Waltham (ip-192.com): After eight milestone releases and two release candidates, the latest version 11.3 of Novell openSUSE Linux (download is available here) arrives with several new features and technical improvements. The distribution is build around kernel 2.6.34 and ships with Xorg 7.5. Computers powered by NVIDIA-graphic cards will benefit from the new open source Nouveau driver.
OpenSUSE 11.3 uses KDE 4.4.4 as the default desktop environment. However, users that prefer Gnome can choose to install Version 2.30.1 or a preview of the upcoming Gnome 3.0 during the initial setup. Owners of netbook computers can use the lightweight LXDE environment, which debuts in the latest release.
"The openSUSE distribution is a stable, easy to use and complete multi-purpose distribution," Novell says on the openSUSE Wiki. "It is aimed for users and developers working on desktop or server. It's great for beginners, experienced users and ultra geeks, short it's perfect for everybody! OpenSUSE is also the base for Novell's award-winning SUSE Linux Enterprise products. The latest release … features new and massively improved versions of all useful server and desktop applications. It comes with more than 1,000 open source applications."
A first is the inclusion of Oracle’s Btrfs filesystems. While not recommended for production environments yet, users need to configure a separate boot partition to give it a test run since grub does not recognize Btrfs at this time.
The new version includes the updated Build Service 2.0 provides software developers with a tool to compile, release and publish their software, and a full collection of popular open-source programs such as OpenOffice and Firefox. The YaST2 system administration tool combines all programs users may need in one easy-to-use set of menus.
After the release of openSUSE 11.3, the development community starts to focus on version 11.4 that is scheduled to be released in March 2011. The project aims to release a new version every eight months. Critical updates will be provided for two releases plus two months, which at the current release cycle results in a support lifetime of 18 months.
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