In order to prevent the front page from containing too much positive Novell news, we shall begin experimenting with truncation of posts, which then requires that the reader presses the "read more" hyperlink/cue. We realise that Saturday's postings can often 'dilute' (take away from) the key message and distract readers.

Let us begin with a quick roundup of OpenSUSE development.

OpenSUSE: General

Man of the week is Klaus Kämpf, who seems like quite a veteran.

Long time openSUSE developer Klaus Kämpf joined former S.u.S.E nine years ago and since then never looked back being committed to his System Management Architect job at Novell.

OpenSUSE: Beta 3

Fortunately, there is a nice review of what is now the previous development release of OpenSUSE 11.0.

Overall, OpenSUSE 11 Beta 3 is fairly stable and very fast system. It is definitely not for the fainthearted of the newbies, but distro junkies like me will love it. With KDE4.1 Beta1 released and OpenSUSE 11 RC1 schedule to release this week, OpenSUSE 11 is right on track and is poised to be a distro worth tempering with.

OpenSUSE: RC1

The release was announced by Zonker in the mailing lists. You can find a copy of it.

The openSUSE Project is proud to announce the openSUSE 11.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1). The good news is that we’re closing in on the final release of 11.0, but it’s not time to relax just yet. We’re getting really close, so we need all hands on deck to help test this release candidate. Since beta 3 we’ve fixed 578 bugs and resolved 1,118 bugs! Read on to see how you can help get 11.0 into top shape.

Softpedia once again ushered the arrival of an OpenSUSE test build and counted bugfixes too. It did this the last time too.

The release candidate version of openSUSE 11.0 was announced last night by the hard working people behind the openSUSE project: "The good news is that we’re closing in on the final release of 11.0, but it’s not time to relax just yet. We’re getting really close, so we need all hands on deck to help test this release candidate." This RC fixes 578 bugs and resolves 1.118 ones.

Francis did a quick selective tour and produced some screenshots.

Though I’ve been running KDE 4 for a few months, it’s great to see it even more polished and working more nicely in the latest RC. With the import of the new artwork, everything looks and feels really wonderful...

Michael Larabel shared some shots of the installer of a previous build that he had downloaded for assessment.

This Linux installer uses Trolltech's Qt4 tool-kit and provides a dramatically improved experience over the earlier YaST installer. However, as the interface has changed slightly since sharing those screenshots, attached are the installation screenshots from OpenSuSE 11.0 RC 1.

First review to be picked up on the face of it is this comprehensive (visually at least) one.

Today openSUSE 11.0 RC was released, and without a second to spare I downloaded the ISO and started the installation on a Dell D820 with NVIDIA NVS 110M Card and Intel 3945 Wireless Driver (which has been known to have poor support lately).

Lots of screenshots herein. S.u.S.E came a long way. ⬆