pro...

There is even an object-oriented version these days.

https://supportline.microfocus...

Cobal is a crazy nuanced language that is hardware specific.

Where in the world did you hear that? I'll admit that most production implementations using it today are usually AS/400 and Z-Series, but there are plenty of other operating systems that support it:

https://www.gtsoftware.com/net...
http://opencobolide.readthedoc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.microfocus.com/pro...

When you say rewriting is a good strategy, do you have ANY idea what that entails?

Or just look at the results. Rip-and-replace projects have a failure rate that makes greenfield development look good.

That's why the sales keep rollin' in. We had $206M in FY16 revenue from COBOL Development and Mainframe Solutions, which is basically all the COBOL stuff plus the mainframe environment (CICS, IMS, JES) emulation. That kind of money adds up.

I'm assuming you meant Visual Cobol...

https://www.microfocus.com/pro...

Though not sure how Suse even still exists...

The same way other companies do: By selling things that people buy.

You may not be interested in the benefits of a commercial distribution like SLES - product support, integration, platform support (SLES on zSeries is a decent market all on its own), and so forth - but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of organizations that are.

SUSE revenues for last year were up 18% pro-forma CCY. So still selling pretty well.

(Disclaimer: I work for Micro Focus, but not for the SUSE side of the house. Though for this post I hardly see how it matters.)

Yes, Visual COBOL is a real thing: http://www.microfocus.com/down...

Just curious, is Microfocus still run covertly by satan as a means of torturing its clients, or has he gone public about his role?

You're way off. By orders of magnitude. Or maybe you were being sarcastic.

Source. Apologize, anonymous one. I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Abandon all hope, ye who gaze upon COBOL in .Net!

I see you clinging to hope, yeah, you, right there. Abandon it!

How many times has it been pronounced dead ?

Never.

What to say but wrong ?
http://www.yourdonreport.com/i...

Really if you haven't been around do a little searching for yourself. I have been hearing that COBOL is dead since the 80s.

But as a development language it is most certainly dead. COBOL is only used in very old legacy applications invariably centered around finance and big iron.

I guess you didn't know COBOL has been enjoying a resurgence ? It has a very nice niche for cloud applications, you know those CLIENT/SERVER type apps.

http://www.microfocus.com/asse...
http://www.zdnet.com/cobol-sti...

Hell the COBOL 2014 standard is now out.

Behold the horrors!
Microfocus COBOL for jvm and j2ee (this possibilty came up with one of my clients but we went a different route): http://visualcobol.microfocus.com/overview/platform/jvm/
The University of Tennesee's Innovative Computing Laboratory is in the final stage of their F2J project, which will support Fortran 95 language to java bytecode: http://icl.cs.utk.edu/f2j/overview/index.html
Ada to JVM, read about projects and products here: http://www.adahome.com/Resources/Ada_Java.html
There was gcc back end to emit jvm bytecode, but RMS killed it because of Sun's Java license at the time. Things have changed since then, maybe that project will be resurrected.

The hip new generation of programmers are all using Visual COBAL!

Heck yes you can do web pages in Cobol, given the latest CICS (for you non-mainframers: Customer Information and Control System) setup. It's also possible to do so from MicoFocus COBOL http://www.microfocus.com/products/RMCOBOL/COBOLCGI.asp

I see they used the Micro Focus COBOL compiler, which is not FOSS by a long shot.

"There is no professional-grade COBOL available for Linux so that they must convert to another language"

I think Microfocus might disagree with you there. It's not cheap, but it's definitely used at enterprise level.

Microsoft Visual COBOL? *blech*

Back in the day I used Microfocus COBOL, which is still available today.

There are plenty of books out there on COBOL but O'Reilly, being geared mostly towards lower end machines, isn't likely to have much that is mainframe-centric like this. It's been over 15 years since I've written any COBOL (not long enough!) so I can't recommend a good modern guide.

Honestly, I think anything you can do in COBOL you can do better in Perl.

Fortran and cobol are recently making a comeback as well. It seems to be cool, again. Does this mean we will see them as a .net application? Suppose so.. I can see it now Visual Cobol, and Visual Ada and Visual Fortran....

The guy that said this from Ovum also said a lot more (HERE), cited on Microfocus' web site, the maker of Microfocus Cobol (yea, they are not biased....). Microfocus does make a good Cobol compiler BTW. That quote could be 10 years old or more and probably is. Most of finance moved on years ago and don't run a single line of Cobol anymore. NYC has a lot of mainframes displaced with blades and linux. IBM helped a lot of them do it. I know I threw all of my Cobol/MVS/other mainframe crap out years ago. I haven't even had an inquiry about that stuff for years.

There are a few implementations of object oriented COBOL for .Net out there...

Fujitsu COBOL and NetCOBOL for .NET
Micro Focus Net Express

Both of those are rather expensive, and I've not seen any open-source ones yet. I thought it would be fun to write a COBOL compiler for .Net as a pet project. I've started it, but haven't had much time to spend on it recently. My plan was to get it to a point where it can do some useful things then put it on sourceforge.

MicroFocus also makes a Cobol.Net called Micro Focus Net Express® with .NET.

If you are hosting your application in .NET, then you choose any language.

If you happen to have a lot of legacy code or just have some COBOL programmer handy.. then you can use Micro Focus's COBOL (Net Express with .NET)

http://www.microfocus.com/products/NetExpress/inde x.asp

I believe that Micro Focus makes COBOL environments for either client/server or .NET and Acucorp also makes a PC based COBOL environment.

Clearly you have special needs so MicroFocus will give you Cobol on Windows
(but that would make as much sense as using the .NET environment for Open Source developments).

Only the really good ones like Object COBOL.

Micro Focus is going to eat the Kompany's lunch on this one. Mainframers know Micro Focus like C++ developers know Rogue Wave. Their Object COBOL developer suite has been here longer from a company Mainframers know and trust.

I have nothing against the Kompany, in fact I like them quite a bit, but this seems like a stupid move.