The distro arrives with Linux kernel 3.11, KDE 4.11, and GNOME 3.10

Nov 19, 2013 12:00 GMT  ·  By

Today, November 19, 2013, the openSUSE Project is proud to announce the immediate availability for download of the highly anticipated and evolved openSUSE 13.1 Linux operating system.

After eight months of hard work, the development team behind the OpenSuSE distribution has finalized the new release, which brings lots of improvements, updated packages, a new Linux kernel, as well as support for new Linux technologies.

For users, openSUSE 13.1, which is distributed as separate KDE and GNOME editions, brings the power and freedom of the KDE Software Compilation desktop environment and the simplicity and beauty of the GNOME 3 desktop environment.

“The GNOME Team pushed boundaries and resources to provide you the greatest GNOME 3.10.1 in time for the 13.1 release. We are very happy to have seen an increase in the number of volunteers reporting bugs and test fixes during the beta/rc phase,” said Dominique “Dimstar” Leuenberger, GNOME team lead.

Moreover, openSUSE 13.1 integrates support for Android devices in the default file manager of the KDE desktop, as well as in the shell and the Amarok music player. Among the included applications we can mention LibreOffice 4.1, Calligra 2.7.4, Krita 2.7.4, YaST 3.0, Zypper 1.9, LLVM 3.3, GCC 4.8, Xen 4.3, QEMU 1.6, Mozilla Firefox 24, Mozilla Thunderbird 24, and Chromium 31.

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openSUSE 13.1 KDE Edition - Image courtesy of the openSUSE Project
Under the hood, the new release is a lot faster than previous versions, as it is powered by Linux kernel 3.11 and includes accelerated video support for Nvidia and Intel video cards, support for 64-bit ARM devices, support for Intel TSX Lock Elision, OpenStack Havana, and support for the Btrfs filesystem, which is not the default, but is considered stable for everyday usage.

“This release is more than the sum of its parts. We made big changes to our testing processes and tools and with the Evergreen commitment and KDE's commitement to supporting Plasma Desktop 4.11 for a long time, this should allow users to rely on this release for a long time,” said Jos Poortvliet, openSUSE community manager.

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openSUSE 13.1 GNOME Edition - Image courtesy of the openSUSE Project
Download openSUSE 13.1, openSUSE 13.1 GNOME Edition, and openSUSE 13.1 KDE Edition right now from Softpedia. They will be supported with security updates and fixes for 36 months (3 years), until November 2016.