Newest openSUSE Features Stability, Cloud and ARM Technologies

November 19, 2013


openSUSE 13.1 is the latest release of the reliable, modern and easy-to-use Linux operating system

Nuremberg, Germany

The openSUSE Project today announced the availability of openSUSE 13.1, the latest release of its reliable, modern and easy-to-use multi-purpose Linux operating system. It delivers up-to-date cloud technologies, including the latest OpenStack Havana, and shows significant progress with ARM support. openSUSE 13.1 allows users and developers to benefit from free and open source software in physical, virtual and cloud environments.

“The openSUSE community has again done an amazing job,” said Ralf Flaxa, SUSE vice president of engineering. “There was an incredible final testing and bug-fixing push over community channels the weeks before the release. We at SUSE are proud to be part of such an innovative team of technology enthusiasts.”

Stability and Performance
Extensively tested with the improved openQA automated testing tool and treated to a global bug-fixing hackathon, openSUSE 13.1 features enhancements to the Btrfs filesystem, accelerated video with VDPAU support in MESA, and many new video card drivers. In addition, the Linux kernel 3.11 includes critical work on “page reclaim” to further improve system interactivity during disk operations. openSUSE releases are supported with fixes and security updates for 18 months, and version 13.1 will be supported for an additional 18 months by the openSUSE Evergreen initiative, adding up to a three-year life cycle.

Networking
This release introduces OpenStack Havana with nearly 400 new features, including the latest LAMP stack. Web developers will benefit from an updated Ruby 2.0 on Rails 4 with improvements from core classes to better caching in the Rails framework. End users can now mount Amazon S3 buckets as local file systems and use much-improved Samba 4.1 with better Windows domains support.

Innovation
openSUSE 13.1 continues to integrate work on the ARM architecture. In addition to ARMv7, openSUSE now comes with special Raspberry Pi images and a much more complete AArch64 port. Having contributed key ARMv8 technologies such as QEMU user mode support to the ARM ecosystem, openSUSE is making more than 6,000 packages for each of these new architectures available for testing. openSUSE 13.1 includes a number of evaluation technologies, such as preliminary Wayland support with Weston compositor in GNOME Shell and KDE Plasma Desktop, as well as improved support for ultra high resolution in applications and shells. In addition, the openSUSE YaST team has ported YaST to Ruby, allowing a much wider audience to contribute to this unique tool.

Refinement
openSUSE is unique among the major Linux distributions in that it delivers all major Free Desktops on an equal footing – officially developed and supported. These include GNOME, KDE's Plasma Desktop (the openSUSE default desktop), Plasma Netbook, Xfce, LXDE and E17. As in the past, this release introduces the latest versions of each along with refined integration and artwork. openSUSE board member Andrew Wafaa, principal engineer, Open Source, at ARM Ltd., said, “We're proud of this release and of all those who worked on it. With a steady increase in contributors there was a lot of hard work put in by so many people from around the globe. Without all these contributors, initiatives like support for ARM would not be possible and we're very thankful for their input.” For more details about the latest innovations in openSUSE 13.1, visit opensuse.org/13.1.  Downloads can be found at software.opensuse.org/131, and information about openSUSE's ARM work and downloads can be found on en.opensuse.org/Portal:ARM. Documentation can be found on activedoc.opensuse.org, replacing most of the packaged documentation.

About openSUSE
The openSUSE project is a worldwide effort that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. openSUSE creates one of the world's best Linux distributions, working together in an open, transparent and friendly manner as part of the worldwide Free and Open Source Software community. For more information, visit www.opensuse.org.

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