openSUSE launches Leap 15 images for Raspberry Pi and Armv7 devices

Following the release of openSUSE Leap 15 for desktops and servers, openSUSE team has unveiled Leap 15 images for Raspberry Pi and Armv7 devices like Beagle Boards, Arndale board, CuBox-i computers, OLinuXino. These releases support the Build to Scale theme initiated by openSUSE team with the Leap images.

openSUSE has plenty of supported arm boards to allow makers to simply create. openSUSE is providing makers the tools to start, run and grow a project on microdevices to large hardware.

The new, fresh and hardened code base that supports modern hardware is stable and offers a full scope of deployments.

Makers can leverage openSUSE Leap 15 images for aarch64 and Armv7 on the Internet of Things (IoT) and embedded devices. Since openSUSE Leap 15 shares a common core  SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 15 sources, makers who find success with a project or device can more comfortably transition to an enterprise product in the future should certifications become a requirement. Currently, the only IoT platform supported by SLE is the Raspberry Pi 3. However, currently, there is no migration support from Leap 15 to SLE 15 with the Raspberry Pi. The barrier to entry in the IoT/embedded markets is lowered when a developer starts a project with Leap 15. Plus, the many supported arm boards can help developers circumnavigate future obstacles that might hinder project’s growth in a developing market.

For more information on openSUSE images for Raspberry Pi and other devices, watch official release announcement published in openSUSE blogs.

openSUSE Leap 15 released based on SUSE Enterprise Linux 15

The openSUSE community has unveiled openSUSE Leap 15, the latest stable release of community driven GNU/Linux distribution built on top of SUSE Enterprise Linux. This release brings a plethora of new features like various updated packages, transaction updates, easy migration to enterprise edition and highly scalable cloud images.

openSUSE Leap 15.0 banner

Today’s major release of openSUSE Leap 15 is offering professional users, entrepreneurs and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) a new, fresh and hardened code base for their workloads that supports modern hardware, based on a stable, community- and enterprise-based open-source GNU/Linux distribution – but developed with a modern, more secure, better tested and much more open open-source build system unique to SUSE and openSUSE.

openSUSE Leap 15 now allows migration to SLE, brings a new partitioner, integrates the Groupware Kopano, moves to Firewalld – and also comes distributed by Linode (for Cloud and infrastructure setups) and on high-end hardware like Tuxedo Laptops (other Cloud and hardware vendors will follow). On top of that, Leap 15 introduces a system role selection with classic “server” or “transactional server” role with transactional updates and a read-only root file system. This brings in all the benefits of atomic updates to the full scope of deployments, from the Internet of Things (IoT) and embedded devices to classical server and desktop roles. Apart from that, Leap 15 has been continually optimized for cloud usage scenarios as virtualization guest and at the same time offers a great variety of desktops, including KDE and GNOME and features the return of Live images for simple test-driving.

You can find a complete list of features introduced in openSUSE Leap 15 in official release announcement. You may also refer our gallery page for openSUSE to know more about this enterprise quality GNU/Linux distribution.

openSUSE Leap 15 snapshot enters beta state

Continuing the development of openSUSE Leap 15, the openSUSE release engineering team has announced availability of development snapshots with beta quality and the testing images can be downloaded from project's website.

Following the development model established by openSUSE Leap 42.3, Leap 15.0 will also follow a rolling development model till final release. It won't include any concrete milestones like Alpha or Beta. However, there will be some soft definitions like the rolling snapshot has reached alpha state and so on.

The first beta release of openSUSE 15 leap was recently released and there will be multiple beta snapshot releases as soon as some issues gets fixed or there are some package updates. This will be released after an open quality assessment process.

Some of the notable remarks on openSUSE 15.0 beta release can be summarized as:

• The beta snapshots has a fresh look with Linux Kernel 4.12 and Plasma Desktop 5.12
• RPM 4.14, one of the planned major update is yet to be integrated with openSUSE 15.0 snapshot
• Currently updating from previous Leap requires some manual conflict resolution. This issue is expected to fix in upcoming beta snapshots.
• The list of obsolete packages is missing. This issue is expected to fix in near future.

As openSUSE is a community driven GNU/Linux distribution it encourages more and more skilled users to download beta snapshot and test it under various workloads to expose most of the issues, so that it can be fixed before final release.

The openSUSE conferences at Pargue will be around the time of final release of openSUSE Leap 15. These conferences will provide more opportunities for the team to collaborate with community to make final release even better.

For more information on openSUSE Leap 15 beta releases, see original blog post published by the project.

openSUSE Leap 42.3 released with better SEL 12 SP3 alignment

The openSUSE community has published openSUSE Leap 42.3, latest stable release of community driven GNU/Linux distribution that shares core packages from SUSE Enterprise Linux (SEL) and enjoys seamless contribution from community of dedicated volunteers.

This release of openSUSE Leap makes another step to the target of achieving a close alignment with it's enterprise counterpart. Leap’s third edition of the  42 series has more than 10,000 packages and offers stability-minded users a refresh and hardware enablement release. It makes openSUSE an ideal choice for deploying on desktops and production servers.

openSUSE 42.3 is a successor of openSUSE Leap 42.2 and there is direct upgrade path from the former. It is recommend to upgrade to 42.3 as the later is going to be out of support period in 6 months.

“By avoiding major version updates in the base system as well as the desktops, the upgrade to Leap 42.3 is a rather unadventurous matter,” said Ludwig Nussel, openSUSE Leap release manager.

The release of Leap 42.3 provides adopters a reliable server operating system for deploying IT services in physical, virtual or cloud environments.

Leap’s third edition of the 42 series has more than 10,000 packages and offers stability-minded users a refresh and hardware enablement release. The release is powered by the same Linux 4.4 Long-Term-Support (LTS) kernel found in the previous Leap edition.

Leap 42.3 continues to use KDE’s Long-Term-Support release 5.8 as the default desktop selection while also offering GNOME 3.20, the same as used by SUSE Linux Enterprise. A variety of additional desktops is available in the installer through the newly designed desktop selection.

For more information and official statements, see release announcement published by openSUSE community.

openSUSE Leap 42.2 GNOME flavor is better than Plasma counterpart : Review

By the time, openSUSE Leap is familiar to all GNU/Linux enthusiasts. It is a conservative, stable, enterprise quality GNU/Linux distribution funded and backed by SUSE Foundation, team behind SEL(SUSE Enterprise Linux).

Since it's inception, there has been multiple reviews on openSUSE Leap 42.2. Most of these reviews praises the stability of the distribution and power of YaST, tool for system configuration and administration. While these reviews also criticizes the difficulty to do the initial configurations. For some people it is related to hardware support such bluetooth, network and printer support ..etc. While for some others it is related to installation of packages such as multimedia codecs.

A customized version of openSUSE Leap 42.2 (CREDIT : dedoimedo)

The dedoimedo portal has published a review on openSUSE Leap 42.2 GNOME edition. The main point made out of the review is, GNOME edition is much better comparing to KDE Plasma counterpart. It provides some relatively easy options for customizing user interface. However, still there some inherent issues like initial configuration, hardware support etc. There are other issues like reduced power efficiency, repeated wifi password queries ..etc. The reviewer puts the blame of QA(Quality Assurance) team for these issues.

OpenSUSE Leap 42.2 Gnome is a better product than its Plasma counterpart, and no mistake. It is more stable, it is faster, more elegant, more easily customizable, and most of the critical everyday functions actually work. For example, you can print to Samba, if you are inclined to fight the firewall, copy files to Samba without losing timestamps, use Bluetooth, use your Ubuntu Phone, and all this without the crippling effects of constant crashes. The entire stack is just more fully featured and better supported.

However, Leap is still only a reasonable release and nothing more. It struggles in many core areas that other distros do with more panache and elegance, and there are some big, glaring problems in the overall product that are a direct result of bad QA. At the very least, this lack of quality has been an almost consistent element with openSUSE these past few years. Now and then, you get a decent hatchling, but most of them are just average. That's probably the word that best defines openSUSE Leap. Average. You should try and see for yourself. You will most likely not be amazed. Such a shame, because for me, SUSE has a sweet spot, and yet, it stubbornly refuses to rekindle the love. 6/10. Have a go, play with your emotions.

Read complete review in dedoimedo portal

openSUSE Leap 42.2 is an extremely stable distribution

openSUSE Leap is an enterprise quality GNU/Linux distribution backed by SUSE foundation. It features extremely stable packages from SEL (SUSE Enterprise Linux) and some packages contributed by openSUSE community.

The Everday Linux User portal has recently published a review of openSUSE 42.2, latest release in openSUSE Leap branch. GNOME flavor of openSUSE leap is considered for the review. In this review, it is observed that openSUSE Leap is extremely stable distribution and if someone is looking for stand alone operating system it is a good choice. It is providing a very smooth and reliable GNOME experience unlike some main stream distributions. Also, the YAST control center provide options to customize operating system up to a great extent.

So here is the deal. If as the Everyday Linux User you are going to use openSUSE then you have to stick with it and in reality it should be the only operating system on your machine. Trying to dual boot will probably tie you up in knots. After you have installed it and you have the most important non-free packages installed (Google Chrome being the main one) then you are likely to find openSUSE and GNOME a joy.

GNOME is really easy to use. It really is point and click and if you can get a handle on those keyboard shortcuts then life will be very easy indeed. openSUSE is stable and it won't let you down with odd quirks that some other distributions have. It really is a case of taking that bit more time to get used to than you may have to with a Linux Mint for instance.

The good news is that there is a lot of documentation available and most things you will try have been tried before and there is usually a straight forward guide to follow to get to where you want to be.

See Everyday Linux User portal to read complete review of openSUSE 42.2