openSUSE Launches 11.1

Novell has unveiled their latest release to the openSUSE line with 11.1. Offering both updates and new features, Novell continues to push for more openness and transparency. The new release includes Linux kernel 2.6.27, Python 2.6, Mono 2.0, OpenOffice 3.0, and many others. "[...] Our choice was also influenced by impressive changes that are transpiring in the openSUSE community, which is growing rapidly and is also becoming more open, inclusive, and transparent. Last month, the project announced its first community-elected board, a major milestone in its advancement towards community empowerment. This is a very good openSUSE release and it delivers some very impressive enhancements. The distro has evolved tremendously in the past two releases and is becoming a very solid and usable option for regular users."

Comments

Re:Still not safe to use Suse of any sort

[Ed Avis]

SUSE always made clear distinction between commercial/non-free software they include and core OS. Core OS always was and is GPL'ed Linux.

You have a short memory. YaST was non-free not so long ago. I think Novell made it free software after they bought SuSE. Back in the day, SuSE intentionally tried to package non-free software without warning the user: see this talk by RMS:

Stallman made an additional remark about Linux. Many different distributions are available, and one day, he tried to install one of them called "SUSE". He noticed that SUSE installed non-free (from a GPL point of view) software, but didn't tell you so. They were concealing the fact that non-GPL software was being installed on your computer. Asked about this, the SUSE people told RMS that it was intentional, that they didn't regard this detail as important, but that mentioning it might worry people and discourage them from using SUSE. Bottom line : RMS says "Don't Use SUSE" (for those interested, he recommends the Debian, which is one of the rare things him and I agree on :-)).

Since then, of course, they've seen the light and nowadays OpenSUSE is pretty good (I believe) about making a fully free distribution. There was some debacle with a non-free EULA on some beta releases, but I think that is resolved now.

Re:Is it really trolling?

[walterbyrd]

Deal is between M$ and Novell. Between you (as user) and Novell stands GPL. Users are NOT affected by the deal.

No offense: but what a stupid thing to post.

If I am a linux user, then Microsoft's attempts to make all distros - except for msft approved distros - illegal, certainty could affect me.

I personally program in Perl, watch Flash movies and use ODF

Doesn't every msft shill post something like that?