SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta 2 Released

“SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta 2 has been released. Next Beta is due on Feb 2.”

If you’ve been reading my blog in the past you know that I’m a big fan of SUSE Linux, mainly because of it’s polish, management tools and overall quality, so this new beta release is nothing but exciting to me. I’ve been using SUSE Linux 10.0 since it came out in October last year, and I’ve been very very happy with it, and 10.1 looks to be even better. In 10.1 Red Hat’s NetworkManager will be integrated as the default app for switching between wired and wireless connections (Very handy for laptops), scan for wireless networks and log on to them, WPA support has just been added and it also has support for VPN connections. Did I mention that NetworkManager also has native frontends for both KDE and GNOME? It’s very exciting stuff, because in the past, the process of switching between wired and wireless connections could be a bit of burden, and that’s really not practical when you’re on the road with your laptop and logs on to a wireless network in a coffee shop.
Another thing I look forward to in SUSE Linux 10.1 is the integration of the AppArmor intrusion prevention system, which Novell acquired when they bought Immunix and then open sourced, I’ve been playing with it on SUSE 10.0 and it’s very cool, it’s so easy to configure and actually does work very well, I tried using a version of Firefox with buffer overflows, with AppArmor turned on, those buffer overruns with exploit code were harmless, they just didn’t work because of the Firefox policies that AppArmor applied to it.

Another thing that will be new in SUSE 10.1 is that you no longer need all five CDs to install the basic desktop system, the SUSE guys has improved the package layout on the CDs so you only need CD1, CD2 and CD3, which will certainly make SUSE Linux more intuitive for new users, because five CDs can sometimes be a little overwhelming. I hope they will make it even better for 10.2 so you only need CD1 and CD2, that would be perfect, because two CDs is doable for most people.

If you wanna help test this beta, you can go grab it at www.opensuse.org, you can also report bugs there, and please do if you try this one out.

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