The ReactOS team is proud to announce the release of ReactOS 0.3.11. This release has been delayed by quite some time due to various blocker bugs which manifested each time we tried to release. A lot of time has gone into hunting down these bugs and various steps have been taken to try to ensure we don't hit this problem again.

Exaile 0.3.1.2 has just been release, this being a bug-fix only release.

Among the changes in this version are:

* Full python2.5 compatibility was restored
* A bug resulting in unexpected duplicate playlist entries was fixed
* Several stability and interface issues were resolved

X Server 1.4.1 was originally scheduled to be released on the first of November as a bug-fix release for X Server 1.4.0, which was released in conjunction with X.Org 7.3. However, a delay had pushed the planned X Server 1.4.1 release to November 11. When that date had come X Server 1.4.1 was far from being ready.

On a whim, I installed the latest pre-release release of ReactOS today. I tried it a long time ago and had no luck whatsoever — black screens, nonbooting or just generalized irregular behavior — and so I rarely give it a thought.

As John posted last night, Fedora 14 Alpha was declared ready for release next week. Although there was a one-week slip to handle the fact that our blocker list wasn’t clear, Fedora developers and testers in the community have worked hard together both to resolve the remaining issues and make sure that our Alpha would pass the release criteria.

The ReactOS team has released version 0.3.7 of its Windows NT compatible operating system. This release along with the rest of the 0.3.x series is still considered alpha quality software.

KDE 4.5 is a milestone release that took several months to complete, fixing over 16,000 bugs. While it also added new features, the selling point of this release is the stability that typically comes with a x.5 version of KDE. The desktop, applications, and development platforms have matured, and many of the outstanding bugs have been resolved.

The first alpha release of Mageia 2 has been made available for download and testing. As you might expect, this is not a review-quality release, so if you have the time and resources, time to start hunting for bugs – and reporting them, if any, to Mageia Bugzilla. Installation and Live CD and DVD ISO images for 32- and 64-bit platforms are available for download here.

The first release candidate of Mandriva Linux 2008, codenamed Copernic, is now available. The release notes are available here. A guide to major new features (some of which are not yet implemented in this release candidate) is available here, and the detailed technical specifications are available here.