The Opensuse project has just released the first beta version of the new 10.3 distribution.

One click installation technology is just one important new feature says the development team. One click install is an easy-to-use tool that installs programs at the press of a button. It is included with the reworked Opensuse Build Service.

The team has also updated applications and components, and includes KDE 3.5.7, Gnome 2.19.6, Open Office 2.3 Beta, Firefox 2.0.0.5, Cups 1.2.12, Gimp 2.3.19 (unstable) and the Compiz 0.5.2 3D window manager. Just like in the Alpha 7, the Beta uses kernel 2.6.22.1. To give users a foretaste of KDE version 4.0 some components of the next release are included, KDE games for example.

Opensuse 10.3 Beta1 welcomes users and includes a whole bunch of new features.

Opensuse 10.3 will boot faster than its predecessors. Tests with statistics are available online. The Libzypp package management library replaces the Zenworks Management Daemon (ZMD) used previously. Libzypp has improved program dependency resolution and supports faster handling of package downloads. To allow this to happen, standardized aliases are used for repositories. ZMD is still available for Suse Enterprise products.

Opensuse 10.3 Alpha 4 introduced the Instlux installer, which supports the installation of Opensuse from within a Windows session.

Opensuse has also reorganized download versions. The KDE and Gnome desktop versions are now available on separated CDs, removing the need for users to download files they do not need. An Opensuse Beta 1 download is available for various architectures such as i386 and x86-64. The DVD variant is only available via Bittorrent. An upgrade package from the Alpha 7 to the Beta 1 is also available. The final version of Opensuse 10.3 is due for release in October 2007.

The Opensuse project has just released the first beta version of the new 10.3 distribution.