openSUSE Leap 16: 24 months support for all

openSUSE has announced that it will significantly extend maintenance and support for its community distribution with Leap 16. It surpasses that of Leap 15, which runs until April 2026: Each major release will receive a full 24 months of updates in the future. An overlap is intended to ensure that all users can smoothly switch to a new version of the Linux distribution.

Leap 16 is based on SUSE's Adaptable Linux Platform (ALP) for the first time, marking a fundamental change for openSUSE. Like its sister distribution Leap Micro, Leap 16 is offered as an appliance and shares the update strategy, allowing companies and community users to benefit from long-term planning security. Previous points of criticism, such as outdated software packages with long lifecycles, are to be mitigated with more flexible product management and targeted ecosystem updates.

Those who require longer support than the 24 months per release can switch to SUSE Linux Enterprise or SLE Micro with the tools provided; these include significantly longer commercial support. Leap 16 will be released in October 2025 and is intended to provide a modernized, stable foundation for desktops and servers.

Details on the longer support can be found in the announcement.

(fo)