Roadmap: Next openSUSE in November

The openSUSE 11.2 release actually should have been ready soon, but the developers decided to postpone it to a later date, supposedly September 2009. Now project manager Stephan Kulow ("coolo") has released the roadmap in the project mailing list and openSUSE 11.2 is not expected until November. The subsequent versions should follow: November 2009, "Fichte" (11.2); July 2010, "Rousseau" (11.3); March 2011, "Voltaire" (12.0); November 2011, "Lessing" (12.1). The intervals end up being between seven and eight months.

As Kulow says, "This gives us a single release in 2009 and 2010, and two release in 2011. The version names and numbers may change, of course."

Coolo bases the decision on the relatively late release dates, among other things, on avoiding holiday blackouts in the summer months that openSUSE can pick up the spring release of GNOME 2.28, allowing ample time for development. How the recent lay-offs from Novell's openSUSE project affects the timetable wasn't brought up.

The openSUSE 11.2 release should include software components such as KDE 4.3, GNOME 2.28, Kernel 2.6.30 (or later), ext4 as the standard filesystem, a web interface for YaST and netbook support with completely new drivers. The roadmap is not set in stone, but feedback to Coolo's announcement has been generally positive.