The openSUSE project is a worldwide community program sponsored by Novell (http://www.novell.com) that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. openSUSE Linux provides anyone with free and easy access to the world's most usable Linux distribution, SUSE Linux.

The goals of the openSUSE project are:

Make SUSE Linux the easiest Linux distribution for anyone to obtain, and the most widely used open source platform.

Provide an environment for open source collaboration tha makes SUSE Linux the world's best Linux distribution for new and experienced Linux users.

Dramatically simplify and open the development and packaging processes to make SUSE Linux the platform of choice for Linux hackers and application developers.

Currently, SUSE Linux is an unsupported, open source only, preliminary edition of SUSE Linux that contains bleeding-edge packages and represents the latest development snapshot. If you intend to test for bugs or contribute patches, this version is for you...


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What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· M6 sees the completed removal of the HAL hardware abstraction layer, to be replaced with the more up-to-date and actively maintained udev, udisks and upower suite. HAL was already scheduled for removal in 11.3, but it was retained while the last few software packages which depend on it were ported to udev and company.

· Branding and artwork has had a lot of attention, with the addition of the final wallpapers, splash screens and branding for 11.4. The default wallpaper is called Celadon Stripes, taking its inspiration from the color codename for this release.

· New software added in Milestone 6 includes the WebYaST stack. WebYaST is the web-based admin tool developed for SLES, now available for openSUSE. Professional sysadmins and those who just like to comfortably administer their openSUSE servers will appreciate WebYaST. Also on the server side, the latest versions of the Horde groupware suite are now in openSUSE.

· Software updates this milestone include the update of XOrg to 7.6, VirtualBox 4.0.2, GnuCash 2.4, and Scribus 1.3.9. A lively discussion on the opensuse-factory list about whether to include the stable Firefox 3.6.13 or a Firefox 4 beta centered around the limited availability of popular extensions for version 4 versus the short upstream maintenance period of Firefox 3 releases. As this article was published, the discussion was leaning towards taking a Firefox 4 beta and online-updating it to the final release when it becomes available.

· Updates are flowing thick and fast to the KDE workspace and applications. KDE 4.6RC2 is on M6, and will be updated to 4.6.0 final for the first Release Candidate. The accompanying flurry of application releases include Amarok 2.4.0, Digikam 1.8.0, KOffice 2.3.1, k3b 2.0.2, KDevelop 4.2, KMyMoney 4.5, Rekonq 0.6 and BlueDevil 1.0.1. Fans of the Oxygen style will also see it in GTK applications, thanks to the native port of Oxygen to a GTK style in the form of the oxygen-gtk package .

· As the GNOME project prepares for GNOME 3, the focus at openSUSE is on stabilisation and polish to GNOME 2.32. Bugfixes to PulseAudio, GDM and gnome-main-menu will ensure that 11.4 brings incremental refinement to GNOME users. Clutter 1.5 is included to support the latest available preview of gnome-shell, and the gramps genealogy tool is added in version 3.2.5. The GNOME team is preparing an 11.4-based Live CD that will include GNOME 3 when it is released in March.

· The XFCE desktop is updated thanks to the hard work of the community to version 4.8, bringing with it network transparent file management, a rewritten panel, menus editable with Alacarte, and improved packaging and installation selections for openSUSE.