openSUSE 13.1 Beta Released with Btrfs Testing
Another day, another beta: openSUSE 13.1 Beta arrives with Btrfs support for testing. In the announcement was a reminder that a "bugfixing hackaton" is planned for this Beta and scheduled for September 27. For contributors in fortuitous locations, pizza will be provided. For everyone else, an online hangout is planned.
Beta 1 (the only beta actually) was announced today right on schedule. by Jos Poortvliet on news.opensuse.com saying, "Starting today, you can scurry over to software.opensuse.org, grab that beta by its tail and give it a spin. So, shove a pizza in that oven, settle with your laptop next to a roaring fire and a big glas of mead and start testing!" We actually prefer grog in my neck of the woods, but the sentiment's the same.
This release also marks the Full Feature Freeze for openSUSE 13.1 and only bug fix commits will be allowed from here on out. Poortvliet lists some of the features that made it into this release before freeze. They include:
* kernel 3.11.1
* llvm/clang 3.3
* Mesa 9.2.0
* systemd 207
* php5 5.4.19
* tcl 8.6
* bluez 5
* wine 1.7
* samba 4.1
* KDE SC 4.11.1 and GNOME 3.9.91
* apache2 2.4.6
* texlive 2013
* vim 7.4
* Amarok 2.8
In addition, this release offers tester a chance to test-run Btrfs support. For this release only, a pop-up will invite installers to use btrfs. Poortvliet says, "only the ‘safe’ features of btrfs are enabled in openSUSE, including the snapshot and metadata and data integrity feature. These both offer protection against data loss. However, who installs btrfs now will be able to instantly benefit from the many features under development as soon as they are marked stable." These include "transparent compression of data, de-duplication of files and data, multi-volume drives and hot add/remove of drives part of it and various performance improvements." Btrfs is being groomed to be default in future openSUSE releases, but not 13.1. See the full post for more information on Btrfs and how to test it.
The openSUSE 13.1 Beta 1 GNOME Desktop is quite buggy at this point
The first release candidate is scheduled for October 10 with the second following three weeks later. 13.1 should go gold November 8 with the public release planned for November 19. Download the beta from software.opensuse.org. The first user report was by Neil Rickert, who promises a report on a full KDE install tomorrow.