14 DAY TRIAL // The openSUSE 13.2 launch will be ready this November, and the developers are preparing to merge the Tumbleweed and the Factory rolling releases into one, under the name of Tumbleweed.
The OpenSuSE developers have changed the release cycle and they now have more time from one version to the next. This is the main reason why openSUSE 13.2 is set to arrive in November. Now, the two development branches for this distribution have been integrated into a single one and the result promises to be a much better and stable version.
With the final version knocking at the door, it didn't make sense anymore to have two branches, and the best way to serve users was to have them combined into a single one. What's more interesting is the fact that the Tumbleweed branch was started by Greg Kroah-Hartman, who is better known for his work as a kernel developer and maintainer.
How does this merge affect the end user?
The bottom line is that the merge between the two branches won't have a real impact on what the regular user will see and experience. It's a good thing for the distribution in general and it should provide the final OS with a faster and better experience.
"With the release of openSUSE 13.2 due in November, we realised this was a perfect opportunity to merge our two openSUSE rolling-releases together so users of Tumbleweed can benefit from the developments to our Factory development process over the last few years. The combined feedback and contributions from our combined Tumbleweed and Factory users should help keep openSUSE rolling forward even faster, while offering our users the latest and greatest applications on a stable rolling release," says Richard Brown, chairman of the openSUSE board.
"The changes to the Factory release model have changed it from being an unstable development codebase into the type of rolling release I set out to create when starting openSUSE Tumbleweed," also notes Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel developer and creator of openSUSE Tumbleweed.
openSUSE will make a real effort for this upcoming release and it will integrate some of the latest packages, including GNOME 3.14, the KDE 4.14.x branch, Linux kernel 3.17 (which is already out and with a first update), a testing version of the Plasma 5 release, LibreOffice 4.3.12, and a few other packages.
You can download openSUSE 13.2 RC1, openSUSE 13.2 RC1 GNOME Edition, and openSUSE 13.2 RC1 KDE Edition right now from Softpedia.