SuSE, openSUSE Archive

The openSUSE project released openSUSE 13.2 on Tuesday. The latest version of the big, green distro ships with updated desktop software, including KDE 4.14 and GNOME 3.14. The new release also features new artwork, a streamlined installer and faster YaST modules. Perhaps most importantly, openSUSE ships with the advanced Btrfs file system by default and will automatically take snapshots of the operating system whenever configuration changes are made. This allows administrators to roll back disruptive changes quickly and without using backups. Further details of the new openSUSE release can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.

"The latest release brings you speed-ups across the board with a faster storage layer in Linux 3.4 and accelerated functions in glibc and Qt, giving a more fluid and responsive desktop. The infrastructure below openSUSE has evolved, bringing in newly matured technologies like GRUB2 and Plymouth and the first steps in the direction of a revised and simplified UNIX file system hierarchy." You can download openSUSE 12 from the mirrors.

And another popular Linux distribution pushes a new release out the door. This time around, it's openSUSE, as they just released version 12.1. Other than the usual latest and greatest version of all the open source desktops and associated tools, there's a few other interesting tidbits in this release as well.

Attachmate now owns Novell and therefore, by extension, also owns SUSE and openSUSE. With Oracle currently doing everything in its power to thoroughly destroy what's left of Sun's open source commitments, scepticism abound about the future of SUSE, and more specifically of openSUSE. Attachmate's CEO has answered some questions about the future of SUSE and openSUSE, and as far as words go, it's looking good.

When you install OpenSUSE, one of the first things you may wish to do is to install new applications or support for restricted media playback. To do this, you'll need to configure your repositories. This blog post explains how it's done.

Jos Poortvliet recently had the opportunity to conduct a Q&A with Attachmate CEO Jeff Hawn. They covered openSUSE, SUSE and open source in general. Please see the full text of his interview at news.opensuse.org.

"In a message to the opensuse-project mailing list, openSUSE developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced a new project openSUSE Tumbleweed. openSUSE Tumbleweed will provide a rolling release for those openSUSE users who wishes to have a rolling release. It will essentially be a repo containing the latest stable versions of the applications."

Last week the openSUSE conference took place in Nuremberg, Germany. Instead of deciding to fork a major desktop, the conference focused on 'collaboration across borders' and the results are showing. Fedora visitors worked with openSUSE developers to integrate systemd and dracut in openSUSE 11.4, LibreOffice held their first conference track, project Bretzn (let's make developers' life easier) was announced and it became known that Mageia discusses use of the openSUSE Build Service.

Long time fans of openSUSE Linux and its commercial big brother, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, will find a lot to like in this latest update.

Kernel News reviews SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, SP1. In addition to fixing a lot of problems that plagued the initial SLED 11 release, SP1 includes major software updates. For instance, SLED11 SP1 includes GNOME 2.28 and KDE 4.3.5.

Ars reports: The developers behind openSUSE are drafting a new "community statement" as part of a broader effort to define a technical strategy for their project. The purpose of the community statement is to describe the kind of collaborative environment that the project wants to create as it refines its technical focus. The full text of the community statement is published in the openSUSE wiki. Additional details about the strategy proposals and community review process are available from the openSUSE News site.

On August 4 we discussed the possibility of openSUSE defaulting to KDE during the installation routine. This was raised as a feature request within the openSUSE community, and quickly gained the favour of many, become the most popular request. The openSUSE board and variousother leader within the project have discussed the issue, and have decided that yes, from now on, openSUSE will default to KDE during the installation process.

SUSE Linux used to be a very KDE-centric distribution. Then Novell came around, bought SUSE and Ximian, and slowely but surely they turned the now-openSUSE distribution into effectively a GNOME-centric distribution with KDE as its sidekick. The openSUSE community, however, doesn't appear to be particularly happy with KDE being a sidekick.