OpenSUSE 10.3 alpha 5 available

The openSUSE development team this week released alpha 5 of the upcoming OpenSUSE 10.3, featuring a cutting-edge 2.6.22.rc4 kernel and a choice between GNOME or KDE desktops. The final stable edition of v10.3 is expected to be available for general release in October, the team said.

"Lots of package renames and splits [are included] to create smaller systems and allow a one-CD installation," team spokesperson Andreas Jaeger said.

Some highlights of Alpha5 compared to Alpha4:

• Linux kernel 2.6.22-rc4
  
• reduced size and cleaned-up dependencies of some packages
  
• glibc 2.6
  
• Emacs 22.1
  
• OpenOffice.org 2.2.1rc3

Standard features in OpenSUSE 10.3 include:

• Evolution 2.10 email client
  
• OpenOffice.org 2.1 office suite
  
• SeaMonkey 1.0.99 web application suite
  
• GIMP 2.2.13 graphics editor
  
• Abiword 2.4.5 text editor
  
• Pidgin (formerly GAIM) 1.5 instant messaging client
  

OpenSUSE is a community project sponsored by Novell. The openSUSE project's main goals are to make openSUSE the most widely used Linux distribution in the world; leverage open source collaboration to make openSUSE the world's most usable Linux distribution and desktop environment for new and experienced Linux users; and make its commercial big-brother SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) the Linux desktop of choice for businesses.

You can download the 698MB live CD ISO image from the main project site, here. Alternatively, you can obtain the live CD ISO images for i386 machines via BitTorrent, here.

Additionally, direct links to the live CD ISOs are available here: GNOME version (698MB); KDE version (700MB).

Be reminded that this is a test version, and Jaeger encourages users to report bugs at the project's bugzilla here. The final 10.3 version is expected by the end of September, Jaeger said.

Screen shots are available for viewing here, thanks to LinuxQuestions.org