The openSUSE project developers have published an atomically upgradable openSUSE Leap Micro 5.3 distribution for building microservices and for use as a base system for virtualization platforms and container isolation. Assemblies for x86_64 and ARM64 (Aarch64) architectures are available for download, supplied both with an installer (Offline assemblies, 1.9 GB in size) and in the form of ready-made boot images: 782MB (preconfigured), 969MB (with Real-Time kernel) and 1.1 GB. Images can run under Xen and KVM hypervisors, or on top of 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, which is notable for the absence of a graphical interface. For configuration, you can use the Cockpit web interface that allows you to manage the system through a browser, the cloud-init toolkit with the transfer of settings on each boot, or Combustion to set the settings during the first boot. The user is provided with tools for quickly switching from Leap Micro to SUSE SLE Micro - it is understood that you can first implement a solution based on Leap Micro for free, and if you need extended support or certification, transfer an existing configuration to a SUSE SLE Micro product.
A key feature of Leap Micro is the atomic update mechanism, which is downloaded and applied automatically. Unlike atomic updates based on ostree and snap used in Fedora and Ubuntu, openSUSE Leap Micro uses standard package management tools (transactional-update utility) in combination with the snapshot mechanism in the Btrfs file system instead of building separate atomic images and deploying additional delivery infrastructure. (snapshots are used to atomically switch between the state of the system before and after installing updates). If you experience problems after applying the updates, you can roll back the system to a previous state. Live patches are supported to update the Linux kernel without restarting or suspending work.
The root partition is mounted in read-only mode and does not change during operation. To run isolated containers, a toolkit with support for runtime Podman / CRI-O and Docker is integrated into the composition. The micro edition of the distribution is used in the ALP (Adaptable Linux Platform) project to provide the "host OS" environment. In ALP, to work on top of the hardware, it is proposed to use a stripped-down "host OS", and run all applications and user-space components not in a mixed environment, but in separate containers or in virtual machines running on top of the "host OS" and isolated from each other.
In the new release, the system components are updated to the SUSE Linux Enterprise SUSE (SLE) Micro 5.3 package base, based on SUSE SLE 15 Service Pack 4. Added a module for managing SELinux and diagnosing problems through Cockpit. NetworkManager is used to manage network settings by default.
Source: opennet.ru