Archive:15.3/Features
openSUSE Leap 15.3 is...
Is this highlight too short? See Features_15.3 for more detailed information about planned changes.
Previous versions of openSUSE Leap did a great job to keep sources alike with SUSE Linux Enterprise, yet different build configuration resulted in various feature sets on both sides of these chameleon distributions. This release of openSUSE Leap goes beyond the previous sources and unifies feature sets and the building openSUSE Leap on top of binary packages from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3. The release becomes fully binary identical with openSUSE Leap 15.3 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3. More information about the progress on identicality can be found here.
The seamless migration experience from Leap to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is practically instantaneous. The pattern changes to migrate to SUSE Linux Enterprise are effortless. Should users of openSUSE Leap have a need to migrate, the option is available and users can be confident in the ability to migration to enterprise support. More information about how the distributions are built the can be found here.
Many Artificial Intelligence packages are available in Leap 15.3.
Tensorflow: A framework for deep learning that can be used by data scientists, provide numerical computations and data-flow graphs. Its flexible architecture enables users to deploy computations to one or more CPUs in a desktop, server, or mobile device without rewriting code.
PyTorch: Made for both server and compute resources, this machine learning library accelerates power users’ ability to prototype a project and move it to a production deployment.
ONNX: An open format built to represent machine learning models, provides interoperability in the AI tool space. It enables AI developers to use models with a variety of frameworks, tools, runtimes, and compilers.
For Users
Plasma 5.18 LTS is the third long-term support release from the KDE Plasma team. Leap 15.3 includes this LTS version. In Plasma 5.18 you will find neat features that make notifications clearer, settings more streamlined and the overall look more attractive. Plasma 5.18 is easier and more fun to use, while at the same time allowing you to be more productive when it is time to work. If you are thinking of updating or migrating your school, company or organization to Plasma, this version is your best bet, as you get the most stable version of Plasma *and* all the new features too. Plasma 5.18 is even more user-friendly as we have added more features that let you work, play and express yourself better. Take the new Emoji Selector: it is literally always just two keystrokes away. Hold down the Meta (Windows) key and press the period (.) and it will pop up. Click on the icon that best represents your feelings and you can paste the emoji into your email, social media post, text message or even your terminal. Continuing with improvements to the overall look, Plasma 5.18 comes with better support for GTK applications using client-side decorations. These applications now show proper shadows and the resize areas for them. GTK apps now also automatically inherit Plasma's settings for fonts, icons, mouse cursors and more. Plasma now starts significantly faster and start-up scripts have been converted from bash to C++ and now run asynchronously. There is also much better support for public WiFi logins. To help relax your eyesight, there's a new system tray widget that lets you toggle the Night Color feature. You can also configure keyboard shortcuts to turn Night Color and Do Not Disturb modes on or off. Full list of changes can be found here.
Leap 15.3 offers GNOME 3.34 (named Thessaloniki), which comes with a large number of new features, bug fixes, and better performance. Improvements to core GNOME applications include new icons, sandboxed browsing in Web, gapless playback in Music, support for bidirectional text in the Terminal, more featured applications in Software, and more. The Folder Management makes it possible to create, rename, and delete folders using Drag n’ Drop actions in the application overview. This makes organizing applications much easier and keeps the application overview clutter-free. The overview visual style was refined as well, including the search entry field, the login password field, and the overview window highlight border.
Xfce Desktop is now an option in the Leap 15.3 Installer. The new Xfce 4.16 comes with many improvements and visual enhancements. A lot of effort was put in Xfce visual identity which resulted in a new set of application icons and color palette. As part of the new look, CSD titlebar are now used in system dialogs and some applications. The window manager received lots of updates and improvements again in the area of compositing and GLX. Support for fractional scaling was added to the display dialog. A new plugin to the panel dubbed "statustray" combines both StatusNotifier and legacy Systray items. As part of a code cleanup and modernization effort, GTK2 was dropped from all Xfce components. You can check out the complete list of new features in the official Xfce 4.16 tour and the official release announcement.
openSUSE Leap 15.3 contains a tiling Wayland compositor Sway, that is a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11.
The Leap distribution supports the health, science, research and developer communities with packages like GNU Health, which can help facilitate running the operations of a hospital and collecting vital patient data, and QGIS, which allows researchers to create, edit, visualise, analyse and publish geospatial information. Grafana and Prometheus are two new maintained packages that open up new possibilities for analytical experts. Grafana provides end users the ability to create interactive visual analytics. Feature-rich data-modeling packages: Graphite, Elastic and Prometheus give openSUSE users greater latitude to construct, compute and decipher data more intelligibly.
This openSUSE release use Weblate to coordinate the translation of openSUSE into more than 50 languages. openSUSE’s Weblate interface enables everyone (from dedicated translators to casual contributors) to take part in the process and makes it possible to coordinate the translations of openSUSE with the ones for SUSE Linux Enterprise, boosting collaboration between community and enterprise.