openSUSE Leap 15.6 Now Planned To Provide More Time For ALP

[phoronix]

Phoronix: openSUSE Leap 15.6 Now Planned To Provide More Time For ALP

The soon-to-be-released openSUSE Leap 15.5 was going to be the last of the openSUSE Leap 15 series, but now openSUSE/SUSE has decided there will be an openSUSE Leap 15.6 release to allow additional time for their Adaptable Linux Platform (ALP) to be developed...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/openSUSE-Leap-15.6-Plan

[Estranged1906]

Good. At the moment I wouldn't dare to install Leap on a new computer because the roadmap is so unclear.

Most importantly, I wonder:

1. Will you be able to upgrade Leap 15.6 (or whatever will be the last version) to the new ALP-based Leap 16.0?
2. Will the new ALP-based Leap have the same scope of packages, most importantly the alternative desktops like Plasma and Xfce? (SUSE only supports Gnome in SLE)
3. Will SLE keep a "traditional" version around or kill it completely once it reaches EOL (in the early 2030's) and only push the new immutable ALP SLE?

[Slartifartblast]

ALP seems nice in theory but I have some serious concerns over it.

No KDE version, no ALP for me.

[user1]

Good. At the moment I wouldn't dare to install Leap on a new computer because the roadmap is so unclear.

Most importantly, I wonder:

1. Will you be able to upgrade Leap 15.6 (or whatever will be the last version) to the new ALP-based Leap 16.0?
2. Will the new ALP-based Leap have the same scope of packages, most importantly the alternative desktops like Plasma and Xfce? (SUSE only supports Gnome in SLE)
3. Will SLE keep a "traditional" version around or kill it completely once it reaches EOL (in the early 2030's) and only push the new immutable ALP SLE?

Same. When I choose a distro, I want to make sure it has a clear future and that I like the direction it's heading to. Currently I wouldn't want to use Leap either given its unclear future.

[Estranged1906]

Same. When I choose a distro, I want to make sure it has a clear future and that I like the direction it's heading to. Currently I wouldn't want to use Leap either given its unclear future.

At least we can be sure that Tumbleweed will stay as it's upstream of SLE/ALP.

[drake23]

Had the same concerns, which is why I went from Leap to Tumbleweed. Looking now, it seems I could have stayed with leap a little longer, but they already said moving to ALP requires a new install, so the conventional Leap would have come to an end sooner or later (unfortunately).

Tumbleweed is fantastic, but I really would have loved an enterprise grade LTS distro with plasma (aka leap)... Might use (k)Ubuntu for that then :/

[Estranged1906]

I really would have loved an enterprise grade LTS distro with plasma (aka leap)/

There's also:

• Kubuntu (as you mentioned)
• Mageia (not really LTS [but neither is Leap] but focused on being stable and reliable)
• Debian (though Plasma is not their main focus)
• Alma (but again very Gnome-focused)

edit: although the one thing I really love about Leap is that even though it is stable and uses well-tested packages (same binaries as SLE in fact), it STILL has Snapper built-in! None of the others above does that.

[Space Beer]

Good. At the moment I wouldn't dare to install Leap on a new computer because the roadmap is so unclear.

Most importantly, I wonder:

1. Will you be able to upgrade Leap 15.6 (or whatever will be the last version) to the new ALP-based Leap 16.0?
2. Will the new ALP-based Leap have the same scope of packages, most importantly the alternative desktops like Plasma and Xfce? (SUSE only supports Gnome in SLE)
3. Will SLE keep a "traditional" version around or kill it completely once it reaches EOL (in the early 2030's) and only push the new immutable ALP SLE?

1. It will be possible to switch from last Leap version (now 15.6) to new 16 version (based on ALP)
2. Most likely. The closest thing to new Leap (16) are MicroOS versions, Aeon (GNOME) & Kalpa (KDE). Though MicroOS is rolling distro, while new Leap will be stable.
3. No. There will still be Tumbleweed, but all other versions will be immutable/ALP (same will be for SLED/SLES)

There is still lot of work to do, so I'm not surprised they decided to keep Leap 15.x one more year. But I agree this announcement might be too late, at least for people who recently considered to give Leap 15 a try.

I was also thinking to move from TW to Leap (works great, but I don't like daily updates), but I don't want immutable distro on my desktop. At least not in this shape (have been testing MicroOS and Fedora Kinoite a bit, actually using Steam Deck as a primary PC). So I would probably stick to TW or move to Kubuntu. Though from 24.04 Ubuntu will also have immutable flavour, which makes me think they might go the same way as (open)SUSE and Fedora (Red Hat), only little bit later

[drake23]

1. It will be possible to switch from last Leap version (now 15.6) to new 16 version (based on ALP)
2. Most likely. The closest thing to new Leap (16) are MicroOS versions, Aeon (GNOME) & Kalpa (KDE). Though MicroOS is rolling distro, while new Leap will be stable.
3. No. There will still be Tumbleweed, but all other versions will be immutable/ALP (same will be for SLED/SLES)

There is still lot of work to do, so I'm not surprised they decided to keep Leap 15.x one more year. But I agree this announcement might be too late, at least for people who recently considered to give Leap 15 a try.

I was also thinking to move from TW to Leap (works great, but I don't like daily updates), but I don't want immutable distro on my desktop. At least not in this shape (have been testing MicroOS and Fedora Kinoite a bit, actually using Steam Deck as a primary PC). So I would probably stick to TW or move to Kubuntu. Though from 24.04 Ubuntu will also have immutable flavour, which makes me think they might go the same way as (open)SUSE and Fedora (Red Hat), only little bit later

Upgrade from 15.x to 16 is only supposed to be possible if 15.x has been installed in the transactional server role afaik.

"Classical" 15.x to 16 is not possible (which is why I already moved to TW)

[Estranged1906]

Upgrade from 15.x to 16 is only supposed to be possible if 15.x has been installed in the transactional server role afaik.

That's good news for the five worldwide users of the transactional server role....