openSUSE Leap is a free and Linux-based operating system for your PC, Laptop or Server. You can surf the Web, manage your e-mails and photos, do office work, play videos or music and have a lot of fun!

Publication Date: 2017-02-21 , Version: 42.2.20170221.d5eb5e0

The release notes are under constant development. To find out about the latest updates, see the online version at https://doc.opensuse.org/release-notes. The English release notes are updated whenever need arises. Translated language versions can temporarily be incomplete.

If you upgrade from an older version to this openSUSE Leap release, see previous release notes listed here: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Release_Notes.

Information about the project is available at https://www.opensuse.org.

To report bugs against this release, use the openSUSE Bugzilla. For more information, see https://en.opensuse.org/Submitting_Bug_Reports.

Installation

This section contains installation-related notes. For detailed upgrade instructions, see the documentation at https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/startup/html/book.opensuse.startup/part.basics.html.

Minimal System Installation

To avoid some big recommended packages from being installed, the pattern for minimal installations uses another pattern that creates conflicts with undesired packages. This pattern, patterns-openSUSE-minimal_base-conflicts, can be removed after installation.

Note that the minimal installation has no firewall by default. If you need one, install SuSEfirewall2.

UEFI—Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

Prior to installing openSUSE on a system that boots using UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), you are urgently advised to check for any firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends and, if available, to install such an update. A pre-installed Windows 8 is a strong indication that your system boots using UEFI.

Background: Some UEFI firmware has bugs that cause it to break if too much data gets written to the UEFI storage area. However, there is no clear data of how much is “too much”.

openSUSE minimizes the risk by not writing more than the bare minimum required to boot the OS. The minimum means telling the UEFI firmware about the location of the openSUSE boot loader. Upstream Linux kernel features that use the UEFI storage area for storing boot and crash information (pstore) have been disabled by default. Nevertheless, it is recommended to install any firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends.

Installer Crashes When Set to Mount by Label by Default

When setting the default mount value to By Label during partitioning, the installer will report an error and crash. As a workaround, use another option for installation. If needed, switch back to By Label on the running system.

UEFI, GPT, and MS-DOS Partitions

Together with the EFI/UEFI specification, a new style of partitioning arrived: GPT (GUID Partition Table). This new schema uses globally unique identifiers (128-bit values displayed in 32 hexadecimal digits) to identify devices and partition types.

Additionally, the UEFI specification also allows legacy MBR (MS-DOS) partitions. The Linux boot loaders (ELILO or GRUB 2) try to automatically generate a GUID for those legacy partitions, and write them to the firmware. Such a GUID can change frequently, causing a rewrite in the firmware. A rewrite consists of two different operations: Removing the old entry and creating a new entry that replaces the first one.

Modern firmware has a garbage collector that collects deleted entries and frees the memory reserved for old entries. A problem arises when faulty firmware does not collect and free those entries. This can result in a non-bootable system.

To work around this problem, convert the legacy MBR partition to GPT.

Nouveau 3D/DRI Driver May Crash KDE Applications

With openSUSE Leap 42.2, the Nouveau Mesa/DRI driver for 2D/3D rendering is considered experimental. The Nouveau kernel/KMS driver and the Nouveau X.org/DDX driver for 2D rendering are still considered stable.

When the Nouveau Mesa/DRI driver is in use, some applications may crash, especially KDE and Qt applications. The driver is now in a separate package called Mesa-dri-nouveau, which can be removed in case of problems.

Without this driver installed, there is no hardware 3D acceleration support on any Nvidia GPU and no 2D acceleration on newer Nvidia GPUs that use Glamor for fast 2D operations. Kernel Mode Setting and basic 2D are still available, as is 2D acceleration via EXA on GPUs from the Nvidia GPU generation code-named Kepler (introduced in 2012) and earlier. 3D operations are supported via software rendering.

For more information, see the bug reports at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91632 and https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1005323.

System Upgrade

This section lists notes related to upgrading the system. For detailed upgrade instructions, see the documentation at https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/startup/html/book.opensuse.startup/cha.update.osuse.html.

Upgrading from openSUSE Leap 42.1

Removed and Replaced Packages

The following packages have been removed or replaced compared to openSUSE Leap 42.1:

arista: Replaced by transmageddon.
cadabra: The source code no longer builds. The successor, Cadabra 2 is not stable yet.
dropbear: Removed because there are no relevant advantages over openssh.
emerillon: Replaced by gnome-maps.
gnome-system-log: Replaced by gnome-logs.
hawk: Replaced by hawk2.
ksnapshot: Replaced by spectacle.
labplot: Labplot has been replaced by its Qt5 version, called labplot-kf5. If you are updating from an openSUSE Leap 42.1 installation on which labplot is installed, you will receive the labplot-kf5 automatically.
nodejs: Renamed to nodejs4.
psi: Replaced by psi+.
python-moin: Replaced by moinmoin-wiki. Purely a rename, not a version upgrade - a virtually identical drop-in replacement.
ungifsicle: Replaced by gifsicle.
xchat: Replaced by hexchat.