The openSUSE release team confirms that there will be a successor to Leap 15
The developers of the openSUSE project announced, through a publication, the istart of work to be carried out the transition of openSUSE Leap towards the ALP base, since according to the roadmap openSUSE Leap 15.6 (to be released in June) will be the last version of openSUSE Leap from the 15.x branch and also the last one in its current form.
It is mentioned that The reasons for the change of plans are due to the desire to make the transition to the new ALP technological platform, a platform that divides the distribution base into parts, where the main distribution acts as a simplified "host operating system", and user space applications and components run in containers or virtual machines isolated from each other and that the main focus Leap's 16 is in commercial and cloud services, emphasizing containerization.
The transition to Leap 16 is not just a numerical step forward, but symbolizes an important path forward in technology and user experiences. The future of openSUSE Leap is based on the innovative concept of SUSE's adaptive Linux platform.
The adaptable Linux platform powers the next-generation openSUSE Leap, Leap Micro, and SUSE solutions. It makes distributions more adaptable and suitable for cloud-native workloads, while being able to handle a rapid pace of innovation.
There are no plans to remove the classic (non-immutable) option from Leap; Both non-immutable and immutable installation variants are available for Leap 15 and are planned for Leap 16. This will continue to be the preferred way for people to deploy Leap.
Some Highlighted features and planned changes for openSUSE Leap 16 include:
- ALP Platform: The adoption of the ALP platform, which is based on SLE Micro, a SUSE Linux Enterprise product based on developments from the MicroOS project. This platform focuses on modularity and running applications and components in isolated environments.
- Centralized management: Salt (pre-installed) and Ansible (optional) configuration management systems will be provided for centralized management.
- Containers and virtual machines; The environment will use containers and virtual machines to run applications and components, providing greater isolation between them.
- Disk Encryption:The default uses full disk encryption (FDE) with the ability to store keys in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM).
- Mounting the root partition: The root partition will be mounted in read-only mode and will not change during the operation.
- Atomic update installation mechanism: A mechanism for atomic installation of updates will be implemented based on the use of a standard package manager and a snapshot mechanism in the Btrfs file system.
- Change of development model: Development of openSUSE Leap 16 will continue to use the openSUSE Factory repository development model, seeking a balance between new ALP technologies, the traditional Linux operating system, and community package integration initiatives.
- Components: Containerized system components include yast2, podman, k3s, cockpit, GDM (GNOME Display Manager), and KVM. Podman and K3s (Kubernetes) tools are available to run isolated containers
- self healing: To maintain system survivability, the last stable state is recorded using Btrfs snapshots (if anomalies are detected after applying updates or changing settings, the system is automatically transferred to the previous state).
It is worth mentioning that openSUSE Leap 16 is expected in 2025, and until then, openSUSE Leap 15.6 will probably be the last classic version of the project, but if for some reason the development of openSUSE Leap 16 is delayed, the developers mention that it is possible to extend the lifecycle of openSUSE Leap 15.6 or release an additional version of openSUSE Leap 15.7. The development of openSUSE Leap 16 plans to continue using the openSUSE Factory repository development model and achieve an optimal balance between new ALP technologies, the traditional Linux operating system, and community package integration initiatives.
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