News you may have missed over the holiday period includes the fact that chameleon-friendly enthusiasts behind the openSUSE project have announced the release of the fifth 'milestone' for version 11.4 of the popular Linux distribution. Featuring a total of six planned milestone releases in all, openSUSE 11.4 should reach its next iteration on January 20th if all goes to plan with the final version planned for March.
Reports suggest that the fifth milestone of openSUSE 11.4 is based on the 2.6.37rc5 Linux kernel and also features the KDE SC 4.6 beta as well as the GNOME 2.32.1 desktop environment.
According to the official announcement for this news, "On the desktop, the KDE platform makes the leap to version 4.6 beta with many improvements in the UI and underlying infrastructure. This includes a complete rewrite of Kontact and is undergoing heavy testing. There is a serious chance KDE PIM 4.6 will not make it into the final openSUSE 11.4 release, testing and development is needed!"
The openSUSE project's milestone (M) releases are intended for developers to use during a period of community testing (and therefore bug reporting) and are not intended for general release.
Looking at the current version of openSUSE 11.4, package updates include:
- the latest KOffice 2.3 RC release,
- the Pidgin IM client,
- a release candidate for version 2.4 of GnuCash — the open sourced desktop financial manager application,
- and the LibreOffice community fork.
The project's download pages finish off by saying that, "A list of most annoying bugs is being compiled; please check it before installing. We look forward to your bug reports and test experiences! Automated testing and the openSUSE Factory team have been very active to ensure that your download of M5 will be at least minimally functional, thanks for that!"
