openSUSE Leap 42.1 Review

Today I’m really happy to say that we are going to review openSUSE Leap 42.1 because i didn’t think even single time to review about openSUSE. why ? I have started using openSUSE 13.1 on August 2014 and i didn’t worked much more and i did some R&D for publishing articles into 2daygeek.com website. Past 2-3 days i was working with openSUSE Leap 42.1 upgrade from openSUSE 13.2 and i faced so many issues while doing upgrade but finally we found the root causes of issues and successfully upgrded from openSUSE 13.2 to openSUSE Leap 42.1 yesterday morning at 05 AM on (November 12, 2015). Due to this challenge i thought to review openSUSE Leap 42.1 each and every part.

First of all hands of to all the developers whoever part of openSUSE Leap 42.1 development. We already know openSUSE 13.1 is Evergreen release This means that the Evergreen team will continue to provide openSUSE 13.1 with with security updates and important bug fixes after the usual 18 month maintenance cycle until it has had a total life time of at least three years.

Released openSUSE Leap 42.1 Becomes First Hybrid Distribution. After exactly one year of continues development, openSUSE transformed its development process to create an entirely new type of hybrid Linux distribution called openSUSE Leap. As we may already know openSUSE Leap is ‘leading edge’ commercial Linux distributions based on SLE compare with other distro which was independently developed and maintained.

Version 42.1 is the first version of openSUSE Leap instead of version 1.1. The team clearly explained about naming strategy, why the named openSUSE Leap 42.1. openSUSE Leap 42.1 that uses source from SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) to provide cutting edge, Enterprise Level & Unmatched distro compare with other Linux distribution. openSUSE Leap 42.1 based on SLE 12.1 SP1 (SUSE Linux Enterprise 12.1 Service Pack 1). openSUSE Leap will maintain as Enterprise Level which will have the same packages and updated packages based on SLE Releases. Leap complete different from previous release of openSUSE and will be maintain separate maintenance stream.

openSUSU community promised to maintain Leap and upcoming releases properly how they maintaining openSUSE till now and Every minor version of openSUSE Leap will adopt with latest release of KDE and GNOME. See the below screenshot of openSUSE Leap 42.1 GNOME version.
opensuse-leap-42-1-review-1
Package Updates.
opnSUSE Leap 42.1 ships with Long team supported kernel 4.1 (Initial stage Leap plan to use SLE provided Version 3.12 Kernel due to support for new hardware, 4.1 LTS Kernel was integrated into the Leap as default kernel on July 22nd) but i expected 4.2 which was shipped recently with Fedora 23 and Ubuntu 15.10. Leap ship with GNOME 3.16 but i expected 3.18 which was shipped with Fedora 23. Anyhow it will be ship with Leap upcoming minor release. Ultimate and big achievements Leap shipped with KDE Plasma 5 is beautiful, feature rich, innovative and modern desktop. Improved High DPI support, added more than 1600 new icons, some minor issues fixed compare with previous releases and improvements in Folder View behavior and visuals. Overall KDE Plasma 5 is awesome desktop experience with Leap.

Some of the other Software updates in openSUSE 42.1

  • KDE Plasma 5.4.2
  • GNOME 3.16.2
  • GCC 5.2
  • Btrfs filesystem as the default option in Leap
  • Qt5.5 brings multiple features
  • QEMU 2.3.1
  • VirtualBox 5.0.6
  • Docker 1.8.2
  • Machinery application added
  • MATE (1.10)
  • Lot of Improvement in YaST with more than 600 fixes
  • XFCE (4.12.1)
  • GTK2 and GTK3 toolkits, added support for 3.x GUI toolkits
  • Enlightenment 19 (0.19.12)
  • If you want to taste latest version of stable software, you may try Tumbleweed
  • For more details about Release notes
  • For openSUSE 42.1 upgrade information

By default Leap take Btrfs file system and XFS data file system for performance. Btrfs allow users to take advantage of Snapper. Users can recover the previous status of the system using snapshots. Snapper will automatically create hourly snapshots of the system.

Leap 42.1 included exactly the same version of YaST, AutoYaST and Linuxrc that will be shipped in SLE12-SP1 compare with earlier version shipped in openSUSE 13.2. This was included 600 bug fixes, new features and enhancements. Users and sysadmins will benefit from the improved YaST included in Leap 42.1.

Leap 42.1 included Machinery. Machinery is a command line application sysadmins can use for creating descriptions of Linux systems and working with them.

Main disadvantage from Leap, there is no Live/separate ISO images for GNOME, KDE and other desktop environment and we need to download all in one Full DVD ISO (4.7GB) and i don’t like to download full ISO image because it’s big size and it will eat my 4 days bandwidth in one shot. Will wait some time may be they will add separate images.

Leap 42.1: The Best of Two Worlds

  • Proven SUSE enterprise-components, an LTS-kernel and long-term support
  • Combine with the innovative spirit of the OpenSource community for excellent reliability and just right up-to-dateness.

In general it was agreed upon that Leap would target people who are looking for a stable base for workstations and servers and that Tumbleweed addresses people who are looking for the latest and greatest Free and Open Source software and sometimes can live with a little instability.

Overall Leap will get good audience and positive feedback from everywhere….)

About Magesh Maruthamuthu

Love to play with all Linux distribution

View all posts by Magesh Maruthamuthu

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