openSUSE 12.2 Released

The openSUSE team has released version 12.2 which, according to the company, “brings you speed-ups across the board with a faster storage layer in Linux 3.4 and accelerated functions in glibc and Qt, giving a more fluid and responsive desktop.”

According to the announcement, the distro now includes mature technologies such as GRUB2 and Plymouth and has taken the first steps in the direction of a revised and simplified Unix file system hierarchy. The announcement states, “Users will also notice the added polish to existing features bringing an improved user experience all over. The novel Btrfs file system comes with improved error handling and recovery tools, GNOME 3.4, developing rapidly, brings smooth scrolling to all applications and features a reworked System Settings and Contacts manager while XFCE has an enhanced application finder.”

Additionally, the documentation team has done a major revision of the reference manuals and implemented changes aimed at making it easier for community contributors to write documentation.

The 12.2 release will be supported for at least two release cycles plus two months. Currently, openSUSE 12.3 is for release scheduled in about six months, because the 12.2 release was delayed. The project, however, is currently reevaluating its release processes, so this schedule is likely to change. Andrew Wafaa of the openSUSE Board said, “The delay in the schedule caused by our growth in the last two years means we have to work on scaling our processes.”