14 DAY TRIAL // The fifth milestone of the upcoming openSUSE 12.1 has been released. The latest testing release comes with updated packages, bug fixes and makes several more steps towards completing the goals for the final release.
The team is getting closer to using SystemD by default and GNOME 3.2 is getting closer to reality with a newer testing build, included in the fifth milestone.
"openSUSE 12.1′s next milestone 5 is now ready for download. Thanks to the men and women of OpenSuSE Factory who kept their eye on the ball," the announcement reads.
"There’s a lot of interesting updates to the 12.1 release and some cool new technologies including GNOME 3 and SystemD. You’ll definitely want to take this milestone for a spin and see what you can expect in 12.1," it said.
openSUSE 12.1 will make the switch to the GNOME 3 desktop environment, that's proven quite controversial in some circles. Of course, any major reboot of a project is going to have its critics.
By the time openSUSE comes along, GNOME 3.2 should be ready. openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 5 comes with the experimental GNOME 3.1.5, not the recent beta, GNOME 3.1.9.
Another big change is the switch to SystemD which will replace the current InitV. The latest milestone still hasn't made the switch, InitV is the default currently, but there are plans to drop it as soon as possible, so testing in this area could come in handy.
openSUSE also announced that it will include OpenJDK from now on, rather than the binary Java JDK coming from Oracle.
Oracle recently announced that it will no longer be licensing this version of the JDK to Linux distributions which are encouraged to adopt the open-source version, OpenJDK. Milestone 5 is the last to include the Oracle version.
openSUSE 12.1 release schedule:
Tue, May 31 2011 - openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 1
Wed, Jun 22 2011 - openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 2
Thu, Jul 14 2011 - openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 3
Thu, Aug 11 2011 - openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 4
Thu, Sep 01 2011 - openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 5
Thu, Sep 22 2011 - openSUSE 12.1 Beta
Thu, Oct 13 2011 - openSUSE 12.1 RC 1
Fri, Oct 27 2011 - openSUSE 12.1 RC 2
Thu, Nov 03 2011 - openSUSE 12.1 Goldmaster
Fri, Nov 11 2011 - openSUSE 12.1 Public Release
openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 5 is available for download here on Softpedia. Remember that this is a development 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 official openSUSE Bug Tracker.