Seemingly skipping the first release candidate, the openSUSE project developers have announced the arrival of a second release candidate (RC2) for version 11.4 of the openSUSE Linux distribution. The final version of openSUSE 11.4 is due to be released in March - a full openSUSE 11.4 Timeline is available from suse.de.
As is normal at this stage of development, the developers have focused on addressing bugs found in the previous development versions, noting that after a recent Bug Squashing day corrected 132 problems, only a "few serious issues remain".
Improvements to the 'backend' include tweaks to Wi-Fi supplicant and drivers, as well as "a host of small fixes across the distribution which enhance stability and performance". Other changes include various package updates, work on the transition from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice and finishing touches to KDE SC 4.6.
As this development release is aimed at developers, testers and community members, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter.
More details about the second RC can be found in the official release announcement. openSUSE 11.4 RC2 is available to download for 32- and 64-bit systems as a DVD or LiveCD image from the project's developer / get it section. The latest stable version is openSUSE 11.3 from mid-July.