hi all,
I’m thinking maybe to switch one desktop that needs some stability to opensuse leap 16, but before I do so, can someone point me to the documentation about what gets updated from 16.0 to 16.1?
e.g. will gnome, kernel,… get upgrades or just minor updates for security reasons?
is there a policy/guide about this?
thanks
How I do it? Since it’s not yet a GA release, I simply install the pre-GA versions and check things in real time. How I do things and configure things, are different than the next person.
I’ve installed 16.1, sub-versions: “14.4” (date 03-13), 14.6 (03.28), and recently 17.5 (04.02 = the current image) in a VBox VM.
Others will probably offer the “what’s new” documentation.
You can as example simply compare the Leap 15.5 repo to the Leap 15.6 repo. Leap 15.5 got shipped with kernel 5.x.x series, Leap 15.6 got shipped with kernel 6.x.x series. It is usual that that many packages get updated to the latest available stable version. So yes, kernel, DE‘s and more get updated to a newer version (please note: not to the latest unstable available version).
You’d have to separate the SUSE part and the community part. SUSE f.e. does officially not update the kernel, but they do backport features and fixes into their kernel.
Another thing is, that during the development phase of a Leap version, versions may still change, this until these get frozen.
All that said, don’t focus too much on version numbers.
this is actually what I wanted to know. this means when 16.1 is released later this year, it will have a newer version of gnome and kernel.
thank you!
I upgraded a couple VMs last weekend and so far the major kernel version is still 6.12.
Historically speaking when I was doing the beta jumps on the 15.x train I seem to remember the kernel versions would change from the start so there was enough time to iron things out until GA.
There’s a lot of work that goes into backporting a lot of things into a kernel — I remember seeing a YT video about it with one of the devs so it must have been at a conference.
I think there’s a kernel repo you can use to install & update the latest kernel in main, but I don’t remember if it is signed for SecureBoot. I would think not though…
openSUSE’s Wikipedia page shows that for the 15.x series, the kernel got updated every two years. If the same were to be true for the 16.x series then 16.1 will not feature a kernel update, but 16.2 (in 2027) will. I don’t know if this also applies to updates to GNOME, KDE and XFCE.
This blog says the backported kernel (right now 6.18) is signed with a “custom build service key” but I wouldn’t know if this person is correct.
That is sheer speculation. And to be fair: the Wikipedia page is not official documentation.
Why would it need to be official documentation? I was only pointing out a pattern - as there is no official word on what is going to be included in 16.1 as of now, all we can do is look for a pattern, right? So yes, of course it’s speculation, hence my choice of words “if the same were to be true”. I’m not implying it is the truth.
If you are trying to say that the information on Wikipedia is incorrect, then ok, my pattern is useless.
“Official Docs”:
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Roadmap
https://documentation.suse.com/sles/16.0/html/SLE-packages-lifecycle/
Please remember hat the core of Leap 16.1 comes from SUSE, so SLE 16 policies are relevant.
Based on that you should wait for “Package versions freeze” on Jul 2, 2026 to have an “official” answer.
Kernel is likely to be bumped, possibly to 6.18 which is the current LTS.
Gnome is unlikely to get to 50, since that drops X11 support; 49 might be possible.
KDE does not come from SUSE, so a newer version is possible via community backports.
[DISCLAIMER] Other than the linked docs, this is my understanding but I have no direct link with release management, so I might be plain wrong.