A release candidate of openSUSE Leap 16.0 is here. It boldly strips out more established legacy tech than almost any other Linux we've seen.

[1]OpenSUSE Leap 16.0 RC appeared earlier this week. Leap 16 is quite a bold departure from previous versions of openSUSE and indeed from most other Linux distros: it eliminates a lot of old and established components that most distros share. It's not entirely legacy-free, but it's getting close. It does still look and feel like a SUSE distro, although many familiar elements are gone.

Leap 16 is Wayland-only, so there's a choice of just three desktops: GNOME, KDE Plasma, and an experimental version of Xfce with the [2]labwc compositor . When installing, there's also an option to install openSUSE Leap Micro 6.2. [3]OpenSUSE Leap Micro is a minimal immutable distro. The installer describes it as an ultra-reliable, lightweight operating system built for containerized and virtualized workloads . It's the fixed-release equivalent of [4]openSUSE MicroOS , which is the rolling-release immutable offering.

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The Leap 16 RC media also offers to install the immutable Leap Micro 6.2 Beta - Click to enlarge

Leap 16 is also 64-bit only, and by default won't even run 32-bit binaries. It requires CPUs capable of x86-64-v2 — we [6]explained the different levels back in 2022. This isn't too onerous: it even loaded the kernel on our trusty old Thinkpad T420, from 2011. Leap 16 uses kernel 6.12, currently the latest LTS version, configured with SELinux for additional security, in place of the easier AppArmor tool that openSUSE previously shared with Ubuntu. It defaults to creating GPT partitions, and in one of its few nods to older systems, it does still support BIOS-based hardware.

Leap 16 replaces a number of components that are familiar friends to long-term SUSE and openSUSE users. There's a new web-based installer, as we [7]reported was coming back in 2022. It's called Agama, as [8]we said in February 2024 . Now, it's here, and it looks pretty good. There's a brief glimpse of Firefox 140's address bar as it starts, and after that you'd never know (unless you press Ctrl+T for a new tab, say). You can also access the installer remotely, and if you press Ctrl+Alt+F3 to F6, the text virtual console tells you the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses you could connect to, and even a QR code for easy access.

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If you switch virtual consoles, you can see how to connect to the Agama installer from another machine. - Click to enlarge

We found it very slightly annoying that we needed to click buttons to confirm many of our choices, but it's clean and attractive, and it does the job. The familiar SUSE YaST tool which the Reg FOSS desk has been using for alarmingly close to 30 years is gone by default, replaced by the Red Hat-sponsored Cockpit. Even for those happy to configure their OS by editing text files, YaST 2 still provided the graphical software-package management interface. That's now replaced by a [10]new app called Myrlyn . We [11]warned you these changes were coming but we suspect we'll miss YaST – and that we won't be alone.

Leap 16 has been a while coming. It's about seven years since [12]Leap 15 in 2018 , and it's over a year since [13]we looked at Leap 15.6 . This is the first RC of several – the announcement says that "Users can expect a few more builds before we announce our Gold Master candidate." As openSUSE Leap has been since [14]Leap 15.3 back in 2021 , it's synced with the paid-for SUSE Linux Enterprise distro, with which it shares a common core. That means that Leap 16 can't ship until SLES 16 is ready. The [15]openSUSE roadmap says that the Gold Master will arrive on 24th September, and the full release on 1st October. According to the announcement, this is "shortly before SLES 16.0."

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There are already some preliminary [17]release notes , which mention some other legacy tech that's gone: for instance, SysV init.d scripts are no longer supported. The structure of openSUSE's online repositories and how they are defined and added has been revamped, too.

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Some of the older software that's been removed can be installed as optional extras. There are packages in the repos for YaST, X.org X11, AppArmor, various X11 window managers and so on. You can still have these things if you wish – but they are likely disappear in future releases. An optional kernel parameter can re-enable 32-bit binary support.

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Leap 16.0 RC has a starkly limited set of Wayland-capable desktops: just three. - Click to enlarge

We gave it a brief spin in a VM, using the Xfce desktop. It installed under VirtualBox 7.1, but after a reboot, the graphical desktop failed to start with a compositor error. It was happier under VMware, and we found that Xfce 4.20 ran pretty well. Window management keyboard shortcuts (such as Alt+space, X to maximize) didn't work, but the window-management menu responds to the cursor keys. With a few clicks to make minor tweaks, we got a desktop with a vertical taskbar that worked well enough that we suspect we could cope. The other options are GNOME 48, and KDE Plasma – in this preliminary release, 6.3.4.

For a mainstream general-purpose distro, Leap 16 is shaping up to be unusually restricted and legacy-free. While some more hobbyist-oriented distros aimed at more techie users offer multiple tiling compositors and so on, the choice to go Wayland-only shows how few rich desktop environments work with the new display protocol yet: GNOME, KDE Plasma, and an experimental Xfce session, and that's it. Although some distros already include COSMIC, System76's new Wayland-only desktop is still at [21]Alpha 7 , not even in beta yet, so it's not ready for prime time.

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Leap 16 RC's Xfce with Labwc, showing a vertical deskbar and the new Myrlyn graphical package manager. - Click to enlarge

It's a shame to see [23]YaST go. It is pretty old – it was first released 30 years ago – and in 2007 it was [24]ported from YCP , mainly to Ruby – but it seems that wasn't enough to save it. Without YaST, Leap 16 feels a little less like openSUSE. On the other hand, SUSE is one of the smaller players in the enterprise Linux world, and replacing its elderly in-house tool with the Red Hat-backed [25]Cockpit project could save the company a significant amount of work.

Leap 16 represents a bold modernization strategy, and it could work. We wrote about [26]SUSE's strategies for immutability last year. By leaning heavily on the advanced snapshot capabilities of Btrfs, SUSE is able to offer a Linux distro which can operate both in a conventional mode with a writable root partition, and also as an immutable OS.

[27]The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive

[28]Debian isn't waiting for 2038 to blow up, switches to 64-bit time for everything

[29]Microsoft-owned GitHub: Open source needs funding. Ya think?

[30]Three ways to run Windows apps on a Linux box

This contrasts starkly with the efforts of Canonical and Red Hat. Ubuntu Core is entirely built from Snap packages, and we note that the [31]long-rumored desktop edition still hasn't surfaced. Meanwhile, the [32]Fedora Atomic Desktops are still somewhat experimental: the Fedora site says: "These editions are supported but not yet a part of the official Fedora editions." Instead of RPM, Fedora Atomic uses OStree to manage the OS's component files, and under the hood, [33]OStree deployments look very unlike conventional Unix filesystems – in this, it reminds us of the [34]strange Nix storage structure . It puts us in mind of one of the guidelines of many an experienced sysadmin: if the fancy software breaks, can you go in there and fix and maintain it by hand? With either of these, the answer is "almost certainly not".

SUSE's powerful and versatile system is close to shipping. We noticed that the company no longer mentions its [35]"Adaptable Linux Platform" , whose [36]second preview was late 2022 . The closest thing we can find now are a few mentions of its [37]SUSE Framework One . We suspect it's scaled back its ambitions slightly, and that may be no bad thing, because Leap 16 looks to have impressive potential all of its own. ®

Get our [38]Tech Resources



[1] https://news.opensuse.org/2025/08/04/leap-16-rc/

[2] https://labwc.github.io/

[3] https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Leap_Micro

[4] https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:MicroOS

[5] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/08/06/leap16rc-product.jpg

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/26/suse_adaptable_linux_platform/

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/23/new_preview_versions_of_suses/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/22/distro_installer_news_roundup/

[9] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/08/06/leap16rc-text.png

[10] https://github.com/shundhammer/myrlyn

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/opensuse_ditches_deepin/

[12] https://news.opensuse.org/2018/04/18/opensuse-leap-15-release-scheduled-for-may-25/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/sle_opensuse_15_6/

[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/04/opensuse_leaps_to_153_now/

[15] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Roadmap#Schedule_for_Leap_16.0

[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJTNlQjFu5hWFzbG10n6ewAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[17] https://susedoc.github.io/release-notes/leap-16.0/html/release-notes/index.html

[18] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJTNlQjFu5hWFzbG10n6ewAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[19] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJTNlQjFu5hWFzbG10n6ewAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[20] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/08/06/leap16rc-desktop.jpg

[21] https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-alpha-7-never-been-beta

[22] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/08/06/leap16rc-xfce.png

[23] https://yast.opensuse.org/

[24] https://news.opensuse.org/2007/08/29/yast-independence-of-ycp/

[25] https://cockpit-project.org/

[26] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/opensuse_confirms_leap_16/

[27] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/27/the_european_union_linux_desktop/

[28] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/y2k38_bug_debian/

[29] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/microsoftowned_github_says_open_source/

[30] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/28/three_ways_to_win_on_lin/

[31] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/06/ubuntu_core_desktop_waiting/

[32] https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/

[33] https://ostreedev.github.io/ostree/deployment/

[34] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/14/nix_forked_but_over_politics/

[35] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/05/suse_alp_v001/

[36] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/23/new_preview_versions_of_suses/

[37] https://www.suse.com/c/suse-linux-enterprise-server-25-years-of-enterprise-linux/

[38] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/