42 is the actual version number of the next OS

Jun 26, 2015 15:43 GMT  ·  By

openSUSE developers are preparing a new major release, but they are going to call it 42 and not 13.3 or something else. The changes are so profound that a completely new release was needed.

openSUSE hasn't changed too much in the past couple of years, and with the exception of the Tumbleweed edition, nothing exciting really happened. This is usually a good thing for an operating system, since it also means that it's stable and the current user base doesn't need to get used to a new OS or major changes.

Well, the good news is that OpenSuSE devs didn't idly sit on their hands for so long, as they have been working on a new release. However, it turns out that the core changes they plan to make are too big and important to just make another update to the regular one.

This is also the reason why they chose the 42 number, which in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is the "answer to life, the universe and everything."

openSUSE 42 promises to be awesome

When you give the number 42 as the release number, you'd better come up with something to justify that. For now, there is little to no information at all about it, but it's likely we'll hear more very soon.

"Deep thought and some additional core SUSE Linux Enterprise source code have given The openSUSE Project a path forward for future releases. The change is so phenomenal that the project is building a whole new release. Some people might be perplexed over the next regular release, but rather than bikeshedding the name over the next few months, for the moment, we will call it openSUSE: 42," wrote Douglas DeMaio.

All we know is that openSUSE 42 is expected to land in November, during the SUSECon in Amsterdam. Also, it's an LTS release, so you know it has to be good.