OpenSUSE Leap 16 out with safeguards against potential Y2K38 disaster

The openSUSE team has released openSUSE Leap 16, promising a "fresh software stack," new hardware requirements, the new Agama installer, and more.

If you're not familiar with openSUSE, it's a free, open-source Linux distro that comes in two main flavors: you have Tumbleweed, the rolling release that gets the newest software all the time, great if you want the latest and greatest. Then there is Leap, the stable version based on the enterprise-grade SUSE Linux Enterprise. The project offers different desktop environments, including KDE, GNOME, and Xfce.

The development team claims that Leap 16 is 2038 safe, just like Debian 13 "Trixie". This tackles the Y2K38 bug, a problem where systems using a signed 32-bit integer to track time will run out of space on January 19, 2038. To prevent this, 32-bit (ia32) support is disabled by default in Leap 16. If you still need it for older applications or games on Steam, you'd have to enable it manually.

As mentioned earlier, the hardware requirements have changed with this release. Leap 16 now demands a CPU with x86-64-v2 architecture support, which basically covers most processors made since 2008. If your machine is older than that, the team suggests moving to Tumbleweed, or Slowroll if you don't want to deal with the "bleeding edge" risk of daily updates.

The new Agama installer replaces the now deprecated YaST (Yet another Setup Tool), which has been the default for a long time. Agama is a web-based installer that provides a more modern installation process, with an interface that can be accessed locally or even remotely.

You can install multiple openSUSE versions, like Tumbleweed and Leap, from a single ISO using Agama. The installer also includes command-line tools like agama monitor that lets admins keep an eye on installations remotely.

Other updates Leap 16 brings include parallel downloads in Zypper, the package manager, to speed up software installation. The default Linux Security Module is now SELinux, though you can still install and use AppArmor after the initial setup.

The openSUSE team says this release also kicks off a new life cycle plan. We can expect annual minor releases for Leap 16 until Leap 16.6 arrives in 2031. A full successor to the Leap 16 series is expected by 2032.