🥇 Release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16

SUSE has published the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16. The SUSE Linux Enterprise 16 branch has been formed seven years after the release of SUSE 15. SUSE 16 packages are already used as the basis in the community-supported distribution openSUSE Leap 16. The distribution can be downloaded and used for free, but access to updates and fixes is limited to a 60-day trial period. The release is available in builds for architectures aarch64, ppc64le, s390x, and x86_64.

The SUSE Linux 16 branch will have a more predictable and flexible release cycle. Instead of Service Pack updates (SP), a scheme with interim releases (16.1, 16.2, etc.) and long-term support (LTS) will be adopted. The overall support duration for the SUSE Linux 16 branch will be 16 years. A total of seven interim releases are planned — from 16.0 to 16.6, each to be published annually in November. Updates for each individual interim release will be supported for five years — two years of general support and three years of extended (LTS) support.

Key changes (1, 2, 3, 4):

A new installer, Agama, has been implemented, notable for separating the user interface from the internal components of YaST and providing a frontend for managing installations via a web interface.
The system management stack has been modernized. Instead of the traditional YaST stack for system management, the Cockpit package has been used, and Myrlyn replaces the YaST Software GUI. Support for SysV initialization scripts has been discontinued. Only systemd units are allowed.
By default, only desktop environments using Wayland are offered. The X.org Server has been removed from the distribution. Support for running X11-based applications is maintained via XWayland. The base desktop environment is based on GNOME 48. The VNC server, GTK2, Qt5, and wxWidgets have been discontinued.
The capabilities for automatically creating snapshots based on the Btrfs filesystem and the Snapper utility have been expanded. Snapshots can now be used in system images for cloud platforms. By default, the ability to revert changes is integrated into all components, allowing the administrator to revert nearly any change—from system updates to the application of individual patches and configuration modifications.
The core now includes support for Live patches, enabling the fixing of vulnerabilities and critical errors in the kernel and libraries such as glibc and openssl without the need to restart the system.
Support for the x86-64-v1 architecture has been discontinued. Operation is only possible on x86 systems with x86_64-v2 architecture, which has been supported by processors since around 2009 (starting with Intel Nehalem) and is characterized by the presence of extensions such as SSE3, SSE4_2, SSSE3, POPCNT, LAHF-SAHF, and CMPXCHG16B.
Support for 32-bit x86 systems and 32-bit executable files is disabled by default in the kernel. To restore support for 32-bit system calls, the parameter 'ia32_emulation=1' should be set when booting the Linux kernel.
The SELinux mandatory access control system is enabled by default. AppArmor support has been deprecated.
The Ansible toolkit for configuration management, orchestration, centralized application installation, and parallel execution of standard tasks across a group of systems is included. System roles have been added for configuring various system components, including the firewall, ha_cluster, selinux, and podman. Support for Salt has been retained as an option.
Libraries with built-in support for cryptographic algorithms resistant to attacks by quantum computers, such as ML-KEM and ML-DSA, are included. Support for these algorithms is provided in OpenSSL 3.5, Libgcrypt 1.11.1, Mozilla NSS 3.112, and Go 1.24.
Support for reproducible builds has been implemented, allowing the creation of custom builds that match the provided ready-to-download builds bit-by-bit, ensuring that the binaries distributed in packages are built from the provided source code and do not contain hidden modifications.
Updated package versions, including Linux kernel 6.12, glibc 2.40, Systemd 257, Python 3.13, Perl 5.42, grub2 2.12, OpenSSH 9.9, QEMU 10.0.2, MariaDB 11.8, PostgreSQL 17, PHP 8.4, Node.js 22, Rust 1.88, ruby 3.4, clang 19, gcc 15.
The year 2038 problem has been fully resolved. All packages have been transitioned to use the 64-bit time_t type in the distribution ports for 32-bit architectures, where the 32-bit time_t type was still used (this cannot handle time beyond January 19, 2038, due to the overflow of the second counter since January 1, 1970).
The network configurator wicked has been replaced by NetworkManager.
NFTables is now the default packet filter instead of iptables.
Transitioned from the ISC DHCP server to KEA DHCP.
The supply of the Xen hypervisor has been discontinued — the primary hypervisor for virtualization is now employed. KVM.
Redis database management system packages have been replaced with the Valkey fork.
Support for lightweight guard pages has been added to protect the stack, access to which triggers an exception and crashes the process (SIGSEGV). The implementation is based on the madvise system call.
Support for NFS over TLS has been added.
A background process tuned has been included to perform automatic optimization of hardware and kernel settings based on current load.
The 'UsrEtc' configuration file storage model is implemented, where default settings provided by the distribution are placed in the /usr/etc directory, and changes made by the local administrator are stored as /etc/example.conf.d/*.conf or /etc/example.conf, ensuring that package-provided settings and those set by the administrator are always separated. The default systemd settings have been moved to the /usr directory.
On x86_64 systems, the BIOS boot is deprecated but still maintained. By default, UEFI is used for new installations. Compatibility with older systems allows BIOS support for migration and updates from old installations with SUSE 15. of virtual machines and for updating old installations.
SSH access for the root user with password authentication is disabled by default.
Support for reiserfs, hfsplus, UFS, and ocfs2 file systems has been discontinued. btrfs is used by default. Supported options include ext4, xfs, and gfs2.
tmpfs is used to store the /tmp partition, keeping data in memory and not preserving contents between restarts.
Experimental support for lklfuse has been added for mounting block devices or filesystem images. Lklfuse runs as an unprivileged process in user space while utilizing filesystem drivers from the Linux kernel.
Experimental (Tech Preview) support for the service based on the MCP (Model Context Protocol) has been added, allowing access to operating system components from AI assistants. For example, an AI assistant can be used to create tasks in natural language for managing infrastructure, utilities, and data. The AI assistant is available from the Cockpit web console. It can connect to various large language model providers.

Source: opennet.ru