openSUSE Tumbleweed

Release Notes #

openSUSE Tumbleweed is a free and Linux-based operating system for your PC, laptop or server. You can surf the web, manage your e-mails and photos, do office work, play videos or music and have a lot of fun!

Publication Date: 2024-06-10 , Version: 84.87.20240609.6b4c891

1 Installation
2 General
3 More Information and Feedback

The release notes are under constant development. To find out about the latest updates, see the online version at https://doc.opensuse.org/release-notes. The English release notes are updated whenever need arises. Translated language versions can temporarily be incomplete.

To report bugs against this release, use the openSUSE Bugzilla. For more information, see https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Submitting_bug_reports.

1 Installation #

1.1 UEFI—Unified Extensible Firmware Interface #

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-installed Windows 8 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. Nobody really knows how much "too much" is, though. 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.

1.2 UEFI, GPT, and MS-DOS Partitions #

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 GRUB2) 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 may end up with a non-bootable system.

The workaround is simple: convert the legacy MBR partition to the new GPT to avoid this problem completely.

2 General #

2.1 System with LUKS-Encrypted Partition Does Not Boot #

In some cases, Plymouth does not display the passphrase prompt properly. To fix this, add plymouth.enable=0 to the kernel command line. See also https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=966255.

2.2 `systemctl stop apparmor` Does Not Work #

In the past, there could be confusion over the difference between how the very similarly named systemctl subcommands reload and restart worked for AppArmor:

systemctl reload apparmor properly reloaded all AppArmor profiles. (It was and continues to be the recommended way of reloading AppArmor profiles.)
systemctl restart apparmor meant that AppArmor would stop, thereby unloading all AppArmor profiles and then restart which left all existing processes unconfined. Only newly started processes would then be confined again.

Unfortunately, systemd does not provide a solution within its unit file format for the issue posed by the restart scenario.

Starting with AppArmor 2.12, the command systemctl stop apparmor will not work. As a consequence, systemctl restart apparmor will now correctly reload AppArmor profiles.

To unload all AppArmor profiles, use the new command aa-teardown instead which matches the previous behavior of systemctl stop apparmor.

For more information, see https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=996520 and https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=853019.

2.3 No Default Compose Key Combination #

In previous versions of openSUSE, the compose key combination allowed typing characters that were not part of the regular keyboard layout. For example, to produce “å”, you could press and release Shift–Right Ctrl and then press a twice.

In openSUSE Tumbleweed, there is no longer a predefined compose key combination because Shift–Right Ctrl does not work as expected anymore.

To define a system-wide custom compose key combination, use the file /etc/X11/Xmodmap and look for the following lines:
```
[...]
!! Third example: Change right Control key to Compose key.
!! To do Compose Character, press this key and afterwards two
!! characters (e.g. `a' and `^' to get 342).
!remove  Control  = Control_R
!keysym Control_R = Multi_key
!add     Control  = Control_R
[...]
```
To uncomment the example code, remove the ! characters at the beginning of lines. However, note that the setup from Xmodmap will be overwritten if you are using setxkbmap.
To define a user-specific compose key combination, use your desktop's keyboard configuration tool or the command-line tool setxkbmap:
```
setxkbmap [...] -option compose:COMPOSE_KEY
```
For the variable COMPOSE_KEY, use your preferred character, for example ralt, lwin, rwin, menu, rctl, or caps.
Alternatively, use an IBus input method that allows typing the characters you need without a Compose key.

3 More Information and Feedback #

Read the README documents on the medium.
View a detailed changelog information about a particular package from its RPM:
```
rpm --changelog -qp FILENAME.rpm
```
Replace FILENAME with the name of the RPM.
Check the ChangeLog file in the top level of the medium for a chronological log of all changes made to the updated packages.
Find more information in the docu directory on the medium.
For additional or updated documentation, see https://doc.opensuse.org/.
For the latest product news, from openSUSE, visit https://www.opensuse.org.

Thanks for using openSUSE.

The openSUSE Team.