OpenSUSE 11.3 Arrives With Unexpected Extras

This week, OpenSUSE 11.3 arrived from Novell, and it's a major upgrade that includes a number of unexpected bells and whistles. If you haven't used OpenSUSE before, it's a free, Linux-based operating system that you can use on a desktop system, laptop or server. In the new version, there is a useful Tracker tool for indexing content, a tool for syncing files online called SpiderOak, and a tool called Rosegarden for working with and editing audio files. Here are what some of the new additions look like.

Via a KDE 4.4 desktop on top of OpenSUSE 11.3, you can keep everything organized and tidy and take advantage of bundled new versions of Mozilla Firefox (browser) and Mozilla Thunderbird (email):

You can choose a GNOME desktop with OpenSUSE 11.3, and the brand new Tracker tool indexes content and applications so you can bring almost anything you're looking for up instantly:

The 3D browsing effect seen here isn't new, but it is useful and eye-catching. You can turn the cube to view different pages:

Check out the Baobab disk usage analyzer--a nice way to tell when it's time for a defrag:

We'll follow up with a complete review of OpenSUSE 11.3, but so far it looks well worth downloading and experimenting with. If you have a netbook, it has a number of netbook-specific features.