openSUSE 13.1 to be Next Evergreen Release

Several distributions continue to support some their releases with bug fixes and updates after a set maintenance period. Some call it Long Term Support but the openSUSE folks call it Evergreen. Wolfgang Rosenauer, systems engineer and software developer, yesterday announced "that openSUSE 13.1 will be the next Evergreen release."

Evergreen is a community project to prolong the life of selected releases of OpenSUSE by providing updates and fixes beyond official support dates. Previous Evergreen releases include versions 11.1, 11.2, and 11.4. 13.1 is due to be officially supported for 18 months until May 2015 and Evergreen postpones its end of life November 2016 or another 18 months.

Evergreen releases are handy for those that don't wish to upgrade or reinstall every 18 months. openSUSE 11.2 and 11.4 are still actively supported by Evergreen, although 11.2 will fall out of support in November.

openSUSE 13.1 is currently in development nearing the beta stage. It's due to be released to the public on November 19, 2013. openSUSE 13.1 will feature Linux 3.10, KDE 4.11, GNOME 3.10, GCC 4.8, and LibreOffice 4.1. This release will also be the first with brand new YaST rewritten in Ruby and Weston experimental packages.