“We often hear from readers who want to track the development
process of their favorite Linux distribution but don’t know where
to start. Budding Linux enthusiasts frequently ask how the release
cycles work, what the version numbers mean, and what options are
available for end-user testing prior to official releases. The
answers to those questions differ depending on the distribution,
but we are going to attempt to address those questions for Ubuntu,
Fedora, and openSUSE–three of the most prominent desktop Linux
distributions. We will also provide a brief visual comparison of
upcoming versions with screenshots of the prereleases…”