The latest stable version of openSUSE Linux distribution – openSUSE Leap 15.3 is now available. In this post, we round up the release with changes and download details.
The openSUSE Linux (Leap) distribution is one of the stable Linux today. It is used by millions of users worldwide across desktops, servers, and enterprises. This Linux distribution is mostly popular for severs, clouds, thin client devices, and enterprise deployments. OpenSUSE provides two variants of its own packages. The openSUSE Leap is the long-term support (LTS) version of this distro while openSUSE Tumbleweed is the tested-rolling-release distribution. The leap series is rock-solid and super stable and you can compare it with Ubuntu LTS releases.
Aligning with the schedule, and followed by a successful release candidate, the third point release openSUSE 15.3 brings updates to packages, desktops to their stable versions. It is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3 and it is supported until December 2022. Lets’s take a look at what’s new.
openSUSE Leap 15.3 – What’s New
In this stable long-term release, you get Linux Kernel 5.3.18. This version of the Linux Kernel is already end-of-life (EOL) as per the mainline Kernel schedule. This Kernel is used today in SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3. The openSUSE 15.3 is binary compatible with SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3. Although this version of the Kernel is EOL, it is currently maintained separately by the SUSE team.
Leap 15.3 can support a wide range of hardware architectures such as x86_64, aarch64, PowerPC (ppc64le), and s390x. You can easily deploy Leap 15.3 on physical, virtual, host and guest, and cloud machines.
openSUSE primarily provides KDE Plasma, GNOME, and Xfce desktops for desktop users. However, being a stable distro, you get a little bit older version of these desktops with openSUSE Leap except Xfce. So, you get KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS with Frameworks 5.76.0, GNOME 3.34, and Xfce 4.16 in this release. Remember, all these desktops are maybe older from their respective upstream versions, but they are super stable.
If you are into tiling window managers, openSUSE leap also provides the Wayland compositor Sway as well.
This release also introduces several Artificial Intelligence packages. The deep learning framework Tensorflow, library PyTorch, open-source AI framework ONNX are included.
If you are using openSUSE for health work, scientific research, etc, then you get the GNU health, QGIS for various work. It also includes two analytics tools Grafana and Prometheus.
With the above tools, your workflow is powered by the latest LibreOffice 7.1.1 stable office suite. So you can seamlessly work on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
A quick summary of popular applications and their versions in openSUSE Leap 15.3.
- LibreOffice 7.1.1
- Thunderbird 78.7.1
- Roundcube 1.3.15
- Chromium 89
- Firefox’s Extended Support Release (ESR) 78.7.1
- Python 3.6.12
Download openSUSE 15.3 Leap
openSUSE comes with separate installer images for Server, desktop, and minimal network install. You can also get separate desktop environment images.
If you have a stable internet connection, download the network image and install any desktop environment during live installation. Or else, you can separately download the entire offline image/separate desktop image from the above link.
You can download the latest Leap version from the below link.
Once downloaded, you can install them in the virtual machine or in a physical system.
If you are planning for an upgrade, please note that it is only recommended to upgrade from the 15.2 version only. That is the most stable path. Upgrade instruction is present is in this link.
Don’t forget to report bugs at BugZilla if you run into any. This relase is supported until December 2022.
