Installing openSUSE Leap 16.0 🐧 looking around

openSUSE Leap 16.0

openSUSE Leap 16.0 is the latest major release of the fixed-release community Linux distribution, which is based on and shares a common binary core with the enterprise-grade SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 16. This version represents a significant modernization and is built upon the SUSE Linux Framework One (formerly ALP) for an adaptable and stable foundation, aimed at both developers and business environments. It introduces a two-year support cycle per minor release, offering a total of 24 months of free maintenance and security updates, which is one of the longest support windows among community distributions. The release includes modern desktop environments such as KDE Plasma 6.4 and GNOME 48, powered by the Linux kernel 6.12 LTS, and maintains the traditional non-immutable installation option while also providing the immutable Leap Micro 6.x variant.

The Leap 16.0 release brings substantial changes compared to Leap 15.6, particularly in installation, system management, and core security. The distribution replaces the traditional YaST installer with the new, web-based Agama installer and largely removes the familiar YaST stack from new installations, favoring new tools like Cockpit and the software management tool Myrlyn for a more modern experience. Security has shifted with SELinux now enabled as the default Linux Security Module, though AppArmor remains an option. The new hardware requirement is a minimum of x86-64-v2 capable CPUs, with 32-bit (ia32) support disabled by default. Finally, the update introduces the new openSUSE Migration tool to simplify upgrades and leverages parallel downloads in the Zypper package manager for improved performance.