openSUSE Leap 16.0 Pre-Alpha Available, GA Next October

[phoronix]

Phoronix: openSUSE Leap 16.0 Pre-Alpha Available, GA Next October

While not expected to reach general availability (GA) state until October of 2025, available today in pre-alpha form is the openSUSE Leap 16.0 distribution...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/openSUSE-Leap-16-Pre-Alpha

[Gabbb]

Why did I think that leap15 was the last version of Leap, I feel stupid ^ Oh well, OpenSuse is rather difficult to keep track of these days.

[Jedibeeftrix]

Why did I think that leap15 was the last version of Leap, I feel stupid ^ Oh well, OpenSuse is rather difficult to keep track of these days.

No, you're not Stupid. It is very difficult to keep track of the profusion of changing products/product_names/development_models.

My stupid question:

"Leap 16.0 is a traditional distribution and a successor to Leap 15.6 with expected General Availability arriving in the Fall of 2025."

Does that mean it is/isn't based on the immutable base from its SLE 16 parent? I thought it was, but is that 'traditional'?

[Mavman]

No, you're not Stupid. It is very difficult to keep track of the profusion of changing products/product_names/development_models.

My stupid question:

"Leap 16.0 is a traditional distribution and a successor to Leap 15.6 with expected General Availability arriving in the Fall of 2025."

Does that mean it is/isn't based on the immutable base from its SLE 16 parent? I thought it was, but is that 'traditional'?

meh... i simply quit'ed it...

still, from

https://news.opensuse.org/2024/01/15/clear-course-is-set-for-os-leap/

and

https://news.opensuse.org/2024/10/07/leap-16-0-prealpha/

it seems 16 is indeed based on ALP - tech which, apparently, got renamed to SLFO, SUSE Linux Framework One (i really don't know who renamed it, but seems to ! be a very brilliant guy ! ... at least alp was more catchy.... remembered me of the ALF tv show)

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Why did I think that leap15 was the last version of Leap, I feel stupid ^ Oh well, OpenSuse is rather difficult to keep track of these days.

You aren't stupid. They said Leap 15 was the last Leap at one point. The whole "who the crap knows how the future is going to pan out for our stable server / workstation offering?" was a huge foot gun for OpenSUSE.

ALP was coming and would be the basis for SLES. There was going to be some OpenSUSE offshoot of that, but for all the desktop usage related packages, there wasn't a solid plan to bridge the gap (hence Leap 15 being the last Leap). It was always likely that things would get hashed out and some new non-rolling offering would eventually exist. So things are starting to come together. But again, foot gun. I'm sure some users left for Ubuntu or Debian or some Red Hat funded offering.

• Tumbleweed is still very compelling for rolling needs (I ran this for years!)
• Slowroll fills an interesting niche for me (especially with the LTS kernel-longterm + zfs-kmp-longterm packages)
• MicroOS and the desktop offshoots of Aeon and Kalpa are neat
• Leap 16 may be very interesting

The new Agama installer is also taking shape nicely. As a longterm OpenSUSE user though, I've been quite taken by Universal Blue umbrella projects including Bluefin and Aurora. I think they've really nailed the "it's a super powerful appliance that needs zero maintenance" aspect and is simultaneously customizable / easily forkable.

[Gabbb]

needs zero maintenance" aspect.

I wouldn't yet call that nailing it. They had to reset the days since "needs serious user intervention" number just like 2-3 months ago.

[lkocman]

Hello everyone,

Leap is traditional distro in the first place, if you want immutable server with point releases just pick Leap Micro. Do you want Immutable desktop? Pick Aeon.
We've dropped the transactional role from 15.6 in later Beta phase (after the referenced 16.0 article was written), so you can't install Leap 15.6 as transactional starting by 15.6.

There might be experimental Leap 16.0 desktop image if there is enough interest (my personal interest), but take it as an experiment if it happens at all.

The renaming is something I'm personally not very happy about, SUSE does that way too often in my private opinion.
But I have to work with what I get.

Thank you

Lubos
Leap Release Manager

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

I wouldn't yet call that nailing it. They had to reset the days since "needs serious user intervention" number just like 2-3 months ago.

My statement was only slightly hyperbolic. Yes, there was the one-off public key rotation issue that required users to curl a script. My only system on the umbrella projects at that point was my Steam Deck on Bazzite. Later on I put Bluefin on my desktop early one weekend. By Sunday I had it on 2 desktops, 3 home theater PCs, and 2 laptops. I haven't done anything maintenance wise to any of those machines since. No system package updates. No flatpak updates. No container updates. That's a far cry from what I was doing on all these machines previously (mostly a combination of Tumbleweed / Slowroll installs).

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Hello everyone,

Leap is traditional distro in the first place, if you want immutable server with point releases just pick Leap Micro. Do you want Immutable desktop? Pick Aeon.
We've dropped the transactional role from 15.6 in later Beta phase (after the referenced 16.0 article was written), so you can't install Leap 15.6 as transactional starting by 15.6.

There might be experimental Leap 16.0 desktop image if there is enough interest (my personal interest), but take it as an experiment if it happens at all.

The renaming is something I'm personally not very happy about, SUSE does that way too often in my private opinion.
But I have to work with what I get.

Thank you

Lubos
Leap Release Manager

Thanks for the update Lubos! I think I had misinterpreted the announcement and assumed there would also be a desktop image for Leap 16, but from your comments I guess it's just targeting server duty for now. So Leap 15 might be the last Leap after all, at least for desktop / workstation use cases.

Leap 16.0 is a traditional distribution and a successor to Leap 15.6 with expected General Availability arriving in the Fall of 2025.

We intend to provide users with sufficient overlap so that 15.6 users can have a smooth migration, just like they’re used to from previous releases.

Further details are available on our roadmap. The roadmap is subject to change since we have to respond to any SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16 schedule changes.

Users can expect a traditional distribution in a brand new form based on binaries from the latest SLES 16 and community packages from our Factory development codebase.

Especially the bits about 'community packages from Factory' made me think that was all the desktop related stuff that doesn't exist in SLES.

[lkocman]

Ah sorry for confusing you. My coment was only for the immutable part, where I wanted to point people to existing immutable desktop or immutable server solution.
The first paragraph in the annoucement mentions "The installer will currently offer you Base, GNOME, and KDE".
Leap 16.0 is general purpose system that can be either server or dektop/workstation. Just like Leap 15.X

Check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6vmC-BpfLA