openSUSE Leap Micro 5.5 Beta Published For This Container & VM Focused Distro

[phoronix]

Phoronix: openSUSE Leap Micro 5.5 Beta Published For This Container & VM Focused Distro

Ahead of the planned stable release in October, the openSUSE Leap Micro 5.5 Beta was published today for this lightweight Linux operating system built for containers and virtualized workloads...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/openSUSE-Leap-Micro-5.5-Beta

[skeevy420]

I took this yesterday and thought it'd be a good wallpaper for SUSE.

[digitaltrails]

how many distros does suse have !?!??

Yeah, it's quite confusing, especially since SUSE also has numerous variants. After looking at the various OpenSUSE related distro web pages I tried to diagram it in their forums using graphviz:


8b6c0357866fd56aca58c76366bdaf6b4ef28c29_2_1035x255.jpg
But I was unsure of the exact relationships. Their forums are pretty quiet (mostly people seeking help), I haven't had a lot of responses with clarifications, but there have been some: https://forums.opensuse.org/t/relati...stros/169349/5.

I've been using Tumbleweed since 2018 (Leap before that). Tumbleweed has proven to be quite stable. The problems are mostly little paper-cuts, but updates are so frequent that time spent on the paper cuts can add up. For example, after a recent update, my boot times went from 6 seconds to 30 seconds and I had to spend a little bit of time figuring out why. The disconnect with the release of Nvidia drivers often results in issues on major kernel version jumps, but it's easy enough to just delay those updates for a week or two. Overall, I've found it a relatively manageable and fun way to stay on the bleeding edge.

Slowroll looks to be a good balance between being very up to date, but with a manageable level of work around updates.

Slowroll would also make it easier to keep multiple machines in sync. With Tumbleweed, the updates happen so frequently the time-window to get multiple hosts on the same version is very small.

They also have a push toward OpenSUSE MicroOS, an containerised platform, immutable between boots, flatpack-oriented.

Naming the OS's doesn't seem to be one of their strong points. I don't think it's helping them win over new recruits.

[Firnefex]

But I was unsure of the exact relationships.

There is also Leap Micro, which is the "MicroOS of Leap" while MicroOS is based on Tumbleweed.
You already showed the renamed Desktop variants Kalpa and Aeon. MicroOS is the Server version.

Leap is based on SLE and SLE will be replaced with ALP, so we need an successor to Leap. This is Slowroll, no longer based on SLE, but Tumbleweed instead, because most people prefer Rolling Releases.
I think the whole immutable system thing don't has to be explained here. Distribution wise you always have the standard and a Micro edition.
So Slowroll theoretically should also get a Micro edition, maybe Leap Micro becomes Slowroll Micro based on ALP...

Besides SLE there is also SLE Micro at the moment. ALP on the other hand only has a MicroOS edition, it will be kind of a SLE Micro rework with a fresh code base specialized for containers and a 3 month update cycle. There are 2 versions of ALP right now:

• the server-oriented version (codename “Bedrock”)
• the cloud-native oriented version (codename “Micro”)

[skeevy420]

lol just looking at the picture makes you dizzy.
also don't forget redhat clone they announced and openELA participation.
looks like they are experimenting a lot these days

And it's incomplete. It's missing SUSE Liberty Linux, the RHEL clone. I wouldn't be surprised if there were others, too.

[digitaltrails]

There is also Leap Micro, which is the "MicroOS of Leap" while MicroOS is based on Tumbleweed.
You already showed the renamed Desktop variants Kalpa and Aeon. MicroOS is the Server version.

Leap is based on SLE and SLE will be replaced with ALP, so we need an successor to Leap. This is Slowroll, no longer based on SLE, but Tumbleweed instead, because most people prefer Rolling Releases.
I think the whole immutable system thing don't has to be explained here. Distribution wise you always have the standard and a Micro edition.
So Slowroll theoretically should also get a Micro edition, maybe Leap Micro becomes Slowroll Micro based on ALP...

Besides SLE there is also SLE Micro at the moment. ALP on the other hand only has a MicroOS edition, it will be kind of a SLE Micro rework with a fresh code base specialized for containers and a 3 month update cycle. There are 2 versions of ALP right now:

• the server-oriented version (codename “Bedrock”)
• the cloud-native oriented version (codename “Micro”)

Thanks for the useful comments, much appreciated. I guess that means the landscape is more like:
SUSE.jpg
SUSE Liberty is off somewhere in left-field. It's nice that they're doing it, but it's not part of the above puzzle. Fedora's already in OpenSUSE's Build Service, so I guess that kind of automation makes Liberty, and all the other variations somewhat more manageable.

[digitaltrails]

And it's incomplete. It's missing SUSE Liberty Linux, the RHEL clone. I wouldn't be surprised if there were others, too.

There are. The box with SLE Real-Time, SLE-High-Performance-Computing, also includes ... - indicating there more niche offerings, such as Thin Client.

Plus, the diagram only shows the current situation, it doesn't show how things have changed over the decades. For example, the original SUSE was based on Slackware.

[uid313]

How does this compare against Alpine Linux and Ubuntu Core?

[skeevy420]

How does this compare against Alpine Linux and Ubuntu Core?

Well, compared to Ubuntu Core it's actually worth using.

It doesn't really compare to Alpine. Alpine is a generic minimalist distribution whereas Leap Micro is a minimalist container/VM distribution. It's like Alpine once you've built it up and gave it a purpose.

[digitaltrails]

How does this compare against Alpine Linux and Ubuntu Core?

From what I understand, Alpine is supposed to small and simple with components like BusyBox and OpenRC. OpenSUSE MicroOS is just as complex as OpenSUSE in respect to systemd and similar components. It's containerisation of the normal OpenSUSE server components with Flatpak for additions. I seen some positive things written about OpenSUSE Aeon, MicroOS with Gnome, in the OpenSUSE mailing lists, but I was waiting for Kalpa (KDE version) before kicking the tires on a containerised approach. There's an article about MicroOS at LWN, it was written back in March, so things have moved on a bit since then.