15.0.20180514
Abstract
openSUSE Leap is a free and Linux-based operating system for your PC, Laptop or Server. You can surf the Web, manage your e-mails and photos, do office work, play videos or music and have a lot of fun!
The release notes are under constant development. To find out about the latest updates, see the online version at https://doc.opensuse.org/release-notes. The English release notes are updated whenever need arises. Translated language versions can temporarily be incomplete.
If you upgrade from an older version to this openSUSE Leap release, see previous release notes listed here: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Release_Notes.
Information about the project is available at https://www.opensuse.org.
To report bugs against this release, use the openSUSE Bugzilla. For more information, see http://en.opensuse.org/Submitting_Bug_Reports.
This section contains installation-related notes. For detailed upgrade instructions, see the documentation at https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/startup/html/book.opensuse.startup/part.basics.html.
The minimal system installation lacks certain functionality that is often taken for granted:
It does not contain a software firewall front-end. You can install the package firewalld additionally.
It does not contain a YaST. You can install the pattern patterns-yast-yast2_basis additionally.
Prior to installing openSUSE on a system that boots using UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), you are urgently advised to check for any firmware updates the hardware vendor recommends and, if available, to install such an update. A pre-installation of Windows 8 or later is a strong indication that your system boots using UEFI.
Background: Some UEFI firmware has bugs that cause it to break if too much data gets written to the UEFI storage area. However, there is no clear data of how much is “too much”.
openSUSE minimizes the risk by not writing more than the bare minimum
required to boot the OS. The minimum means telling the UEFI firmware about
the location of the openSUSE boot loader. Upstream Linux kernel features
that use the UEFI storage area for storing boot and crash information
(pstore) have been disabled by default. Nevertheless, it
is recommended to install any firmware updates the hardware vendor
recommends.
Together with the EFI/UEFI specification, a new style of partitioning arrived: GPT (GUID Partition Table). This new schema uses globally unique identifiers (128-bit values displayed in 32 hexadecimal digits) to identify devices and partition types.
Additionally, the UEFI specification also allows legacy MBR (MS-DOS) partitions. The Linux boot loaders (ELILO or GRUB 2) try to automatically generate a GUID for those legacy partitions, and write them to the firmware. Such a GUID can change frequently, causing a rewrite in the firmware. A rewrite consists of two different operations: Removing the old entry and creating a new entry that replaces the first one.
Modern firmware has a garbage collector that collects deleted entries and frees the memory reserved for old entries. A problem arises when faulty firmware does not collect and free those entries. This can result in a non-bootable system.
To work around this problem, convert the legacy MBR partition to GPT.
On openSUSE Leap 15.0, you need to uninstall the package
drm-kmp-default first, before you can manually install
Nvidia drivers using the .run shell script archive:
zypper rm drm-kmp-default
If you install the RPMs provided by Nvidia, you will not be affected by this issue, because in that case, the package drm-kmp-default is replaced during the driver installation automatically.
If you decide to uninstall Nvidia's driver later, make sure to reinstall the package drm-kmp-default.
For more information, see https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1044816.
The YaST installer does not scale its UI for High-DPI displays by default.
If you have a computer with a high-DPI display, you can set YaST to scale
its UI automatically for the display. To do so, add the parameter
QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1 to the bootloader
command line.
This section lists notes related to upgrading the system. For detailed upgrade instructions, see the documentation at https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/startup/html/book.opensuse.startup/cha.update.osuse.html.
Additionally, check Section 3, “Packaging Changes”.
Starting with the version 3.2, as shipped in openSUSE Leap 15.0, Postfix Admin (package postfixadmin) uses a new and backwards-incompatible directory layout:
The configuration files moved to /etc/postfixadmin.
The PHP code moved to /usr/share/postfixadmin.
The Smarty cache moved to /var/cache/postfixadmin.
Postfix Admin no longer reads configuration files from their previous locations and the configuration is not migrated automatically. Therefore, you need to migrate the following items manually:
Move config.local.php from
/srv/www/htdocs/postfixadmin to
/etc/postfixadmin.
If you made customizations to config.inc.php,
ideally merge these customizations into
/etc/postfixadmin/config.local.php.
We recommended keeping config.inc.php unmodified.
In the Apache configuration, add or enable the alias
/postfixadmin:
To make the alias available on all virtual hosts, run:
a2enflag POSTFIXADMIN && rcapache2 restart
To make the alias available only on a specific virtual host only, add the alias to the config of that virtual host.
Deprecated packages are still shipped as part of the distribution but are scheduled to be removed the next version of openSUSE Leap. These packages exist to aid migration, but their use is discouraged and they may not receive updates.
To check whether installed packages are no longer maintained: Make sure that lifecycle-data-openSUSE is installed, then use the command:
zypper lifecycle
This section lists desktop issues and changes in openSUSE Leap 15.0.
The KDE Plasma Wayland session is not supported with the proprietary Nvidia driver. If you are using KDE and the proprietary Nvidia driver, stay with the X session.
In previous versions of openSUSE, the compose key combination allowed typing characters that were not part of the regular keyboard layout. For example, to produce “å”, you could press and release Shift+Right Ctrl and then press a twice.
In openSUSE Leap 15.0, there is no longer a predefined compose key combination because Shift+Right Ctrl does not work as expected anymore.
To define a system-wide custom compose key combination, use the file
/etc/X11/Xmodmap and look for the following lines:
[...] !! Third example: Change right Control key to Compose key. !! To do Compose Character, press this key and afterwards two !! characters (e.g. `a' and `^' to get 342). !remove Control = Control_R !keysym Control_R = Multi_key !add Control = Control_R [...]
To uncomment the example code, remove the
! characters at the beginning of lines. However,
note that the setup from Xmodmap will be
overwritten if you are using setxkbmap.
To define a user-specific compose key combination, use your desktop's keyboard configuration tool or the command-line tool setxkbmap:
setxkbmap[...]-option compose:COMPOSE_KEY
For the variable COMPOSE_KEY, use your
preferred character, for example
ralt, lwin,
rwin, menu,
rctl, or caps.
Alternatively, use an IBus input method that allows typing the characters you need without a Compose key.
In the past, you could use /etc/sysconfig or the
YaST module to define the login
manager and desktop session. Starting with openSUSE Leap 15.0, the values
are not defined using /etc/sysconfig anymore but
with the alternatives system.
To change the defaults, use the following alternatives:
Login manager: default-displaymanager
Wayland session: default-waylandsession.desktop
X desktop session: default-xsession.desktop
For example, to check the value of
default-displaymanager, use:
sudo update-alternatives --display default-displaymanager
To switch the default-displaymanager to
xdm, use:
sudo update-alternatives --set default-displaymanager \ /usr/lib/X11/displaymanagers/xdm
To enable graphical management of alternatives, use the YaST module that can be installed from the package yast2-alternatives.
When using GNOME Shell together with a login manager other than GDM, such as SDDM or LightDM, the screen will not blank or lock. Additionally, switching users without logging out is not possible.
To be able to lock the screen from GNOME Shell, enable GDM as your login manager:
Make sure that the package gdm is installed.
Open YaST and from it, open .
Navigate to ++.
In the text box, specify gdm. To save, click
.
Reboot.
The default login manager for KDE, SDDM, does not scale its UI for High-DPI
displays by default.
If you have a computer with a high-DPI display, you can set SDDM to scale
its UI automatically for the display using the configuration file
/etc/sddm.conf:
[XDisplay]
ServerArguments=-dpi DPI_SETTING
EnableHiDPI=true
Replace DPI_SETTING with an appropriate DPI
value, such as 192. For best scaling results, use a
DPI value that is a multiple of the default 96 DPI.
YaST does not scale its UI for High-DPI displays by default.
If you have a computer with a high-DPI display, you can set YaST to scale
its UI automatically for the display. To do so, set the environment
variable QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1.
Firefox and Chromium normally allow Web-based tools such as videoconferencing applications to share the entire screen or individual application windows. This functionality is currently not supported in either browser when using a Wayland session.
To be able to share your screen in Firefox or Chromium, use an X session instead.
The codecs to play MP3 media files are shipped as part of the standard repository.
To use this decoder in gstreamer-based applications and frameworks,
such as Rhythmbox or Totem, install the package
gstreamer-plugins-ugly.
LibreOffice 5.3 and higher do not support legacy Type-1 fonts (file extensions
.afm and .pfb) anymore. Most
users should not be affected by this, as current fonts are available
either in the format TrueType (.ttf) or OpenType
(.otf) formats.
If you are affected by this, convert Type-1 fonts to a supported format, such as TrueType and then use the converted fonts. Conversion is possible with the application FontForge (package fontforge) which is included in openSUSE. For information on scripting such conversions, see https://fontforge.github.io/en-US/documentation/scripting/.
FreeType 2.6.4 has a new default glyph hinting interpreter (version 38) that more closely matches other operating systems but may look “more fuzzy” to some. To restore the previous FreeType behavior, set the following environment variable at any level (system-wide, user-specific, or program-specific) of your choice:
FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=35"
Plasma browser integration for Firefox and Chromium/Chrome allows monitoring multimedia and downloads using KDE system tools and gives quick access to tabs via the bar of the KDE Plasma desktop.
The browser integration functionality consists of two parts that need to work together:
The desktop part that can be installed using the system package plasma-browser-integration.
The browser part that needs to be installed from the add-on store of your browser:
Note that this functionality is officially still in development and openSUSE Leap 15.0 ships with an early version of it.
This section lists changes to security features in openSUSE Leap 15.0.
In the past, there could be confusion over the difference between how the
very similarly named systemctl subcommands
reload and restart worked for
AppArmor:
systemctl reload apparmor properly reloaded all AppArmor profiles. (It was and continues to be the recommended way of reloading AppArmor profiles.)
systemctl restart apparmor meant that AppArmor would stop, thereby unloading all AppArmor profiles and then restart which left all existing processes unconfined. Only newly started processes would then be confined again.
Unfortunately, systemd does
not provide a solution within its unit file format for the issue posed
by the restart scenario.
Starting with AppArmor 2.12, the command systemctl stop apparmor will not work. As a consequence, systemctl restart apparmor will now correctly reload AppArmor profiles.
To unload all AppArmor profiles, use the new command aa-teardown instead which matches the previous behavior of systemctl stop apparmor.
For more information, see https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=996520 and https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=853019.
Read the README documents on the medium.
View a detailed changelog information about a particular package from its RPM:
rpm --changelog -qp FILENAME.rpm
Replace FILENAME with the name of the RPM.
Check the ChangeLog file in the top level of the
medium for a chronological log of all changes made to the updated packages.
Find more information in the docu directory on the
medium.
For additional or updated documentation, see https://doc.opensuse.org/.
For the latest product news, from openSUSE, visit https://www.opensuse.org.
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