openSUSE 12.2 Released

The delay of openSUSE 12.2 has been hard to ignore, but looking over everything that this just-released version brings to the table, it seems it hasn’t been for naught. 12.2 boasts all-around performance improvements, thanks to features introduced in the 3.4 kernel and also Systemd 44. Glibc has also been upgraded, most notably improving performance on 64-bit machines, and furthering the goal of “faster”, KDE has also seen its performance boosted thanks to its use of Qt 4.8.1.

Continuing its “evolution”, 12.2 brings some rather notable changes that all users should be aware of. The merging of various root folders into /usr has begun, with everything from /bin officially being pushed to /usr/bin with this release. Other folders, such as /sbin and /lib will be tackled later, likely with 12.3. Also this release, GRUB2 becomes the default boot-loader, and for an aesthetics improvement, the use of Plymouth has allowed boot and shutdown transitions to be smoothed out (an impressive sight, based on what I’ve seen with the release candidate).

openSUSE 12.2 – Could Not Be More Green Edition

Other updates include KDE 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4 (marking the second official GNOME 3 release in openSUSE) and Xfce 4.10 as far as desktop environments are concerned, and up-to-date versions of XOrg, Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice and other common apps can be found. Of course, I am merely scratching the surface here, so I’d recommend checking out the URL below to read through everything 12.2 offers.

I hate to admit, but thus far I’ve had mixed luck with the 12.2 release candidate, but I will be giving the final a go to see if things improve. It’s been just over two years since I last took an in-depth look at openSUSE, and I’m hoping to be able to do it again with 12.2 – if I can sort my issues out (GPU-related; is it any surprise?).