The newest minor version of openSUSE Leap is released. openSUSE Leap 15.3 is the most recent, rock-solid addition to the openSUSE 15.x series that carries all the positive attributes of its predecessors. The OpenSUSE Linux (Leap) distribution is mostly popular for servers, clouds, thin client devices, and enterprise deployments.
Table of Contents
Bridging path to enterprise
Besides SUSE Linux Enterprise source code, openSUSE Leap 15.3 is built with the exact same binary packages. Large development teams can use openSUSE Leap 15.3 to optimally run and test workloads that can be lifted and shifted to SUSE Linux Enterprise Linux 15 SP3 for long-term maintenance.
The release manager of openSUSE Lubos Kocman said,
“The software craftsmanship of this release makes server, workstation, desktop and container use on openSUSE Leap a desirable distribution for IT professionals, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, small businesses and educational practitioners.”
The openSUSE 15.3 brings updates to packages, desktops to their stable versions. It is supported until December 2022.
What’s new?
New major features are in Xfce 4.16. It now has a new visual identity. With new icons and palette, Xfce shines a little more out of the box. While the settings manager received a visual refresh of its filter box, the search capabilities of the filter box were improved by searching the descriptive ‘Comments’ part of each dialogue’s launcher (aka .desktop) file A new plugin in the panel dubbed “statustray” combines both StatusNotifier and legacy Systray items.
Container technologies
In terms of container technologies, Leap 15.3 has the same versions of container technology packages as Leap 15.2, but there are security updates to all the packages like containerd, podman, kubeadm and cri-o.
Leap 15.3 gives more power to develop, ship and deploy containerized applications using the newer container technologies that are being maintained in the distribution. According to the announcement, Kubernetes gives a huge boost to container orchestration capabilities, allowing users to automate deployments, scale, and manage containerized applications. Even with Docker, the use of microservices will be secure thanks to more container packages arriving in this release.
The Long-Term-Support version of KDE’s Plasma 5.18 is once again available in Leap 15.3. The LTS has a significant amount of polish and quality features.
Linode cloud images of Leap are available today and ready for all infrastructure needs. Cloud hosting services will offer images of Leap 15.3 soon such as Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Compute Engine and OpenStack.
Upgrading from previous versions of Leap
It is needed to note that openSUSE Leap 15.2 will have its End of Life (EOL) six months from today’s release. Upgrading directly from versions before openSUSE Leap 15.2 is not recommended. Due to the upgrade path, it is highly recommended to upgrade to Leap 15.2 before upgrading to Leap 15.3.