14 DAY TRIAL // openSUSE Board Chairman Richard Brown informed the community about a major version number change for upcoming releases of the openSUSE Leap operating system.
As some of you might know already, OpenSuSE Leap 42.2 is the current stable release of the GNU/Linux distribution based on the sources of the commercial SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) operating system designed for enterprises, and the next scheduled release is openSUSE Leap 42.3, which is currently in development.
Well, according to Richard Brown, the release after openSUSE Leap 42.3 will be openSUSE Leap 15. Yes, you're reading it right, openSUSE Leap 15 will follow openSUSE Leap 42.3, which is scheduled to launch in the last week of July 2017, based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 3 (SP3).
You're probably wondering right now why this radical change in the version number, especially that it's a lot smaller than the current one, from 42.x to 15. We don't even recall something like this to have ever happened to a GNU/Linux distro, but the explanation is very simple.
"When we started openSUSE Leap, the version number was an issue that needed addressing. openSUSE at that time was at 13.2, but SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) was at 12 and heading towards 12 SP1," said Richard Brown. "But openSUSE had already had versions starting with 12, so we couldn't sync up with SLE."
"The plan was therefore for the next version of Leap to be 43 with its release aligned with SLE 13, followed by Leap 43.1 (with SLE 13 SP1), Leap 43.2 (w. SP2), etc.," explained Brown. "However, like all good plans, things change. SUSE have decided that their next version of SLE will be 15, not 13."
Nothing will change for users
The openSUSE team saw the perfect opportunity to make their dream reality and have the version number of the openSUSE Leap operating system in sync with upstream, with the version number of SUSE Linux Enterprise. As such, openSUSE Leap 15 will be based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 15.
The change may sound like a major reform, but nothing will be changed for users. No openSUSE Leap user will be affected by the new versioning scheme, and it also looks like only a few packages reference the 42.x versioning, which means that upgrades won't be any issue either.