openSUSE 11.2 development features and roadmap

As we are all still settling down with openSUSE 11.1 version of our favorite operating system, developers are already on the next big thing and the development of openSUSE 11.2 version seems to be hapening at a much faster pace. The lastest release is the openSUSE Milestone2.

With openSUSE 11.2, the major changes are

Linux Kernel 2.6.30

The Linux Kernel versio 2.6.30 which includes lots of prominent features like the inclusion NILFS log, A cahcing layer for NFS, fastboot architecture to name a few. The latest build (openSUSE 11.2 milstone2) has 2.6.30rc6

Default File System: Ext4

Ext4 is the evolution of the Ext3 and is a deeper improvement over Ext3 than Ext3 was over Ext2. Ext4 modifies important data structures of the filesystem such as the ones destined to store the file data. The result is a filesystem with an improved design, better performance, reliability and features.

KDE 4.3 & GNOME 2.28 – openSUSE 11.2 moves ahead with the integration of KDE 4.3 desktop environment and GNOME 2.28 which has improved user interface called SONAR

other improvements include the inclusion of Firefox 3.5, OpenOffice 3.1 and improvements to YaST with much better parition Manager, plasmoids improvements etc

Road Map & Release Schedule

Now, let us look at the roadmap for openSUSE 11.2 with the release cycles. The final stable release for openSUSE 11.2 is expected to be released to public on the 12th November 2009.

23rd April 2009 – openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 1 release

28rd May 2009 – openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 2 release

30th June 2009 – openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 3 release (Toolchain is feature frozen on 4th June)

31st July 2009 – openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 4 release (Base system and version free)

02nd August 2009 – openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 release (complete distro feature and version freeze)

17th August 2009 – Freeze Packages containing cryptographic routines (No release)

18th August 2009 – openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 6 release (Patchlevel update of leaf packages finished)

07th September 2009 –  openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 7 release (First localised build)

30th September 2009 –  openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 8 release (Fully Localised build)

09th October 2009 – Last fixes localisation (No Release)

15th October 2009 – openSUSE 11.2 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) release

29th October 2009 – openSUSE 11.2 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) release

06th November 2009 – openSUSE 11.2 Gold master release (release version for internal only not for public download)

12th November 2009 – openSUSE 11.2 Final public release