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OpenSUSE Leap 16.0 Release Notes

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openSUSE Leap is a modern, modular operating system suitable for both traditional IT and multimodal workloads. This document highlights major features, updates, and known limitations.

About the release notes

These Release Notes are identical across all architectures, and the most recent version is always available online at https://doc.opensuse.org.

Entries are only listed once but they can be referenced in several places if they are important and belong to more than one section.

Release notes usually only list changes that happened between two subsequent releases. Certain important entries from the release notes of previous product versions are repeated. To make these entries easier to identify, they contain a note to that effect.

However, repeated entries are provided as a courtesy only. Therefore, if you are skipping one or more service packs, check the release notes of the skipped service packs as well. If you are only reading the release notes of the current release, you could miss important changes.

Documentation and other information

For the most up-to-date version of the documentation for openSUSE Leap, see:

This section describes community-driven enhancements, features, and updates that extend the SUSE Linux Enterprise core. These changes reflect the openSUSE project’s unique contributions, including desktop improvements, additional packages, and new workflows.

openSUSE Leap Community Additions

Lifecycle

Each openSUSE Leap minor release is published once every 12 months. openSUSE Leap 16 provides maintenance updates over two minor releases, giving each release a full 24 months of community support.

Unless there is a change in release strategy, the final openSUSE Leap version (16.6) will be released in fall 2031 and will continue receiving updates until the release of openSUSE Leap 17.1 two years later.

For more information, see: Roadmap.

For more than 24 months of support for a point release, the openSUSE migration tool makes it simple to move to SUSE Linux Enterprise, which provides decades of support. See Support Policy and Long Term Service Pack Support.

Migration from Leap 15.6

The openSUSE migration tool (zypper in opensuse-migration-tool) is included as part of openSUSE Leap 15.6. Users migrating from older releases can run the tool from Git repository.

For more information, refer to: SDB:System_upgrade.

Installer and Desktop Environments

  • openSUSE Leap 16 installer provides only Wayland variants of desktop environments. Xorg-based environments can be installed manually post-installation.

NVIDIA and Graphics Issues with the Installation Image

Some users with NVIDIA GPUs may experience graphics-related issues during installation, such as boo#1247670 where X server fails to start. This is due to the fact that openSUSE Leap install image contains kernel-default-optional and kernel-default-extra

If you encounter problems specific to the nouveau driver, try booting with the option: rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau

For general graphics boot problems, use the option: nomodeset

Experimental Xfce Wayland session

Experimental Xfce Wayland session is available as an installation option. openSUSE Leap is one of the first distributions to provide Wayland support for Xfce. We use gtkgreet with greetd as a Wayland-ready replacement for LightDM (used in the X11 variant).

LXQt Wayland session available post install

LXQt Wayland session is included, but will become a full installer option in later releases once LXQt Miriway efforts are further developed: https://code.opensuse.org/leap/features/issue/192.

Changes to the openSUSE Welcome

openSUSE Leap 16 now uses the opensuse-welcome-launcher to start the appropriate greeter application. This launcher, in combination with gnome-tour and plasma-welcome, replaces the legacy Qt5-based opensuse-welcome, which was previously the default greeter.

The launcher also allows the openSUSE release team to update or refresh the displayed greeter via a package update, for example after a major GNOME update. To create a custom appliance without a welcome application, or to deploy a system where the greeter should never appear, remove opensuse-welcome-launcher.

Automated NVIDIA Driver and Repository Setup

On supported GPUs, NVIDIA’s open driver is installed by default along with the NVIDIA graphics driver repository. In openSUSE Leap 16, user-space drivers are also automatically installed, enabling graphical acceleration out of the box.

Security

AppArmor

AppArmor has been updated from version 3.1 to 4.1.

  • Version 4.0 introduced fine-grained network rules (limitable by IP/port), but kernel support is not upstream yet.
  • Version 4.1 introduced the priority=<number> rule prefix, which allows overriding rules.

AppArmor not available by default on new installations

Warning

AppArmor is no longer available in SUSE Linux Enterprise 16.0. Leap users cannot select AppArmor as the Linux Security Module (LSM) during a new installation. AppArmor can still be enabled post-installation. For instructions, refer to AppArmor wiki page.


Users migrating manually from 15.6 will retain AppArmor by default. Users migrating with openSUSE migration tool will be prompted to either switch to SELinux or preserve AppArmor during post-migration.

Steam

Warning

The Steam package has been removed from the Non-OSS repository due to limited 32-bit library support. Users are advised to install it via Flatpak.


  • 32-bit execution requires installing grub2-compat-ia32 and rebooting.
  • SELinux users may also need selinux-policy-targeted-gaming. For details, refer to SELinux wiki page.

Wine

openSUSE Leap includes wine 10.10, available only in the wow64 flavor. Users requiring 32-bit binary execution should consider using the Flatpak version or a similar solution.

Networking

Broken libvirt networking when using Docker

Warning

If networking inside libvirt-managed virtual machines fails while Docker is running, it is likely due to Docker not supporting nftables.


To fix the issue:

  • Edit /etc/libvirt/network.conf and set:
firewall_backend = "iptables"
  • Add the virtual network interface to the libvirt firewall zone:
firewall-cmd --add-interface=virbr0 --zone=libvirt --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload
  • Restart libvirt and related services:
systemctl restart libvirtd

This restores networking for libvirt VMs while Docker is active.

GNU Health

GNU Health has been updated to major release 5.0.2. The underlying ERP framework, Tryton, has been updated to LTS version 7.0. Functional improvements include enhanced medical image workflows and better integration with Orthanc 1.12.9 (PACS server).

PipeWire replaces PulseAudio

openSUSE Leap 16.0 uses PipeWire by default. Users upgrading from previous releases should be automatically migrated from PulseAudio. opensuse-migration-tool provides a post-migration script if migration does not occur automatically.

If experiencing audio issues, ensure you are not using the wireplumber-video-only-profile. For details, refer to PipeWire#Installation for details.

Hexchat drop

Hexchat IRC client has been dropped as the upstream project is archived. Alternatives include Polari or the Flatpak version: Flatpak.

Configuring boot entry with serial console

See https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:SerialConsole for guidance.

This section describes the enterprise-grade foundation of openSUSE Leap, based on SUSE Linux Enterprise. Content here is adapted from the SUSE Linux Enterprise release notes to reflect core functionality, security updates, and enterprise features that openSUSE Leap inherits.

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