As someone that has been passionate about openSUSE for over a decade I unfortunately think that the company is committing suicide. More than that, it may be bringing down the community with it. I'm not going to Nuremberg this year. I couldn't be less excited about ALP, and, honestly, I don't know if I want to have anything to do with openSUSE anymore. While I'm nowhere as relevant to the community as someone like you, I'm the kind of guy with a Gecko Sticker glued to my ThinkPad, going around and telling everyone that they should try openSUSE. It is very unpleasant to see what is happening to SUSE (and openSUSE) and I would love to turn back the clock on some of the decision making which got us here.
Truth be told, for something that will be developed in the open, SUSE is keeping cards close to its chest. So, other than SUSE insiders, most people don't really know much about ALP.
Here's the bits and pieces of information that have been confirmed:
1. ALP will be a replacement for SUSE Enterprise Linux (SLE)
2. It will be developed "in the open" (meaning OBS)
3. Its all about containers
4. Leap 15.5 will be the last openSUSE Leap based on SLE 15.
5. SUSE is going out of its way to try and sell SLE to openSUSE Leap users.
Everything else is highly speculative, but here's what I think will happen after reading what some well known SUSE people had to say on Reddit.
1. ALP is very likely going to be an Immutable system like Fedora Silverblue or MicroOS.
2. It will likely use a mix of Flatpak and Podman containers.
3. Since SLE is going to be discontinued, the future of openSUSE Leap is somewhat uncertain. The next version of openSUSE Leap after 15.5 may be based on ALP, it may be replaced by ALP or it may become its own thing.
This is only my opinion, but here's what I don't like about the whole situation: Despite the popularity of openSUSE Leap, as far as I understood, a stable end-user focused distro is not really a top priority at the moment. I may be wrong, and ALP may turn to be a great distro for end users, but so far I haven't heard anything compelling, neither from SUSE nor from none of its most vocal community members.
I don't know much about openSUSE politics and who is running what inside SUSE, but I've sensed a lot of frustration comming from and being directed towards some well known maintainers. At the heart of the matter is an argument about the very nature of what we call openSUSE.
The focus is clearly shifting from a more welcoming, end-user oriented community to a Developer's oriented one. And I unfortunately think that some low profile but very cool downstream distros like GeckoLinux, EasyNAS, Regata OS and Linux Kamarada will get the short end of the stick.
Again, I know very little about SUSE internal politics, but if Leap isn't a top priority, I doubt that they care about downstream distros either.
So, in summary, ALP can go either way. It can become a funky unfriendly immutable OS or it can actually be the best evolutionary step for SLE. One way or another, big changes are coming.
Wow, I was really eager to receive this insight, thank you very much for taking the time to respond so elaborately!
Indeed the very first Linux I unstalled on my main PC (which was 2 years ago) was Leap. I ruled out first Fedora as I didn't at all care about bleeding edge stuff and then also Tumbleweed as I didn't want to have any problematic packages when learning a new OS was requiring enough effort in itself.
So hearing that the Leap of the future isn't going to be the optimal solution for a person in the position I was in does sadden me in a way and I was actually speculating whether the community could uphold the past spirit of Leap in a concentrated effort on maintaining the stable release version of Gecko Linux (or maybe Kamarada, which I didn't know of), kind of how they took CloudLinuxOS and made AlmaLinux out of it.
Speaking of which, I have no personal impression, but presumably CentOS Stream could manage to satisfy the userbase niche of legacy Leap, occupying now the midstream between a rolling release and a commercial server distribution - unless ofc Red Hat decides to go do sth wacky themselves to follow along.
I think maybe it does make more sense to create a container-centric atomic OS based off of a server-suited distro like Leap rather than from the latest'n'greatest-user-oriented as is Fedora. So there's some reasoning behind the decision, ostensibly.
I share your hopes that something evolutionary comes out, at least for DevOps' sake if no-one else's.
Finally, if Linux sucks as much as it does, it's good that we get to have the occasional provocation to look for something alternative to serve as our daily driver.
I'm thinking of hopping onto Hyperbola as soon as it rounds up its transition to becoming the very first GNU/OpenBSD-libre OS.
I don't know if the small time Leap based distros that I mentioned could survive on their own. Think about what would happen to Ubuntu based distros if Debian was no more and Ubuntu itself decided to go all in on Snaps.
IMO our best bet as a community would be to find and encourage people to maintain Leap itself. Maybe start a Leap version out of a particularly well behaved Tumbleweed snapshot + mantain a minimal security backports repo. Once a year the community would promote a new Tumbleweed snapshot + create a new security backport repo, while keeping the previous year repo running for another 6 months or so. We could run Leap similarly to Fedora Workstation. This is doable, although (IMO) unlikely to happen.
CentOS Steam may be a good alternative. Fedora itself has been somewhat more stable and well polished than ever.
I'm also personally experimenting with something weird. I have:
1. Installed Ubuntu + ZFS (it has built-in snapshots much like Btrfs + Snapper).
2. Remove Firefox Snap + Gnome and Install KDE (I'm a KDE kind of person)
3. Installed a binary distro of Firefox and let it update itself.
4. I've also added ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports just for fun.
So far it has been surprisingly stable and painless. And this is coming from someone that never had much luck with neither Kubuntu nor KDE Neon.
Of course that I would prefer something RPM based, so, if I can make do with CentOs Stream or Fedora Workstation I would prefer it to "Frankenstein Kubuntu".
As for DevOps stuff you are right, although I don't get why the host OS is so important, nor the whole reasoning behind ALP. I mean, as a Dev I'm much more concerned about Orchestration + Observability. I really don't care if the K8s cluster is running on rock solid RHEL or an obscure
version of Microsoft / Amazon Linux OS in the cloud, as long the cloud provider can guarantee the required SLA (but then again, I'm not much in the Ops side of DevOps).
Things like NixOS are interesting and fun to play with, but I don't need the declarative stuff to be backed in the OS to get the results I need. And I really, really don't get immutable OSes for end users.
Hyperbola looks very interesting. I'll keep tabs on it for sure, but I have to say that it looks quite restrictive to be used as a daily driver (it's certainly shaping up to be a rock solid free server distro though :)).
Yeah, totally agree with your points. And that's quite a well determined effort to amend (K)ubuntu for sure, though I wouldn't feel myself comfortable on a Frankestein so I'd not consider it for the time being. Nix seems mostly for software builds, haven't heard of many people opting to use it as a main OS.
But if only standard Linux is to be considered, maybe Void with a dwm suite can bring one as close to suckless as one may get.
Sorry, but SUSE like the citadel, in the Book of Esther ? We stand with you. Was very interested by an explanation of Pessah, almost ten days ago. Feel free to delete my message, if against any standards you hold.
I'm in Ontario Canada, and if you tried to block an Islamic holiday or celebration you'd face a lawsuit, because Islam and it's message, is protected against anything that could even by accident, be declared hate-speech, hatred, fear, intimidation, or misunderstanding. I'm not exactly sure what would happen if you tried to block a Catholic / Christian holiday, but I suspect it wouldn't be good, because much of the social aspect of our society is based on those beliefs / structure, even though we're secular by law.
I'm not Jewish, but I have a surprisingly large number of Jewish friends and you guys know how to party, how to eat, drink and celebrate! I have yet to attend a Jewish party / celebration that I didn't LOVE, and that didn't make me want to convert!
SUSE should be ashamed of itself, there's no excuse for discrimination, and I'll never use or recommend SUSE again, it's blacklisted.
Thank you for sharing the story! We are with you and everyone else who's suffered the same!
I'm so sorry that this has happened to you.
I always wondered why you left SUSE.
As someone that has been passionate about openSUSE for over a decade I unfortunately think that the company is committing suicide. More than that, it may be bringing down the community with it. I'm not going to Nuremberg this year. I couldn't be less excited about ALP, and, honestly, I don't know if I want to have anything to do with openSUSE anymore. While I'm nowhere as relevant to the community as someone like you, I'm the kind of guy with a Gecko Sticker glued to my ThinkPad, going around and telling everyone that they should try openSUSE. It is very unpleasant to see what is happening to SUSE (and openSUSE) and I would love to turn back the clock on some of the decision making which got us here.
Dear Sir I would so love you to tell me what ALP is all about, as I'm a confused novice failing to assess its potential usefulness or harm.
Truth be told, for something that will be developed in the open, SUSE is keeping cards close to its chest. So, other than SUSE insiders, most people don't really know much about ALP.
Here's the bits and pieces of information that have been confirmed:
1. ALP will be a replacement for SUSE Enterprise Linux (SLE)
2. It will be developed "in the open" (meaning OBS)
3. Its all about containers
4. Leap 15.5 will be the last openSUSE Leap based on SLE 15.
5. SUSE is going out of its way to try and sell SLE to openSUSE Leap users.
Everything else is highly speculative, but here's what I think will happen after reading what some well known SUSE people had to say on Reddit.
1. ALP is very likely going to be an Immutable system like Fedora Silverblue or MicroOS.
2. It will likely use a mix of Flatpak and Podman containers.
3. Since SLE is going to be discontinued, the future of openSUSE Leap is somewhat uncertain. The next version of openSUSE Leap after 15.5 may be based on ALP, it may be replaced by ALP or it may become its own thing.
This is only my opinion, but here's what I don't like about the whole situation: Despite the popularity of openSUSE Leap, as far as I understood, a stable end-user focused distro is not really a top priority at the moment. I may be wrong, and ALP may turn to be a great distro for end users, but so far I haven't heard anything compelling, neither from SUSE nor from none of its most vocal community members.
I don't know much about openSUSE politics and who is running what inside SUSE, but I've sensed a lot of frustration comming from and being directed towards some well known maintainers. At the heart of the matter is an argument about the very nature of what we call openSUSE.
The focus is clearly shifting from a more welcoming, end-user oriented community to a Developer's oriented one. And I unfortunately think that some low profile but very cool downstream distros like GeckoLinux, EasyNAS, Regata OS and Linux Kamarada will get the short end of the stick.
Again, I know very little about SUSE internal politics, but if Leap isn't a top priority, I doubt that they care about downstream distros either.
So, in summary, ALP can go either way. It can become a funky unfriendly immutable OS or it can actually be the best evolutionary step for SLE. One way or another, big changes are coming.
Wow, I was really eager to receive this insight, thank you very much for taking the time to respond so elaborately!
Indeed the very first Linux I unstalled on my main PC (which was 2 years ago) was Leap. I ruled out first Fedora as I didn't at all care about bleeding edge stuff and then also Tumbleweed as I didn't want to have any problematic packages when learning a new OS was requiring enough effort in itself.
So hearing that the Leap of the future isn't going to be the optimal solution for a person in the position I was in does sadden me in a way and I was actually speculating whether the community could uphold the past spirit of Leap in a concentrated effort on maintaining the stable release version of Gecko Linux (or maybe Kamarada, which I didn't know of), kind of how they took CloudLinuxOS and made AlmaLinux out of it.
Speaking of which, I have no personal impression, but presumably CentOS Stream could manage to satisfy the userbase niche of legacy Leap, occupying now the midstream between a rolling release and a commercial server distribution - unless ofc Red Hat decides to go do sth wacky themselves to follow along.
I think maybe it does make more sense to create a container-centric atomic OS based off of a server-suited distro like Leap rather than from the latest'n'greatest-user-oriented as is Fedora. So there's some reasoning behind the decision, ostensibly.
I share your hopes that something evolutionary comes out, at least for DevOps' sake if no-one else's.
Finally, if Linux sucks as much as it does, it's good that we get to have the occasional provocation to look for something alternative to serve as our daily driver.
I'm thinking of hopping onto Hyperbola as soon as it rounds up its transition to becoming the very first GNU/OpenBSD-libre OS.
Not a problem. Leap is great isn't it?
I don't know if the small time Leap based distros that I mentioned could survive on their own. Think about what would happen to Ubuntu based distros if Debian was no more and Ubuntu itself decided to go all in on Snaps.
IMO our best bet as a community would be to find and encourage people to maintain Leap itself. Maybe start a Leap version out of a particularly well behaved Tumbleweed snapshot + mantain a minimal security backports repo. Once a year the community would promote a new Tumbleweed snapshot + create a new security backport repo, while keeping the previous year repo running for another 6 months or so. We could run Leap similarly to Fedora Workstation. This is doable, although (IMO) unlikely to happen.
CentOS Steam may be a good alternative. Fedora itself has been somewhat more stable and well polished than ever.
I'm also personally experimenting with something weird. I have:
1. Installed Ubuntu + ZFS (it has built-in snapshots much like Btrfs + Snapper).
2. Remove Firefox Snap + Gnome and Install KDE (I'm a KDE kind of person)
3. Installed a binary distro of Firefox and let it update itself.
4. I've also added ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports just for fun.
So far it has been surprisingly stable and painless. And this is coming from someone that never had much luck with neither Kubuntu nor KDE Neon.
Of course that I would prefer something RPM based, so, if I can make do with CentOs Stream or Fedora Workstation I would prefer it to "Frankenstein Kubuntu".
As for DevOps stuff you are right, although I don't get why the host OS is so important, nor the whole reasoning behind ALP. I mean, as a Dev I'm much more concerned about Orchestration + Observability. I really don't care if the K8s cluster is running on rock solid RHEL or an obscure
version of Microsoft / Amazon Linux OS in the cloud, as long the cloud provider can guarantee the required SLA (but then again, I'm not much in the Ops side of DevOps).
Things like NixOS are interesting and fun to play with, but I don't need the declarative stuff to be backed in the OS to get the results I need. And I really, really don't get immutable OSes for end users.
Hyperbola looks very interesting. I'll keep tabs on it for sure, but I have to say that it looks quite restrictive to be used as a daily driver (it's certainly shaping up to be a rock solid free server distro though :)).
Yeah, totally agree with your points. And that's quite a well determined effort to amend (K)ubuntu for sure, though I wouldn't feel myself comfortable on a Frankestein so I'd not consider it for the time being. Nix seems mostly for software builds, haven't heard of many people opting to use it as a main OS.
But if only standard Linux is to be considered, maybe Void with a dwm suite can bring one as close to suckless as one may get.
Sorry, but SUSE like the citadel, in the Book of Esther ? We stand with you. Was very interested by an explanation of Pessah, almost ten days ago. Feel free to delete my message, if against any standards you hold.
This really angers me. And it saddens me that such bad people are put into such powerful positions.
Seriously? That's insane!
I'm in Ontario Canada, and if you tried to block an Islamic holiday or celebration you'd face a lawsuit, because Islam and it's message, is protected against anything that could even by accident, be declared hate-speech, hatred, fear, intimidation, or misunderstanding. I'm not exactly sure what would happen if you tried to block a Catholic / Christian holiday, but I suspect it wouldn't be good, because much of the social aspect of our society is based on those beliefs / structure, even though we're secular by law.
I'm not Jewish, but I have a surprisingly large number of Jewish friends and you guys know how to party, how to eat, drink and celebrate! I have yet to attend a Jewish party / celebration that I didn't LOVE, and that didn't make me want to convert!
SUSE should be ashamed of itself, there's no excuse for discrimination, and I'll never use or recommend SUSE again, it's blacklisted.
That's pretty weird. It's like Google & Christian holidays. I don't understand their thinking.