Thanks to the latest release, which arrived yesterday and is labeled 15.6, openSUSE Leap is taking one more step in the direction of Leap 16. While this next major release is scheduled to arrive in 2025, the new update comes with a support period that will provide its users with enough time to decide if they want to switch to the enterprise distribution with extended support or stay with Leap.

The list of changes is quite long and can be found on this page. The highlights of openSUSE Leap 15.6 are multiple, such as KDE Plasma 5.27.11, Linux Kernel 6.4 with OpenSSL 3.1 as the new default, MariaDB 10.11.6, PostgreSQL 16, Podman 4.8 with quadlets support for Nextcloud, as well as Gnome 45 desktop improvements thanks to PulseAudio 17.0 and PipeWire 1.0.4. Many outdated packages have been removed, for example, in the case of transitioning to Python 3.11.

Starting from yesterday's release, openSUSE Leap 15.5 will hit its End of Life in six months. The new ISO images can be downloaded from https://get.opensuse.org/leap/. The list of hardware platforms supported in this release includes 64-bit Intel and AMD desktops, laptops, and servers, ARM servers, desktops, laptops, and boards (aarch64), IBM zSystems and LinuxONE (s390x), as well as PowerPC servers, little-endian (ppc64le).

Those who need a large mouse pad alongside a Linux commands cheat sheet can have them both from the Glittery Garden Store on Amazon. The XL version of the non-slip mouse pad with shortcuts to Kali/Red Hat/Ubuntu/OpenSUSE/Arch/Debian/Unix measures 31.5 x 11.9 inches and is currently available for $20.95 (22% down from the $27 list price).