Developers of the Opensuse announced the start of work on the next significant release of the Opensuse Leap 16 distribution. This new release will be based on the Alp (Adaptable Linux Platform) technological platform, which is also used by the SUSE commercial distribution.
The release of Opensuse Leap 16.0 is planned for 2025, according to the Opensuse roadmap. However, before that, on June 11 of this year, the OpenSuse Leap 15.6 release will be formed. This is expected to be the last classic release of the project. In case there are delays in the development of Opensuse Leap 16, there is a possibility of extending the Opensuse Leap 15.6 life cycle or releasing an additional version, Opensuse Leap 15.7.
During the development of Opensuse Leap 16, the model of development based on the Opensuse Factory repository will continue to be used. The goal is to achieve an optimal balance between the new Alp technologies, the traditional Linux operating system, and initiatives for the integration of packages developed by the community.
The ALP (Adaptable Linux Platform) platform is positioned as a continuation of the development of the SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution. It differentiates itself by separating the basic basis of the distribution into parts. The main distribution will be the “Host OS” environment, which includes only the components necessary for basic operations and control. All applications and components of the user’s space will run in separate containers or virtual machines on top of the “Host OS” and isolated from each other.
The basis for the “Host OS” is the use of the Sle Micro product, which is based on the developments of the microos project. For centralized management, preinstalled SALT configuration control systems are offered, along with the option of ANSIBLE. To run isolated containers, tools such as podman and k3s (kubernetes) are available. The containers include system components such as Yast2, Podman, K3S, Cockpit, GDM (Gnome Display Manager), and KVM.