OpenSUSE 10.3 Alpha1 has been released. “Since the openSUSE 10.2 final release, the most significant changes are: GNOME has been moved to /usr (lease do test especially updates from older distributions); KDE updated to KDE 3.5.6; Linux kernel updated to 2.6.20 (no Xen support enabled for now); pattern for minimal text install; update of OpenOffice.org to version 2.1.3; the whole distribution is build now with -fstack-protector to better guard against some buffer overflows; and much more.”
but without the intention of including KDE4 it seems a bit pointless going for an extended 8-9 month dev period on this release, given that it would mean waiting until at least March 08 to get a SUSE 10.4 with KDE4.
It is quite possible that once KDE4 is released, Novell will make it available as an upgrade. It has been the policy of SUSE/Novell for years now.
KDE4 packages are built regulary from the latest SVN sources for suse 10.0 – 10.3/factory for everyone to try. Just add the KDE4 repo from repos.opensuse.org to yast. It’s just to early yet to include as the default KDE desktop.
Thom,
Do you know what the reasoning was behind Novell’s decision to move Gnome from “/opt” to the “/usr” directory? Is KDE also being relocated to “/usr”? Are they fazing out the “/opt” directory. Doesn’t this go against the LSB certification for where packages are installed? Are other Linux distributions such as RHEL/Fedora going to move Gnome to “/usr”?
I can’t tell you about Gnome, but in Debian (and derivatives) KDE is in /usr. Such a thing is not unprecedented.
LSB has nothing to do with directories. If you’re thinking of the FHS, it’s rather more FHS-compliant to put the DEs in /usr. This is what we (Mandriva) and Debian do at least, I’m not sure about Ubuntu and FC.
FC/Redhat has KDE in /usr as well. I am not so sure about Ubuntu.
RedHat/Fedora based distros, too.
BTW, I thought FHS was part of LSB now?
At any rate, I’m glad to hear about it. Some distros putting things in /opt while others put them in /usr is exactly the sort of silly, purposeless, incompatibility that is bad for Linux, and with no upside.
Though to be honest, I must admit that I did not know that Suse had been doing this.
Yeah, you’re right, FHS is part of LSB now, which means I was a bit wrong in my comment: LSB does have something to do with it, via the FHS.
You are somewhat incorrect. The FHS preceded the LSB, but the LSB includes the FHS as-is. Proof is in the pudding:
http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_3.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Co…
Please make better informed comments to improve the quality of OSNEWS. However, you are correct that it is FHS compliant to put desktop environments under /usr like virtually every distro sans SUSE has been doing for years now.
I believe /opt first appeared in Solaris, an unholy and purely unnatural manifestation put upon linux by oracle and a few others who don’t want to bother with the difference. That device should be mounted on /usr/local
I think of /opt as quite logical and I love Solaris for its business oriented approach. Normally /usr is for (programs, libs, etc) that get installed as part of the OS and can be modified as part of OS updates, patches, etc. /usr/local is for customer developed and built packages. They are in /usr/local and an OS upgrade should not tamper with these files. The /opt i smeant for third party (commercial, etc) software that will also not be affected by OS patching/upgrades.
Highly illogical, you want to segregate your applications based on where you bought or how much you paid for or by license? User software is third party and it goes in usr/local. Nobody needs opt, it’s just oracle etc. way of saying they’re better than you.
No Solaris hater mind you, still running 8 on my rusty trusty sparc5 here, heavy user since V4, I just never saw the need to add to *NIX already sprawling directory structure and still don’t.
i thought i had read that it resulted from a LSB or Portland request.
i note the comments above, but what everyone wants is a default KDE 4 desktop.
it is guessed that KDE 4 will be available Mid 2007.
at the same time SUSE is opting for a 9-10 month dev schedule (instead of 6) meaning that 10.3 will arrive in September time.
it has been said that SUSE is not considering KDE 4 for SUSE 10.3.
this seems odd, because to go for a Sept release and still not ship KDE 4 means that SUSE won’t have a chance to ship a KDE 4 desktop until March 2008 at the earliest, possibly 8 months after other distro’s have done the same.
i would suggest, that if SUSE arn’t going to include KDE 4 in SUSE 10.3, then make the dev schedule 6-7 months instead so that SUSE 10.4 can be released in Dec 2007 with KDE 4 instead of March 2008.
SUSE from what I’ve seen has never been about bleeding edge. They tend to release after bugs have been ironed out. That being said SLED is still using Gnome 2.12, where Gnome 2.18 is a month from being released. For those not savvy on Gnome release schedule math that means that SLED is using a version of Gnome that was released a year and a half ago! 10.1 was also using 2.12 at the time when other distros were releasing with 2.16. I’d be curious to see what happens in the KDE front, but I’m guessing they’re making the assumption they won’t have time to fix all the bugs and release a decent product. I wouldn’t doubt they offer KDE4 in an unsupported unofficial repository though in 10.3.
SUSE from what I’ve seen has never been about bleeding edge. They tend to release after bugs have been ironed out. That being said SLED is still using Gnome 2.12, where Gnome 2.18 is a month from being released.
Actually, for better or worse, Suse does tend towards bleeding edge now as long as the chances of breakage are minimal. At least more so than the pre-Novell Suse < 10.0 seems to have.
SLED is the version that releases when the bugs are out, and that mostly comes from the initial bugzilla reports after Suse goes final; SLED 10 was based on the Suse 10.1 codebase, hence the older version of Gnome, and that’s sort of by design for SLED. Right now SP1 is going through beta testing at Novell, and when released it will update SLED 10 to share many of the same components and improvements as Suse 10.2.
Suse already provides current KDE4 snapshots from SVN through the build service, so there’s no doubt they’ll provide the full desktop as an option after release, for all recent versions. There’s nothing in KDE4 that requires an architectural change that would make it incompatible with earlier releases.
I suspect that KDE4 as a standard desktop will likely anchor Suse 11.0, and possibly SLED 11. Speculation, mind you.
For what it’s worth, the release notes for this alpha say “GNOME 2 is now installed under the /usr/ file system hierarchy and KDE 4 will follow soon. KDE3 will stay in /opt for compatibility reasons”
So it looks like the expectation is that 10.3 will include both KDE3 and KDE4. I imagine that the default will be KDE3 unless KDE4 proves a lot more stable early on than people expect.
KDE 4 will not be in a ready-to-ship form for widespread use till at least March 2008, so Suse’s sense of timing is very accurate.
KDE 4 is a huge platform change and will take a long time to stabilize. There will continue to be KDE 3.5.x and 3.6.x releases for a long time to come, because KDE can be used today and is, generally speaking, rock solid.
There won’t be a 3.6.x release. If you read their mailing lists, you can read that they plan on releasing 3.5.7, but that is at least some months from now. They delay this release on purpose so that the focos of both the developers and users shifts to kde4. 3.5.7 will probably be the last 3.x.x release.
> it is guessed that KDE 4 will be available
> Mid 2007.
With an alpha release due soon (in March) and maybe one or two beta releases following (2-4 months) I don’t see KDE 4 being released before August or September 2007. Jason Harris and the KDE 4 release team are getting more specific about the release schedule these days. But given that KDE 4 certainly won’t be released within the next 5 months it’s easy to understand that KDE 4 isn’t planned to be shipped with openSUSE 10.3.
available from http://download.packages.ro/metalink/opensuse/ and http://www.metalinker.org/samples.html#opensuse
any improvement about boot time
and performance of the system?
It is my understanding that they are constantly looking at this. It is my experience that each release, with 10.2 being the best so far, is faster at boot (and shutdown, by the way) and that the crispness is improving. It is fast if you turn unneeded services off. I was suggested, if I’m correct, in one of the status meetings to review the default settings to see if performance can be enhanced.
I have not been unhappy with SUSE’s performance, although compared to something like Slackware, it’s slow. It’s plenty fast for me though..and if they make incremental improvements, I’m happy…
About KDE4, well….it’s pretty new, maybe it would be a nice thing for openSUSE 11.0? By then there might even be a point release…it would make the overall release experience better….I would think.
at LinuxQuestions http://shots.linuxquestions.org/?linux_distribution_sm=openSUSE~*~@…
After Suse 10.1 and 10.2 installers broke for me after quite a short time, i hope this time they either kick out zen or finally get around fixing it for real.