14 DAY TRIAL // The openSUSE Project announced this week that they'd extended support for the openSUSE Leap 42.3 operating system with six more months to allow more users to upgrade to the latest openSUSE Leap 15 release.
Launched on July 26, 2017, the OpenSuSE Leap 42.3 operating system is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 12 Service Pack (SP) 3 and the long-term supported Linux 4.4 kernel series. Like previous openSUSE Leap 42 point releases, openSUSE Leap 42.3 was supposed to receive 18 months of support, until January 2019.
However, both the openSUSE Project and parent company SUSE decided to give users more time to upgrade to the latest openSUSE Leap 15 release, which is based on the SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 15 operating system series, by continuing to deliver updates to the openSUSE Leap 42.3 release, and the openSUSE Leap 42 series, for six more months.
"The last minor version of the Leap 42 series was scheduled to be maintained until January 2019, but that has changed thanks to SUSE committing to additional months of maintenance and security updates," said Douglas DeMaio. "This means the extended End of Life for Leap 42.3 will increase the total lifetime of the Leap 42 series to 44 months."
openSUSE Leap 42.3 to reach end of life on June 30, 2019
Therefore, the openSUSE Leap 42.3 release and the openSUSE Leap 42 operating system series will now reach end of life on June 30, 2019, instead of January 2019. This will give users more time to upgrade their installations to the openSUSE Leap 15 release, which will be maintained with security and software updates until the end of November 2019.
The openSUSE Project recommends all openSUSE Leap 42 users to take advantage of the extended support window of six months and prepare for the upgrade to the openSUSE Leap 15 series, which also includes a migration assistant to SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 15 for those who can't migrate their installations in time. Use these instructions to upgrade your systems!
Those who can’t migrate production servers to the new major version in time may want to take a (commercial) SLE subscription into consideration, which provides even a longer lifecycle. The proximity of Leap 42’s base system to SLE 12 keeps the technical effort to migrate workflows from Leap to SLE low.