Archive:42.3/Features
openSUSE Leap 42.3 is...
After basing openSUSE Leap on SLE (SUSE Linux Enterprise) and adding more source code to Leap 42.2 from SLE 12, Leap 42.3 adds even more packages from SLE 12 SP 3 and synchronizes several common packages. The shared codebase allows for openSUSE Leap 42.3 to receive enhanced maintenance and bug fixes from both the openSUSE community and SUSE engineers.
openSUSE Leap 42.3 offers a server installation option during the installation. With no graphical environment, a server install of Leap stands ready to do whatever you need from it. Something as simple as running a Web or Mail platform is easier than ever, as are complex projects using virtualization or container technologies. For example, users seeking an "Exchange-like" service can benefit from the latest version of the Kopano collaboration platform, including support for Thunderbird, Outlook and mobile mail clients. It’s also good to remember that Leap and all other openSUSE and SLE distributions have support for a full-featured textmode installer, giving all the same functionality as the graphical installer. The installer is fully capable of doing installations remotely using VNC or SSH, letting you set up your openSUSE Leap server without needing to be anywhere near it at all.
For Developers
openSUSE Leap 42.3 ships with Docker 1.12 which builds upon Dockers recent adoption of runC and containerd to bring the latest orchestration features, such as Docker Swarm. Docker containers and tooling make building and shipping applications dramatically easier and faster. This release is the first to include Flatpak, a software utility for software deployment, package management, and application virtualization for Linux. It provides a sandbox environment in which users can run applications in isolation from the rest of the system.
Leap 42.3 carries a mature version of the Qt 5 GUI toolkit (5.6) LTS . Qt 5.6 has some non-critical security fixes in the Qt framework and in third-party libraries. 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 . GTK 3.20, shared with SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP3, provides a solid & stable toolkit for building gtk based applications. GNOME Builder is offered as a powerful general purpose IDE for not only GTK applications based on C, C++ and Vala, but many other languages in addition. For all your compiling needs, Leap 42.3 has gcc 4.8.5 as the default compiler, but gcc 5.3.1, 6.2.1 and 7.1.1 are also available options for developers.
openSUSE Leap 42.3 include older and newer Programming languages. Go 1.6.2, Python 2.7, Ruby 2.4 and Perl 5.18 are all available in Leap 42.3. This Leap release provides new major version libraries. New features for libvirt 3.3.0 enabling data batching and can improve network performance for guests. Functionality for the package manager is improved in libzypp (16.12). Leap also has the well established GNU C Library that has Power 9 enablement.
For Sysadmins
openSUSE Leap 42.3 is full of virtualization solutions. QEMU 2.9 provides an extremely well-performing CPU emulator that allows you to choose between simulating an entire system and running userspace binaries for different architectures. VirtualBox 5.1.22 has a patch for API change in Leap 42.3. openSUSE Leap 42.3 has a perfect base system to distribute applications the set up is easy with YaST and gnome-boxes. System administrator will be able deploy solutions quickly and easily with openSUSE Leap 42.3. The release provides system administrators several options to easily maintain reliable operations of computer systems. Create and manage Linux containers with Leap with Docker and LXC. Also, take control of your Linux container images with openSUSE’ Portus Project.
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. 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 no 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. 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, which opens the door to many new possibilities for more flexible unattended scenarios. 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.
openSUSE Leap has Samba 4.6.5 and comes with the security release 4.6.4 that takes care of a remote code execution vulnerability that allowed a malicious client to upload a shared library to a writable share, and then cause the server to load and execute it. Systemd 228 remains in Leap 42.3 and has received fixes for memory leak as well as enhancement for rollbacks capabilities using openSUSE Technology. MariaDB 10.0.30 and Linux binary tarballs will now always untar to directories that match their filename. MySQL’s 5.6.36 improved thread_pool plugin performance, connection authentication and initialization have been moved from the acceptor thread to the thread pool worker threads that handle client connections. It is also worth remembering that openSUSE Leap uses Delta RPMs for all maintenance updates, ensuring that the long term bandwidth requirements for maintaining your Leap system are as small as possible.
For Users
openSUSE Leap 42.3 has KDE’s Long Term Support edition of its flagship desktop software, Plasma. Plasma 5.8 LTS is the default desktop environment in openSUSE and is feature rich with even more stable performance. The newer Plasma 5.8.7 adds three months work of new translations and fixes. A touchscreen fix and improved icons are available in KDE’s desktop selection for openSUSE Leap 42.3. 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. The bugfixes for Plasma 5.8.7 are typically small but important and include fixes for user management, system setting, audio volume controls and the Plasma workspace. System administrators will enjoy the Kiosk support from an improved Plasma in Leap 42.3. Check out the release notes for Plasma 5.8.7.
GNOME 3.20 is another desktop version that remains the same in openSUSE Leap 42.3. The stability of it offers privacy controls to improve per-application location access, quick access to media controls directly from the shell, and keyboard shortcuts and gestures can be easily learned with new shortcut overlay windows. Many GNOME applications have shortcut windows for 3.20, including Files, Videos, Photos, gedit, Builder, Maps and more. In each application, the shortcut window can be opened from the application menu, or by using the Ctrl+/ or Ctrl+F1 shortcut. GNOME can access Google Drive directly from the Files application in openSUSE Leap 42.3. Check out the release notes for GNOME 3.20.
openSUSE Leap 42.3 offers users the option to choose multiple desktop; try MATE, Xfce, Enlightenment or Cinnamon. LXQt 0.11.0, which has an improved user experience, once again ships in openSUSE Leap 42.3, but is not available in the installer.
This openSUSE releases 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 Enterprise Linux, boosting collaboration between community and enterprise.