…which links to:
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade
I tried a clean install, and it did NOT go well. 800+ packages not installed, hard drive not encrypted, and booted to command line, not GUI.
Well at last for me, this means that Leap 16.0 is currently not being maintained. A distribution that can’t update OpenSSL, Firefox, etc., from day one isn’t ready for release in my opinion.
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“Market Share” ?
Exactly where would I go buy a copy of Leap?
I have my feelings about whether Leap 16 was “ready for release” or not, but the simple facts remain:
A) Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything, and I’m getting tired of seeing people making this claim, as it’s Nonsense.
B) Leap 15.6 is still fully supported until “at least” April 2026 (Lifetime - openSUSE Wiki), and there’s nobody forcing upgrades to 16.0
C) People might not like it, and they might even require packman repositories for their workflows, but not only is “The openSUSE Project” not responsible for packman, because of the way the project is setup, even if “The Project” wanted to be involved with packman in any official capacity, it has the potential to expose “The Project” and by extension SUSE S.A. to legal liabilities, because of Licensing and/or Software Patents, so it’s not going to happen.
It is not incumbent on “The Project” to coordinate with packman, it’s packman’s responsibility to do so, and if they don’t have the resources to do so, well, then things are going to lag, and that’s an issue to be taken up through whatever mechanisms packman has for organizing their workflows. This isn’t an indictment against packman, or a value judgement, just reality.
D) Leap inherits design from SUSE Linux Enterprise, and rightly, or wrongly, SUSE is building SLE-16 to meet the needs of what they’ve decided their customers want. So if SUSE isn’t providing a thing, its up to community developers to do the things SUSE isn’t, if that’s what the community developers feel needs to happen. That the current Leap submission and development workflow is problematic has made that incredibly difficult is neither here, nor there, as SUSE controls that, and has made it clear that it’s the way it’s going to be. I don’t like it any better than anybody else and have some strong opinions about it, but it is what it is, and I’ll be honest, I think it’s a huge mistake.
Long story short, there’s a good chance that Leap 16 may not fit your needs, that’s just how this works, and maybe you decide that you need to go elsewhere, to a different distribution. That’s how linux distributions work, nobody OWES you anything, and sometimes a project is going to make decision you don’t like. I don’t particularly like it, and even as an openSUSE maintainer and developer, I’m probably not going to use Leap-16, nor contribute to it (certainly not until the contribution workflow gets stablized), but the project doesn’t OWE me, or you, anything.
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Yes. Expecting Packman to be ready when openSUSE decides to release an update to Leap is like expecting Microsoft to hold a release of Windows until Adobe Creative Suite is running on the latest release. Or Apple to hold the latest MacOS release until Adobe Premiere is ready.
Nobody expects that, because they understand that Apple doesn’t control what Adobe does.
The same holds true for the relationship between openSUSE and Packman (or nVidia or whatever third party repo isn’t ready).
And if the things that one needs aren’t ready when the OS upgrade becomes available, then wait to upgrade until the things you need are available.
@sfalken You can call it whatever you like, but the package is a product and it has a share. AFAIK little more than 2% of linux desktops (not all desktops, just linux ones).
I did not say it’s responsibility of SUSE to get Packamn ready (neither anyone else said that, I believe). But you’ve put that very nicely: "I’m probably not going to use Leap-16, nor contribute to it ". That’s exactly the point I had about Packman.
Reading your post, I get a feeling that even though we emphasize different points, we have generally the same opinion.
It’s just said to see this state, after being with SuSE/OpenSUSE for like 27 or 28 years… Even I’m tempted to switch to different distro, let alone users, who don’t have the bond.
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Ultimately, sharing your thoughts here isn’t going to change anything or get your feedback heard by the right people.
Check the News and Announcements section for information on how to get your feedback seen by the right people (and some guidelines for submitting it so it’s useful to those people).
@hendersj Expectations develop from experience. If it has worked for like 20 years, there’ are obviously reasonable expectations from the users. And I’m sure it would work, if done right.
As for opinion sharing, I don’t think it was in vain. I see developing serious issues here and it’s good to learn it in time, not after long struggle.
It isn’t reasonable to expect coordination with Packman or any third party developer or software repo. That it’s been fine in the past hasn’t been by design, as far as I am aware. As sfalken pointed out, there are specific legal issues surrounding the patent-encumbered stuff that’s delivered through Packman, and coordination opens SUSE up to potential legal liabilities.
So take your issues with Packman not being ready up with the Packman team. As per my example said, even if every release of Windows had a perfectly functioning copy of Adobe Creative Suite available, and then the most recent didn’t, you wouldn’t complain to Microsoft about it not working, nor would you expect Microsoft to hold the release of Windows until Adobe got their product working on it. You’d just not upgrade until it was ready. (I’ve actually been there with almost that exact situation - MacOS rather than Windows, and a different Adobe product than CS - but the solution wasn’t to complain to Apple, but to ask Adobe when it would be ready and then wait to upgrade my team’s laptops to the latest MacOS until the software they needed to do their job was ready).
Nobody forced anyone to upgrade to 16.0 the day of release. The general “best practice” is to wait to see what issues shake out from the early adopters. I run Tumbleweed, and usually wait a few days to apply an update so I’m aware of what potential issues are going to hit me. If you have a working system that is still in support, there’s no reason to immediately upgrade solely because an upgrade is available.
And sharing opinions here is fine, so long as your expectation isn’t that sharing opinions here is going to change anything. If you want your feedback to be heard by the people who have responsibility, you need to address it to them in a venue they participate in. The survey (which is linked from a post in the announcements section) is explicitly a way to get feedback to the right people.
If you want to effect change, you need to provide the feedback to the people who need it. Yelling in the wind isn’t going to change anything.
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@hendersj You’re still missing the point… And I get feeling, that you’re imagining things, that no one said. Like that someone owes something to someone? Who said that? No, it’s just sad to watch the distro literally going under after 3 decades. Maybe it won’t be so bad, but sure I get that feeling, especially because of defensive posts like this.
“It isn’t reasonable to expect coordination with Packman or any third party developer or software repo.” - your colleague wrote: “I’m probably not going to use Leap-16, nor contribute to it”. And that’s the point of Packman, where we stand and why this release went South for so many users.
“obody forced anyone to upgrade to 16.0” - totally true. Nobody forces OpenSUSE to release it’s “LTS” in alpha state, though. Yes, OpenSUSE has totally right to do that, but the Leap (aka LTS in a way) brand is being destroyed.
I hear your opinion, but I can’t agree. It’s developer’s way of thinking, not a product manager’s, sales or management thinking.
Please, don’t write the samal points again and again. If you don’t have anything new to add, let’s finish right here.
Thank you for sharing your opinions, especially @hendersj and @sfalken . I really do meain it. 
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What does packman have to do with anything I said? I literally haven’t used Packman, with, or without Leap, in years, for a number of reasons. Please don’t attribute things to Me, that I never said.
I’m not a developer, and I don’t generally think like a developer.
Nor am I missing your point. You have an expectation based on the past. Sure, I get that. But you’re missing this point:
If you want things to change/improve, complaining here is not the way to effect change. If you want the people who need to hear your thoughts to hear your thoughts, this is not the place to share them if you want your thoughts to be heard by the people who can effect that change.
If you actually care about the “openSUSE Brand”, then you should care about making sure the people who need to hear what you’re saying actually hear it.
Otherwise, you are just shouting into the wind.
You have no idea how frustrating it is, as an admin in a community to have community members constantly complaining about things in a venue that simply is not the right venue for those things to be addressed in. We’re a user suport community. We’re not a developer community (though we certainly welcome developers who take the time to be here). We’re not the people who build the distros or who run the infrastructure that’s used to build the distros.
So coming in here and yelling/complaining/sharing your opinions (call it what you will) accomplishes as near to nothing as makes no odds. If you want your opinion to matter, then share your feedback through the mechanism provided.
It’s that simple. The release manager extended the survey period so the community could provide specific feedback to improve future releases - and did so specifically at my request because I wanted the community to have their feedback heard.
So I did what I could. The rest is up to you (collectively).
I don’t disagree that there were issues with this release. There absolutely were, in my opinion. My point is, and has always been, that if you want to be heard, you are providing your feedback in a place where it will not be heard by those who need to hear it.
Sorry to say, but IMHO you are missing the points that others bring up. If you don’t want Leap 16, you’ll find more alternatives than you can digest in a day. Spend your time on that instead of arguing why Leap 16 is bad. Or start contributing to Packman?
Here’s the bottom line for me with discussions like this (in general), and something I think everyone who wants to “express an opinion” about: What is your goal? What do you hope to achieve?
Think about that. Seriously.
If you want to effect change, there are ways to do that. A constructive discussion here about ways to organize to address the issues is a good thing.
Coming up here (or to any openSUSE-sponsored space) just to have a yell about things you don’t like achieves nothing.
Hey, I get it - y’all think the release wasn’t handled well. I happen to agree that there are things that could have definitely been done better.
So what are you going to do about it? Yell in the wind, threaten to switch distros because of it? Why? To what end?
Or are you going to step up and contribute to solutions - even if you’re not a developer, there are ways to help. Provide feedback to the people who make the decisions. Express your opinions in ways that the people who make the decisions will listen to you.
The choice is yours.
This space is not the openSUSE project “complaints department”. The forum staff are not the people who make decisions about the direction of the distro. This forum is, first and foremost, a place to ask for help or to provide others with help.
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@hendersj “So coming in here and yelling” - I’m not yelling and I’m sorry if you feel that way.
@knurpht Any amout of justification you pull will not make user to use a defect product. That’s why this is completely of topic in this thread. I haven’t placed a question, “how can we justify this situation”. Please start another topic, if that’s what you’re after.
Let’s finish this discussion. You’re already deleting uncomfortable posts, let’s not do it worse.
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It’s a figure of speech. Understand that I admin/moderate here and on the Facebook group. There has been a lot of yelling and complaining about this release. All of it is complaints that simply will not be heard by the people who need to hear it.
That is why I asked the release manager (publicly, the discussion is on the project mailing list for anyone to see - and he agreed that it was a good idea) to extend the survey period so users like you who are unhappy with the release can provide feedback directly to the people who need to hear it.
So there you have it: The release manager wants to hear from users who are willing to take the time to provide constructive feedback on this release. But he’s not going to come here or go to all the various social spaces the project maintains to gather it - y’all need to provide it to him and the release team through the survey.
As for the removed posts - we moderate and remove posts that (for example) violate the TOS and the Code of Conduct. It is not unusual in a heated discussion for posts to be flagged by the community and for the moderation team to decide to remove things as a result.
Anyone who doesn’t want to participate in this discussion is free to leave at any time. You can stop tracking the discussion using the controls at the bottom of the thread (“Tracking” can be changed to “Normal” or “Mute” if you want to no longer receive notifications).
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Retrospective survey is still open:
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I am aware of this, but at the same time we have 180 open bugs, and no update workflow.
Which is definitely a concern.
The survey was created to pull this kind of feedback and get it to the right people - if you’ve provided this feedback there, that’s fantastic. If not, I’d encourage you to do so. That ensures that those who need to hear this will hear it directly from you.
Sorry, but assigning bug reports for Leap 16.0 to the “Leap and Leap Micro Release Manager” (LK) should be sufficient “that those who need to hear this will hear it directly from you.”