The second milestone for openSUSE’s newest distribution Leap was released today and it’s filled with packages that will interest open-source users everywhere and Linux professionals looking for a long-term, stable Linux system.

“Milestone 2 is realistic to use for non-critical production servers,” said members of the openSUSE release team.

Doing so, as well has having developers, system administrators and users use Milestone 2 will offer a chance to find missing packages and determine where the gaps are in the milestone.

Milestone 2 replaced the complete base system and replaced the full YaST stack.

New versions in the milestone release include Firefox 40, ThunderBird 38.2, digiKam photo management program 4.11 and the YaST stack of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 1.

The latest stable Linux Kernel 4.1.6 is in Milestone 2 and git is updated to version 2.5.0. The kernel-firmware update is 20150715. Apache updates to 2.4.16 and btrfs to 4.1.2.

KDE Plasma has update 15.04.3, which include Long Term Support versions of Plasma Workspaces 4.11.21. GNOME 3.16 has a refresh and Libreoffice 4.3 based on SLE 12 is pending an upgrade to Libreoffice 5. Most versions in Milestone 2 are expected to be the versions in Leap 42.1 when it’s released Nov. 4 at at SUSECon in Amsterdam, which will no doubt be celebrated with openSUSE Beer during the release party.

Open source enthusiast can expect a toolchain refresh with GNU Compiler Collection 4.8.5 (GCC 5 is optional) and a collection of binary tools from binutils 2.25 and debugger GDB 7.9.1. Makers can build and test software packages with the CMake 3.3.1, which is included in the latest milestone.

Enterprise class database PostgreSQL 9.3.8 and database management system MariaDB 10.0.20 are both in the milestone. Samba 4.1.12 and LVM2 1.02.97 round off the highlighted packages for Milestone 2.

Aligned with SLE 12 SP 1, Leap version 42.1 will provide the best of both worlds in terms of enterprise packages and stability topped with community innovations from openSUSE’s tested and integrated development architecture.

Leap shares source code from SP1 and a common core SLE. Future minor releases of Leap will align with future SUSE service packs while future major versions of Leap will align with future major versions of SLE.

There are currently more than 6900 packages in Milestone 2 with 600 pending updates.

Developers wanting to include their packages in Leap should ensure their Factory packages are releasable by Sept. 20.

Oct. 1 is the cut off date for allowing packages to change because of licenses and legal reviews.

The RC1 release will be Oct. 15 and the Goldmaster is scheduled for Oct. 30, so translations, release notes and localization of the release should be completed by Oct. 30.

Journalists should contact ddemaio@suse.com to test the Goldmaster prior to the release.