openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 3 Comes With a Professional Installer

The third alpha version of openSUSE 11.0 was launched a couple of days ago and it comes packed with some important improvements, like a new and professional installer theme (see the image on the left) and faster package management system. Here are the most essential changes since the Alpha 2 release:

￭ Linux kernel 2.6.25 RC5
￭ GCC 4.3.0
￭ GNOME 2.22.0
￭ Compiz 0.7.2
￭ KDE 4.0.2
￭ KDE 3.5.9
￭ Zypper 0.10.2

The developers have found some bugs, which are not fixed yet. Here is a short list with the most annoying ones:

￭ The kernel OOPSes early in the installation on hardware probe on some hardware. Workaround: boot with hwprobe=-parallel,-misc.par [including VirtualBox];
￭ "Use Automatic Configuration" checkbox is highly experimental, this feature is not finished yet. The root password will be "*****" by default, feel free to change it;
￭ network startup is racy;
￭ the artwork is not complete yet.

Remember that this is an alpha release and it 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

openSUSE 11.0 release schedule:

6 December 2007: openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 0
17 January 2008: openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 1
7 February 2008: openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 2
19 March 2008: openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 3
17 April 2008: openSUSE 11.0 Beta 1
2 May 2008: openSUSE 11.0 Beta 2
13 May 2008: openSUSE 11.0 Beta 3
29 May 2008: openSUSE 11.0 Release Candidate 1
12 June 2008: openSUSE 11.0 Goldmaster release (internal)
19 June 2008: openSUSE 11.0 Public release

Download and test openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 3 right now from Softpedia and don't forget to drop a line or two about it!

Also, the stable openSUSE 10.3 release can be downloaded right now from Softpedia.