After dropping a beta back in late April, openSUSE Leap is now cruising toward its final stable 16.0 release, with the RC version officially available for testing purposes.
Now, since Leap 16 is closely tied to SUSE Linux Enterprise 16 (SLE 16), the actual Gold Master candidate can only be announced after SLE 16.0 itself hits that milestone, which is expected sometime in late September.
Assuming everything goes smoothly with the new maintenance setup, Leap 16.0 is on track to be delivered in October, just ahead of the official SLE 16.0 launch.
It’s worth noting also that the dev team transitioned from the old Open Build Service Source Code Management to Git for both Tumbleweed and Leap 16.0. Now, to the novelties.
Possibly the biggest headline for desktop enthusiasts is that Leap 16.0 RC is among the first to offer Xfce running on Wayland—right out of the box, no extra tweaking needed.
But don’t forget, this is experimental, so expect bugs and rough edges. In any case, however, it’s an exciting step for anyone who’s been waiting for Xfce desktops to join the Wayland era.
Another big change is that a fresh Leap 16.0 install now ships with no YaST packages by default. Instead, the new Myrlyn package steps in as a replacement for legacy YaST Software Management, offering a modern interface to Zypper.
Security also gets a boost in Leap 16.0, with SELinux now enabled by default for all new installations. But if SELinux isn’t your thing, you can still switch to AppArmor after installation.
It’s worth noting that SLE 16.0 drops support for running 32-bit binaries. However, Leap users aren’t completely out of luck. There’s a workaround—installing grub2-compat-ia32 and enabling ia32_emulation=1 at the kernel level—if you need legacy compatibility.
Meanwhile, Steam has been removed from the Non-OSS repo due to missing 32-bit libraries, so gamers should pay attention to installing the selinux-policy-targeted-gaming package manually.
Another novelty – Leap 16.0 ditches the old split-update repository setup in favor of a single repo-oss that now handles both SLE and community packages (and their updates). Each architecture gets its own repodata, and parallel downloads are now supported in Zypper.
Lastly, users moving from Leap 15.6 will find things a little different this time around. The recommended way to migrate is by using the new opensuse-migration-tool, which brings handy scripts for things like enabling 32-bit binaries, switching from PulseAudio to PipeWire, and toggling between AppArmor and SELinux.
For more information, see the announcement.
I’ve always loved OpenSUSE. It doesn’t seem to withstand my tinkering too well. I find it to be a little fragile. I have frequently tinkered with it – and arrived at a non-bootable situation. For that reason – I mostly bypass it.
That’s great news! Thank you, Bobby. Looking forward to your review of the release candidate. 🙂 I wonder how you’ll rate it and if you’ll be able to easily install Steam and play it.