Great Release Announcement, OpenSuse!
Whenever a new major distribution comes out, I am always curious to see how they handled the release announcement. These sorts of announcements are almost always followed by some form of feature list. In some cases, this consists of something like this:
- Linux Kernel updated from 2.34.23.23 to 2.3.43.4.3
- OpenOffice.org updated from 43.43 to 343.2
- Bug #4344059450 fixed
- Blah, blah, blah
Obviously, I am exaggerating some, but, unfortunately, not very much.
In other cases, however, the “feature list” is a straight forward explanation of what is cool or interesting about the new version. This later case, of course, is what I far prefer. Instead of pushing away new users, it pulls them in and tells them why <insert name of distro> is the OS they should be using.
I am very happy to say that OpenSuse did a great job with their anouncement. The technical details are still there, just down a couple of pages. At the beginning is an explanation of the cool new end-user features like Compiz Fusion, complete with screenshots.
It is true that there are some references in the beginning to GNOME, KDE, and Xfce, but they are fairly well explained and OpenSuse has never really seemed to target the “average joe” Windows user anyway.
Overall, I am very happy to see another distro doing their release announcement the right way. Good job OpenSuse!!!
Remember, live review of OpenSuse 11 this Friday at 3:30 PM EDT.
