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Announcing openSUSE 10.3 GM
(295 votes, average: 4.56 out of 5)
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The openSUSE team is proud to announce the release of openSUSE 10.3. Promoting the use of Linux everywhere, the openSUSE project provides free, easy access to the world’s most usable Linux distribution, openSUSE. openSUSE is released regularly, is stable, secure, contains the latest free and open source software, and comes with several new technologies.
openSUSE 10.3 will be supported with security and other serious updates for a period of 2 years.
This version contains new beautiful green artwork, KDE 3.5.7 and parts of KDE 4, SUSE-polished GNOME 2.20, a GTK version of YaST, a new 1-click-install technology, MP3 support out-of-the-box, new and redesigned YaST modules, compiz and compiz fusion advances, virtualisation improvements, OpenOffice.org 2.3, Xfce 4.4.1, and much more! Read on for details of what is new and available in openSUSE 10.3, and for all the necessary download links.
On the desktop
There are many visual changes throughout this release, and they are also well-presented in the openSUSE 10.3 Screenshots on the wiki.
Beautiful Green Artwork
This release, as always, will have a full, new collection of artwork, and for openSUSE 10.3 it has gone back to the classical and much-loved green theme. It is all finished off with a polished and professional look:
To see more openSUSE 10.3 artwork, see its respective branding overview.
KDE 3.5.7
The default KDE desktop is the latest stable and SUSE-polished KDE 3.5.7, which comes complete with the usability-centric Kickoff menu, KNetworkManager and other such openSUSE creations. Kontact, the KDE Personal Information Manager, has also been upgraded to the enterprise release, providing you with some new features and many fixes.
KDE 4
While KDE 3.5.7 is the default KDE desktop environment, the first parts of KDE 4 will also be seen in the distribution. This includes, by default, some KDE 4 games as well as KDE 4 versions of KRDC and KRFB — applications for remote administration. Below you can see a couple of screenshots of these KDE 4 games, now both using SVG for a smoother graphical experience:
A full KDE 4 desktop is also available for preview purposes:
GNOME 2.20
The very latest GNOME 2.20 is also featured in this release, and it comes with its own selection of typically SUSE-polished additions. This includes the simpler and better-structured SLAB menu, a new world clock applet from the intlclock package (pictured below), as well as the comprehensive, feature-full and well-delivered F-Spot and Banshee applications, which are a photo browser and audio player respectively.
GTK YaST
The GTK version of YaST is now default for all GNOME installations. This means that YaST will still have a well-integrated and consistent feel when using the GNOME desktop environment, and all the modules are structured in the same way as openSUSE’s GNOME control panel.
The GTK version of YaST of course also contains all of the same YaST modules as the regular Qt version, so there is absolutely no loss of functionality. Sentimental users can still easily switch to the Qt-style YaST by editing /etc/sysconfig/yast2.
1-Click Install
This is a completely new and revolutionary piece of technology available to you in openSUSE, which finally removes the hassle from installing additional software from other repositories. Instead of searching for a repository, adding it to the package manager, then heading over to software management again, 1-Click-Install combines it into one simple process, all initiated by a single click.
It is already fully implemented in the openSUSE Build Service, and it is used for aiding you in acquiring multimedia codecs as is mentioned below.
Multimedia
The frequently-requested feature of MP3 support is now fully available out-of-the-box! MP3 playback is available via Fluendo (GStreamer) codecs in either Amarok or Banshee. These are available on the DVD, but if you chose to use the 1-CD Installation it is just as easy to get working — a small and friendly dialog box will inquire about whether you wish to enable MP3 support:
The codecs will then be installed using 1-Click-Install. This same technology is also used on the Community website where it recommends workarounds and methods to get other multimedia formats working. See openSUSE-Community.org/Multimedia.
New/Redesigned YaST Modules
The Network card module has also been completely re-designed from a usability perspective. The new version is more relevant to today’s typical configuration of a network card, and makes simple tasks a lot easier to accomplish.
One popular new module is the Community Repositories module, which provides you with a convenient list of the official repositories, popular repositories in the openSUSE Build Service, and external community repositories. This makes it trivial to enable the extra repositories that you require.
Another module available from the yast2-product-creator package is a YaST front-end to KIWI, a configurable and easy-to-use application to help you roll your very own system images. Though there are many additional plans for KIWI, it currently supports a huge selection of options, such as creating Live CDs, USB, QEMU/VMware, Xen and Net boot images. Unlike other typical system image creators, KIWI is fully configurable (down to the wallpaper you want to have), and has a clean and simple design.
Compiz and Compiz Fusion
Compiz, as always, is available directly on all the installation CDs/DVDs, and Compiz Fusion is also available in the official online repository. The new version comes with many new amazing plugins providing you with the latest composite effects.
To learn more see this sneak peaks article. The X11:/XGL openSUSE Build Service repository also always provides the latest Compiz and Compiz Fusion versions.
Virtualisation
There have been several Virtualisation improvements and additions, including of course an excellent delivery of the latest Xen 3.1 and QEMU. Furthermore, VirtualBox, a general-purpose full virtualizer, and KVM, the latest Linux virtualisation infrastructure, are now included. Other VMware-related kernel options such as paravirt-ops and vmi have also been enabled in the kernel now.
OpenOffice.org 2.3
OpenOffice.org, the comprehensive office suite in openSUSE, has also been updated to the latest stable version of 2.3. The release includes several new features and countless fixes.
A Whole Lot More!
openSUSE 10.3 contains a plethora of extra improvements that haven’t been mentioned here, including small applications like Giver, an easy file-sharing tool, Xfce 4.4.1, and other community developments. See Product Highlights/10.3 for more details.
Behind the Scenes
Though this release has seen a large selection of graphical changes, a lot of work has been happening all around the distribution, with several changes occuring behind the scenes.
New Package Management
The package management team have been working hard on improving the new openSUSE package management, and there is a lot to show for it now. It is reliable, more mature, and an awful lot faster. There is no more parsing during startup, greater compatibility with tools like yum and smart, and increased speed for the most common use-case: installing a package.
It contains the much-improved zypper tool for the command line, a re-designed openSUSE updater applet (a native KDE and GNOME one) as pictured below, while still providing you with the same YaST interface for graphical package management.
Greatly Improved Boot Time
A big round of improvements to the boot time are now included. There are now some incredibly impressive speed-ups, with desktops booting in around 24 seconds, or laptops booting in 27 seconds compared to a 55 second wait in openSUSE 10.2! See the link for more details.
Under the Hood
- Linux 2.6.22.5
- GCC 4.2
- libZYpp 3.26.2
Media and Download
All of the installation media can be downloaded from software.openSUSE.org via torrents or HTTP/FTP. Here’s a few quick links:
- 1 DVD containing OSS and NonOSS software (torrents for: i386, x86_64, ppc). Languages supported: English, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Chinese (Simpl. & Trad.), Japanese, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Finnish, Danish, Swedish, Dutch
- 1 CD with a default KDE installation (i386, x86_64, not for ppc, English only)
- 1 CD with a default GNOME installation (i386, x86_64, not for ppc, English only)
- 1 AddOn CD with only NonOSS packages (i386 or x86_64, ppc)
- 1 AddOn CD with language packages that are used for extra languages (i386, x86_64, ppc, only to be used with DVDs!)
Live CDs will be released in the next couple of weeks. Metalinks with checksum support are also available from download.packages.ro.
Upgrade Options
As always, you can fully upgrade your previous openSUSE 10.2 to the final version of openSUSE 10.3 by simply downloading one of the media options and burning it to disk, boot to it, and then select the Upgrade option in the installer. For the smoothest possible upgrade, leave the “Add Online Repositories Before Installation” option checked.
To upgrade from openSUSE 10.3 RC1, please ensure that you have strictly only the 10.3 repositories (oss, non-oss; not the factory ones), in YaST -> Software Repositories; if you do not, remove the factory ones and then add the 10.3 ones again from the Community Repositories YaST module. Once that is done, go to Software Management, and in the menu select Package -> All Packages -> Update if Newer Version Available.
Alternatively, with Zypper you can execute the following command to upgrade all packages (again, first check that you have the 10.3 repositories and not the factory ones):
zypper update -t package
Communicate!
We want to hear from you! To get help, provide any feedback, ask questions, or get involved and help contribute to the openSUSE distribution, please communicate. There are several ways to get in touch with the openSUSE community, including:
- IRC: #opensuse on irc.freenode.net
- Discussion Forums: take a look at openSUSE.org/Communicate/Forums
- Mailing Lists: in particular, the opensuse@opensuse.org (subscribe) is available for all support questions. For additional help with subscribing, check here
- For other ways such as Jabber and Usenet, see the Communicate page.
A huge thanks to all those involved in the release, particularly all the community contributors, for making this an excellent openSUSE release!
To install all the necessary multimedia codecs and restricted formats (using 1-click-install), see http://opensuse-community.org/Restricted_Formats/10.3
Also worth noting where you can 1-click the Nvidia driver, http://en.opensuse.org/NVIDIA
There is only one CD to download.
Where are the other 5?
They don’t exist anymore, it’s either one of the CDs or the DVD.
Nice work, dudes. SuSE has always been one of the best and most popular distributions.
And until the strong popularity from Ubuntu it has been THE choice for German people.
I hope to enjoy this version. At the moment I favour Debian(-based) distros. But SuSE could be an alternative. Probably the best one (on a desktop-pc). (I only tested 10.1 and 10.2, but for me they were not as good as Debian(based distros!) (this should not be an introduction for a flamewar :D)
Thank yo so much! openSuSe is the best Linux distributive.
I have tried many of them and I found out SuSE is the best!
This is great. I’ve been avoiding suse since 10.1. I think now is the time to come back. The one thing I am concerned with is the fonts in the screenshots don’t look so good.
would it help if I told you that you can choose which fonts to use?
Do you really believe in what you just said? Have you even ever used anything but a Linux desktop? I ask because if you had (any other really… from Win95 to Vista, or even os x), you’d never dare to stand for anything font-related regarding Linux desktops. Really…
Take any open minded linux user, have them browse the web with vista for an hour…
linux_user> Why do my eyes hurt?
any_other_os> You’re seeing nice fonts for the first time…
Yeah my friend… You’re living in a dream world…
No intention to upset the minority using vista out there, but the fonts on Linux systems are far more varied and provide better choice for all aspects of computer design, and general use. And i’m actually quite disappointed by the number of Microsoft True Type fonts pre-installed by default, and so many good fonts that you find pre-installed on Mandriva/RedHat, etc…
But apart from that, great distro, openSuSE an excellent well polished distro, as always.
The fonts that were introduced with XP (Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Georgia, Arial (MS)) were specially designed by a team north of London for easy reading on screen. They are pleasant to look at on-screen. Microsoft spent millions on those well designed fonts and their embedded hinting-scripts. They were released to the public for widespread use a few years ago. (This from /microsoft/ !) They do not render all that well on paper or other high-res devices.
Between Apple/Adobe and MS, there’s been a feud about rendering true to nature (loos like you have the printed end result before your eyes) vs. “it looks nice while I see it on screen”. Something to be said for both camps.
With the advent of Anti-aliasing in Linux the third move is “we have anti-aliasing, but be patient, it’s horrible” towards “hey, this is actually pleasing”. It is still not clear if it is either of the “true” or “nice” camps. But major progress has been made. And you can now tweak the anti-alisasing level until the fonts are rendered to your liking.
Some fonts are currently (SuSE 10.2 and 10.3) not very nicely rendered. I actually liked it the way 10.1 did. Especially Times and Arial are not up to spec. If necessary, you can physically replace the *.ttf in /usr/share/fonts/truetype for the ‘offending’ fonts to make sure they use microsofts’ if that’s your thing.
The Linux/Apple/Adobe line, makes for heavier, less rounded-off rendering, and may take some time to get used to, though. MS is mostly very crisp, which works very well on LCD’s.
Here are a few good sources about fonts.
* The new Vista fonts described:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=47&aid=78683
* The cost of font design:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/08/28/why_computer_fonts_are_so/
* Good fonts
http://www.goodfonts.org/eflp/fonts/pid73362/D285096/C0/PROVAHHAF
* Intro to anti-aliasing
http://www.isocalc.com/tutorials/antialias.htm
* Extensive comparison various anti-alias techniques (Adobe, MS, Linux)
(includes a good list of references)
http://antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.html
* Joel On Software
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html
* Gibson Research in detail
http://www.grc.com/ctwhat.htm
Great work everyone! It’s a tough job maintaining and improving the worlds greatest Linux Distribution, but you all make it look so easy.
I just started downloading this new version today and I can’t wait until it finish, in order to I start using this distro!
I followed the news during last months and I really want to test the new package management system!
Congratulations to openSUSE community! Today’s a great day for me!
Thank you, openSUSE!
openSUSE best!
Great work everybody! Really looking forward to downloading and using this great distro!
OpenSUSE has always been my favourite distro!
I use it since 9.0.
Please continue to work like this!
Can anyone tell me his md5-checksum?
I got
39D1A1DC7E193264F756EB67D84504A My version
39d1a1dc07e193264f756eb67d84504a This is on the website
Mine only has one 0 less (dc75 instead f dc07e)
so… is my file really corrupt or is the given sum wrong? I cant imagine why mine should be corrupt…
I got 0 in my check sum, but I also got it all small case letters (under redhat).
http://en.opensuse.org/Checksums/10.3
i meant dc7e in the first row…. so the only difference is this 0
Notice that your MD5 sum (My version) only has 31 hex digits. MD5 products 16 bytes of data (displays as 32 hex digits). Whatever application printed your checksum dropped the leading zero on the second group of eight hex digits. That’s a bug in the application. The data you ran MD5 agains is probably correct.
Or, the MD5 application may have printed out two hex digits at a time and dropped the leading zero on the 5th byte of data. If it is uses a printf in C then it may be using “%2x” instedd of “%02x” in the format string. Report or fix the bug in the MD5 program you are using.
Right. And furthermore, the MD5sum you’d get from a corrupt file would be similar to the correct one only with infinitesimally small probability. You’re always going to see either the same checksum, or a very obviously different one.
Great job everyone! SUSE has always been my favorite distribution at home and work as well. I started with 8.2 and despite the fact that I tried numerous distributions since then, SUSE always gets me back!
keep it up, opensuse!!! looks great….
Great!
It’s still downloading. I can’t wait to install!
Thanks for all your hard work.
openSUSE’s the best!
Greetings from The Netherlands
I think I need to change my boxers….
Hi there .
Great job guys/gals.But what about wifi support,one of the things what makes stay away from Open Suse 10-10.2.So could some tell if most commun wifi cards are supported on the kernel?
Thanks
i know this is not the nonplusultra solution. but try ndiswrapper with your win2k/XP drivers. simply let it run all available options, and then write “ndiswrapper” into the field below “module name” in your networkcard configuration in Yast. then configure it through knetworkmanager. if you want to use a hidden network at your place, then connect to it manually, select “show networks” from the options menu of knetworkmanager, and drag the network you’Re connected to do “fallback” (if it’s not already there)
works for ALL cards/usb sticks i tried this method on, and i never encountered any problems with the system stability!
I am a former SUSE user. I wish I could get exited about this as I used to, but I cannot support a distribution produced by a company that agrees to enter into a pact with MS that threatens all Linux developers not joining it. That may not matter to some of you, but for me it is important that the distro I support is a good free software community member that doesn’t just look out for its own selfish ambitions. Fortunately, there are excellent alternatives out there. Go to distrowatch.com and explore some of them.
Yawn
Grow up, go back to a distribution that steals rather than makes an agreement with a company to allow it to be able to use things it has a copyright on. Really, you people need to grow up. There is an article on kde-.org about trolls, a very good article that you should go read and learn from.
Please define “steals”. The intellectual property laws are unethical and unjust. The fact that some government has passed laws to enforce these idiotic rules does not alter that fact. The governments (especially the United States) involved are corrupt and it is a damn shame that the voters in that country are so mindless that they vote them in in the first place.
Still the stupid governments (i use the word loosely) are there and the nonsensical laws they pass are there - the best that reasonable and sensible people can do is ingore them as much as possible, and hope that one day they will go away (some hope!).
‘Justathought’ Why are you even no this website? Seems like you are just here to cause trouble. Obviously you don’t want to install the distro, nor do you care about the new release. So why are you here? Vis-a-vis the MS-deal: near as I can tell, the largest effect was Novell getting a buttload of money up front in exchange for some guaranteed and some sales-dependent money to MS later on — and MS getting to spread “FUD” about their patents to confuse people like you. If you could even come up with a quarter of the money MS paid to Novell, maybe you could comment. I forget the exact figures, but essentially, MS paid, say, 50M to Novell. You are saying to Novell: “Please don’t take $50million dollars, cause it makes me uncomfortable that you are dealing with MS”. Get a clue. Novell is a business, not a non-profit company.
Besides — this is “openSuSE” — which I thought was mostly community supported — if you want to vent against a distro, go vent against Novell’s business distro. Here, your comments just insult the community of developers working to put this distro out. *plegh* :^&
“So could some tell if most commun wifi cards are supported on the kernel?”
Hmm i don’t think so, it didnt work on my laptop with an atheros card after the install. But with the madwifi drivers it works perfect:
http://madwifi.org/
I think this only works with Atheros cards…
openSUSE 10.3, is just great !
Congrats everyone who contributed to openSUSE 10.3
“Congrats everyone who contributed to openSUSE 10.3″
But beware those of you who didn’t!
the download site doesn’t seem to work right now, try to get 32bit DVD version and only got 100M, far less than 4.1G!
This looks like a problem with your download program, it can not download files larger than 4 GB :-(. Please try another download option and report a bug against the broken download program
Use bittorrent! It’s perfect for files of this size and suse is very popular so you will always have many peers and seeds so it will download in no time.
Summarized and translated in italian language:
http://pettinix.blogspot.com/2007/10/rilasciata-opensuse-103.html
We love you Suse
“Turkey users..”
I’m sorry to hear this. Where excactly is that written? Please file a bugreport. For instructions see http://bugs.opensuse.org.
I replaced 10.2 with 10.3 on my x86 webserver yesterday and so far its very good. In less than 3hrs, everything is finished and that is impressive. I could download only 10.3 KDE CD from torrent so I used it even though I prefer using DVD.In the 3 hrs, I had different feelings about it & here is my brief review.The best thing I can say in few words is “Everything just works”. I did not use command line even once.
Now the negatives
Installation: Only minor annoyance. I couldn’t deslect both Games & Desktop Effects. When I deselct one, the other one is automatically selected.
Post Installation-Configuration: When trying to configure the printer, I couldn’t find HP4100 series printer in the database. But later after going thr’ CUPS configuration, I was able to install the printer.
Post configuration: I generally delete all the packages I don’t need. With Suse, earlier it used be that I couldn’t remove lot of packages because of dependencies. This time since the no. of packages installed are less, I had to remove only a few. In this respect I think yast can be more modularized. I could remove yast2-tv and yast2-scanner but not yast2-bluetooth and yast2-fingerprint reader. Also at this point I was able to delete KDE games and Desktop effects.
Software Management:This is the major issue for most of the openSuse users.The nice addition to this release is community repos. So one don’t have to google for extra repos. The repos I enabled are Main (OSS,non-OSS),Packman,nvidia & KDE ports in build. It would be better, if one can choose a mirror for the community repos. Now its not possible. And I added update repo. All worked without any problems. The speed of package manager improved, but not to my satisfation. All I can say is software management is STILL SLOW. It downloads package info from all the repos, whenever I open it. And that too when when it is downloading, the main window and the small window (which says whats happening), alternately flash and that is straining my eyes. When I search for something in the package manager, a small window appears saying “searching …”, which again is irritating. When I close and restart package manager, it again downloads package info from all repos. When I was configuring clock to NTP time, it spent two minutes downloading package info from repos. What the heck!
Final conclusions: Its very solid and good. Coming to software management is slightly improved, but needs LOTS of improvement for streamlined user experience. Most of the users spend first few hrs installing software. Thats is the time they decide to stick to or not. I guess with this release also, most won’t.
You didn’t have to google for repos in 10.2. I have been using packages.opensuse-community.org which is very convenient.
The package manager should not download information for all repositories everytime you open it. It should just read the locally stored cache if the repository hasn’t changed since the last time you used the package manager. If your package manager goes on downloading informations from unchanged repositories like OSS and non-OSS, it’s not what it is expected to do, so please report it.
For larger and not changing repositories (OSS, non-OSS), however, you can disable the automatic refresh in Yast -> Installation sources.
Regards,
Alberto
I use YUM for package management on OpenSuSe 10.1. I run a batch job weekly to find and install updates. Only glitches I is a rare conflict from the packman repo.
great product! OpenSuse is my main OS for daily usage, work and home. My wife event uses OpenSuse now even she did not know what Linux is.
Congrats everyone who contributed to openSuse
Hello thanks for opensuse 10.3
But very slow download link (../distribution/10.3/iso/dvd/openSUSE-10.3-GM-DVD-x86_64.iso) 13Kb/s
I am using 4096/1024 ADSL Turkey.
Which mirrors fast? Please help me. Thanks.
@Murat:Must be the connection in between the hosts!
I did the download until an hour ago in 3:20 hours with an average of 320kBytes/s. That’s really fast, thinking of that the distro was first released TODAY (ok, now yesterday). Must be a _really_ fast server connection ..
My downlink could do faster, but hey, we are not the only ones wanting that release _now_.
Thanks!
i trye dopen suse before, but i dident have the ram, it seems odd the installer wont let you install and just compinsate with a swap. am i wasting my time downloading this if i only have 256mb Ram?
I did it with 10.2, it was OK (so-so even with 128MB). You just had to have a swap partition ready before installing; it was possible to do it during, but I don’t remebere how. I guess it will be same with 10.3.
http://www.debian.org
Why is everytime a Release comes out, The freaks and well Pedos* come out of the woodwork?
You know who you are.
You know who you are.
Do you really want to know why or are you just being obtuse? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. To find out why some people are very disappointed with Novell look here as a start:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2006-11-29-020-26-IN-BZ-NV&tbovrmode=1#talkback_area
Weekend project: fresh 10.3 install!
openSUSE ROCKS!!! Excellent work guys. Yet Another Sweet Release.
Comment by Justathought
2007-10-04 17:36:14
Do you really want to know why or are you just being obtuse? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. To find out why some people are very disappointed with Novell look here as a start:
———————
Did you know that microsoft and novell were once a team . ? I dont think you do.
It is old news about novell and microsoft like news in 95.
Listen , do you remember novell netware err microsoft nt4 and nt5 . novell used to be part of microsoft back in the day. Novell also is the one that bought out Suse back in the day. Do your history. I was actually there when it happened , obviously you were not
This is not the place to discuss the history of the computing industry, or ‘FUD’ a very good distro. Some etiquette please, Novell, OpenSuSE and everyone else involved have worked very hard on this release.