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OpenSUSE 13.2: Have your gecko and eat your rolling distro too

New development model, new distro, same class

Much improved desktop

All the missing GNOME apps are available in the default openSUSE repositories though, so you can install them without any trouble.

The GNOME 3.14 update also continues to polish the desktop's HiDPI screen support, which took a huge leap forward in GNOME 3.12. This release sees GNOME fixing some of the small, but irksome problems with HiDPI screens. The result is a desktop that's one of the best I've tested on HiDPI screens.

Perhaps the most noticeable change in GNOME 3.14 — at least in terms of everyday use — are the new animations that happen when you switch applications and maximize or restore windows. It's a long way from the kind of crazy window animations that were possible if you tweaked GNOME 2.x, but it does add a little excitement to the otherwise stolid GNOME Shell interface. The animations strike a nice balance between boring and pointless.

In the guts of openSUSE 13.2 you'll find the 3.16 version of the Linux kernel. That's not as current as, for example, the recently released Fedora 21, which uses 3.17, but it is in keeping with openSUSE's slightly more conservative approach to updates.

There's also a ton of new stuff since the last openSUSE release, which shipped with the 3.11 kernel. Since then there's been quite a bit of new hardware support added — especially some new support for HiDPI screens, which coincides with GNOME's updated HiDPI support. Together, those two updates alone make openSUSE a worthwhile update for anyone using a HiDPI machine like the Lenovo Yoga Pro line.

The updated kernel also means btrfs works better, which is good because it's the new default option in the openSUSE installer. As part of the previous 13.1 release, openSUSE declared the btrfs file system "stable for everyday usage". However, since 13.1 was an "evergreen" release (SUSE slang for long term support) btrfs was still not the default.

That's changed in 13.2. Assuming you don't change the defaults, you will end up with an openSUSE 13.2 installation running atop btrfs. Btrfs is also the default in the just-released SUSE Linux Enterprise 12, making it the first enterprise-targeted distro to embrace btrfs.

OpenSUSE 13.2 KDE Firefox

Firefox as it looks in the new openSUSE

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