The openSUSE Board elections are right around the corner.We’re in “phase 0″ right now, so you have four weeks from October 26th to declare candidacy if you’re running, and four weeks to get those membership applications in to vote. (If you’re already a member, you’re good, of course.)

Phase 0 closes on November 23rd, then we have a two-week campaign period for candidates, followed by a voting period from December 8 through December 22nd.

The last year has been pretty formative for the openSUSE Project. A lot has happened, and we’ve seen areas where our governance needs to be improved and streamlined. The next year is going to be really important for the board, and we need some really committed openSUSE contributors to step up. The existing board has done a great job so far, but there’s a lot more to do.

In case it hasn’t gotten enough attention — we will have a sixth seat on the board next year. This will be held by a community member. This means that the seats are balanced between community and Novell employees, yet another step to ensure that openSUSE contributors outside Novell have a strong voice in the direction of the project.

Questions? Contact the election committee at election-officials@opensuse.org. Thanks to the committee for running with this, and may the best community members win!

ZDNet’s Jason Perlow takes an early look at openSUSE 11.2, and finds it quite good:

openSUSE’s implementation of KDE 4.3 finally gives the Open Source and Linux community something to brag about from a UI technology perspective, and in many ways I feel it is superior to both Windows 7, in both the underpinning technology and from a usability standpoint. It is also at least at parity in terms of object oriented technology with Mac OS X, and Qt 4’s cross-platform nature may actually give KDE an edge over Mac’s Cocoa. KDE 4.3 is pretty and functional, proving that Open Source advocates that choose a Linux OS for their desktop can have their cake, eat it as well as flaunt it.

He also has a few comments about the security settings affecting use of Samba on first install, but overall — looks good.

He also has a screencast of openSUSE 11.2 with KDE 4.3, which is well worth a look if you haven’t already installed M8. (But of course you have, right?)