Novell dishes up OpenSUSE 11.1 details

The next big release of Novell’s community-driven SUSE Linux distro is set to land on Thursday. Ahead of that, the firm has released details about what customers can expect from version 11.1, including a new licence in which the EULA has been ditched.

New features include an improved KDE desktop experience and better synchronisation with Apple's iPod and Android G1 phone, said Novell.

It will also come loaded with GNOME 2.24.1, KDE 4.1.3, OpenOffice.org 3.0 and Firefox 3.0.4 software updates.

The installation media is available in various formats including Live CD images for both GNOME and KDE, each carrying a comprehensive stack with the major components of its own desktop environment.

Novell is also bigging up its latest Linux distro by pointing out that it will come packed with over 200 new features.

Despite the upcoming launch, many openistas are still struggling to accept the software firm’s newfound love for Microsoft.

Odd couple MS and Novell in September reaffirmed their vows to let their products play nice together with an announcement of full joint support of SUSE Linux run as a guest OS on Window's virtualisation hypervisor, Hyper-V.

Microsoft anointed Novell as its pet Linux distribution back in 2006, while the software giant was attempting to cool off other distros with (apparently idle) threats of IP infringement.

Odd then, that the company has tweaked its licence for OpenSUSE 11.1, apparently to make it "much easier to redistribute OpenSUSE.” The latest release is licensed under the GNU GPL version 2, with the included packages retaining their governing licenses.

The distro comes without any End User Licence Agreement (EULA) restrictions because it isn’t loaded with software from “non-free” vendors, such as, er, Microsoft. All of which means you’ll now be required to download individual packages that had been included in the previous release. ®