It is an operating system oriented to free software users and open to the development of new functions by its community.
openSUSE recently announced that it has started with work for the development of a new distribution called «openSUSE Slowroll» which will be based on openSUSE Tumbleweed, but which presents a slower update cycle for software versions.
openSUSE Slowroll It is positioned as an intermediate option between the openSUSE Tumbleweed and openSUSE Leap, based on the SUSE Enterprise Linux packages. Updates are mentioned to be initially pushed to the Factory/Tumbleweed repository and, after an allotted time for testing and identifying issues, automatically moved to the Slowroll repository.
With that, It is intended that "openSUSE Slowroll can be considered a variant of Tumbleweed, in which the packages will arrive with a certain delay for their stabilization. Adding packages directly to the Slowroll repository will only be allowed to make urgent bug fixes that affect key packages in Factory and are too risky to update quickly.
It is mentioned that ""openSUSE Slowroll” was created after summarizing the results of a survey to openSUSE developers and users about what to do with the openSUSE Leap distribution, in the context of the transition of the future branch of the SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution to ALP (Adaptive Linux Platform).
The survey showed that, on the one hand, the community is in favor of continuing the development of openSUSE Leap in its current form and, on the other hand, shows interest in a continuously updated distribution build model:
- The majority of developers voted to continue using (54%) and participating in the development (39%) of the current combination of openSUSE Leap and openSUSE Tumbleweed without creating new distributions.
- Most users (39%) immediately chose Slowroll, considering this option a higher priority than the current openSUSE Leap distribution. When asked which option users would participate in development, 28% chose Slowroll, 25% the old Leap, and 19% Linarite.
The final decision has not yet been made, but given the interest in the rolling model, it is proposed to focus on the development of Slowroll, since maintaining two replacement options at the same time (Slowroll and Linarite) will require many more resources for maintenance. of what was spent during the development of openSUSE Leap. Furthermore, the survey showed that only a small number of developers are interested in supporting Slowroll and Linarite simultaneously.
In its current form, openSUSE Leap is based on a core set of packages, common with the SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution. After the transformation of SUSE Linux Enterprise, two basic options were proposed for further development of openSUSE:
- openSUSE Linarite: which is created using old release preparation methods used in the development of openSUSE Leap. openSUSE Linarite is supposed to use the ALP platform, which involves dividing the basic foundation of the distribution into two parts: a simplified "host operating system" to run on top of the hardware and an application support layer, intended to run in containers and Virtual machines.
- “openSUSE Slowroll”: based on openSUSE Tumbleweed without using SUSE Linux Enterprise packages. Slowroll will offer newer versions of software and evolve with a short update cycle, but will focus on providing a higher level of stability than Tumbleweed.
According to Richard Brown, head of the openSUSE project board, the openSUSE Leap replacement should:
Focus primarily on workstation applications, rather than trying to simultaneously cover the needs of servers and desktop systems. The priority for use on workstations is given primarily due to the fact that most openSUSE developers use the distribution in this area, and SUSE Linux Enterprise products are primarily focused on server use, i.e.
It is hoped that by developing a desktop distribution, the openSUSE community can make up for what was lost in SUSE Linux Enterprise and generate the most benefit.
Finally it is worth mentioning that new versions are supposed to be created by openSUSE Slowroll once every one or two months, with a constant interim release of package updates with bug and vulnerability fixes.
For now, since they find images available iso lists (4.4 GB) for x86_64 architecture.
If you are interested in knowing more about it, You can check the details in the following link.