The shares are sitting on €30.39 and the moment giving the outfit a market cap of around €5 billion (approximately $6.1 billion). This is nothing to sneeze at, but it wasn't what EQT hoped for either. Before the IPO, EQT had sought an IPO price as high as €34 per share.

SUSE and its backers sold 37.8 million shares in the IPO, for €1.1 billion. EQT is still keeping a stake. SUSE itself continues to do well with reported revenue of $503 million for the 2020 financial year.

The German based company has changed its owners several times over the years. First, SUSE was acquired by Novell in 2004. Then, Attachmate, with some Microsoft funding, bought Novell and SUSE in 2010. Next, in 2014, Micro Focus purchased Attachmate and SUSE was spun off as an independent division. Finally, EQT purchased SUSE from Micro Focus for $2.5 billion in 2018.

SUSE has also been expanding beyond Linux. In late 2020, SUSE bought Rancher Labs in a significant Kubernetes move.

Like its Linux rivals Canonical and Red Hat, SUSE believes its future lies not just with the Linux plumbing that underlies most enterprise-level technology but in containers and clouds too.