The openSUSE Project has released version 11.1 of its Community Linux today. Besides undergoing comprehensive maintenance, the release brings vast improvements to the KDE 4 Desktop.

OpenSUSE 11.1 rolled out today, sporting more than 230 new features, many updates, and a brand new license. The newest release is also the first built entirely on the openSUSE Build Service.

Just in time for the launch of openSUSE 11.1, Novell developers have completed the new Contrib-Repository. The Contrib will act as a bridge between factory (packages officially supported by Novell) and third party packages.

Free Linux distro Debian has been working steadily on its next version 5.0 of the OS, known as Lenny. Now developers have been called in for a vote to determine the course of its general release.

Slackware is widely regarded as the oldest active Linux distributions. Right on time for Christmas, the distro, which once served as a basis for (open) SUSE, is available in a new version.

The many years of hard work and reverse engineering that went into developing the free Nouveau drivers for NVIDIA graphics cards have finally paid off. Nouveau is now included in the repository of the next Ubuntu 9.04 release.

In its upcoming version 11.1, the openSUSE Linux distro will be integrating the Smolt program, which collects hardware profiles in a central database from end users on a volunteer basis.

Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst sees opportunities for open source firms that might be putting undue burden on their dwindling IT departments because of the current economic downturn. Whitehurst offered his views in a press conference in Munich. His conclusion: "When people look at alternatives, often Open Source wins."