Features 15.4

Release Spot Light (WIP)

Please fill in more information about the software package/s new features in the release or Leap 15.4. The following pages go into some details on what is new in this openSUSE release.
Too much information? Check out the feature highlights instead.

Containers

podman

podman is a daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running OCI Containers on your Linux System. Containers can either be run as root or in rootless mode. Simply put: alias docker=podman. The version in Leap 15.4 matches that of SUSE Linux Enterprise as version 3.4.4. Create and maintain containers on Leap and migrate to SLE.

CRI-O

Get Lightweight Container Runtimes for Kubernetes with CRI-O. CRI-O is meant to provide an integration path between OCI conformant runtimes and the kubelet. Specifically, it implements the Kubelet Container Runtime Interface (CRI) using OCI conformant runtimes. The scope of CRI-O is tied to the scope of the CRI. Leap 15.4 has CRI-O 1.22.0.

containerd

Get the industry-standard container runtime with an emphasis on simplicity, robustness and portability with containerd. containerd is available as a daemon for Linux. It manages the complete container lifecycle of its host system, from image transfer and storage to container execution and supervision to low-level storage to network attachments and beyond. Leap 15.4 includes version 1.4.12.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

TensorFlow

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. It has a comprehensive, flexible ecosystem of tools, libraries and community resources that lets researchers push the state-of-the-art in ML and developers easily build and deploy ML powered applications. The updated TensorFlow 2.6.2 version is in the release and provides stable Python and C++ APIs, as well as non-guaranteed backward compatible API for other languages.

PyTorch

Pytorch is an open source machine learning framework that accelerates the path from research prototyping to production deployment. The 1.4.0 version remains the same in Leap 15.4.

ONNX

Open Neural Network Exchange or ONNX is an open ecosystem that empowers AI developers to choose the right tools as their project evolves. ONNX provides an open source format for AI models, with both deep learning and traditional ML. It defines an extensible computation graph model, as well as definitions of built-in operators and standard data types.

ONNX 1.6.x is in the release and is widely supported and can be found in many frameworks, tools, and hardware. ONNX enables interoperability between different frameworks and streamlining the path from research to production and helps increase the speed of innovation in the AI community.

Grafana

Get a working dashboard in minutes or use Grafana on a Raspberry Pi to run all kinds of software experiments. Grafana allows you to query, visualize, alert and understand your metrics. Create, explore, and share dashboards with your team and foster a data driven culture.

Fixes in Grafana 7.5.12 include:

Prometheus

Use Prometheus to unleash the power of metrics with this open-source monitoring solution. Prometheus implements a highly dimensional data model. Powerful queries, precise alerts and many client libraries while help create a solution that meets your needs. Prometheus is 100% open source and community-driven.

Leap 15.4 includes Prometheus 2.2.3; fixes include:

Server

Pagure Git hosting forge server

Pagure is an easy, customizable, lightweight solution to set up your own full-featured Git repository server. It is similar to other popular Git-based forges, allowing developers and contributors to share and collaborate on code and content. However, it also has some unique features not found in any other Git forge providing the basis for decentralized, federated software code hosting and development.

For Leap 15.4, Pagure remains version 5.13.2. Please read "/usr/share/doc/packages/pagure/UPGRADING.rst" for details on how to handle upgrading from 5.5 or 5.10.0 to 5.13.2.

GNU Health

GNU Health is an ecosystem for hospitals, practitioner and Ministry of Health. It allows local as well as nationwide implementations of health systems, connected via the GNU Health Federation Server.

The GNU Health Hospital Management and Information system (HMIS) provides the following functionality:

• Hospital Management Information System (HMIS)
• Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
• Health Information System (HIS)
• Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS)

GNU Health, recently nominated as Digital Public Good (DPG), comes in version 4.0. It is prepared for COVID-19 pandemic tracking, including updated ICD-10/11 codes and improved ergonomics on the GTK-client like a new help-functionality. It interfaces directly with Orthanc, the free PACS Server.

The Federation Server and MyGNUHealth, the Personal Medical Record, are shipped with Leap 15.4 as well

Orthanc

Orthanc is a free Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) developed at the University of Liege. It handles all kinds of medical images, like MRI or X-Ray, that come e.g. in DICOM format.

Orthanc comes in latest version 1.10 including its plugins, like WebViewer, Database-backends, Indexer or TCIA (The Cancer Image Archive).

Desktop Environments

Xfce

Xfce 4.16 introduces new major features. There is a new visual identity in this release of Xfce. With new icons and palette, Xfce shines a little more out of the box. The Settings Manager received a visual refresh of its filter box, which can now be hidden permanently. The search capabilities of the filter box were improved by searching the descriptive 'Comments' part of each dialog's launcher (aka .desktop) file. The settings dialog of the power manager was cleaned up and shows either 'on battery' or 'plugged in' settings as opposed to both in a huge table.

With default applications, a new dialog represents a merger between the previously available 'Mime Settings' and the 'Preferred Applications' dialogs. Consolidating both in one place means users have an easier time setting default applications to handle certain file types. To better support high-density displays, which come in various sizes and densities, 4.16 adds fractional scaling based on the RandR extension of X11; the preferred mode of a display is now marked with an asterisk and aspect ratios are shown along display resolutions.

The copy and move dialogs users can now easily pause the respective file operation in Thunar. Support for queued file transfer, remembering view settings per folder and support for transparency in Gtk themes was added. The panel received quite a few noteworthy updates, an animation for autohide and intellihide, a new 'Status Tray' plugin that combines both legacy Systray item support with modern StatusNotifier item support, dark mode support, launchers showing additional actions on right-click, window buttons offering to 'Launch a new instance...' and much more.

KDE

Plasma

Plasma 5.24 LTS is a long-term support release from the KDE Plasma team. Leap 15.4 includes this new LTS version. In Plasma 5.24 you will find several improvements in the looks, ease of use and consistency.

Ken Vermette made a spectacular new wallpaper for Plasma 5.24. The Honeywave wallpaper was streamed on YouTube.

The next thing users will notice is the changes to Breeze, Plasma’s default theme. It has received a visual refresh to make it more closely match the Breeze style for apps, improving the visual consistency between them.

The changing color scheme now toggles the standardized FreeDesktop light/dark color scheme preference. This means that non-KDE apps that respect this preference will automatically switch to light or dark mode based on the chosen color scheme. Global Themes can also specify and change the layouts of KDE’s Latte Dock.

Notifications

To make critically important Plasma notifications stand out, they now come with an orange strip on the side to visually distinguish them from less urgent messages. Meanwhile, we have improved the contrast and visibility of the header and title labels in all notifications to make them easier to read.

Another visual enhancement is that notifications about video files now display a thumbnail of the video in the notification itself, just like for image files.

System Tray and Widgets

Many widgets have received new features and subtle enhancements that improve their looks, the relevance of their information, and ease of navigating them. For example, we have added a Date always below time option for the Digital Clock. The Weather widget asks you to configure it when you add it for the first time to the tray, and now automatically searches through all available weather sources. The Battery & Brightness widget has been made clearer and now shows a more accurate title and icon for computers with no batteries. The new versions of the Clipboard and Network widgets can now be navigated with just your keyboard.

System Settings

Version after version, KDE developers and designers work to make System Settings easier and faster to use. You can see the progress and attention to detail in such small things as System Settings' own settings: there were so few options that developers have moved them to the hamburger menu that you can see next to the Search text box, preventing the need to clutter up your workspace with another window.

Frameworks

KDE Frameworks are over 70 addon libraries. Frameworks 5.90.0 is expected for the Gold Master. The newer KDE Frameworks had made changes to several packages including Baloo, Breeze Icons, KAuth, KActivities, KConfig, KIO, Kirigami, KWidgetsAddons, KWayland, Oxygen Icons and more. Some key changes in the version are:

Applications

KDE Gear (Applications) were updated to version 21.12.2.1. The version includes improvements to the music player Elisa, search tags for the file manager Dolphin and faster editing with KDE’s advanced video-editing application Kdenlive.

GNOME

Leap 15.4 offers GNOME 41. GNOME 41 is the product of 6 months work by the GNOME project. It includes a number of significant improvements and new features, as well as a large collection of smaller enhancements.

The most notable changes this release include an improved Software app, new multitasking settings, and enhanced power management features. With these changes, GNOME is smarter, more flexible, and offers a richer and more engaging experience than ever before.

The new release also comes with significant improvements for developers, including a new developer documentation website, a major new version of the Human Interface Guidelines, new features in the Builder IDE, GTK 4 enhancements, and much more.

Thanks to the work of GNOME's translation teams, GNOME 41 is available in 38 languages.

GNOME 41 is the second release to use GNOME's new version numbering scheme.

New Look Software

Software has been given an overhaul for GNOME 41, making it look and work better than ever before.

• The updated explore view makes it easier to browse and discover apps, with descriptions of each app and more attractive tiles.
• A new set of categories helps with browsing and exploring available apps.
• Details pages have a new design, with bigger screenshots and new information tiles, which provide a better overview of each application.

Almost every part of Software has been polished or improved in some way. This includes redesigned settings, more attractive layouts in the installed and updates views, better OS upgrade banners, and much more.

The changes aren't skin deep, either: there have been many fixes and improvements under the hood, which make the experience faster and more reliable.

Multitasking

GNOME 41 includes a new Multitasking settings panel, which includes window management and workspace options. These allow:

• Disabling the Activities hot corner.
• Disabling Active Screen Edges.
• Configuring a fixed number of workspaces.
• Showing workspaces on all displays, instead of just the primary display.
• Restricting app switching to the current workspace, when using the Super+Tab keyboard shortcut.

New Connections App

GNOME 41 includes Connections, a new remote desktop client. This provides a modern, easy to use experience for connecting to other desktops, and automatically handles as much of the complexity for you as possible. VNC and RDP connections are both supported.

Connections replaces the remote desktop functionality that was previously found in Boxes.

Mobile Settings

GNOME 41 includes a new Mobile Network settings panel. This allows configuring mobile network connections, and works with 2G, 3G, 4G, and GSM/LTE modems.

The new Mobile Network settings are only shown when a supported modem is present. They allow setting the network type, selecting whether mobile data should be used, and whether data should be used while roaming. They also support using multiple SIMs and modems, and allow easy switching between networks.

The new settings replace the previous mobile network settings.

Performance Improvements

GNOME is continually working to improve performance, responsiveness and smoothness, and GNOME 41 includes a collection of improvements in this area.

• Efficiency improvements in GNOME 41 mean that the screen will update faster in response to keyboard and pointer input. This change only applies to those using the Wayland session, and the effects will be more noticeable with some displays rather than others (the improvement is more significant on displays with lower refresh rates).
• System-level multitouch gestures now behave more reliably and consistently.
• GTK 4 has a new default GL renderer, which provides faster rendering and reduced power consumption.
• Finally, a major code cleanup has been carried out in Mutter, GNOME's window manager, which will improve long-term maintainability and efficiency.

Enlightenment

Leap 15.4 offers Enlightenment 0.25.3 Featuring a range of bugfixes and new features including integrated mixer settings and a new Desktop theme.

MATE

MATE Desktop have been updated to 1.26. It gets many bugfixes and new features. Please read more details on upstream.

Deepin Desktop

Deepin Desktop Environment 20.3 is initial bringing in Leap 15.4. There is the User Guide help you how to install in openSUSE.

The Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE) is the desktop environment of the deepin Linux distribution. It is designed by the Wuhan Deepin Technology Co.,Ltd. The DDE is comprised of the Desktop Environment, deepin Window Manager, Control Center, Launcher and Dock.

General Improvements

sudo

Leap 15.4 will have sudo 1.9.9. Below are a list of changes in the new version:

• Sudo can now be built with OpenSSL 3.0 without generating warnings about deprecated OpenSSL APIs.

• A digest can now be specified along with the ALL command in the LDAP and SSSD back-ends. Sudo 1.9.0 introduced support for this in the sudoers file but did not include corresponding changes for the other back-ends.

• visudo now only warns about an undefined alias or a cycle in an alias once for each alias.

• The sudoRole cn was truncated by a single character in warning messages. GitHub issue #115.

• The cvtsudoers utility has new --group-file and --passwd-file options to use a custom passwd or group file when the --match-local option is also used.

• The cvtsudoers utility can now filter or match based on a command.

• The cvtsudoers utility can now produce output in csv (comma-separated value) format. This can be used to help generate entitlement reports.

• Fixed a bug in sudo_logsrvd that could result in the connection being dropped for very long command lines.

• Fixed a bug where sudo_logsrvd would not accept a restore point of zero.

• Fixed a bug in visudo where the value of the editor setting was not used if it did not match the user’s EDITOR environment variable. This was only a problem if the env_editor setting was not enabled. Bug #1000.

• Sudo now builds with the -fcf-protection compiler option and the -z now linker option if supported.

• The output of sudoreplay -l now more closely matches the traditional sudo log format.

• Added support for negated sudoUser attributes in the LDAP and SSSD sudoers back ends. A matching sudoUser that is negated will cause the sudoRole containing it to be ignored.

Linux kernel

Leap 15.4 will use the 5.14.21 Linux Kernel. The kernel in Leap is the same kernel used in SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 4. This kernel version is maintained by SUSE.

Hardware Support

Leap 15.4 works with x86_64, aarch64, PowerPC (ppc64le) and s390x. Deployment scenarios can be run for physical, virtual, host and guest, and cloud.

systemd

Leap 15.4 includes systemd version 249.10, which includes backport fixes and updates. This System and Service Manager is a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system that runs as PID 1 and starts the rest of the system.

systemd provides aggressive parallelization capabilities, uses socket and D-Bus activation for starting services, offers on-demand starting of daemons, keeps track of processes using Linux control groups, maintains mount and automount points, and implements an elaborate transactional dependency-based service control logic. systemd supports SysV and LSB init scripts and works as a replacement for sysvinit.

Other parts include a logging daemon, utilities to control basic system configuration like the hostname, date, locale, maintain a list of logged-in users and running containers and virtual machines, system accounts, runtime directories and settings, and daemons to manage simple network configuration, network time synchronization, log forwarding, and name resolution.

Mesa

Mesa 21.2.4 is a bug fix release.

Security, Networking and Privacy

AppArmor

The AppArmor Parser is a userlevel program that is used to load in program profiles to the AppArmor Security kernel module. AppArmor 3.0.4 is a major release update for Leap 15.4. The kernel portion of the project is maintained and pushed separately.

Tor

Anonymizing overlay network for TCP (The onion router)

Tor is a connection-based low-latency anonymous communication system. This package provides the "tor" program, which serves as both a client and a relay node. Scripts will automatically create a "tor" user and a "tor" group, and set tor up to run as a daemon when the system is rebooted. Applications connect to the local Tor proxy using the SOCKS protocol. The tor client chooses a path through a set of relays, in which each relay knows its predecessor and successor, but no others. Traffic flowing down the circuit is unwrapped by a symmetric key at each relay, which reveals the downstream relay. Warnings: Tor does no protocol cleaning. That means there is a danger that application protocols and associated programs can be induced to reveal information about the initiator. Tor depends on Privoxy or similar protocol cleaners to solve this problem. This is alpha code, and is even more likely than released code to have anonymity-spoiling bugs. The present network is small -- this further reduces the strength of the anonymity provided. Tor is not presently suitable for high-stakes anonymity.

Package Manager

DNF package manager

DNF is a next-generation dependency resolver and high-level package management tool that traces its ancestry to two projects: YUM (Yellowdog Updater, Modified) and libsolv. DNF was forked from YUM several years ago in order to rewrite it to use libsolv and to massively restructure the codebase so that a sane API would be available for both extending DNF (via plugins and hooks) and building applications on top of it (such as graphical frontends and system lifecycle automation frameworks). Leap 15.4 will have version 4.10.0.

DNF provides the following over YUM: a maintained and documented Python API, enhanced problem reporting, advanced tracking of weak dependencies, support for rich dependencies, and more detailed transaction information while performing actions.

The DNF Python API is stable and supported, while the underlying libdnf and hawkey APIs (both C/C++ and Python) are unstable, and will likely change in future releases.

In addition, a lightweight C implementation of DNF called "Micro DNF" is included. It is designed to be used for doing simple package management actions when you don't need full-blown DNF and you want the tiniest useful environments possible. This is useful for the case of minimal containers and appliances.

Finally, an experimental alternative PackageKit backend to use DNF is also available.

Some highlights:

• Support for "sticky vendors" that is enabled by default. This can be disabled by setting "allow_vendor_change=True" in /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
• Experimental support for transactional updates with Micro DNF and PackageKit. This requires creating images with this functionality, which can be done with the KIWI image builder tool.
• Experimental support for offline updates and upgrades using DNF is available.
• Experimental "opensuse/leap-dnf" and "opensuse/leap-microdnf" base containers are now available.

DNF is currently not configured with openSUSE repositories for software management by default. However, the "libdnf-repo-config-zypp" package enables DNF to use the repository configuration that is used by YaST and the Zypper package manager. Alternatively, the "rpm-repos-openSUSE-Leap" package provides stable repository configuration independent of Zypper/YaST for DNF to use.

Finally, upgrading from Leap to Tumbleweed is now supported with DNF by installing "rpm-repos-openSUSE-Tumbleweed" and using "dnf --refresh offline-distrosync". If you have either "libdnf-repo-config-zypp" or "rpm-repos-openSUSE-Leap" already installed, "dnf install --allowerasing rpm-repos-openSUSE-Tumbleweed" will swap to that package for upgrading.

Productivity

Printing System

CUPS

CUPS is the standards-based, open source printing system. CUPS uses the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) to support printing to local and network printers. CUPS 2.2.7-3.20.1 provides bug fixes that addresses issues in the scheduler, IPP Everywhere support, CUPS library, and USB printer support.

Suite, Finances and Desktop Publishing

Libreoffice

LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite, a project of The Document Foundation. LibreOffice is a comprehensive office package featuring a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program, and much more.

More information about the below new features included in the LibreOffice version in Leap 15.4 can be found in the Release Notes:

The release of LibreOffice 7.2.5 brings latest "fresh" version of LibreOffice, recommended for technology enthusiasts; it contains new features and program enhancements.

Write

General improvements include:

Alphabetical indexes, tables of contents and user-defined indexes will now generate clickable hyperlinks to document index entry marks core commit 7685c074

All background fills can now be set to either cover the page inside the margins or the entire page core commit 56d8007a

Page styles can now have a gutter margin

Bibliography improvements: tooltip for bibliography entry fields and clickable URLs in the bibliography table

Fields are now listed in the the Navigator sidebar, and users can choose "Field" and "Field type" in the "Navigate by" tool.

Calc

General improvements include:

Fixed problems with pasting filtered cells and pasting with transpose. Also added many unit tests for those cases tdf#107348, tdf#45958, tdf#141215, tdf#141683, tdf#68976, tdf#71058, tdf#142065, tdf#142201, tdf#141683

Added mixed date format "Common Year (Era Name)" and "Era Name (Common Year)" for cell format in Japanese locales.

The 'fat-cross' cursor was introduced. To enable, go to Tools ▸ Options ▸ Calc ▸ View and check "Themed" (the cursor follows the icon theme); use System to keep the conventional arrow pointer.

Autofilter improvements

   Calc shows blue row numbers for filtered rows by Autofilter.

   Calc now highlights an active autofilter dropdown arrow.

Impress and Draw

General improvements

The set of default templates was refreshed.
Removed: Alizarin, Bright Blue, Classy Red, Impress, Lush Green (introduced in 4.4)
Added: Candy, Freshes, Grey Elegant, Growing Liberty, Yellow Idea
All background fills can now be set to either cover the page inside the margins or the entire page 

User Interface

Direct access to the document's scaling factor via statusbar in Draw
Improved export dialog for PNG and JPG clarifies the distinction between dimensions and resolution.

Skrooge

Skrooge is powerful software to manage your personal finances. There are many features that allow users to enter, follow, and analyze expenses. The 2.27.0 version was upgraded in Leap 15.4. The following has changed in this version:

• Correction bug 440271: 2.26.1 still installs skrooge_unit.knsrc to depreciated /etc/xdg/ location
• Correction bug 446353: you can't tab to the number and duration fields in Operations "Show" table filter
• Correction bug 446915: Import from Woob using Ofx
• Correction: Weeks without operation are missing in reports
• Correction: Crash when the dashboard is closed during animation
• Feature: Unit values can be negative now (see https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=210&t=173318)
• Feature: Skrooge uses now the LC_MONETARY environement variable to use the specific locale for currency format

Scribus

Scribus (/ˈskraɪbəs/) is open-source desktop publishing software that gives users an application designed for layout, typesetting, and preparation of files for professional-quality image-setting equipment. Scribus allows users to create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms, publish newspapers, brochures, newsletters, books and posters. The upgrade of Scribus 1.5.8 in Leap 15.4 includes:

• UI Improvements for dark mode and some icon updates and window interactivity
• Improvements to file import (IDML, PDF, PNG, TIFF, SVG)
• Improvements to PDF export
• Improvements with respect to tables (undo/redo, styles)
• Improvements to the Story Editor
• Improvements to the build system
• Translation updates

Email Client

ThunderBird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free email application that’s easy to set up and customize. It’s loaded with great features. Leap 15.4 ships with Thunderbird's Extended Support Release (ESR) 91.7. Thunderbird has gotten faster with multi-process support. The new multi-process Thunderbird takes better advantage of the processor in your computer by splitting up the application into multiple smaller processes instead of running as one large one. That’s a lot of geekspeak to say that Thunderbird 91 will feel like it got a speed boost. This Thunderbird generates views of meeting invitations expanded by default. Fixes include:

• Port numbers were not shown in "Confirm Security Exception" dialog for CalDAV connections
• Emails were not downloading at startup under some conditions

Evolution

Evolution consists of modular components (at the moment: mailer, calendar, and address book) that should make daily life easier. Because of the modular design, it is possible to plug new components into Evolution or embed the existing ones in other applications.

Roundcube

Roundcube 1.5.1 is a browser-based multilingual IMAP client with an application-like user interface. It provides MIME support, address book, folder manipulation, message searching and spell checking. Roundcube Webmail is written in PHP and requires a MySQL database. The user interface is skinnable using XHTML and CSS 2.

Browsers and Web Search

Chromium

WIP - This will likely be Chromium 99. Waiting for RC.

Leap 15.4 will ship with Chromium 98. Chromium is the open-source project behind Google Chrome. We invite you to join us in our effort to help build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all Internet users to experience the web, and to create a powerful platform for developing a new generation of web applications.

Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a standalone web browser, designed for standards compliance and performance. Its functionality can be enhanced via a plethora of extensions. Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) 91 will give users new features and allow for interactions with newer web services.

GNOME Web Browser

Epiphany is a Web browser for the GNOME Desktop. Its principles are simplicity and standards compliance.

Applications

Multimedia

From TV to music to video, Leap 15.4 offers several multimedia applications that enhance your life. Leap simplifies multimedia codec installation. Progress has been made to bring Cisco's openh264 users through a repository present by default on the system. Watch TV, make music or listen to your favorite musicians. There are several more packages, but here are just a few examples of the multimedia applications found in Leap:

Amarok

Amarok is a media player for all kinds of media. This includes MP3, Ogg Vorbis, audio CDs, podcasts and streams. Play lists can be stored in .m3u or .pls files.

Audacious

Audacious is an audio player. It is based on Qt and supports a wide range of audio codecs. It still features an alternative skinned user interface (based on Winamp 2.x skins). Historically, it started as a fork of a fork of XMMS.

Brasero

Brasero is an application for the GNOME Desktop to write to CD/DVDs. For data CDs/DVDs, Brasero supports multisession, Joliet extensions and on-the-fly image generation. The file manager can automatically ignore unwanted files. For Red Book audio CDs, Brasero supports CD-TEXT, on-the-fly transcoding from Ogg/FLAC/etc., and intra-track silence configuration. Brasero is capable of copying CDs/DVDs to an image file on disk and vice-versa. BIN/CUE is supported.

Elisa

Elisa is a music player with a library where music can be browsed by album, artist or all tracks. It is indexed using either a private indexer or an indexer using Baloo. The private one can be configured to scan music on chosen paths. The Baloo one is faster because Baloo is providing all needed data from its own database. Playlists can be built and played.

GNOME MPV

Simple GTK+ frontend for MPV. GNOME MPV is a simple GTK+ frontend for MPV.

Hydrogen

A Real-Time Drum Machine and Sequencer Hydrogen is a software synthesizer which can be used alone, emulating a drum machine based on patterns, or via an external MIDI keyboard/sequencer software. It features a modular and graphical interface based on QT4, has a sample-based stereo audio engine, with import of sound samples in PCM formats. Furthermore, a pattern-based sequencer with the ability to chain patterns into a song. Up to 64 ticks per pattern with individual level per event and variable pattern length are possible. 32 instrument tracks with volume, mute, solo, pan capabilities are provided, and there is multi-layer support for instruments (up to 16 samples for each instrument). Human velocity, human time, pitch and swing functions are implemented as well.

VLC

VLC 3.0.11.1 release notably solves an audio rendering regression introduced in the last update specific to that platform. Additionally, it improves playback of HLS streams, WebVTT subtitles and UPnP discovery.

Fixes

• Fixes HLS regressions
• Fixes a potential crash on startup on macOS
• Fixes imprecise seeking in m4a files
• Fixes resampling on Android
• Fixes a crash when listing bluray mountpoints on macOS
• Avoid unnecessary permission warnings on macOS
• Fixes permanent silence on macOS after pausing playback
• Fixes AAC playback regression
• And a security issue

Sway

Sway 1.6 is a tiling Wayland compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3's features, plus a few extras.

Tilix

Tilix is an advanced GTK3 tiling terminal emulator that follows the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines. This release includes version 1.9.4, which as the following features and bugfixes:

Features:

* Actually install Yaru color scheme
* Give every tab the ${title} (instead of "Default")
* Add option to strip trailing whitespace on paste (#1904)

Bugfixes:

* Fix saving of already saved session
* Add shortcut to "Unselect all"
* Many Meson buildsystem fixes
* Avoid missing the previous command exit code when encoding URLs
* Resolve some D deprecation messages
* Mention powerline/fonts in README
* Avoid calling `values()` on a shared object
* Update metainfo data
* Drop compat code for older D frontend versions
* Bump minimum VTE version to 0.46
* Remove deprecated Autotools support
* Add release notes, NEWS file, automatic metainfo update
* Update to GtkD 3.9.0

Graphics and Photo/Video Editing

Blender

Blender (2.82a) is a 3D modelling and rendering package. It is the in-house software of a high quality animation studio, Blender has proven to be an extremely fast and versatile design instrument. The software has a personal touch, offering a unique approach to the world of Three Dimensions. Use Blender to create TV commercials, to make technical visualizations, business graphics, to do some morphing, or design user interfaces. You can easy build and manage complex environments. The renderer is versatile and extremely fast. All basic animation principles (curves & keys) are well implemented.It includes tools for modeling, sculpting, texturing (painting, node-based shader materials, or UV mapped), UV mapping, rigging and constraints, weight painting, particle systems, simulation (fluids, physics, and soft body dynamics and an external crowd simulator), rendering, node-based compositing, and non linear video editing, as well as an integrated game engine for real-time interactive 3D and game creation and playback with cross-platform compatibility.

ImageMagick

Leap 15.4 will include version 7.1.x. ImageMagick is a robust collection of tools and libraries to read, write, and manipulate an image in many image formats, including popular formats like TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, PhotoCD, and GIF. With ImageMagick, you can create images dynamically, making it suitable for Web applications Image processing operations are available from the command line as well as through C, C++, and Perl-based programming interfaces.

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is an open-source video editing software. It is maintained by a small team of developers and is part of the official KDE project. . This version provides major speed improvements due to the Preview Scaling feature, New rating, tagging sorting and filtering of clips in the Project Bin for a great logging experience.Besides all the shiny features, the version comes with fixes for 40 critical stability issues as well as a major revamp of the user experience.

RawTherapee

RawTherapee is a powerful, cross-platform raw photo processing system, released as Free Software (GPLv3). It is designed for developing raw files from a broad range of digital cameras and targeted at users ranging from enthusiast newcomers who wish to broaden their understanding of how digital imaging works to professional photographers. RawTherapee provides a powerful suite of tools for you to produce amazing photos and showcase your creativity.

Games

There are many games in openSUSE Leap 15.4 to entertain and enjoy. There are arcade games, logic games, board games, strategy and action games. There are games for kids and games for adventure.

0AD

0 A.D. (pronounced "zero ey-dee") is a real-time strategy (RTS) game of ancient warfare. It is a historically-based war/economy game that allows players to relive or rewrite the history of Western civilizations, focusing on the years between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D. The project contains 3D graphics, detailed artwork, sound, and a flexible game engine.

Blinken

Simon Says Game. A memory enhancement game.

FlightGear

Practice your flying with FlightGear. FlightGear is an open-source flight simulator. It supports a variety of popular platforms and is developed by skilled volunteers from around the world. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License. Leap offers bug fixes with the 2020.3.x release.

FreeOrion

FreeOrion is a turn-based space empire and galactic conquest (4X) computer game. It is inspired by the tradition of the Master of Orion games, but is not a clone or remake of that series or any other game.

GCompris Educational Game

GCompris-Qt is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. Some of the activities are game orientated, but nonetheless still educational. Currently, GCompris offers in excess of 100 activities. New activities can be added, and an activity can implement its own game scheme. This version is a rewrite of GCompris using the QtQuick technology.

SuperTuxKart

SuperTuxKart is a Free 3d kart racing game. The focus of the game is more to be fun than it is to be realistic. You can play with up to 4 friends on one PC, racing against each other or just try to beat the computer. See the great lighthouse or drive through the sand and visit the pyramids. Race underground or in space, watching the stars passing by. Have some rest under the palms on the beach (watching the other karts overtaking you :) ). But don't eat the bananas! Watch for bowling balls, plungers, bubble gum and cakes thrown by opponents. You can do a single race against other karts, compete in one of several Grand Prix, try to beat the high score in time trials on your own, play battle mode against your friends, and more!

Programing Languages

Go

The 1.17 Go version 1.17 is available with openSUSE Leap 15.4. Go 1.17 includes three small enhancements to the language.

Conversions from slice to array pointer: An expression s of type []T may now be converted to array pointer type *[N]T. If a is the result of such a conversion, then corresponding indices that are in range refer to the same underlying elements: &a[i] == &s[i] for 0 <= i < N. The conversion panics if len(s) is less than N.

unsafe.Add: unsafe.Add(ptr, len) adds len to ptr and returns the updated pointer unsafe.Pointer(uintptr(ptr) + uintptr(len)).

unsafe.Slice: For expression ptr of type *T, unsafe.Slice(ptr, len) returns a slice of type []T whose underlying array starts at ptr and whose length and capacity are len.

Perl

Perl 5.26.1 continues to flourish thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. The release has several security fixes that have been backported, and the 5.26.1 release had several bugfixes. There are several other Perl packages in Leap 15.4 to include Perl Mojolicious 9.22 and PerlMagick 7.1.

PHP 7 and PHP 8

PHP is a popular general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development. PHP 7.4.25 will come in Leap 15.4. The distribution will also provide PHP 8.1.

Performance related features in PHP 8.1 are:

   JIT backend for ARM64 (AArch64)
   Inheritance cache (avoid relinking classes in each request)
   Fast class name resolution (avoid lowercasing and hash lookup)
   timelib and ext/date performance improvements
   SPL file-system iterators improvements
   serialize/unserialize optimizations
   Some internal functions optimization (get_declared_classes(), explode(), strtr(), strnatcmp(), dechex())
   JIT improvements and fixes

Python

The default in Leap is Python 3.6.15. Python 3.9 and Python 3.10 are for parallel installation.

Python 3.9 provides for those Python 2 backward compatibility layers, to give more time to Python projects maintainers to organize the removal of the Python 2 support and add support for Python 3.9. The version uses a new parser, based on PEG instead of LL(1). The new parser’s performance is roughly comparable to that of the old parser, but the PEG formalism is more flexible than LL(1) when it comes to designing new language features. We’ll start using this flexibility in Python 3.10 and later.

The ast module uses the new parser and produces the same AST as the old parser.

In Python 3.10, the old parser will be deleted and so will all functionality that depends on it (primarily the parser module, which has long been deprecated). In Python 3.9 only, you can switch back to the LL(1) parser using a command line switch (-X oldparser) or an environment variable (PYTHONOLDPARSER=1).

New syntax features:

PEP 584, union operators added to dict;
PEP 585, type hinting generics in standard collections;
PEP 614, relaxed grammar restrictions on decorators.

Interpreter improvements:

PEP 573, fast access to module state from methods of C extension types;
PEP 617, CPython now uses a new parser based on PEG; 
a number of Python builtins (range, tuple, set, frozenset, list, dict) are now sped up using PEP 590 vectorcall;
garbage collection does not block on resurrected objects; a number of Python modules (_abc, audioop, _bz2, _codecs, _contextvars, _crypt, _functools, _json, _locale, math, operator, resource, time, _weakref) now use multiphase initialization as defined by PEP 489;
a number of standard library modules (audioop, ast, grp, _hashlib, pwd, _posixsubprocess, random, select, struct, termios, zlib) are now using the stable ABI defined by PEP 384.

Ruby

Ruby 2.5 has many new features and performance improvements. The notable changes are as follows:

Support branch coverage and method coverage measurement. The branch coverage indicates which branches are executed and which are not. The method coverage indicates which methods are invoked and which are not. By running a test suite with these new features, you will know which branches and methods are executed, and evaluate total coverage of the test suite more strictly.

One of our most loved libraries, pp.rb, is now automatically loaded. You no longer have to write require "pp".

Hash#slice [Feature #8499] and Hash#transform_keys [Feature #13583]

Struct.new can create classes that accept keyword arguments. [Feature #11925]

Block passing by a block parameter (e.g. def foo(&b); bar(&b); end) is about 3 times faster than Ruby 2.4 by “Lazy Proc allocation” technique. [Feature #14045]

Mutex is rewritten to be smaller and faster. [Feature #13517]

Rust

Rust is a programming language that is empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software. The version in Leap 15.4 is Rust 1.59. Rust has burst onto the scene as a popular systems programming language. Rust 1.59 now supports inline assembly. This enables many applications that need very low-level control over their execution, or access to specialized machine instructions. Sometimes bugs in the Rust compiler cause it to accept code that should not have been accepted. An example of this was borrows of packed struct fields being allowed in safe code. While this happens very rarely, it can be quite disruptive when a crate used by your project has code that will no longer be allowed.