openSUSE () is a

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

RPM Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl ...

-based

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

developed by the openSUSE project. The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. Additionally the project creates a variety of tools, such as

YaST YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) is a Linux operating system setup and configuration tool. YaST is featured in the openSUSE Linux distribution, as well as in SUSE's derived commercial distributions. It is also part of the defunct United Linux. YaS ...

, Open Build Service, openQA, Snapper, Machinery, Portus,

KIWI Kiwi most commonly refers to: * Kiwi (bird), a flightless bird native to New Zealand * Kiwi (nickname), a nickname for New Zealanders * Kiwifruit, an edible berry * Kiwi dollar or New Zealand dollar, a unit of currency Kiwi or KIWI may also ref ...

and OSEM.

Product history

In the past, the SUSE Linux company had focused on releasing the SUSE Linux Personal and SUSE Linux Professional box sets which included extensive printed documentation that was available for sale in retail stores. The company's ability to sell an open source product was largely due to the closed-source development process used. Although SUSE Linux had always been free software product licensed with the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), it was only freely possible to retrieve the source code of the next release 2 months after it was ready for purchase. SUSE Linux' strategy was to create a technically superior Linux distribution with the large number of employed engineers, that would make users willing to pay for their distribution in retail stores. Since the acquisition by

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the lead ...

in 2003 and with the advent of openSUSE, this has been reversed: starting with version 9.2, an unsupported one-DVD

ISO image An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. IS ...

of SUSE Professional was made available for download. The FTP server continues to operate and has the advantage of "streamlined" installs, permitting the user to download only the packages the user feels they need. The ISO has the advantages of an easy install package, the ability to operate even if the user's network card does not work "out of the box", and less experience needed (i.e., an inexperienced Linux user may not know whether or not to install a certain package, and the ISO offers several preselected sets of packages). VirtualBox SUSE Linux 10

The initial stable release from the openSUSE Project, SUSE Linux 10.0, was available for download just before the retail release of SUSE Linux 10.0. In addition, Novell discontinued the Personal version, renaming the Professional version to simply "SUSE Linux", and repricing "SUSE Linux" to about the same as the old Personal version. In 2006 with version 10.2, the SUSE Linux distribution was officially renamed to openSUSE, as it is pronounced similarly to “''

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

''”. Until version 13.2, stable fixed releases with separate maintenance streams from SLE were the project's main offering. From late 2015, openSUSE has been split into two main offerings, Leap, the more conservative fixed release Leap distribution based on SLE, and Tumbleweed, the rolling release distribution focused on integrating the latest stable packages from upstream projects. Over the years, SuSE Linux has gone from a status of a distribution with restrictive, delayed publications (2 months of waiting for those who had not bought the box, without ISOs available, but installation available via FTP) and a closed development model to a free distribution model with immediate and free availability for all and transparent and open development. On April 27, 2011, Attachmate completed its acquisition of Novell. Attachmate split Novell into two autonomous business units, Novell and SUSE. Attachmate made no changes to the relationship between SUSE (formerly Novell) and the openSUSE project. After the 2014 merger of the Attachmate Group with Micro Focus, SUSE reaffirmed their commitment to openSUSE.

EQT Partners EQT AB Group is a global investment organization founded in 1994. Its funds invest in private equity, infrastructure, real estate, growth equity, and venture capital in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. , EQT's assets under management a ...

announced their intent to acquire SUSE on July 2, 2018. There are no expected changes in the relationship between SUSE and openSUSE. This acquisition is the third acquisition of SUSE Linux since the founding of the openSUSE Project and closed on March 15, 2019.

The openSUSE Project

The openSUSE Project is a community project to create, promote, improve and document the openSUSE

. The

openSUSE Project openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open source RPM Package Manager, RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. Addi ...

community, sponsored by

SUSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux Ent ...

Arm In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...

B1-SystemsTuxedo Computers
and others, develops and maintains various distributions based on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

. Beyond the distributions and tools, the openSUSE Project provides a web portal for community involvement. The community develops openSUSE collaboratively with its corporate sponsors through the Open Build Service
openQA
writing documentation, designing artwork, fostering discussions on open

mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...

s and in

Internet Relay Chat Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called ''channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat and ...

channels, and improving the openSUSE site through its

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...

interface. The openSUSE Project develops

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

and tools and has two main Linux distribution named openSUSE Leap and openSUSE Tumbleweed. The project has several distributions for specific purposes like MicroOS, which is an immutable

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

that hosts container workloads, and the

Kubernetes Kubernetes (, commonly stylized as K8s) is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Google originally designed Kubernetes, but the Cloud Native Computing Foundation now maintains ...

certified distribution Kubic, which is a multi-purpose standalone and

container operating system based on openSUSE MicroOS. The project is sponsored by a number of companies and individuals, most notably

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

, B1 Systems, Heinlein Support and TUXEDO Computers. The first indication that there should be a community-based Linux distribution called OpenSuSE goes back to a mail of August 3, 2005, in which at the same time the launch of the website opensuse.org was announced. This page was available a few days later. One day later the launch of the community project was officially announced. According to its own understanding, openSUSE is a community that propagates the use of Linux and free software wherever possible. Beside a Linux based distribution it develops tools like the Open Build Service and

. Collaboration is open to everyone.

Activities

The openSUSE Project develops the openSUSE Linux distribution as well as a large number of tools around building Linux distributions like the Open Build Service,

, openQA, Snapper, Machinery, Portus and more. The project annually hosts free software events. The community's conference is held at a location in Europe and a summit at is held at a location in Asia.

Organization

The project is controlled by its community and relies on the contributions of individuals, working as testers, writers, translators, usability experts, artists and developers. The project embraces a wide variety of technology, people with different levels of expertise, speaking different languages and having different cultural backgrounds. There is an openSUSE Board which is responsible to lead the overall project. The openSUSE Board provides guidance and supports existing governance structures, but does not direct or control development, since community mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project. The board documents decisions and policies. The project is self-organized without a legal structure, although the establishment of a

foundation Foundation may refer to: * Foundation (nonprofit), a type of charitable organization ** Foundation (United States law), a type of charitable organization in the U.S. ** Private foundation, a charitable organization that, while serving a good cause ...

has been under consideration for some time. SUSE as the main sponsor exerts some influence, but the project is legally independent of SUSE. openSUSE is a "do-ocracy" in which those, who do the work, also decide what happens (those who decide). This primarily refers to desktop and application development, as the sources of the base packages have been coming from

SLE Lupus, technically known as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue in many parts of the body. Symptoms vary among people and may be mild to severe. Commo ...

since the switch to the Leap development model. To further unify the base, the 'Closing-the-Leap-Gap' project has been started, where openSUSE Leap 15.3 will be completely based on SLE's binary packages.

Organizational units

There are three main organizational units: * ''openSUSE Board'': the board consists of 5 members elected for 2 years at a time, plus the chairman, who is provided by SUSE. The Board serves as a central point of contact, helps with conflict resolutions and communicates community interests to SUSE. As of January 2022, the Board has the following members: ** Dr. Axel Braun (DE) ** Maurizio Galli (HK) ** Neal Gompa (US) ** Gertjan Lettink (NL) ** Dr. Gerald Pfeifer (AT), Chairman ** Attila Pinter (ID) * ''Election Officials'': The Election Committee manages and supervises the elections to the openSUSE Board. It consists of three or more volunteers. * ''Membership-Officials'': The Membership-Officials are appointed by the Board if interested. The Membership-Officials decide on the admission of contributors to the group of openSUSE members upon request. A member receives, among other things, an @opensuse.org address. Only members may vote in the election to the Board.

SUSE Company history

Current distributions

openSUSE Tumbleweed

''Tumbleweed'' is the flagship of the openSUSE Project. Instead of classical version numbers and periodic updates, a

rolling release Rolling release, also known as rolling update or continuous delivery, is a concept in software development of frequently delivering updates to applications. This is in contrast to a ''standard'' or ''point release'' development model which uses so ...

system is used: updates happen continuously; previous states of the operating system are saved as "snapshots". Tumbleweed is preferred by openSUSE users as a desktop system. In the old development model, with each new openSUSE release (13.0, 13.1,...) a new rolling release was set-up, which always received new packages. When the new release was at the doorstep, and Tumbleweed was reset to that release, most packages were newer than the ones in the release, which led to problems. With the switch to Leap, the development model was changed completely: according to the ''Factory First'' policy all software packages had to be sent to Factory in the first place, before they could be included in a distribution. Out of Factory a daily

snapshot Snapshot, snapshots or snap shot may refer to: * Snapshot (photography), a photograph taken without preparation Computing * Snapshot (computer storage), the state of a system at a particular point in time * Snapshot (file format) or SNP, a file ...

is taken and tested i
openQA
A successful test is released as the next Tumbleweed snapshot. Unlike other rolling release distributions, Tumbleweed is a ''tested rolling release'', which increases stability dramatically. Technically Tumbleweed is the basis for MicroOS and Kubic.

openSUSE Leap

Leap is a classic stable distribution approach: one release each year, and in between, security updates and bugfixes. This makes Leap very attractive as a server operating system, as well as a desktop operating system, since it requires little maintenance effort. For the version released in the fall of 2015, the development team settled on the name ''openSUSE Leap'' with the deviating version number 42.1. As in the openSUSE version 4.2 from May 1996, which was called S.u.S.E. Linux at the time, the number 42 refers to the question about "life, the universe and everything" in the

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it w ...

book series. After that, the basis packages are received from the

SUSE Linux Enterprise SUSE Linux Enterprise (often abbreviated to SLE) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. It is available in two editions, suffixed with Server (SLES) for servers and mainframes, and Desktop (SLED) for workstations and desktop comp ...

, while applications and desktops come from Tumbleweed. At the openSUSE conference held in Nuremberg in 2016, statistics were announced that since the conceptual reorientation with openSUSE Leap 42.1, increasing user numbers had been recorded. According to this, the number of downloads is 400,000 DVD-images per month with an increasing tendency. Each month, 1,600 installations would be added, and 500,000

packages Package may refer to: Containers or Enclosures * Packaging and labeling, enclosing or protecting products * Mail, items larger than a letter * Chip package or chip carrier * Electronic packaging, in electrical engineering * Automotive package, ...

would be installed. The number of ''Tumbleweed'' users is 60,000, half of whom frequently perform updates. Thus, the number of ''Tumbleweed'' installations had doubled in the last year. Other findings from the statistics are that most installations are done via DVD images. The dominant architecture is

x64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mo ...

. The geographical distribution of users has hardly changed according to these figures. One third of users are from Germany, 12% are found in the USA, 5% in Russia and 3% in Brazil. For the openSUSE Leap 15.3 release, the repository for openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) was merged and now contains the same source code and binary packages. SLE 15 will be supported until 31 July 2028.

openSUSE MicroOS

MicroOS is an immutable, minimalistic, self-maintained and transactional system, which is primarily, but not exclusively, intended for use in edge computing or as container runtime. Some even use it as desktop system. MicroOS takes a completely new approach to address the needs of Edge- or Cloud-computing: It minimizes the need for maintenance by running from a read-only file system, which prevents accidental changes as well as malware attacks. The system is self-contained and transactional, which means that it updates itself in an all-or-nothing approach (transactional) and rolls back to its previous stage in case something goes wrong. The transactional update does not affect the running system. Basically all software available for Tumbleweed is also available for MicroOS. As it comes with

podman OS-level virtualization is an operating system (OS) paradigm in which the kernel allows the existence of multiple isolated user space instances, called ''containers'' ( LXC, Solaris containers, Docker, Podman), ''zones'' (Solaris containers), ' ...

Container-Runtime, MicroOS is the perfect Container-Host. MicroOS Desktop is the focus for the 202
Hackweek

openSUSE Kubic

Kubic is a Container-as-a-Service Platform, based on MicroOS. It comes with

and is designed for large container environments. The openSUSE Community maintains a number of containers in their registry. The configuration was originally done with

Salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantitie ...

, but later it was switched to Kubeadm. Kubic shares the codebase with Tumbleweed and MicroOS and thus allows transactional updates. openSUSE Kubic project has been retired on June 2022. Kubic users are advised to use openSUSE MicroOS and then install k3s.

Factory project

The Factory project is the rolling development code base for openSUSE

Tumbleweed A tumbleweed is a structural part of the above-ground anatomy of a number of species of plants. It is a diaspore that, once mature and dry, detaches from its root or stem and rolls due to the force of the wind. In most such species, the tumble ...

, Factory is mainly used as an internal term for openSUSE's distribution developers, and the target project for all contributions to openSUSE's main code base. There is a constant flow of packages going into Factory. There is no freeze; therefore, the Factory repository is not guaranteed to be fully stable and is not intended to be used by humans. The core system packages receive automated testing vi
openQA
When automated testing is completed and the repository is in a consistent state, the repository is synced to the download mirrors and published as openSUSE Tumbleweed, That usually happens several times a week.

Features

YaST Control Center

SUSE includes an installation and administration program called YaST ("Yet another Setup Tool") which handles hard disk partitioning, system setup, RPM package management, online updates, network and

firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spre ...

configuration, user administration and more in an integrated interface. By 2010, many more YaST modules were added, including one for

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

support. It also controls all software applications. SaX2 was once integrated into YaST to change monitor settings, however with openSUSE 11.3 SaX2 has been removed. The GTK user interface was removed starting with Leap 42.1, however the ncurses and Qt interfaces remain.

AutoYaST

AutoYaST
is part of YaST2 and is used for automatic installation. The configuration is stored in an XML file and the installation happens without user interaction.

WebYaST

WebYaST is a web interface version of YaST. It can configure settings and updates of the openSUSE machine it is running on. It can also shut down and check the status of the host.

ZYpp package management

ZYpp (or libzypp) is a Linux software management engine. ZYpp is the backend for zypper, the default command line package management tool for openSUSE.

Build Service

The Open Build Service provides software developers with a tool to compile, release and publish their software for many distributions, including

Mandriva Mandriva S.A. was a public software company specializing in Linux and open-source software. Its corporate headquarters was in Paris, and it had development centers in Metz, France and Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A. was the developer and mainta ...

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

and

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

. It typically simplifies the packaging process, so developers can more easily package a single program for many distributions, and many openSUSE releases, making more packages available to users regardless of what distribution version they use. It is published under the GNU GPLv2+.

Default use of Delta RPM

By default, OpenSUSE uses

Delta RPM A Delta ISO is used to update an ISO image which contains RPM Package Manager files. It makes use of DeltaRPMs (a form of Delta compression) for RPMs which have changed between the old and new versions of the ISO. Delta ISOs can save disk space ...

s when updating an installation. A Delta RPM contains the difference between an old and new version of a package. This means that only the changes between the installed package and the new one, are downloaded. This reduces bandwidth consumption and update time, which is especially important on slow Internet connections.

Desktop innovation

KDE

SUSE was a leading contributor to the

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

project for many years. SUSE's contributions in this area have been very wide-ranging, and affecting many parts of KDE such as

kdelibs KDE Platform 4 was a collection of libraries and software frameworks by KDE that served as technological foundation for KDE Software Compilation 4 distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). KDE Platform 4 was the successor to ...

and KDEBase,

Kontact Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...

, and kdenetwork. Other notable projects include: ''KNetworkManager'' – a front-end to

NetworkManager NetworkManager is a daemon that sits on top of libudev and other Linux kernel interfaces (and a couple of other daemons) and provides a high-level interface for the configuration of the network interfaces. Rationale NetworkManager is a software ...

and ''Kickoff'' – a new K menu for KDE Plasma Desktop. From openSUSE Leap 42.1 to 15.0, the default

Plasma 5 KDE Plasma 5 is the fifth and current generation of the graphical workspaces environment created by KDE primarily for Linux systems. KDE Plasma 5 is the successor of KDE Plasma 4 and was first released on 15 July 2014. It includes a new defaul ...

desktop for openSUSE used the traditional cascading ''Application Menu'' in place of the upstream default ''Kickoff''-like ''Application Launcher'' menu. The openSUSE Leap KDE experience is built on long term support versions of KDE Plasma, starting with openSUSE Leap 42.2. With openSUSE Leap 15.1, the Plasma 5 desktop now again defaults to the ''Kickoff''-style application menu.

GNOME

The

Ximian Ximian, Inc. (previously called Helix Code and originally named International Gnome Support) was an American company that developed, sold and supported application software for Linux and Unix based on the GNOME platform. It was founded by Miguel ...

group became part of Novell, and in turn made and continued several contributions to GNOME with applications such as

F-Spot F-Spot is a slowly maintained image organizer, designed to provide personal photo management for the GNOME desktop environment. The name is a play on the word F-Stop. History The F-Spot project was started by Ettore Perazzoli and is maintained ...

Evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

and

Banshee A banshee ( ; Modern Irish , from sga, ben síde , "woman of the fairy mound" or "fairy woman") is a female spirit in Irish folklore who heralds the death of a family member, usually by screaming, wailing, shrieking, or keening. Her name is c ...

. The GNOME desktop used the ''slab'' instead of the classic double-panelled GNOME menu bars from openSUSE 10.2 to openSUSE 11.4. In openSUSE 12.1 ''slab'' was replaced with the upstream GNOME Shell and GNOME Fallback designs. Starting with openSUSE Leap 15.0, GNOME on Wayland is offered as the default GNOME session.

GNOME Classic A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic Renaissance magic was a resurgence in Hermeticism and Neo-Platonic varieties of the magical arts which arose along with Renaissance humanism in the 15th and 1 ...

, GNOME on Xorg, and "GNOME SLE" are offered as alternative sessions to the more upstream Wayland-based session.

Releases

10.x series

The initial stable release from the openSUSE Project was SUSE Linux 10.0, released on October 6, 2005. This was released as a freely downloadable

and as a boxed retail package, with certain bundled software only included in the retail package. On May 11, 2006, the

released SUSE Linux 10.1, with the mailing list announcement identifying

Xgl Xgl is an obsolete display server implementation supporting the X Window System protocol designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers, layered on top of OpenGL. It supports hardware acceleration of all X, OpenGL an ...

, AppArmor and Xen as prominent features. For their third release, the openSUSE Project renamed their distribution, releasing openSUSE 10.2 on December 7, 2006. Several areas that developers focused their efforts on were reworking the menus used to launch programs in KDE and GNOME, moving to

ext3 ext3, or third extended filesystem, is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux kernel. It used to be the default file system for many popular Linux distributions. Stephen Tweedie first revealed that he was working on extend ...

as the default

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

, providing support for internal readers of

Secure Digital card Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices. The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between SanDis ...

s commonly used in

digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile device ...

s, improving

power management Power management is a feature of some electrical appliances, especially copiers, computers, computer CPUs, computer GPUs and computer peripherals such as monitors and printers, that turns off the power or switches the system to a low-power stat ...

framework (more computers can enter suspended states instead of shutting down and

starting up ''Starting Up'' is the fourth solo album by Roy Wood, who played most of the instruments and sang most of the vocals throughout, in addition to writing and producing the album. The album was released in February 1987. The track "On Top of the Wor ...

) and the

package management system A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals w ...

. This release also featured version 2.0 of

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and a ...

. The fourth release, openSUSE 10.3, was made available as a stable version on October 4, 2007. An overhaul of the software package management system (including support for 1-Click-Install), legal MP3 support from Fluendo and improved boot-time are some of the areas focused on for this release.

11.x series

openSUSE 11.0 was released on June 19, 2008. It includes the latest version of GNOME and two versions of KDE (the older, stable 3.5.9 and the newer 4.0.4). It comes in three freely downloadable versions: a complete installation DVD (including GNOME, KDE3, and KDE4), and two

Live CD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading fro ...

s (GNOME, and KDE4 respectively). A KDE3 Live CD was not produced due to limited resources. Package management and installation were made significantly faster with

ZYpp ZYpp (or libzypp; ''"Zen / YaST Packages Patches Patterns Products"'') is a package manager engine that powers Linux applications like YaST, Zypper and the implementation of PackageKit for openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise. Unlike some more bas ...

. openSUSE 11.1 was released on December 18, 2008. Updated software includes

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

2.24.1, Plasma 4.1.3 +

K Desktop Environment 3 K Desktop Environment 3 is the third series of releases of the K Desktop Environment (after that called ''KDE Software Compilation''). There are six major releases in this series. After the release of KDE 4, version 3.5 was forked into the Trinit ...

.5.10,

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...

3.0,

VirtualBox Oracle VM VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and Innotek VirtualBox) is a type-2 hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by Innotek GmbH, which was acquired by ...

2.0.6,

Compiz Compiz () is a compositing window manager for the X Window System, using 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management. Effects, such as a minimization animation or a cube workspace, are implemented as lo ...

0.7.8,

Zypper ZYpp (or libzypp; ''"Zen / YaST Packages Patches Patterns Products"'') is a package manager engine that powers Linux applications like YaST, Zypper and the implementation of PackageKit for openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise. Unlike some more basic ...

1.0.1, continued improvement in the software update stack, X.Org 7.4, Xserver 1.5.2, and Linux kernel 2.6.27.7. openSUSE 11.1 was the first Evergreen supported release. openSUSE 11.2 was released on November 12, 2009. It includes Plasma 4.3, GNOME 2.28,

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is a version of the Firefox web browser released in June 2009, adding a variety of new features to Firefox. Version 3.5 was touted as being twice as fast as 3.0 (due its TraceMonkey JavaScript engine and rendering improveme ...

, OpenOffice.org 3.1, improved

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

support, updated filesystems such as

Ext4 ext4 (fourth extended filesystem) is a journaling file system for Linux, developed as the successor to ext3. ext4 was initially a series of backward-compatible extensions to ext3, many of them originally developed by Cluster File Systems for ...

as the new default and support for

Btrfs Btrfs (pronounced as "better F S", "butter F S", "b-tree F S", or simply by spelling it out) is a computer storage format that combines a file system based on the copy-on-write (COW) principle with a logical volume manager (not to be confused ...

, installer support for

whole-disk encryption Disk encryption is a technology which protects information by converting it into unreadable code that cannot be deciphered easily by unauthorized people. Disk encryption uses disk encryption software or hardware to encrypt every bit of data that g ...

, significant improvements to

and

zypp ZYpp (or libzypp; ''"Zen / YaST Packages Patches Patterns Products"'') is a package manager engine that powers Linux applications like YaST, Zypper and the implementation of PackageKit for openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise. Unlike some more bas ...

er, and all ISO images are

hybrid Hybrid may refer to: Science * Hybrid (biology), an offspring resulting from cross-breeding ** Hybrid grape, grape varieties produced by cross-breeding two ''Vitis'' species ** Hybridity, the property of a hybrid plant which is a union of two dif ...

and now support both USB and CD-ROM boot. openSUSE 11.3 was released on July 15, 2010. It includes Plasma 4.4.4, GNOME 2.30.1,

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Mozilla Firefox 3.6 is a version of the Firefox web browser released in January 2010. The release's main improvement over Firefox 3.5 is improved performance (due to further speed improvements in the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine). It uses the Ge ...

.6, OpenOffice.org 3.2.1, SpiderOak support, support for the Btrfs filesystem and support for LXDE. It also updates the Linux kernel to version 2.6.34. openSUSE 11.4 was finished on March 3, 2011 and released on March 10, 2011. It includes Plasma 4.6.0, GNOME 2.32.1,

Mozilla Firefox 4 Mozilla Firefox 4 is a version of the Firefox web browser, released on March 22, 2011. The first beta was made available on July 6, 2010; Release Candidate 2 (a base for the final version) was released on March 18, 2011. It was codenamed Tumu ...

.0 beta 12, and switched from OpenOffice.org to

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source productivity software, office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was fork (software development), forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of t ...

3.3.1. It updates the Linux kernel to version 2.6.37.

12.x series

openSUSE 12.1 was released on November 16, 2011. This includes Plasma 4.7 and GNOME 3.2 and Firefox 7.0.1. The Linux kernel was updated to 3.1.0 It also introduced an advanced disk snapshot tool, called Snapper, for managing

snapshots. openSUSE 12.1 was also the first release of openSUSE to use systemd by default rather than the traditional System V init. Users can still select to boot to System V init at startup time. openSUSE 12.2 was to be released on July 11, 2012, but was postponed due to persistent stability issues. The final release candidate was eventually announced on August 2, 2012 and the final release date was September 5, 2012. 12.2 includes the desktop environments Plasma 4.8, GNOME 3.4, Firefox 14.0.1, and Xfce 4.10 and now uses Plymouth and GRUB 2 by default. openSUSE 12.3 was released on schedule on March 13, 2013. This includes Plasma 4.10, GNOME 3.6, Firefox 19.0, LibreOffice 3.6, and the removal of SuSEconfig. Also, the Live CD images were replaced with Live USB images, and an Xfce rescue image.

13.x series

openSUSE 13.1 was released on November 19, 2013, and includes updates to Plasma 4.11, GNOME 3.10, Firefox 25.0, and LibreOffice 4.1. Some other changes include a YaST port to Ruby, the LightDM KDE greeter, and experimental Wayland support in the GNOME Shell and KDE Plasma Desktop. openSUSE 13.1 is an Evergreen supported release, meaning it will receive community patches for 18 months after SUSE support ends. openSUSE 13.2 was released on November 4, 2014, and includes updates to Plasma 4.11, KDE Applications 4.14, GNOME 3.14.1, Firefox 33.0 and LibreOffice 4.3.2.2.

Leap 42.x series

The openSUSE team decided that the next version would be based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). They named it "Leap 42" (42 being the answer to life, the universe and everything); this was a temporary anomaly in the version number sequence, as the following release series was numbered 15.X. Leap 42.2 features KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS as its default desktop environment.

Leap 15.x series

openSUSE Leap 15 is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE). The name "Leap 15" is meant to match the

version it is based on. Leap 15 (just like SUSE Linux Enterprise 15) uses

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

4.12 LTS, and the default desktop is KDE Plasma 5.12 LTS. It also allows users to switch to its enterprise variant -

15. The last release openSUSE 15.4 uses Linux kernel 5.14.21,

41 and

Plasma 5.24.

Version history

Starting with version Leap (after version 13.2), each major release (e.g. 15.0) is expected to be supported for at least 36 months, until the next major version is available (e.g. 16.0), aligned with SUSE Linux Enterprise Releases. Each minor release (e.g. 15.5, 15.6 etc.) is expected to be released annually, aligned with SUSE Linux Enterprise Service Packs, and users are expected to upgrade to the latest minor release within 6 months of its availability, leading to an expected support lifecycle of 18 months. Tumbleweed is updated on a rolling basis, and requires no upgrades beyond the regular installation of small updates and snapshots. Evergreen was a community effort to prolong maintenance of selected openSUSE versions after they reached official end-of-life before the Leap series. From 2009 to 2014, the openSUSE project aimed to release a new version every eight months. Prior to the Leap series, versions 11.2-13.2 were provided with critical updates for two releases plus two months, which resulted in an expected support lifetime of 18 months.

Version timeline

Reception

Jesse Smith from

DistroWatch DistroWatch is a website which provides news, distribution pages hit rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open source Unix-like operating systems. It now contains information on ...

Weekly reviewed openSUSE Leap 15.0, lauding the "work that has gone into the system installer", simplify for new users, but criticized the lack of media support, and performance issues, like a slow startup or slow shutdown.

References

External links

* *
openSUSE Roadmap
(schedule of current and upcoming releases) * {{DEFAULTSORT:opensuse ARM Linux distributions Independent Linux distributions KDE Linux distributions PowerPC operating systems Rolling Release Linux distributions RPM-based Linux distributions SUSE Linux X86-64 Linux distributions