First Beta Release of openSUSE 11.1 Is Here

A few days ago, the openSUSE Team announced the first beta release of openSUSE 11.1, which includes many new additions over the previous alpha releases, such as new GNOME, KDE and kernel versions, as well as numerous improvements and bug fixes.

A delay in the release of this version occurred partly because the ISOs have been created using KIWI and RPMs within the openSUSE Build Service, which is now undergoing a transition in terms of shifting all development within it.

This version comes with lots of new or improved features, the most important of them being listed below:

GNOME 2.24:

· Banshee 1.3;
· New deskbar plugins;
· Ekiga 3.0;
· PulseAudio improvements;
· File manager improvements (including tab support and "compact" view in Nautilus);
· Power Manager improvement (Tab added to configure time to automatically wake from suspend/hibernate);
· New screen resolution controls.

KDE 3.5.10:

· it will be included on the media DVD, under the "other window managers" category.

KDE 4.1.x:

· Amarok 2.0 Beta 1;
· Enhanced SVG support;
· Autohiding panels;
· KWin has compositing enabled by default;
· KWin cube effect.

New YaST Modules:

· Re-written YaST Printer module;
· Re-written YaST Partitioner module;
· Re-written YaST Security module (checks the security of your system configuration).

Also featured:

· Linux kernel 2.6.27 RC5;
· GCC 4.3.2;
· Samba 3.2.3;
· OpenOffice.org 3.0 RC1;
· Python 2.6 Beta 3 and 3.0 Beta 3;
· Xen 3.3.1 RC;
· PackageKit 0.3.2;
· X.org 7.4.

openSUSE 11.1 release schedule:

· 24 July 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Alpha 1
· 21 August 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Alpha 2
· 18 September 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1
· 2 October 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 2
· 16 October 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 3
· 30 October 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 4
· 13 November 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Release Candidate 1
· 27 November 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Release Candidate 2
· 4 December 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Goldmaster release (internal)
· 18 December 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Public release

Download and test openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a beta release and should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only. Please report bugs to the openSUSE Bug Tracker.

The stable openSUSE 11.0 release can also be downloaded from Softpedia.