Along the same lines, the beta version of openSUSE Leap 15.4 has been released for the general public to download and test. Leap 15.4 Beta is based on the Jump concept that combines openSUSE Backports with binaries from SUSE Linux Enterprise.
Related: openSUSE Leap vs Tumbleweed, Difference Between Them Explained
Even though it is technically a minor release, there are some significant changes worth noting along with some updates and improvements.
openSUSE Leap 15.4 Beta: What’s New?
Unlike previous 15.x series versions, Leap 15.4 will offer a refresh of more modern packages for the distribution.
On the desktop environment side, this first public beta of openSUSE Leap 15.4 Beta features the KDE Plasma 5.24 LTS, GNOME 41, and Xfce 4.16. In the case of Xfce, the openSUSE devs have put a lot of effort into its visual identity which resulted in a new set of application icons and color palettes. With them, Xfce shines a little more out of the box.
Another interesting change is the inclusion of Sway, which is a tiling Wayland compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3’s features, plus a few extras.
Under the hood, openSUSE Leap 15.4 is powered by Linux kernel 5.14.21. It’s important to note that the kernel in Leap is the same kernel used in SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 4. Furthermore, openSUSE Leap 15.4 Beta includes systemd version 249.10 as well the DNF package manager is bumped to version 4.10.
Of course, there are many other updated packages compared to what shipped in Leap 15.3.
- LibreOffice 7.2.3
- Firefox 91.5
- Chromium 98
- Thunderbird 91.6
- PHP 7.4
- Python 3.6
- Ruby 2.5
- Rust 1.43
In terms of container technologies, openSUSE Leap 15.4 Beta gives more power to develop, ship, and deploy containerized applications using the newer container technologies that are being maintained in the distribution. It has updated versions of container technology packages compared to Leap 15.3, plus security updates to all the packages such as containerd, podman, and CRI-O.
Apart from those mentioned above, many AI (Artificial Intelligence) packages such as Tensorflow, PyTorch, and ONNX are available in Leap 15.4 Beta.
The beta build of openSUSE Leap 15.4 is available to download for x86_64, aarch64, PowerPC, and s390x architecture. Deployment scenarios can be run for physical, virtual, host and guest, and cloud.
More details on the openSUSE Leap 15.4 Beta effort via news.opensuse.org.
