Factory-fresh delivery: Get your OpenSUSE fix daily Open-sourcers running OpenSUSE’s development have adopted a browser-based model of development for their beloved distro. From now on, daily builds of new versions of OpenSUSE are to be developed and released for immediate testing. SUSE Linux was owned by Novell, which opened distro development to outside contributors in 2005 …
It sounds as though the "Factory" option is recent, which it isn't, as it's been the rolling release option for a while now. But if I understand this announcement correctly, the main development process will now start using Factory's rolling release mechanism as the format for the development of the milestone versions, which sounds good reduction in effort.
I must say I've taken to OpenSuSE again over the last couple of years. Last week's Linux Weekly News (LWN) included a discussion flowing from someone suggesting OpenSuSE has little following, and the support for it was interesting.
"Last week's Linux Weekly News (LWN) included a discussion flowing from someone suggesting OpenSuSE has little following, and the support for it was interesting."
CPQ/HP, Dell, and IBM all have some kind of relationship with Suse so it's a supported option on (some of) their hardware (business-class desktop+laptop, plus servers). Maybe a touch commercial for some old-skool Linux folk? For similar reasons, Novell's dalliance with MS a few years ago may have done them no favours.
But for a simple reliable general purpose Linux that generally Just Works (tm), it's hard to beat Suse. I've tried a few, and they may well have some specific advantages over Suse especially if Suse have just released one of the occasional below-par versions, but ever since my first involvement with Suse 8, nothing really fits the bill like Suse does.
"Novell's dalliance with MS a few years ago may have done them no favours."
True, and it was only after SuSE* was sold that I had another look at OpenSuSE, and found that it was good. OpenSUSE remains a very Euro-centric distro, too, which helps.
* - I know that it's supposed to be fully capitalised, but I started with SuSE 5.1 and the origin of the name makes it hard to break the habit.
"For similar reasons, Novell's dalliance with MS a few years ago may have done them no favours"
With whom?
Paying customers looking for interoperability?
Or those ranting from the sidelines who didn't notice it was Novell that stepped up and spent seven years in a lawsuit defending the Linux kernel from an MS and Sun funded attack.
I would add the nice feature they have is package specific repos, so there is some control over updating.
I am running 12.2 (I have no time to upgrade currently...!) but I have been able to update various pieces of the system to keep tools working well (KDE+Libreoffice +Mozilla are the big ones).
Also, if you haven't used the Build service, check it out, it is very useful!! A bit clunky, but otherwise a really good way to build specific versions of software for multiple platforms
P.
Yast and System Settings keep nearly all your config in one place if you don't want to be messing with text-file configuration and random GUI config programs. There are Steam repo's and if you switch your multimedia repo to Packman you free yourself from American patent madness and all your multimedia formats like AAC work fine. We have Mac's in the house which serves all the music for my wife's ipad.
KDE is a little ugly on first start, the default font is a little thin on my display, but swap your system fonts from "sans serif" to "Nimbus L Sans" and it will look really good (IMHO) - again, easy with System Settings->Application Appearance.
Yast is definitely nice for those who just want to use linux rather than be bothered hunting down all the quirks different distro's have.
Moved from Mandrake to openSuSE 7.0 years ago and have never regretted the move. OoenSUSE is a good general purpose linux distro. Over the years I have tried MANY other versions but I always return to openSUSE. It is the best overall distribution out there. Whats not to like about "factory fresh" openSUSE?
This article appears to have been sourced from unofficial speculation, rather than the openSUSE mailing lists or web site,
Version 13.2 is due for release in November, and milestones are expected from October for pre-release testing. Factory has always been the place for development packages, that often break each others' dependencies. Snapshots of Factory were fairly infrequent, and used as the basis for "milestones". The change is that since the end of May factory-snapshots are being built daily, including DVD and CD images. This allows system testers to work with known builds without waiting for the milestones.
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