Second openSUSE 12.2 milestone arrives for testing

The second milestone for version 12.2 of the openSUSE Linux distribution is now available for testing. The upcoming openSUSE 12.2 release will be a major update based on the recent 3.3 Linux kernel and, like a number of other distributions, will use version 2 of GRUB as the default boot-loader.

The new version will use Plymouth for a "flicker-free" boot animation – Fedora has already used Plymouth for its animated boot process for some time. The open source Spice protocol for sharing a virtual machine's desktop interface with remote workstations has also been accepted into 12.2. Other features and changes planned for openSUSE 12.2 include X Server 1.12 with multi-touch support, upgrading the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) to version 4.7 – the milestone currently includes 4.6 – and adding in Razor-Qt, a Qt-based desktop environment. Milestone 2 includes new artwork and a choice of KDE SC 4.8 or a new unstable development release (GNOME 3.3.x) of what will become GNOME 3.4 as the default desktop.

openSUSE 12.2 Milestone 2 in action Further information about this development release can be found in the official release announcement; a list of known problems is provided on the most annoying bugs page. Milestone 2 for openSUSE 12.2 is available to download for 32- and 64-bit systems as a DVD ISO image file. As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Those testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they find.

According to the project's current roadmap, this second of four planned milestone builds will be followed by a beta and two release candidates. Although the Milestone 2 release was nearly two weeks behind schedule, the final version openSUSE 12.2 is still expected to arrive on 11 July 2012. The current stable release is openSUSE 12.1 from November 2011.

See also:

• What's new in openSUSE 12.1, a feature from The H.

(crve)