OpenSUSE Leap 15.2 has entered the RC “Release Candidate” phase, the last step before the official release. Since it has been agreed to release only on Thursdays + early July, we will probably see it on July 6th.
It will use kernel 5.3.18, maintained by SUSE and offer the following desktop environment options by default:
- Xfce in version 4.14
- Gnome version 3.34
- KDE & Qt – Version 5.12 LTS
- KDE Plasma version 5.18 LTS
It will, of course, come with an improved YaST, SUSE’s signature Swiss army knife tool for the installer and all kinds of settings. This animal is what really sets openSUSE apart, and it’s cute too!
Default applications will include updated versions of Libre Office, Thunderbird, Chromium, Firefox, VLC, GNU Health, OnionShare and Syncthing.
OpenSUSE will now also include the DNF package manager!
You can already download and try the RC: https://software.opensuse.org/distributions/testing
It appears to use 800 – 900 MB of RAM out of the box running Gnome.
SUSE/openSUSE is one of the big old heavy weights of the Linux world. While primarily enterprise focused, their Leap (standard) and Tumbleweed (rolling) desktop editions have been interesting options for us Linux desktop users for years. Have you had experience with an openSUSE desktop? Let us know in the comments!
Once 15.2 is released, I’ll give cute YaST a walk through the park and report back.
