The developers of the openSUSE project have published an atomically updated openSUSE Leap Micro 5.5 distribution, designed for creating microservices and for use as a base system for virtualization and container isolation platforms. Assemblies for x86_64 and ARM64 (Aarch64) architectures are available for download, supplied both with an installer (Offline assemblies, 2.1 GB in size) and in the form of ready-made boot images: 782 MB (preconfigured), 959 MB (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, characterized by the absence of a graphical interface. To configure, you can use the Cockpit web interface, which allows you to control the system through a browser, the cloud-init toolkit with the transfer of settings at each boot, or Combustion for setting 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 your existing configuration to the 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, the toolkit is integrated with support for runtime Podman/CRI-O and Docker. 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, it is proposed to use a stripped-down “host OS” to work on top of equipment, 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:
- System components have been updated to the SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) Micro 5.5 package base, based on SUSE SLE 15 Service Pack 5.
- SELinux support has been significantly expanded.
- For systems based on the AArch64 architecture, support for the podman-docker toolkit (reproduces the Docker CLI via podman) and the hyper-v hypervisor has been added.
- The podman toolkit has been updated to version 4.4, which includes the quadlet utility to make it easier to launch system containers running systemd.
- Added fwupdate and fwupdate-efi packages to simplify firmware updates.
- Images were generated in QCOW (QEMU Copy On Write) format for x86_64 and aarch64 architectures.
- The Cockpit web management interface has been updated to version 298, and the cockpit-selinux module has been integrated for SELinux management.
Source: opennet.ru