openSUSE 12.1 Released

openSUSE 12.1
This release represents more than eight months of work by international community.
Awesome improvements include the latest GNOME 3.2 desktop as well as the newest from KDE, XFCE and LXDE; your ownCloud made easy with mirall; Snapper-shots of your file system; and much, much more.

Desktops:
openSUSE 12.1 comes with the new GNOME Shell 3.2.
Notifications are much nicer, you can now configure your online accounts in one place and Shell handles multiple-screen setups better.

Among the features is color management, something GNOME shares with KDE where openSUSE is the first to integrate the Oyranos color management system. Also new from KDE is Apper, an easier-to-use PackageKit front end.

Cloud:
It is 2011, and most of us use ‘cloud’ technology like having our files on Dropbox, friends on Facebook and music on Spotify. But these technologies are arguably dangerous from a security and privacy point of view. While not solving all problems yet, ownCloud aims to bring these services back under your control.

openSUSE is the first Linux distribution to support ownCloud with its own unique mirall desktop integration. For end users, mirall makes the difference between thinking that ownCloud is interesting and being able to actually use it. Read about mirall and ownCloud

Kernel:
openSUSE 12.1 comes with Linux 3.1, The new Linux 3.1 kernel is a substantial improvement over the 2.6.38 kernel which was part of openSUSE 11.4. Not only have filesystems like ext4 and btrfs been improved, the Linux 3.1 kernel specifically brings a number of performance improvements to memory management and data handling. Of course, there is the usual slab of new hardware support including external devices like Microsoft's Kinect, Apple iSight webcam and the Nintendo Wii controller, as well as internal hardware like the new AMD Llano Fusion APUs and Intel's Ivy Bridge and Cedar Trail CPUs, a variety of wireless and graphics cards and much more. Find more details about what is new in the openSUSE kernel on the Linux 2.6.39, Linux 3.0 and Linux 3.1 KernelNewbies pages.

Others:
openSUSE is also the first major distribution to ship the Go programming language, Google’s new open development language. Go is a fast, easy-to-use language that helps programmers handle multi-core, networked machines with the convenience of garbage collection and run-time reflection.

openSUSE 12.1 includes Snapper, a new and unique tool that employs the snapshot functionality in btrfs to allow you to view older versions of files and revert changes. The integration of Snapper into the zypper package manager allows roll back of system updates and configuration changes.

Read more on new exiting openSUSE 12.1 features - here
You can download openSUSE 12.1 - here