The openSUSE team announced the release of the fourth point release, openSUSE 15.4, with significant updates and improvements. This is a release recap.
The openSUSE Leap is the long-term support (LTS) release of the great openSUSE Linux distribution. Coming after almost a year since the openSUSE 15.3 release, this release delivers another super-stable operating system for your desktops, servers, containers and virtual workloads.
First, quickly do a recap for you on what’s new. And then we will give you the instructions on installation.
openSUSE Leap 15.4
Major highlights
First and foremost, Leap 15.4 introduces the latest version of Leap Micro 5.2. The Leap Micro is a new offering from openSUSE, which was released a while back. In a nutshell, the Leap Micro is a small footprint and immutable Linux Operating System for host containers and virtual workloads. It’s perfect for edge-business cases such as IoT, embedded systems and decentralized business needs.
Moreover, in this release, the Leap Micro also updated to use Podman 3.4.2 to initialize and run your apps inside Podman in containers. It is worth mentioning here that Leap Micro offers automated remote administration and security patching of your OS deployments.
Secondly, Leap 15.4 brings simplified multimedia code installation and open-source driver support for your deployments. The Cisco openh264 video codec should be available via a default repository in the next maintenance update. In addition, NVIDIA users get the latest “signed” firmware images for GeForce 30 series cards right in this release. Thanks to NVIDIA’s recent announcement, this is available for the users. You should be glad to know that Wayland now works with proprietary NVIDIA drivers!
Server updates
Let’s talk about the server updates because openSUSE is used primarily on servers.
In addition to the above changes, if you are a Dell PowerEdge Server user, good news for you. Dell Assist is now available for remote logging and configuration data collection for your server.
Firstly, the notable server update includes the deprecation of Python2 (which is old anyway). Also, the deprecation list includes libvirt LXC containers and the OpenLDAP server. The 389 Directory Server replaces the OpenLDAP server.
Secondly, PHP 8.1.0 is now available in openSUSE Leap 15.4, bringing many performance boosts and bug fixes.
Desktops
Many users run openSUSE Leap as long term support with major desktop environments.
KDE Plasma users get the KDE Plasma 5.24 with Qt 5.15 and KDE Framework 5.90.0. This is the current KDE Plasma LTS version. In addition, GNOME 41, Xfce 4.16 and MATE 1.26 graces this release of openSUSE. Here’s a quick round-up of the desktop versions in openSUSE LEap 15.4:
- KDE Plasma 5.24 with Framework 5.90
- Xfce 4.16
- GNOME 41.2
- MATE 1.26
- Deepin 20.3
- Enlightenment 0.25
Other Misc Changes
Furthermore, this release brings DNF 4.10, LLVM Compiler 13.0 and systems 249 as part of the core operating system.
Download openSUSE Leap 15.4
To download the fresh copy, visit https://get.opensuse.org/leap/15.4/ and choose your suitable version. If you are looking for the standard desktop version ISO, select the Offline Image for AMD-64 desktops as below.
What’s Next
Finally, with the release of 15.4, the team gears up for Leap 15.5. Here’s the tentative schedule for openSUSE Leap 15.5
- Feature draft: April 14, 2022
- Tentative Feature freeze: Aug 26, 2022
- Beta: November, December 2022 and January 2023 (beta 1, 2 and 3)
- Release Candidate: March 9, 2023
- Leap 15.5 release: Juen 2023
Stay tuned for more updates here as the development progresses. I will keep you all posted on the major improvements.
Via release announcement.
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