openSUSE 12.2 RC1 Surfaces

One month after openSUSE admitted it had a problem and was seeking a new direction, the first release candidate of openSUSE 12.2 is now available.

Among the changes for openSUSE 12.2 RC1 is upgrading to GRUB 2.0 final, many systemd fixes, the Zypper package management solution was updated along with YaST and the libzpp PackageKit back-end, GCC 4.7.1 has been pulled in, X.Org Server 1.12.3, plus many other package updates. While the release of openSUSE 12.2 has been delayed, they have decided to not ship KDE 4.9.0 but rather will be sticking with the KDE 4.8.x series, which in the RC1 version is up to 4.8.4. They aren't upgrading KDE on the basis of stability.

A second release candidate is planned for early August while the final release should come in an early pre-Oktoberfest September. Changes to openSUSE's overall development model are still being debated with no announcement at this time.

The openSUSE 12.2 Release Candidate 1 details (and download links) are available from news.opensuse.org.