Technical

THE MAIN news for this project is probably the release of Build Service 1.5, which was announced in the project's Web site.

The openSUSE Project is proud to announce the 1.5 release of the openSUSE Build Service. This release takes developers beyond just building packages. You can now build your own distribution using the openSUSE Build Service!

Heise has covered this too because many of its readers use Open/SUSE. Here is what it's all about:

Version 1.5 can automatically calculate dependencies to create install images, including live CDs, USB drives images, Xen images and VMWare images. The release includes experimental support for cross-architecture builds, filtering of build results via the Web monitor and package download on demand.

Google is going to fund some projects that benefit OpenSUSE (and Microsoft's partner, Novell), which is a little strange.

Once again, the openSUSE Project will be participating in Google’s Summer of Code program! openSUSE was one of the 150 mentoring organizations accepted this year, and we’re excited to have the chance to work with students on projects to improve the openSUSE distribution and its tools.

There are some more OpenSUSE-specific HOWTOs that are new and SUSEGeek remains more or less active.

To install TV-Browser, click this 1-click installer from Packman supported on openSUSE 11.1/11.0/10.3

Experiences

Heise published an overview of GNU/Linux distributions and OpenSUSE was of course included.

While the community distributions Fedora and Ubuntu, as well as Mandriva, prepare for their spring releases, Novell has been busy completing final adjustments to SUSE Linux Enterprise.

[...]

openSUSE has announced a release cycle of eight months. The upcoming release of 11.2 (code-named Fichte) is aimed at November, eleven months after the release of the current version 11.1, which arrived just before Christmas. Meanwhile, there were increasing signs of an early release of the upcoming version 11 of SUSE Linux Enterprise. Novell provided a sneak preview of pre-release versions of both SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 as well as Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 11 in late February and released them both on the 24th of March.

Here are some positive experiences with OpenSUSE 11.1:

Review - OpenSUSE 11.1

[...]

The partitioning part is a breeze as it automatically makes a recommendation, but you can customize it yourself. Choosing your time zone on this baby is even nicer than in XP or even OSX. Before you know it, the install starts and you can even choose to view a nice informational slideshow or the live install details. Half an hour is all it takes.

 

I think that OpenSUSE 11.1 is one of the best linux distributions available, if not the best. There are a few other distros that may be a bit easier to configure, but usually there's a drawback in not having the ability to customize your system the way you like. Also, I find the applications in the OpenSUSE repositories very stable, and haven't experienced any crashes or freezing of the window manager. The documentation and support forums are among the best for assisting new linux users in need of getting their systems set up, and I would definitely recommend it for someone wishing to make the jump from Windows to linux. The final score would definitely be much higher if I would have chosen to select the additional applications during the install process, and even most newbies would be able to figure out which extras to add. The additional applications are described clearly and are in categories in the installer.

David Ramel, who has been trolling GNU/Linux from IDG recently, gave OpenSUSE a shot too, but he seems to be just looking for trouble and provocation.

I don't think openSUSE and I are going to get along, so I'm going to give Fedora a shot.

Here is one claim that OpenSUSE 11.1 is better as a server than Ubuntu 8.04.

Other

The "People of OpenSUSE" series is returning and OpenSUSE Weekly News had regained its pace after some wobbles around FOSDEM and the layoffs. Here is the 64^th installment.

In this Week:

* openSUSE Build Service 1.5 Announced * Gabriel Stein: SuSE-Studio - Quick and Easier * Joe Brockmeier: openSUSE Project Accepted to Google Summer of Code 2009 * mendesdomnic: Package Management Quick Reference * Survey: Is openSUSE Developer Friendly?

The release of SLE* 11 means that there is a lot more news about the commercial product that's produced from OpenSUSE 11.1. An extensive overview will be posted later. ⬆