The developers of the openSUSE project have released the atomically updatable distribution openSUSE Leap Micro 5.3, designed for creating microservices and serving as a base system for virtualization platforms and container isolation. Builds for x86_64 and ARM64 (Aarch64) architectures are available for download, provided both with an installer (Offline builds, size 1.9 GB) and as ready-to-use boot images: 782 MB (preconfigured), 969 MB (with Real-Time kernel), and 1.1 GB. The images can run under the management of Xen and KVM hypervisors or on hardware, including Raspberry Pi boards.
The openSUSE Leap Micro distribution is based on the developments of the MicroOS project and is positioned as a community version of the commercial product SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.3, distinguished by the absence of a graphical interface. For configuration, the Cockpit web interface can be used to manage the system through a browser, the cloud-init toolkit allows passing settings on every restart, or Combustion for configuring settings at first boot. Users are provided with tools for quickly switching from Leap Micro to SUSE SLE Micro — it is implied that a solution based on Leap Micro can initially be implemented for free, and if extended support or certification is needed, the existing configuration can be transitioned to the SUSE SLE Micro product.
A key feature of Leap Micro is the atomic update mechanism, which automatically downloads and applies updates. Unlike atomic updates based on ostree and snap, used in Fedora and Ubuntu, openSUSE Leap Micro utilizes standard package management tools (the transactional-update utility) combined with Btrfs snapshot mechanisms (snapshots are used for atomic switching between the system state before and after installation of updates). In case of issues following the updates, the system can be rolled back to a previous state. Live patches are supported for updating the Linux kernel without rebooting and interrupting operations.
The root partition is mounted in read-only mode and remains unchanged during operation. For launching isolated containers, an integrated toolkit with runtime support for Podman/CRI-O and Docker is included. The Micro edition of the distribution is used in the ALP (Adaptable Linux Platform) project to ensure the operation of the 'host OS' environment. In ALP, a slimmed-down 'host OS' is suggested for operation directly on hardware, while all applications and user-space components should run not in a mixed environment but in separate containers or in virtual machines, executed over the 'host OS' and isolated from each other.
In the new release, the system components have been updated to the SUSE Linux Enterprise SUSE (SLE) Micro 5.3 package base, based on SUSE SLE 15 Service Pack 4. A module for managing SELinux and diagnosing issues through Cockpit has been added. By default, NetworkManager is employed for managing network settings.
Source: opennet.ru
