On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 10:15 PM, Peter Reutemann <fracpete(a)waikato.ac.nz> wrote:

"In what they're calling the first "hybrid" distribution release, the openSUSE project have announced the availability of openSUSE Leap 42.1. Built on a core of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP1 packages but including an up-to-date userspace (KDE Plasma 5.4.2, GNOME 3.16, and many other DEs), Leap aims to provide a stable middle ground between enterprise releases which are quickly out of date, and the sometimes unstable community distros. DVD/USB or Network Install ISOs are available for download now. For those who do prefer the bleeding edge, the openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling-release distribution is also available."

-- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/11/05/0246248

Sounds like an interesting concept...

Cheers, Peter

I've had it installed and running for a couple of days now. This time round I decided to leave things until the full release was available rather than going with an RC just for the sake of being early. I've gone with Leap rather than Tumbleweed as I have no need to be on the bleeding edge right now. First impressions look good with a couple of annoyances which would put off a newbie. OSS NV driver not up to scratch. It caused multiple hangs after install until I installed the proprietary NVidia drivers via ncurses yast from the terminal. Not something a newbie would be expected to handle. That's with a GTX550 card, not a particularly new one so.... That was the only problem during install however, everything else went smoothly. Not so enamoured with the new partitioner screen. The auto suggestion is good and works well and thank heavens still keeps / and /home on separate partitions, but the layout for the suggestion is godawfully complicated, listing every directory that it is going to create in the root and home partitions. Probably information overload and hence scary for a newbie. My DE preference is KDE, but in true openSUSE fashion the media comes with a raft of options: Gnome, Mate. Enlightenment, LXDE and XFCE are included as well, so lots of choice. New in this version for me is Steam. One of my favourite RPG games, "Witcher" is available from the Steam shop and it seems that Witcher 3 is going to be a blast. Many hours are going to be wasted and I won't have to put Win 7 in a VM to play it. Definite plus. In summary, the interface is clean and functional, the new KDE applications menu is simpler, more streamlined and less confusing than the previous iteration and far quicker and easier than the Gnome interface, which is good. The question I always ask myself is would I let a newbie loose in it and the answer is a definite yes, with one caveat, it needs someone experienced to install it, if the machine it is going on has NVidia graphics. I suspect that there would no issues with intel, but I won't know that until I upgrade the wife's machine and my spare laptop. Cheers Graham