The developers of the openSUSE distribution have announced the extension of the update formation period for new releases of openSUSE Leap and openSUSE Leap Micro to two years. This new support period will take effect starting with the openSUSE Leap 16 branch, the first release of which is scheduled for October 1, 2025. Interim releases in the openSUSE Leap 16 branch, which will be maintained alongside the commercial distribution SUSE Linux Enterprise 16, will be created until autumn 2031 — the final release will be openSUSE Leap 16.6, with updates issued until autumn 2033. As before, new releases of the distribution will be published once a year.
Since 2009, the support period for openSUSE has been one and a half years — one year until the next release + six months were allowed for the transition to the new version. Since the development of the first release of the new openSUSE Leap 16 branch took longer than usual, an exception was made for the release of openSUSE Leap 15.6, created in June last year, and its support period was extended by an additional 4 months (the total update publication period will be 1 year and 10 months). Starting with openSUSE 16, the support for releases will be carried out during two full cycles of preparing new releases. For those who need more than two years of support, tools will be provided for migrating installations to SUSE Linux Enterprise and SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro distributions.
Source: opennet.ru
