As promised, here's the first release candidate and probably the last development version of the upcoming openSUSE 11.1 Linux distribution. This RC includes a new and improved kernel, lots of bug fixes, a new license and many software updates (see below for changes). "If all goes well, this will be the last testing release before the final 11.1 public release on December 18th." - said Joe Brockmeier in the release announcement.

Here's what has changed since the openSUSE 11.1 Beta 5 release:

· Linux kernel 2.6.27.7
· Amarok 2.0 RC1
· Zypper 1.0.1
· glibc 2.9
· The license was shortened
· Added more translations

Testers should also be aware of the following unresolved bugs:

· Novell VPN is broken and does not work at novell-ipsec-tools 0.7.1;
· Amarok 2.0 does not stop on KDE4;
· OpenOffice.org is not included in the PPC edition;
· The license is not translated, yet!

openSUSE 11.1 will be distributed as KDE4 and GNOME Live CDs for both i386 and x86_64 architectures. The usual i586/x86_64/PPC DVDs, Net Install Disk and Addon-NonOss/Addon-Lang CDs will also be available. Among the new technologies and applications that will be part of the final version of openSUSE 11.1, due for release in three weeks, on December 18th, you'll find the latest version of the Linux kernel 2.6.27, KDE 4.1, GNOME 2.24, OpenOffice.org 3, software update stack improvements, and much more...

openSUSE 11.1 release schedule:

July 24th, 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Alpha 1
August 21st, 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Alpha 2
September 18th, 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1
October 3rd, 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 2
October 16th, 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 3
November 3rd, 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 4
November 13th, 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 5
November 27th, 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Release Candidate
December 4th, 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Goldmaster release (internal)
December 18th, 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Public release

Download and test openSUSE 11.1 RC1 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a development 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.