Features 42.3

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openSUSE 42.3 – Leap

The next minor version of openSUSE Leap is version 42.3. The release is mostly a refresh and hardware enablement release that will include more than 10,000 packages coming from both community and enterprise developers. openSUSE Leap 42.3 is extremely stable and hardened because it shares source code from SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 12 Service Pack (SP) 3. Leap also benefits from the bug fixes and maintenance of community developers and SUSE engineers. The rock-solid Leap distribution also offers great packages for streaming media, playing games, editing graphics and creating animation, 3D printing projects, worldwide health-care projects, data extraction, tools for high performance computing, network monitoring and much more. Try Leap 42.3 and see why so many people are switching to openSUSE distributions.

The following pages go into much detail on what is new in this openSUSE release. Too much information? Check out the Feature highlights instead.

Base operating system

Linux kernel

The default kernel for openSUSE Leap 42.3 is the longterm maintenance Kernel 4.4.

Networking

  • Completely lockless TCP listener handling, which allows for faster and more scalable TCP servers.
  • A persistent reservation API for block devices.
  • VRF (Virtual Routing and Forwarding) support in the IPv6 stack.

Security

  • EXT4 fixes for the filesystem's native encryption support.
  • Additional UEFI 2.5 functionality.
  • Optimized code for using Intel SHA extensions.
  • Improved Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 support.

Hardware Support

  • Support for Open-Channel solid state drives (SSDs) through LightNVM.
  • Improved Skylake Windows 8 precision touchpad support.
  • Google Fiber TV remote control support.
  • Many new and updated drivers.

More

  • A new mlock2() syscall that allows users to request memory to be locked on page fault.
  • Clustered RAID1 and Journaled RAID5 support.
  • A lot of x86 KVM work.
  • Numerous 64-bit ARM changes.

systemd

systemd 228 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/v228/NEWS

Support for the "pids" cgroup controller has been added. It allows accounting the number of tasks in a cgroup and enforcing limits on it. For user processes the limit is set to 12K whereas the limit is 512 for system services. The general benefit of these changes should be a more robust and safer system, that provides a certain amount of per-service fork() bomb protection.

The systemd package now also enables machined and imported, which enables systemd's native support for running lightweight containers.

PHP 7

openSUSE Leap 42.3 provides both PHP 5 and PHP 7 packages. The

PHP 7.0.7 fixes several bugs, such as:

  • Fixed bug #72162 (use-after-free - error_reporting).
  • Add compiler option to disable special case function calls.
  • Fixed bug #72101 (crash on complex code).
  • Fixed bug #72100 (implode() inserts garbage into resulting string when joins very big integer).
  • Fixed bug #72057 (PHP Hangs when using custom error handler and typehint).
  • Fixed bug #72038 (Function calls with values to a by-ref parameter don't always throw a notice).
  • Fixed bug #71737 (Memory leak in closure with parameter named $this).
  • Fixed bug #72059 (?? is not allowed on constant expressions).
  • Fixed bug #72159 (Imported Class Overrides Local Class Name).

A detailed list of new of bug fixes is available at http://php.net/ChangeLog-7.php#7.0.7

Users considering to migrate production systems from PHP 5.5.x to 7.0.x should also review the following documents which describe backward incompatible changes, deprecated features and changed functions:

Printing System

In openSUSE Leap 42.3, there are no major changes in the printing system compared to openSUSE Leap 42.2. The cups-filters-1.8.2 remains the same and the RPM package for hplip in openSUSE Leap 42.3 compared to openSUSE Leap 42.2 is hplip-3.16.11 rather than hplip-3.16.5.

Mesa 17

Mesa is an open-source implementation of the OpenGL, Vulkan and other specifications, which is a system for rendering interactive 3D graphics.

New

  • Building RADV requires --enable-gallium-llvm
  • The vulkan headers vk_platform.h and vulkan.h are no longer installed
  • The configure options --with-sha1 and --disable-shader-cache are removed alongside their respective library requirements
  • Intel Haswell now supports OpenGL 4.2
  • Vulkan Float64 capability support on Intel's ANV driver

Fixes

  • Fixed the configuration of a desktop with 3x4k monitors in one row
  • Fixed Blender line rendering broken after removing XY clipping of lines
  • Fixed Firefox crashing when opening about:support with WebGL2 enabled
  • Fixed VLC video that has corrupted colors when using VDPAU output on Radeon SI

More fixes can be found here.

Office and Groupware

TeX Live 2016

TeX Live is an easy way to get up and running with the TeX document production system. It provides a comprehensive TeX system with a lot of programs like LaTeX, pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX, and LuaLaTex. It includes all the major TeX-related programs, macro packages, and fonts that are free software, including support for many languages around the world.

New

There are a lot of changes in LuaTeX backend. The pdfTeX and XeTeX commands got new primitives. MetaFont got experimental Lua integration. MetaPost got bug fixes and was prepared for a new major version coming soon.

A lot of updates of packages had been done like update of the fontspec package as well as the corresponding LaTeX engine.

The environment variable SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is supported in all engines except LuaTEX (which will come in the next release) and original tex (intentionally omitted): If the environment variable SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is set, its value is used for timestamps in the PDF output. If SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH_TEX_PRIMITIVES is also set, the SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH value is used to initialize the TEX primitives \year, \month, \day, \time. The pdfTEX manual has examples and details.

pdfTEX: new primitives \pdfinfoomitdate, \pdftrailerid, \pdfsuppressptexinfo, to control values appearing in the output which normally change with each run. These features are for PDF output only, not DVI.

XeTEX: New primitives \XeTeXhyphenatablelength, \XeTeXgenerateactualtext, \XeTeXinterwordspaceshaping, \mdfivesum; character class limit increased to 4096; DVI id byte incremented.

Other utilities:

gregorio is a new program, part of the gregoriotex package for typesetting Gregorian chant scores; it is included in shell_escape_commands by default. upmendex is an index creation program, mostly compatible with makeindex, with support for Unicode sorting, among other changes. afm2tfm now makes only accent-based height adjustments upward; a new option -a omits all adjustments. ps2pk can handle extended PK/GF fonts.

It doesn’t sound like a big change, but it comes with updates for a lot of packages compared to last year’s TeX Live 2015.

Firefox 52 (ESR version)

Firefox is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation.

New

Added automatic captive portal detection, for easier access to Wi-Fi hotspots. When accessing the Internet via a captive portal, Firefox will alert users and open the portal login page in a new tab.

Implemented the Strict Secure Cookies specification which forbids insecure HTTP sites from setting cookies with the "secure" attribute. In some cases, this will prevent an insecure site from setting a cookie with the same name as an existing "secure" cookie from the same base domain.

Added user warnings for non-secure HTTP pages with logins. Firefox now displays a “This connection is not secure” message when users click into the username and password fields on pages that don’t use HTTPS.

Enhanced Sync to allow users to send and open tabs from one device to another.

Changed

Improved experience for downloads:

  • Notification in the toolbar when a download fails
  • Quick access to five most recent downloads rather than three
  • Larger buttons for canceling and restarting downloads

Removed Battery Status API to reduce fingerprinting of users by trackers

Display (but allow users to override) an “Untrusted Connection” error when encountering SHA-1 certificates that chain up to a root certificate included in Mozilla’s CA Certificate Program. (Note: Firefox continues to permit SHA-1 certificates that chain to manually imported root certificates.) Read more about the Mozilla Security Team’s plans to deprecate SHA-1

Libreoffice

LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite, a project of The Document Foundation.

Writer

  • Spelling dialog no longer automatically closes once spellcheck is complete.
  • Widow/Orphan paragraph text-flow enabled by default for new documents.
  • Mail merge embedding of the datasource definition (see this blog entry)
  • Hide Whitespace option added to View menu
  • Outline split button available in formatting toolbar, but hidden by default
  • While in print preview mode to jump to a specific page, the only thing you have to do is enter the page number on the numeric field in the toolbar.

Calc

  • New commands to add rows below and columns right.
  • Data Sources keyboard shortcut was changed to Ctrl+⇧ Shift+F4 and F4 was assigned to toggling cell references.
  • Formula Wizard shows the values of parameters and results on the Structure page.
  • Statistics regression: linear, logarithmic, power: Add a new statistics dialog for calculating regression.
  • Organize sheet level context menus. commit
  • PNG export in LibreOffice Calc was added, as in Writer and Impress. blog entry
  • Option to search formatted display strings using find bar and also "Find & Replace" dialog.

Impress and Draw

  • Slide navigation and sorting commands were added with corresponding shortcut keys.
  • Master slide view appears in a different background color to normal view.
  • KDE, XFCE, and Mate ScreenSavers are now also inhibited when presenting

Impress Mode selection Several modes were active in Impress:

  • Page to edit slides content
  • Page Master to edit slides container
  • Notes to add Notes
  • Notes Master to edit Notes container
  • Plan to sketch a presentation
  • Handout to define the handout format
  • Slide sorter to organise presentation

It was hard to navigate between Master / non master modes. Tabs above the working area were jumping right and left, consuming screen space.

Now, two toolbox icons have been added:

  • one to toggle Tab bar visibility. It is hidden by default. Clicking the toggle disables the new Mode Selection tool and restores the previous behaviour.
  • one to Select the Working mode among the 7 modes listed above. It is divided in two zones: top zone is regular mode (dealing with content of the presentation), bottom zone is the Master mode (dealing with container).

Slide Design Slide Design dialog in Slide ▸ Slide Design now affects all selected (standard) slides.

Equalize Width/Height When multiple objects are selected, the right click context menu Shapes submenu now supports Equalize Width and Equalize Height which adjusts the width/height of the selected objects to the width/height of the last selected object.

Save Background Image Right clicking a slide now supports saving a background image to file, this matches the pre-existing set background image option.

View/Edit Control Points The Shape Properties dialog for enhanced shapes now lists and enables editing the control points. This is in addition to the preexisting mechanism of selecting with the mouse the yellow control handle of the shape, but enables viewing and fine control over the control values.

Presenter Console There is now a button on the presenter console to restart the timer of the slideshow without restarting the slideshow itself (see this blog entry)

OpenGL Transitions All OpenGL transitions have been ported to OpenGL 2.1+, which removes support for very old GPUs but allows a better usage of modern ones. Four new transitions have been added which require OpenGL 3.2+ that exploit these new available features.

Math

Import MathML from Clipboard

  • The tool “Math Input Panel” in Windows or the context menu of a formula in a browser allow to copy the MathML source to clipboard. The Math module in LibreOffice has got a new item “Import MathML from Clipboard” in menu Tools to import such source and convert it into LibreOffice’s own formula syntax StarMath.
  • MathML and StarMath have some differences and therefore sometimes corrections on the imported formula are needed, but most of the formula should be correct. If a conversion is not possible, nothing happens.
  • The import expects, that a <math> element exists, which has an attribute xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML".

ThunderBird 52

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free,[10] open source, cross-platform email, news, RSS, and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation.

New
  • Folder pane toolbar and folder view selector (replacement for folder view arrows)
  • Optionally remove corresponding data files when removing an account from Thunderbird
  • Import settings from Becky! Internet Mail
  • Possibility to copy message filter
  • Dictionary setting is restored when editing a draft. Content-Language header (RFC 3282) transmitted with message
  • Calendar: Event can now be created and edited in a tab
  • Calendar: Processing of received invitation counter proposals
  • Chat: Support Twitter Direct Messages
  • Chat: Liking and favoriting in Twitter
  • Chat: XMPP: Support SASL SCRAM authentication mechanism
  • Chat: Support Jabber/XMPP Message Carbons (XEP-280)
Fixed
  • IMPORTANT: The way images are included in a compose window has changed. Images are now included as data URIs and not as references to parts of other messages or operating system files. This allows better interoperability with office packages for LibreOffice. Images linked from locations on the internet will no longer be downloaded and attached to the message automatically. This can be changed for each image individually via the Image Properties dialog or globally by setting the preference mail.compose.attach_http_images.
  • Correspondents column now default for all new folders, can be switched off with preference mail.threadpane.use_correspondents
  • When replying to a mailing list, reply will be sent to address in From header ignoring Reply-to header
  • Formatting toolbar is now left in place when delivery format is switched to plain text only
  • Messages in IMAP folders read on external device are now filtered by default
  • Folders backed by mbox storage larger than 4GB are supported without warning (unless preference mailnews.allowMboxOver4GB is set to false)
  • IMAP caching now uses Mozilla's latest caching technology
  • The keyboard shortcut to insert hyperlinks into a compose window was changed from CTRL+L to CTRL+K to align with Office applications
  • Chat: Removed Yahoo! Messenger support (since Yahoo removed support)

Kopano Core & WebApp

Leap 42.3 brings Kopano Core and Kopano WebApp, part of a groupware for office collaboration:

  • Put bluntly, KC is a replacement for an Exchange Server installation. More technically, it is a set of remote system services for handling email, contacts, calendars, events and tasks. kopano-server is the main storage service where emails get placed into an indexed key-value store. Protocols like LMTP, IMAP, POP3, iCal/CalDav and HTTPRPC enable connectivity from and to e.g. postfix, Thunderbird, Outlook and mobile systems like Android, BlackBerry, iOS, etc.
  • WebApp is a PHP/JS-based webinterface similar in looks to Outlook Web Access for connecting to a kopano-server instance.
  • The optional Z-Push extension (to be obtained separately) is a PHP-based web service that translates ActiveSync requests for a kopano-server instance.
  • For more information, see the wikipedia article and the Kopano online documentation.

Desktop Environments

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is classed as a “desktop shell” providing the things you need to operate your desktop (or laptop), but is not a whole application suite. This covers launching applications, managing their windows and doing other system tasks like suspending, reboots, managing files etc. openSUSE Leap 42.3 comes with Enlightenment 0.21.8, an upgrade from the 0.21.3 version found in Leap 42.2.

Changes

  • Fixed macro namings in relation to endianness.
  • Fixed compiler type warnings (snprintf)
  • E keyboard settings - use the same icon as the keyboard settings dialog
  • e randr2 - fixed freeing of stringshare by making it a stringshare
  • Fixed fullscreen no blank logic in e's dpms code
  • Further fixes to screensaver/banking with window states like fullscreen
  • Better protect comp object internals from dereferencing freed clients
  • Add all wl client frame callbacks with priority AFTER
  • Defer menu activation mouse-up feed

Further changes to Enlightenment 0.21.8 can be found here.

GNOME

openSUSE Leap 42.3 ships with the same GNOME as it did in Leap 42.2 - GNOME 3.20.

GNOME Applications

Files (Nautilus)

it is now possible to access Google Drive directly from the Files application, as well as from file chooser dialogs. To use the feature, simply add your Google account through the Online Accounts settings, and Google Drive will automatically appear in the files places sidebar.

Once set up, Google Drive behaves very similarly to the rest of your files and folders: files can be opened using your normal applications, and folders can be created just like regular folders. It is also really easy to upload files to Google Drive — all you have to do is move or copy them across.

Furthermore, long-running operations (such as copying or moving large numbers of files) have also been improved: a button shows progress information in the header bar, which shows more detailed information when pressed. This allows you to easily see progress at a glance, and avoids progress windows getting in the way.

Search has been a particular focus: search filters have been revamped, and are vastly simpler and easier to use than the previous version. Search has also been made more robust: performance issues have been addressed, and the interface is faster and more responsive.

GNOME Calendar

Calendar is a new application for GNOME, which was initially introduced as a preview in 3.16. Designed to be consistent with other GNOME 3 applications, and to be fully integrated with GNOME 3, Calendar makes a great addition to the GNOME application suite. It is attractive, simple to use, and is fully integrated with GNOME Online Accounts.

The initial feature list is simple and straightforward, including month and year views, search, the ability to add calendars from files and remote calendars from URLs, online accounts integration, and event viewing and editing.

Automatic screen brightness

If your computer has an integrated light sensor, GNOME 3 is now able to use it to automatically control screen brightness. Not only does this ensure that the screen is always easy to see, but it also helps to reduce battery consumption. An option is provided to disable automatic screen brightness in the Power settings, should you want to turn it off.

Simple and Easy Photo Editing

With GNOME 3.20, editing has arrived in 'Photos'. The new editing controls are simple and easy to use. All editing is non-destructive, so your original photo is preserved and changes can be undone. Editing functions include crop and rotate, color adjustment and picture enhancement. A selection of artistic filters are also available.

Quickly Access Media Controls

With GNOME 3.20, media controls are now built-in and displayed in the notification/clock area. This provides a way to quickly access music and video applications that are currently in use. Controls for multiple media applications can even be shown at the same time.

The controls show the name and artist of the currently playing track, which can be paused and resumed. It is also possible to skip forward and back. This new feature works with a large range of music players, using the common MPRIS standard.

Maps

Maps now supports editing and adding place information using your OpenStreeMap login. In addition, it supports printing of routes, as well as saving and exporting maps as png images for inclusion into your documents and emails.

Other Little Improvements
  • Applications launchers on the dash and application overview now come with convenient secondary-click shortcuts. Try secondary click (right click or long press after primary-click) on the evolution icon to directly open the mail composer, calendar, contacts, tasks and more.
  • Many applications in GNOME now feature a helpful Keyboard Shortcuts window (e.g., try hitting Ctrl+? when the Files application is open).
  • Polari, the IRC chat application, now automatically pastes images and large blocks of text to a pastebin service and prints the corresponding pastebin URL into your chat message, making the drag of pasting these manually and then copy-pasting the link back into your IRC chat a convenient one-step process.
  • Evince, the pdf and djvu document viewer, has seen a major improvement to its annotations interface: highlighting is now supported as one of the annotations, in addition to the existing text annotations supported earlier.
  • Location awareness settings can now be controlled at the application level, thus making the feature more privacy focused.
  • The Mouse and touchpad settings panel in system settings has been redesigned and is much more convenient to work with.
  • Web (or Epiphany), GNOME's other browser, has also undergone several exciting changes. At the user interface level, it has now gained a pretty popover to show ongoing and completed downloads. But, its major new feature is the session restore, whereby if you choose to restore your tabs from the previous browsing session, it now also restores your entire session history, including the scroll position from the previous session.
  • Boxes, GNOME's super user-friendly virtualization app, now has an improved list view where it shows the current status of all your virtual machines.
  • New applications available from the default repositories
    • Lollypop — A new feature-rich music player
    • GNOME To Do — A tasks application
    • Calendar — A user-friendly calendar and appointment manager
    • Guake — A dropdown terminal

GNOME Infrastructure / internals

dconf editor

dconf Editor has had a facelift for 3.20. Settings lists have been overhauled, to give a better overview, with each row now including the description for the setting. Search uses the standard design found in other GNOME applications, making it easier to find. Search can also be activated by just starting to type.

GTK+ Inspector

The GTK+ Inspector keyboard shortcut must be explicitly enabled. This can be done using DConf Editor, by checking enable-inspector-keybinding in org ▸ gtk ▸ settings ▸ Debug. Alternatively, you can run the following command: 

  gsettings set org.gtk.Settings.Debug enable-inspector-keybinding true
GLib
  • Threadpools are no longer limited to 10 threads.
  • Information about metered networks is now available in GNetworkMonitor.
  • Portability improvements: GNotification has now been implemented on OS X, and GAppInfo has been partially implemented on Windows (this is backed by the registry).
Builder

Builder is the new integrated development environment for GNOME, which aims to make it quick and easy to do all kinds of development work, particularly application development. Thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign, a huge amount of progress has been made on Builder since last release. While it is still under heavy development, it is already becoming an extremely effective tool.

KDE Plasma 5.8

openSUSE Leap 42.3 will once again have the Long Term Support version for KDE Plasma 5.8. At the release of Leap 42.3, version 5.8.7 offers many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

The global menu functionality, known from KDE 4 times already, is supported by the Plasma Desktop in openSUSE Leap 42.3.

Three months worth of new translations and fixes from KDE's contributors gives KDE user a great user experience. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include fixes for user management, system setting, audio volume controls and the Plasma workspace.

KDE now integrates with Google Drive thanks to kio-gdrive which allows to access your data in the cloud from Dolphin as well as KDE file dialogs. To use your account, install the kio-gdrive package, open Dolphin, click on Network and then on Google Drive and "New account". The new place can be added to the side panel to access your Google Drive files easily from all KDE applications.

Applications 17.04.2

The newest applications provides several fixes and new features. From Dolphin to konqueror, Applications 17.04.2 enhances the experience of users. Changes for Applications 17.04.2 can be found here.

Dolphin
  • Correct searchbox, split view transitions between tabs.
  • Show pointing hand cursor when hovering spaceinfo bar.
  • Change "Date" to "Modified" and allow access to new "Accessed" time field.
  • Fixed async conditions.
  • DolphinSearchBox: Add a "More search tools..." menu button.
  • Apply the file preview shadow frame to most previews instead of only image file previews.
kalgebra
  • Offer the same default window size as the legacy UI.
  • PrintSupport only needed for the Widgets-based UI.
  • Implementation for pasting text from log to input.
  • Use PlotsView3DES to render 3D plots.
konqueror
  • Restore/port the "Default web browser engine" setting.
  • Fix 'Home Folder' button action.
  • Use PlotsView3DES to render 3D plots.
print-manager
  • Fix moving print job to another printer.
  • Make kded happy by prepending "kded_" to the X-KDE-Library value "printmanager".
  • Remove the depreciated Plasma PopupApplet servicetype.

Frameworks

KDE Frameworks 5.32.0 provides numerous component updates for KDE users. Among these are updates to KWidgetsAddons, KTextEditor, KPackage Framework, KNotification and many more. There are plenty of bugfixes and improvements in this frameworks release and Breeze has icons changes. The collection of libraries and software frameworks provide functionality and solutions needed for file format support, graphical control elements, plotting functions, spell checking and more. The release adds support for Flatpak portals through KNotification and KTextEditor adds sentence style capitalization with label texts of edit fields. KDE Kiosk, which has been built since KDE 3, can also be used.

LXQt

openSUSE Leap 42.3 ships with the same LXQt 0.11 version from Leap 42.2.

  • Multimonitor support improved a lot in this release (especially lxqt-panel)
  • Search functionality in lxqt-panel menu
  • New component: pavucontrol-qt Qt interface to Pulseaudio
  • lxqt-config contains now a tool to adjust display brightness
  • The pattern changed from gwenview to the newly included Lximage-qt as the default image viewer
  • pattern requires lightdm now

See LXQt release notes for complete LXQt release notes.

Health

openSUSE Leap 42.3 has packages that support worldwide health care initiative and is proud to be assisting projects with improving health and science efforts.

GNU Health

GNU Health, developed by GNUSolidario, a non-profit, non-government organization (NGO), delivers free open-source software for health practitioners, health institutions and governments worldwide. GNU Health’s free software provides functionality to facilitate a Hospital Information System (HIS), Health Information System and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) management. It is translated into many languages, amongst which are: Arabic, Chinese (China), English (United Kingdom), French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Lao, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Ecuador), Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Peru) and Spanish (Spain).

The new GNU Health release 3.2 is a major milestone, as it was completely ported to Python 3. It sets the ground for the upcoming GNU Health Federation.

New

  • Tryton 4.2 integration
  • All GNU Health packages are now written in Python 3
  • Enhanced support for Calendar and WebDAV system
  • Updated Crypto packages
  • Link lab orders with health services
  • Better language and localization, that optimizes translation for regional languages
  • Add cod39 to lab tests
  • Include the Domicilary Unit address in the main person information
  • Improved gnuhealth-setup and gnuhealth-control programs (gnuhealth-control comes with a version adapted to openSUSE)
  • Patient, Medicament and Services can now be activated / deactivated

New Modules

  • health_ems : Emergency and Ambulances Management
  • health_insurance : Insurance management and pricelists
  • health_genetics_uniprot : Uniprot DB for thousands of genetic natural variants and phenotypes
  • health_crypto_lab : Digital signatures for lab orders
  • health_services_lab : Integrate lab orders into services

health-check

Health-check monitors processes and optionally their child processes and threads for a given amount of time. At the end of the monitoring it will display the CPU time used, wakeup events generated and I/O operations of the given processes. It can be used to diagnose unhealthy bad processes.

openSUSE technologies

AutoYaST

AutoYaST is now more robust, powerful and friendly than ever. Apart from faster installation in many situations and better reporting of the adjustments automatically performed to the partition sizes, the management of services have been moved to the first AutoYaST stage, opening many new possibilities for more flexible unattended scenarios.

But the new jewel of the AutoYaST crown is its brand new integration with SaltStack and other configuration management systems introduced by the new addition to the Leap family: the yast2-configuration-manager package. Now AutoYaST can take care of the system installation (partitioning, network setup, etc.) and then delegate the system configuration to one of those widely used external tools.

Snapper

openSUSE Released Snapper 0.5.0 in may and users of Leap benefit from the cleanup of an algorithm for rollback snapshots. Snapper snapshots based on the btrfs filesystem is more mature and is less disk-hungry. Snapper was also improved to work with a read-only btrfs root filesystem, which is related to openSUSE Kubic that uses a read-only root filesystem and uses transactional updates.

(Transactional updates work by creating a snapshot of the system and then updating the packages in that new snapshot. This way the update does not affect any of the running services. Instead the update is activated by a reboot. A read-only root filesystem on a system with transactional updates simply ensures that the update does not accidentally modify the running system. When installing openSUSE with YaST, the space aware cleanup will be enabled for the root filesystem.)

YaST

The YaST development sprints have brought tons of improvements to openSUSE Leap 42.3. The YaST community has been working hard to improve usability and continues to add new tools and modules in Tumbleweed and Leap. The list of improvements include extending the ability to configure and use Trusted Boot also to EFI systems, new possibilities for network installation, enhancements in the YaST partitioner and better integration with Systemd services.

But the most visible change is the revamped desktop selection screen in the installer, that offers a more fair playground for all graphical environments beyond KDE and Gnome. The installer does not longer offers a predefined selection of "secondary" desktops environments, but relies on the existing patterns created and maintained by the enthusiasts of every graphical environment. So the "those who do, decide" principle now also drives the selection of available desktops.

Scientific and Educational Apps

Avogadro

Avogadro is an advanced molecular editor designed for cross-platform use in computational chemistry, molecular modeling, bioinformatics, materials science, and related areas. It offers flexible rendering and a powerful plugin architecture).

Chemical MIME Data

A collection of data files which tries to give support for various chemical MIME types (chemical/*) on Linux/UNIX desktops. Chemical MIME's have been proposed in 1995, though it seems they have never been registered with IANA.

Octave

GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly compatible with Matlab. It may also be used as a batch-oriented language.

Octave has extensive tools for solving common numerical linear algebra problems, finding the roots of nonlinear equations, integrating ordinary functions, manipulating polynomials, and integrating ordinary differential and differential-algebraic equations. It is easily extensible and customizable via user-defined functions written in Octave’s own language, or using dynamically loaded modules written in C++, C, Fortran, or other languages.

KStars

KStars is free, open source, cross-platform Astronomy Software. It provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes up to 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects,all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets, asteroids, supernovae, and satellites. For students and teachers, it supports adjustable simulation speeds in order to view phenomena that happen over long timescales, the KStars Astrocalculator to predict conjunctions, and many common astronomical calculations.

Open Babel

Open Babel is a chemical toolbox designed to speak the many languages of chemical data. It's an open, collaborative project allowing anyone to search, convert, analyze, or store data from molecular modeling, chemistry, solid-state materials, biochemistry, or related areas.

Scilab

Scilab is a scientific software package for numerical computations providing a powerful open computing environment for engineering and scientific applications which includes hundreds of mathematical functions with the possibility to add interactively programs from various languages (C, C++, Fortran...). It has sophisticated data structures (including lists, polynomials, rational functions, linear systems...), an interpreter and a high level programming language. Matlab and Maple files can be converted.

Step

Step is an open source two-dimensional physics simulation engine that is included in the KDE SC as a part of KDE Education Project.[1] It includes StepCore, a physical simulation library.

Security

openSUSE Leap 42.3 offers several packages for security. Below are just of the few packages you can use to ensure you are protecting your system.

apparmor

AppArmor is an effective and easy-to-use Linux application security system. AppArmor proactively protects the operating system and applications from external or internal threats, even zero-day attacks, by enforcing good behavior and preventing even unknown application flaws from being exploited.

AppArmor 2.10.2 is an incremental bug fix release over AppArmor 2.10.1 that is focused on fixing issues in the userspace code.

Lynis

Lynis is a security and system auditing tool. It scans a system on the most interesting parts useful for audits, like:

  • Security enhancements
  • Logging and auditing options
  • Banner identification
  • Software availability

yast2-security

The YaST2 component for security settings configuration.

Tools

CMake 3.5.2

CMake is an extensible, open-source system that manages the build process in an operating system and in a compiler-independent manner. Unlike many cross-platform systems, CMake is designed to be used in conjunction with the native build environment. Simple configuration files placed in each source directory (called CMakeLists.txt files) are used to generate standard build files (e.g., makefiles on Unix and projects/workspaces in Windows MSVC) which are used in the usual way. CMake can generate a native build environment that will compile source code, create libraries, generate wrappers and build executables in arbitrary combinations.

GUI

  • The cmake-gui(1) gained options to control warnings about deprecated functionality.
  • The cmake-gui(1) learned an option to set the toolset to be used with VS IDE and Xcode generators, much like the existing -T option to cmake(1).
  • The cmake-gui(1) gained a Regular Expression Explorer which may be used to create and evaluate regular expressions in real-time. The explorer window is available via the Tools menu.

Command-Line

  • The -Wdev and -Wno-dev cmake(1) options now also enable and suppress the deprecated warnings output by default.
  • The suppression of developer warnings as errors can now be controlled with the new -Werror=dev and -Wno-error=dev cmake(1) options.
  • The cmake(1) -E command-line tools copy, copy_if_different, copy_directory, and make_directory learned to support multiple input files or directories.

Commands

  • The cmake_parse_arguments() command is now implemented natively. The CMakeParseArguments module remains as an empty placeholder for compatibility.
  • The install(DIRECTORY) command learned to support generator expressions in the list of directories.

Variables

  • The CMAKE_ERROR_DEPRECATED variable can now be set using the -Werror=deprecated and -Wno-error=deprecated cmake(1) options.
  • The CMAKE_WARN_DEPRECATED variable can now be set using the -Wdeprecated and -Wno-deprecated cmake(1) options.

Modules

  • The ExternalProject module learned a new GIT_REMOTE_NAME option to control the git clone --origin value.
  • The FindBoost module now provides imported targets such as Boost::boost and Boost::filesystem.
  • The FindFLEX module FLEX_TARGET macro learned a new DEFINES_FILE option to specify a custom output header to be generated.
  • The FindGTest module now provides imported targets.
  • The FindGTK2 module, when GTK2_USE_IMPORTED_TARGETS is enabled, now sets GTK2_LIBRARIES to contain the list of imported targets instead of the paths to the libraries. Moreover it now sets a new GTK2_TARGETS variable containing all the targets imported.
  • The FindOpenMP module learned to support Clang.
  • The FindOpenSSL module gained a new OPENSSL_MSVC_STATIC_RT option to search for libraries using the MSVC static runtime.
  • The FindPNG module now provides imported targets.
  • The FindTIFF module now provides imported targets.
  • A FindXalanC module was introduced to find the Apache Xalan-C++ XSL transform processing library.
  • The FindXercesC module now provides imported targets.

Platforms

  • Support was added for the ARM Compiler (arm.com) with compiler id ARMCC.
  • A new platform file for cross-compiling in the Cray Linux Environment to target compute nodes was added. See Cross Compiling for the Cray Linux Environment for usage details.
  • The Compile Features functionality is now aware of features supported by Clang compilers on Windows (MinGW).
  • When building for embedded Apple platforms like iOS CMake learned to build and install combined targets which contain both a device and a simulator build. This behavior can be enabled by setting the IOS_INSTALL_COMBINED target property.

nodejs

As an asynchronous event driven JavaScript runtime, Node is designed to build scalable network applications. openSUSE Leap 42.3 comes with nodejs 4 and 6. The most notable change for nodejs version 6.9.5 is upgrade openssl sources to 1.0.2k; this was also made available in nodejs version 4.7.3.

Qt

The Qt libraries were updated to Qt 5.6.2, which is a bug-fix release. It maintains both forward and backward compatibility (source and binary) with Qt 5.6.0. This is the second patch release to the long-term supported Qt 5.6, and there will still be more patch releases to come. While a patch release does not bring new features, it contains security fixes, error corrections and general improvements. Read more about Qt 5.6.2. Qt now detects remote print queues using avahi. This adds a delay the first time a print dialog is opened in an application. If you don't have any network print queues and you find the delay too annoying, it can be disabled by setting the QT_DISABLE_PRINTER_DISCOVERY environment variable to 1 in /etc/environment .

As part of this update, Qt Creator has been updated to 4.3.0. Qt Creator 4.3 integrated a code editor into Qt Quick Designer, which allows you to use the Properties editor and the Navigator also while editing code. Split the view to show both the graphical and the code editor, and directly see how a change in the graphical editor affects the code, and vice versa.

GNU Compiler Collection

GCC7 is available as optional compiler. The same is true for GCC 5 and GCC 6. This gives developers tons of options. The default compiler is GCC 4.8.5.

Ruby 2.4

Ruby 2.4 is available as an optional choice in addition to ruby 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3

What else is new

  • The zypper lifecycle plugin allows list installed packages that require updating or are no longer supported
  • postgresql 9.6 is the default, postgresql 9.4 is still available though
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