Two snapshots were released this week for OpenSuSE Tumbleweed. As you know, the Tumbleweed distro is a pure rolling release version of openSUSE containing the latest stable versions of all software instead of relying on rigid periodic release cycles.
Related: What is a Rolling Release Linux and What is the Real Benefit of Using it
For those that may enjoy the rolling-release nature of openSUSE Tumbleweed but want to be a bit more conservative with the updates, Tumbleweed supports the concept of snapshots.
What Are the openSUSE Tumbleweed Snapshots
Tumbleweed differs from Leap in that the base system and packages are constantly changing within the same repository. The user then performs distribution upgrades each time the repository is updated.
Related: openSUSE Leap vs Tumbleweed, Difference Between Them Explained
openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots provides a separate repository for each snapshot of Tumbleweed. Users thus have a remote repository that matches their installed system. Unlike the single repository approach were installing a new package may come from a newer snapshot and not fit into the installed system, with snapshot repositories new packages are ensured to fit properly.
This provides the benefits of bleeding edge software when you need it without the hassle of updating just to install new software. In effect openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots acts like lots of mini fixed releases so you can choose when to update.
Highlights
The previous snapshot this week, 20211016, updated the 25th Anniversary Edition of KDE’s Plasma. The 5.23 version dives into a cool blue default color scheme and provides System Settings that lets users pick accent colors to make their system pop out with a personal touch.
The Kickoff launcher for Plasma, which is located in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, had some large rewritten code to make it faster and easier to use.
Snapshot 20211019 offered quite a bit of updated packages. Remote access package Remmina 1.4.21 provided updates for the GNOME 40 runtime and made some backward compatibility with WebKit versions under 2.32.0.
Related: openSUSE Tumbleweed Now Offering GNOME 41
The KDE 5.87.0 Frameworks version had an enormous amount of updated packages in the snapshot. Among the updates was the removal of defunct Python and Ruby script engines with Plasma Framework. On top of that, the 5.87.0 Breeze icons package added 22px variants of the preferences icons.
Via the openSUSE Tumbleweed CLI utility, interested users can bind their systems to a given snapshot if not wanting to be continually installing the very latest Tumbleweed packaging changes on a daily basis.
