After a year of development, the launch of the new version of the popular Linux distribution, openSUSE Leap 15.4. The release is based on the same set of binary packages with SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP 4 with some custom applications from the openSUSE Tumbleweed repository.
Using the same binary packages in SUSE and openSUSE simplifies switching between distributions, saves resources on building packages, distributing updates, and testing, unifies differences in specification files, and lets you stop diagnosing different package builds when parse error messages.
In this new version of Leap 15.4 it is highlighted by Leap Micro 5.2, a modern, lightweight operating system that is immutable and ideal for host container and virtualized workloads. Leap Micro is ideal for decentralized computing environments, edge uses, and embedded/IoT deployments.
Leap Micro is a simplified distribution based on the Tumbleweed repository, which uses an atomic install system and automatic update enforcement, supports configuration via cloud-init, comes with a read-only root partition with Btrfs, and built-in runtime support for Podman/CRI-O and Docker . The main purpose of Leap Micro is to be used in decentralized environments, to create microservices and as a base system for virtualization platforms and container isolation.
One of the Leap Micro related packages for developers is Podman. Podman gives developers options to run their apps with Podman in production and the 3.4.2 updateThe release brings new pod support for ini containers
leap 15.4 continues to deliver a robust and familiar release and offers stable open source software for desktops, servers, containers and virtualized workloads,” said Max Lin, Release Team Member. “Leap is a hard distro for techies to ignore; security fixes, new technologies, and updated packages provide professionals with a well-designed community release that is identical to its enterprise twin. And it offers a huge amount of community software.”
As with the previous version of Leap, users can migrate to SUSE Linux Enterprise and let workloads run as normal. This release further improves migration proficiency because the YaST team developed a simplified migration tool for SLE migrations.
OpenSUSE Leap 15.4 Main New Features
In this new version of the distribution, as mentioned at the beginning, one of the main novelties is that a new specialized build “Leap Micro 5.2” is released, based on the developments of the MicroOS project.
The 389 directory server is used as the primary LDAP server, and support for the OpenLDAP server has been discontinued.
We can also find the updating user environments: KDE Plasma 5.24, GNOME 41, Enlightenment 0.25.3, MATE 1.26, LxQt 1.0, Sway 1.6.1, Deepin 20.3, Cinnamon 4.6.7. The version of Xfce has not changed (4.16).
In addition to this, it is also highlighted that the ability to use a desktop session based on the Wayland protocol in environments with proprietary drivers NVIDIA, as well as that added Pipewire media server, currently only used for screen sharing in Wayland-based environments (PulseAudio is still used for audio).
Other changes that stand out in this new version are the updates of the different components of the system, of which PeulseAudio 15 updated, Mesa 21.2.4, Wayland 1.20, LibreOffice 7.2.5, Scribus 1.5.8, VLC 3.0.17, mpv 0.34, KDE Gear 21.12.2, GTK 4.6, Qt 6.2/ 5.15.2, among others.
In addition to this, it also stands out the simplified installation of the H.264 codec (openh264) and gstreamer plugins, if the user needs them.
Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.
Download and get openSUSE Leap 15.2
For those who are interested in being able to obtain this new version, they should know that ISO image can be downloaded from the official distribution website 3.8 GB (x86_64, aarch64, ppc64les, 390x), simplified image for installation with package network download (173 MB) and live builds with KDE, GNOME and Xfce (~900 MB).
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