The openSUSE community is happy to announce that the 6th Milestone of the upcoming release will be renamed openSUSE 12.1 Beta 1. This change in name reflects the state of this milestone, being ready for more extensive testing. After the beta, 2 release candidates will become available in quick succession before the final release. To celebrate the Beta release and give it a good workout, we call out on the community to organize BetaPizza parties around the world! <h2>Release Schedule</h2> As can be found in the detailed release schedule for 12.1</a> openSUSE has a 8 month development schedule. Starting about 6 weeks after the previous openSUSE release, 6 monthly milestones followed by two Release Candidates are published for testing the upcoming openSUSE version. From the 6th milestone onwards only major/critical/blocker bug fixes are allowed and localization testing commences. Most other projects refer to this stage as 'beta testing' and the release team of openSUSE has decided to follow this naming from now on upon request of the openSUSE QA team. Release team coordinator Stephan "Coolo" Kulow notes: "the 6th milestone has sometimes gotten less testing than it deserved. We want to ensure the quality and stability of openSUSE and give users the best experience as possible. We need help from the wider community to find and fix the bugs in this release and this beta is the perfect opportunity to help out!" The latest openSUSE testing release can always be found on the openSUSE download page. Find the openSUSE 12.1 portal page here: http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:12.1 Find the detailed openSUSE 12.1 release schedule here: http://www.suse.de/~coolo/opensuse_12.1/ Download the latest openSUSE 12.1 test image on: http://software.opensuse.org/developer