Opensuse has unveiled the candidate for the release of Opensuse Leap 16, which is based on the technology of the commercial distribution of Sles 16 and the new platform of SLFOO. This new platform, previously known as Alp, will retain the features of the classic distribution using traditional packages. For users who require an atomic updated system with basic functionalities in read-only mode, Opensuse Leap Micro editions will be available for use.
For testing purposes, assemblies for architectures x86_64, ARM64, S390X, and PowerPC are currently available. The installation process proposes the use of Wayland for the desktop environment, labwc as the composite manager on top of the Cockpit package instead of the traditional Yast stack. It also suggests using greetd and gtkgretm instead of lightdm for system entry screen organization.
In addition, the Yast Software GUI will be replaced by a new Myrlyn package for controlling software. Support for SYSV initialization system has been discontinued, with only Systemd being allowed for use. The architecture X86-64-V1 has been phased out in favor of X86 systems with x86_64-V2 architecture, which has been supported by processors since around 2009.
Other updates in Opensuse Leap 16 include newer versions of packages and a revised repository control service based on a protocol called RepositoryIndexService. This service reduces the size of the metadata repository by dividing it for each supported architecture, consolidating SUSE Linux Enterprise packages and community-supported packages into a general Repo-Sosspackages repository.