As winter refuses to relax its icy grasp on the northern hemisphere, the openSUSE project would like to announce the first release candidate of version 12.3 of its popular Linux distribution. Major updates include the desktop environment KDE to version 4.10, GNOME 3.6 and kernel 3.7.6. Help to iron out the last few bugs before the final release by downloading RC1 from software.opensuse.org.

What’s in there?

This preview includes the large number of fixes made to Factory since the beta, as well as the last major set of version updates.  RC1 needs a real workout to ensure we fix any remaining issues in time, so don’t wait for RC2, put it on your spare disk and give it a try now. Major changes include:

• PackageKit 0.8.7
  • Major release allows transactions to be parallelized for better performance. The libzypp backend used by openSUSE was completely rewritten around the new API, allowing a lot of old ugly bugs to be shown the door.
• Apper 0.8
  • Rewritten around new PackageKit, and the software update notifier has been rewritten as a plasmoid.  The language used in the UI has been changed to match usage in YaST and zypper better.
• fcitx 4.2.7
  • The input method has several UI improvements for more efficient international text entry, and better Qt integration
• Linux kernel 3.7.6
  • Has a bunch of driver fixes, including one bug that gives Intel machines hot flushes by disabling i915 RC6 power saving after suspend, fixes to hda and usb-audio, EFI firmware, NFS and the kernel radeon driver.
• MariaDB replaces MySQL, as widely reported.
• postfix 2.9.5 fixes bugs in rule pattern matching and in IPv6 support
• WebYaST finally works on 12.3, but needs more testing
• Samba 3.6.12 (Samba 4 missed the feature deadline)

For the first time, openSUSE 12.3 features custom-developed theming for Plasma Workspace. This features a dark tone-on-tone colour scheme, controlled use of texture and fashionably monochrome tray icons that stand apart from application icons.  Coordinated colour palettes in dark and light variations should appeal all tastes. Feedback on the new theme is very welcome at the opensuse-artwork mailing list.

Get openSUSE 12.3 RC1 from the usual place.

How you can contribute to 12.3

Although the final release is only a month away, there are lots of ways you can make a difference.

Testers can find information on how to work effectively in the openSUSE Testing wiki.
You can find the current list of the most annoying 12.3 bugs here.
Help us shorten that list by re-testing the problematic areas or by fixing bugs, and we love it when you help us find new important issues!

The openSUSE 12.3 Portal has been set up but still needs lots of work. There are screenshots to take, release notes to write, and documentation to update. We also welcome help with translating it all. Right now, the openSUSE Marketing and Artwork teams are meeting in the Nuremberg SUSE office on finishing artwork and release notes in time for the final release.

Find the information portal for openSUSE 12.3 here.
Screenshots of 12.3 are here, Documentation and the Localization Guide.
You can help promote our release by adding a release counter to your website. Pick a size, then link to the image with the usual tags:
http://counter.opensuse.org/small.png

Example tags:
<img title="release counter" src="http://counter.opensuse.org/small.png" alt="release counter"/>

You can also find social media backgrounds for g+, twitter and facebook here, website banners here, a cool release poster here and we’ve already got slide templates so you can present openSUSE at user groups, universities or workplaces.

Thanks!

openSUSE would like to shout out to OortLinux for letting us use their video for the KDE first login greeter. Thanks!

We’d of course also would like to extend our gratitude to our regular contributor base who contributed to making openSUSE: the packagers, translators, document authors and everyone else.

According to plan, today openSUSE 12.3 Beta sees the light. The beta comes with mostly smallish changes as we’re in serious testing waters now – we hope you’re out there to help us clear the way to the final release! The first RC is already coming on February 7 so this Beta needs a good workout. As is tradition in openSUSE, the Beta will be celebrated with a BetaPizzaParty at the Nuremberg headquarters on Wed 30th of Jan starting 16:00 CET! Read on to find out a bit more about the Parties and Pizzas and what’s new and about the awesome 12.3 Polish Hackaton which is being organized this weekend at the SUSE headquarters! (more…)

A month’s work since Milestone 1 shows that the new Release Team are hitting their stride, as they have reviewed and checked in more than 470 updated packages, far more than early milestones in previous releases.

Desktops and apps

The biggest update is in LibreOffice, which jumps from 3.5.4 to 3.6.3. This new version of the office suite fixes a lot of annoying bugs and improves DOCX compatibility. Also this release includes a lot of new functionality, like adding the Lanczos image algorithm for resizing, which reduces aliasing in resized images. In Calc, there are several new functions, like support for color scales and data bars in XLSX and ODS document formats. Please check the release notes for a full description of the main fixes and new features.

In a change to policy, KDE 4.10 Beta 2 has been added to Factory already. Usually only finished KDE releases are added, but since more KDE team developers are working on Factory, it made sense to perform early integration and testing in Factory now. So, if everything goes as planned, the final version of openSUSE will arrive in March including KDE 4.10.0 or 4.10.1 (expected in the first week of March). This new version of KDE increases the Qt Quick usage in Plasma Workspaces. In 4.10, additional desktop components are implemented using this declarative technology instead of C++ for greater stability and easier theming. Okular now uses less memory when zooming in on big PDFs, and a new indexer replaces the last Strigi components, allows faster and more reliable indexing of documents. You can expect much more functionality and bug fixing in the final release of KDE 4.10.

Other KDE changes include kwebkitpart 1.3, which adds Access Key support, automatic scrolling and manual spell checking support for forms, as well as on demand plugin loading; and appmenu-qt joins the standard installation, allowing application menus to be shown at the top of the screen or in a menu button on the window border.

After a period of stabilization work, GNOME 3.6.3 found its way into this milestone. The GNOME interface for PackageKit is at version 3.6.1, which fixes a segfault error when a distribution upgrade is available. This GNOME version is better integrated with systemd, and has a new “Airplane Mode”, that switches off all radios, including Bluetooth.

Claws Mail has been updated to 3.9. This little GTK email client and news reader is known for being fast, extensible and easy to configure. It adds IMAP server side search, has several speed-ups and optimizations, a better GnuPG integration and more than thirty bug fixes.

Platform

The GNU C library was updated. glibc 2.17 improves ARM and multi-arch subsystems, and adds fixes for crypto bugs. DBUS 1.6.8 includes new service ownership rule possibilities, and many security, bugs, and performance fixes.

Another updated package is QEMU, which goes from 1.2.0 to 1.3.0. With QEMU we can easily create and run virtual machines. This new version improves  live migrations of virtual machines. That means that we can now stop a virtual machine and continue the execution in another place without noticeable problems. QEMU 1.3.0 adds many newly virtualized devices and chipsets.

LLVM is one of those cool projects that everyone knows, but few can exactly say what it is. Fascinate Xmas parties with the knowledge that LLVM is a set of libraries that allow aggressive optimizations of a intermediate ad-hoc language (known as LLVM IR) and the compilation of this language to a specific architecture and processor. Clang is a C / C++ / Objective-C compiler that translate the high level language to this IR language, and is a really fast compiler. If this description interests you, then you’ll be pleased to know that M2 updates LLVM/Clang to 3.2rc2. This version of LLVM improves the Clang diagnostics, this means that we will have better error messages that explain more clearly what mistakes we are making. LLDB is the new command line debugger for LLVM/Clang. It uses the Clang parser for the C++ debugger. And there is a lot of new functionality in the optimizer, like a new high-level loop optimizer and the automatic parallelizer.

Mono 3 now has a complete C# 5.0 compiler, with all the async functionality enabled, and adds interesting optimizations in the garbage collector (mainly for SMP systems) and in the runtime library. This is a big version change, so may cause breakage with Mono 2.10 code.

This milestone comes with a 3.6 kernel, but don’t despair, packages for 3.7 are already cooking.

Distribution

libzypp 12.5 includes new package management transaction logging features.

As part of the SuSEconfig removal work, permissions now applies changes following installation or upgrade, to ensure new permissions are effective regardless of package installation order.

News fresh from the Factory: the openSUSE Release team has made the openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 1 available for testing and feedback. There has been lots of plumbing in the infrastructure, with most prominently the removal of SuSEconfig – the capitalization of its name should give a hint about its age. If you want to get a taste of the upcoming release or want to help test and develop this awesome, green Linux distribution: come and get it! (more…)

As was promised last week, the openSUSE ARM team has released openSUSE 12.2 for the ARM architecture! Almost all of the usual openSUSE distribution (>5000 packages) builds and runs on all the ARM hardware it has been tested on. Read on to find out more. (more…)