openSUSE 10.3 Alpha1 has been released:

I'm glad to announce the first public alpha release of openSUSE 10.3.

Since the openSUSE 10.2 final release, the most significant changes are:

* GNOME is moved to /usr. Please do test especially updates from older distributions.
* KDE updated to KDE 3.5.6.
* Linux Kernel updated to 2.6.20. There's no Xen support enabled for now.
* Pattern for minimal text install (see the opensuse-factory thread for details)
* Update of OpenOffice.org to version 2.1.3.
* The whole distribution is build now with -fstack-protector to better guard against some buffer overflows.
* Usage of LUKS by default for crypto partitions in YaST. Both GNOME and KDE handle removable LUKS media now.

Besides this a lot of bugs have been fixed and various packages updated.

openSUSE 10.3 Alpha1 is an important milestone for us since it is an installable release so that everybody doing development in the last weeks can double check that their changes not only work in their own environment but also in the complete distribution. It also shows us the state of STABLE so that everybody should be able to use STABLE as basis for their work.

Most annoying bugs for now:

* Adding a remote repository shows "/media.1/in not found". Just press OK to continue the install Bug 243498

* ftp installation of mounted CD/DVD images is not possible (http seems to work - and installation from online repositories works as well) Bug 245304

* On x86-64, you need CD4 for a default install since some extra -devel packages are installed Bug 245332

* Some Systems will hang at "Cloning the system ..." when selecting "Clone This System for AutoYaST" Bug 245350

* Registration does not work Bug #240591

* A GNOME installation does not include OpenOffice_org and banshee Bugs 245408 245407

The list of annoying bugs is kept updated at:
http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs:Most_Annoying_Bugs_10.3-dev

openSUSE 10.3 Alpha1 comes as different medias:
* 5 CDs, you need CDs 1-3 for a normal installation with just GNOME or
KDE (any language)
* 1 AddOn CD with only NonOSS packages on it
* 1 AddOn CD with language packages that are used for extra languages (the 5 CDs contain support for english, french, italian, spanish, german, chinese, japanese, czech, danish, norwegian, khmer, hungarian, polish) (the 5 CDs have support for installation in all languages, just extra packages are only on this extra media)
* 1 DVD containing the contents of the 5 CDs and the NonOSS AddOn CD
* CDs/DVDs containing the sources corresponding to the media

We have created Delta ISOs from the final version of openSUSE 10.2 Please use them for download.

The DVDs and the source media are only available via bittorrent.

Please report all bugs you find on in our bugzilla as explained in http://bugs.opensuse.org, discussion is most appropriate on the opensuse-factory@xxxxxxxxxxxx mailing list.

To download media, please use the links provided at:
http://en.opensuse.org/Development_Version#Downloads

The next planned release is Alpha2 in four weeks (March 15th),

Have a lot of fun!
Andreas