OpenSuse, the free Linux distribution forked from Suse Linux Professional and the basis for Suse Linux Enterprise, is switching to a rolling release model.
The development change will see daily builds released to keep the distribution at the cutting edge of development.
Announced by the Opensuse Project on Wednesday, the rolling release model for the development version of Opensuse, which is called Factory, will shorten the stabilisation process for releases and eliminate the need for pre-release or “milestone” builds, the project said.
Opensuse board chairman Richard Brown said that the project team was hopeful that the move would lead to more users of the software and more contributors to the code, which would have a knock-on effect on quality.
“With a daily fresh Factory distribution making it easier for those who want to preview and test, we hope to see more users and contributors, leading to faster fixes and even higher quality. Factory is critical as it provides the base technology for Opensuse and Suse Linux Enterprise, which is used by tens of thousands of organisations around the world,” he said.
The new development model balances responsibility among packagers, testers and end users while putting more emphasis on automated quality assurance. As a result, Opensuse Factory is no longer just the development branch of Opensuse but becomes a reliable, always-ready working distribution, according to the project.
The move also means that Opensuse is following a similar development model to Fedora, the cutting-edge Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is based upon.
More information on Opensuse Factory can be found on the project’s online portal. However, at the time of writing this was still showing a notice warning that the Factory repository is not guaranteed to be fully stable, and advising users to download the current release build.
An Opensuse spokesperson told stated that this is because the Factory build is primarily for developers and those keen to see the latest developments, and is not recommended for production environments.
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