Coming along strong: first look at openSUSE 11 beta 2

We like to keep a close eye on Linux desktop distribution alphas and betas so we can give you the goods and show you what is coming long before the official release. When the openSUSE community announced the availability of openSUSE 11 beta 2 this weekend, we knew that we had to give it a spin.

We tested the openSUSE 11 beta 2 LiveCD installers, which are available with either GNOME or KDE 4. We installed both flavors so that we could see both desktop environments in action. The LiveCD images booted without any problems and provided a reasonably functional desktop experience. In both the KDE and GNOME environments, an icon on the desktop provides easy access to the installer.

The installation process is relatively simple and intuitive. The graphical installer, which is built on SUSE's YaST framework, takes the user through a series of configuration steps before the installation begins. The user simply needs to select a keyboard layout, specify their timezone, partition their disk, and provide basic login information. The GNOME-based installer uses GTK and the KDE-based installer uses Qt, so they largely share the look and feel of the underlying desktop environment. The GNOME LiveCD installation program crashed once during our tests and had to be restarted, but we encountered no problems with the KDE installer.

The only major bug we ran into with the LiveCD installer is that it doesn't properly set up a graphical login manager. After a text-based login, we were able to initiate the desktop environments by using the startx command.

The KDE flavor users version 4.0.3, which was released early last month. It's a lot more stable than the KDE 4.1 alpha 1 release that we tested last week. Users can add and remove panels, drag desktop plasmoids onto panels (this crashes about half the time), and change the plasma theme. Even though it uses a KDE 4 environment, it ships with some applications that were built on top of KDE 3, like Digikam 0.93 and Amarok 1.4.9.1.

The GNOME flavor uses GNOME 2.22, which was released in March. GNOME 2.22 includes some significant new architectural features like the GVFS virtual filesystem abstraction layer and the new PolicyKit secure privilege escalation system. OpenSUSE's GNOME environment has a few notable deviations from the standard GNOME release, including a special menu system called the Slab. Firefox 3 beta 5 is included as the default browser.

Another exciting feature that is new in openSUSE 11 is the PulseAudio sound server, which supports advanced features like network streaming and per-application volume control. In the GNOME flavor of openSUSE 11, the PulseAudio configuration utilities can be accessed from the contextual menu of the sound server notification area icon.

There are a lot of things to like in openSUSE 11 and it will make a good choice for many users—it is already shaping up to provide better PulseAudio integration and stronger desktop search capabilities than Ubuntu, for instance. OpenSUSE also has excellent support for KDE 4, which is why we have used it as our reference platform for KDE testing and reviews.

Although there are still many bugs that make openSUSE 11 beta 2 unsuitable for day-to-day use, it is improving at a rapid pace. An additional beta will be released later this month before the final official release, which is scheduled for June 19. Users who want to test beta 2 can download it from the openSUSE web site.