The Release Candidate (RC1) of Leap 42.1 is out and with it comes more packages as well as a new office suite.

LibreOffice 5 is in the RC1 and about 400 more packages made it in the RC1 release, which were not in the Beta.

Leap is less about the newest updates, which is the purpose of Tumbleweed and its frequent snapshots; Leap is more about relevance and purposeful updates and packages that provide users prolonged, stable and enterprise-level functionality. Leap has newer, community packages built on core SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) source code for a more stable base. Of the 7,000-plus packages in Leap, 1,500 are from SLE.

Linux Kernel 4.1.10 is available in the RC1, which is the newest Long-Term-Support kernel from Greg Kroah-Hartman.

There are about 70 bugs in Leap, but some are older, known bugs. KDE has many of the bugs currently in Leap and there are four critical bugs related to the kernel.

The release of RC1 provides the last opportunity to test Leap before it is official released as Leap 42.1 on Nov. 4 during [SUSECon](//www.susecon.com) in Amsterdam.

The Goldmaster is scheduled for Oct. 30, so translations, release notes and localization of the release should be completed by Oct. 30.

Journalists and bloggers should contact ddemaio@suse.com to test the Goldmaster prior to the release on Nov. 4.