Release Notes #

The installer supports the system role Transactional Server. This system role features an update system that applies updates atomically (as a single operation) and makes them easy to revert should that become necessary. These features are based on the package management tools that all other SUSE and openSUSE distributions also rely on. This means that the vast majority of RPM packages that work with other system roles of openSUSE Leap 15.5 also work with the system role Transactional Server.

Note: Incompatible Packages

Some packages modify the contents of /var or /srv in their RPM %post scripts. These packages are incompatible. If you find such a package, file a bug report.

To provide these features, this update system relies on:

Important: Transactional Server Needs At Least 12 GB of Disk Space

The system role Transactional Server needs a disk size of at least 12 GB to accommodate Btrfs snapshots.

Important: YaST Does Not Work Transactional Mode

Currently, YaST does not work with transactional updates. This is because YaST performs things immediately and because it cannot edit a read-only filesystem.

To work with transactional updates, always use the command transactional-update instead of YaST and Zypper for all software management:

When using this system role, by default, the system will perform a daily update and reboot between 03:30 am and 05:00 am. Both of these actions are systemd-based and if necessary can be disabled using systemctl:

systemctl disable --now transactional-update.timer rebootmgr.service

For more information about transactional updates, see the openSUSE Kubic blog posts https://kubic.opensuse.org/blog/2018-04-04-transactionalupdates/ and https://kubic.opensuse.org/blog/2018-04-20-transactionalupdates2/.

The installer will only propose a partitioning scheme if the available hard disk size is larger than 12 GB. If you want to set up, for example, very small virtual machines images, use the guided partitioner to tune partitioning parameters manually.

Prior to installing openSUSE on a system that boots using UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), you are urgently advised to check for any firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends and, if available, to install such an update. A pre-installation of Windows 8 or later is a strong indication that your system boots using UEFI.

Background: Some UEFI firmware has bugs that cause it to break if too much data gets written to the UEFI storage area. However, there is no clear data of how much is “too much”.

openSUSE minimizes the risk by not writing more than the bare minimum required to boot the OS. The minimum means telling the UEFI firmware about the location of the openSUSE boot loader. Upstream Linux kernel features that use the UEFI storage area for storing boot and crash information (pstore) have been disabled by default. Nevertheless, it is recommended to install any firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends.

Together with the EFI/UEFI specification, a new style of partitioning arrived: GPT (GUID Partition Table). This new schema uses globally unique identifiers (128-bit values displayed in 32 hexadecimal digits) to identify devices and partition types.

Additionally, the UEFI specification also allows legacy MBR (MS-DOS) partitions. The Linux boot loaders (ELILO or GRUB 2) try to automatically generate a GUID for those legacy partitions, and write them to the firmware. Such a GUID can change frequently, causing a rewrite in the firmware. A rewrite consists of two different operations: Removing the old entry and creating a new entry that replaces the first one.

Modern firmware has a garbage collector that collects deleted entries and frees the memory reserved for old entries. A problem arises when faulty firmware does not collect and free those entries. This can result in a non-bootable system.

To work around this problem, convert the legacy MBR partition to GPT.

Deprecated packages are still shipped as part of the distribution but are scheduled to be removed the next version of openSUSE Leap. These packages exist to aid migration, but their use is discouraged and they may not receive updates.

To check whether installed packages are no longer maintained, make sure that the lifecycle-data-openSUSE package is installed, then use the command:

zypper lifecycle

Removed packages are not shipped as part of the distribution anymore.

Starting with openSUSE Leap 15.2, kernel module signature check for third-party drivers (CONFIG_MODULE_SIG=y) is now enabled. This is an important security measure to avoid untrusted code running in the kernel.

This may prevent third-party kernel modules from being loaded if UEFI Secure Boot is enabled. Kernel Module Packages (KMPs) from the official openSUSE repositories are not affected, because the modules they contain are signed with the openSUSE key. The signature check has the following behavior:

It is possible to generate a custom certificate, enroll it into the system's Machine Owner Key (MOK) data base, and sign locally compiled kernel modules with this certificate's key. Modules signed in this manner will neither be blocked nor cause warnings. See https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:UEFI.

Since this also affects NVIDIA graphics drivers, we addressed this in our official packages for openSUSE. However, you need to manually enroll a new MOK key after installation to make the new packages work. For instructions how to install the drivers and enroll the MOK key, see https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers#Secureboot.

Booting the network install image from USB stick on Raspberry Pi 4 hangs on boot. To resolve this issue, add the console=tty boot parameter. See details in the known issues section of our Raspberry Pi 4 Hardware Compatibility List.

KDE 4 packages will not be part of openSUSE Leap 15.4. Please update your system to Plasma 5 and Qt 5. Some of Qt 4 packages might still remain for compatibility reasons. https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1179613.

The nouveau driver is still considered experimental for Nvidia Turing and Ampere GPUs. Therefore it has been disabled by default on systems with these GPUs.

Instead of using the nouveau driver we recommend using Nvidia's new openGPU driver. Install this driver by installing these following packages:

Then uncomment the options nvidia line in the /etc/modprobe.d/50-nvidia-default.conf file so that it looks like the following afterwards:

### Enable support on *all* Turing/Ampere GPUs: Alpha Quality!
options nvidia NVreg_OpenRmEnableUnsupportedGpus=1

If you prefer using nouveau driver anyway, add nouveau.force_probe=1 to your kernel boot parameters, and do not install the above openGPU package.

ibus does not start automatically under KDE Plasma. This can be fixed by adding the appropriate command to the autostart section. To do that, go to System Settings, Startup and Shutdown, Autostart and there click on the Add… button, and then click on Add Application…. In the opened dialog window type ibus-daemon -x into the text box and click OK. For more information see https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1211977.

iotop does not display values for SWAPIN and IO %.

Since Linux kernel 5.14, either kernel boot parameter delayacct needs to be specified or kernel.task_delayacct sysctl needs to be enabled.

We switched the RPM and repository signing key of openSUSE Leap 15.5 from 2048 bit RSA to a 4096 bit RSA key. This key was previously introduced to openSUSE Leap 15.4 users in a maintenance update. Users upgrading from older releases will need to import the new key manually as described in https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade#0._New_4096_bit_RSA_signing_key.