The project openSUSE has announced the release of openSUSE Leap Micro 6.1, its distribution intended for microservices environments and as a basis for virtualization and container platforms.
openSUSE Leap Micro It is based on the MicroOS project and acts as the community counterpart to SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro, differentiating itself by not including a graphical interface. Instead, it can be managed and configured using tools such as Cockpit, which allows remote control from a browser, the cloud starter kit for automatic configurations on every boot, or Combustion, which facilitates initial configurations on first boot.
An prominent feature is possibility to migrate from Leap Micro to SUSE SLE Micro, offering a seamless transition path for those requiring enterprise support or additional certifications.
The system adopts an atomic update mechanism that combines standard package management tools with the use of snapshots on the Btrfs file system. This technique allows for transactional updates, ensuring system integrity without the need for additional infrastructures such as those used in ostree- or snap-based solutions.
What's new in openSUSE Leap Micro 6.1?
Among the notable new features of version 6.1, Support for a "soft-reboot" mode is included, which allows only user-space components to be restarted while keeping the Linux kernel intact. This mechanism is ideal for applying updates that do not affect the kernel or bootloader, reducing downtime. In addition, opensuse-migration-tool is introduced, which makes it easier to upgrade from previous versions such as 5.5 and 6.0.
Besides that, SL Micro pays special attention to the reproducibility of builds in RPM packages, as the improvements are reflected in unified metadata, where the build host is consistent and the build date is aligned with the last change in the package sources, rather than the exact date the package was created, ensuring greater transparency and reliability, benefiting developers and users.
On the part of the security improvements, se has added a PAM module that allows two-factor authentication based on one-time passwords. They have also been implemented Restrictions to disable remote login as root user via password authentication, including the Cockpit web interface. Remote access now requires non-privileged accounts created specifically for this purpose, and the online tool firstboot-installer and ignition and the authentication server fuel-ignition are mentioned to support this configuration.
Other relevant changes include Additional installation images for deployments via PXE, Expanded support for IBM Power architecture (requiring at least Power9 processors) and the option to enable swap partition compression with the zRAM module, which uses compressed RAM as swap space. Additionally, the Busybox, salt-master and k3s packages have been removed and improvements have been made to the jeos-firstboot boot helper.
SL Micro 6.0 iIncludes support for Active Directory environments by using the sssd service. This integration facilitates authentication and centralized management of users in enterprise networks and corporate infrastructures that rely on this technology to coordinate services and access.
Finally, if you are interested in being able to know more about it, you can consult the details in the following link
Download and get openSUSE Leap Micro 6.1
For those interested in trying out the new openSUSE Leap Micro 6.1 release, system images are available in versions for both x86_64 and ARM64 (Aarch64) architectures, including pre-configured images for Raspberry Pi that allow for quick setup as well as images for immediate use on virtualized systems.
Last but not least, it is important to note that the release of Leap Micro 6.1 represents the end of support for version 5.5 so those users with this version must upgrade to the new version to continue receiving updates.