14 DAY TRIAL // SUSE recently kicked off the development of the SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 15 operating system series and they just opened the closed beta program this week by releasing the first beta milestone.
SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 will be developed with a few key objectives in mind, including support for installing and using modules and extensions easier than before, use packages across the entire SUSE universe, support multiple scenarios and architectures on 64-bit, IBM System z (s390x), ARM64 (AArch64), and Power LE systems, as well as on cloud, virtual, physical, host and guest environments.
On top of that, wants SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 to be compliant with regulations and use a secure development model. SUSE also promises to provide a common code base for containerized and traditional infrastructures alike, as well as to allow installations of the operating system from a single medium.
"SLE 15 is developed with both “Traditional Infrastructure” and “Software-Defined Infrastructure” in mind, thus significant and major changes from the previous SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 are made to address both worlds in the more elegant and simpler way," said Frederic Crozat, Release Manager, SUSE, in the release announcement.
Wayland, GCC 7 and OpenSSL 1.1 by default in SLE 15
For SUSE Linux Enterprise 15, SUSE decided to go with the Linux 4.12 kernel, GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) 7 as default system compiler, OpenSSL 1.1.x as default with OpenSSL 1.0.x available as a legacy module, Python 3.6 as default with Python 2 available as a legacy module, as well as Perl 5.26, Ruby 2.5, TLS 1.3, OpenJDK 9, and PHP 7.x.
New applications included for this cycle are Firewalld as default firewall instead of SUSEFirewall2, Chrony as default NTP (Network Time Protocol) implementation instead of ntpd, which will be available as a legacy module, 389 Directory Server as default LDAP server instead of openLDAP, whose libraries will still be available, and cluster-raid 10 as a technical preview.
Last but not least, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 will ship with the next-generation Wayland display by default, running the latest GNOME 3.26 desktop environment on top. However, SUSE noted that Wayland support would only be available for 64-bit installations. SLE 15 will also feature DRDB multi-node three-way replication, better NVDIMM support, and improved search for packages across modules.
The close beta program is available to registered users and provides download links to the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 15 Beta 1, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15 Beta 1, SUSE Linux Enterprise Workstation Extension (SLE-WE) 15 Beta 1, and SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability (SLE-HA) 15 Beta 1 builds. Please read the list of known issues before jumping into beta testing.