openSUSE 11.3 final released

Following several development milestones and two release candidates, the openSUSE Project developers have announced the arrival of the final version of openSUSE 11.3, the latest release of their popular Linux distribution. The 11.3 release includes a number of changes, package updates and new features over the previous 11.2 release from November of 2009.

The latest openSUSE release is based on version 2.6.34 of the Linux kernel and includes GNOME 2.30.1 and KDE SC 4.4.4 (the latest release is version 4.4.5 from the end of June). The updated installer now includes support for the Btrfs file system, making openSUSE the first distribution to let users select Btrfs in the installer, and openSUSE's Zypper command line package manager has received several updates.

Other changes include various KDE, GNOME and LXDE desktop updates and changes. Package updates include version 3.2.1 of the OpenOffice.org office suite, Firefox 3.6.6 and the 3.0.5 release of the Thunderbird email client – Thunderbird 3.1 was released at the end of last month. Integration of the Nouveau driver now provides better support for NVIDIA graphics cards and improved netbook support is also included.

More details about the release can be found in the release notes, change log, and on the Product Highlights page. A start-up guide and screenshot tour are also provided. openSUSE 11.3 is available to download for 32 and 64-bit x86 systems as a DVD or LiveCD image. Alternatively, users can purchase a boxed copy of openSUSE 11.3. openSUSE is released under the GPL Licence. The next major release of openSUSE, version 11.4, is scheduled to arrive in March of 2011.

For more information please refer to our feature which takes a more in-depth look at what's new in openSUSE 11.3.

See also:

• openSUSE 11.3 is here!, an openSUSE News announcement.
• openSUSE Project Releases openSUSE 11.3, press release from Novell.
• openSUSE 11.2 on the test bench, a feature from The H.

(crve)