openSUSE 42 - work on new release has begun

The openSUSE project announced that work has started on a completely new openSUSE release.

42 has it's towel with it

Everyone who knows me a little will be able to recall that I am a big fan of openSUSE and it's Linux based operating system. And I know I have been a pain in the neck for a few of my close ones with talking - maybe a slightly little tiny bit too much - about the projects work on improving the ways they are producing new releases.

Prior to the openSUSE 13.2 release there already have been a few refinements on how they build a release with a lot of work on OBS and openQA. Additionally YaST has been rewritten in Ruby to make contributing much easier than it has been before when it was still been written in the proprietary YCP.

After a long way from the openSUSE 13.2 release until today it has not been clear when work will start on a new release and what the release cycle will look like in the future.

But now the travel has started and openSUSE's new release is in development under the working title »42«. And 42 has it's towel with it as it's well prepared and has a plan up it's sleeve.

Where openSUSE is heading

The plan is well thought-out and backed with SUSE Linux Enterprise code for the very first steps and about 2,000 packages are included in first place with many more to be added.

The upcoming release and it's successors will be long term support type releases and aligned with releases of SUSE Linux Enterprise service packs and major releases.

Possibly openSUSE 42 will receive a proper version number for the final release which is planned for around SUSECon from 2. - 6. November this year.

Update (2015-07-15)

As Richard Brown wrote on the openSUSE Mailinglist there are now decisions made for the name and version number of the new openSUSE regular release. In short:

openSUSE 42 will be called openSUSE Leap
Leap will start at version 42.1

Therefore the new stable version will answere to the name of openSUSE Leap 42.1.

Update (2015-07-16)

As a news article on news.opensuse.org points out today, that a first milestone of Leap is being tested in openQA at the moment. So very early adopters might start testing on bare metal very soon.

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