openSUSE Announces Fourth Development Milestone with Kernel Interactivity Patch

On Monday, the openSUSE project released the fourth of six milestones in the development of openSUSE 11.4.  Milestone 4 (M4) brings a wide range of updates, both major and minor.

Kernel 2.6.37rc3 is the basis of M4, including the famous “200 line” per tty task groups patch to improve desktop interactivity, and featuring the removal of the so-called ‘Big Kernel Lock’ that will improve scalability.

NetworkManager was updated to 0.8.2, seeing several last minute fixes in cooperation with upstream developers.

Libzypp 8.8 adds support for metalinks, the multiple download URL specification.

On the desktops, KDE makes the leap to version 4.6 beta 1.  This includes a complete rewrite of Kontact and is undergoing heavy testing. GNOME 2.32.2 is the final version planned for openSUSE 11.4, which is notable for being the last stable release before GNOME 3 in March.  Zeitgeist, the activity tracker, is updated to 0.6.  KOffice is updated to 2.3beta1, bringing the exciting Krita natural media painting app to M4, while OpenOffice.org is removed, having been succeeded by LibreOffice in M3.  Qt 4.7.1 and Qt Creator 2.1beta2 will allow improved Qt Quick development.   Other major updates include the addition of the Midori lightweight browser, the Rosegarden musical notation editor in version 10.10 and monodevelop 2.4. Gnash, the free Flash viewer, comes in version 0.8.8, which has “100% Youtube support” and supports hardware acceleration.

And finally, the prize for biggest version number leap goes to xmahjong, which went from 2006.8.10 to 2010.11.8.  xmahjong fans will be happy to hear that the version bump is only due to a packaging change removing build support for SUSE versions earlier than 9.1.  The graphics and gameplay remain as they were in 1990.

A list of most annoying bugs is being compiled; please check it before installing. We look forward to your bug reports and test experiences too. Automated testing and the openSUSE Factory team have been active to ensure that your download of  M4 will be at least minimally functional.

The next milestone is scheduled for December 16.  openSUSE 11.4 is planned to be released in March 2011.