The openSUSE Release Team says openSUSE Leap 16.1 is close to its Release Candidate (RC) stage, with general availability planned for November.

Leap Release Manager Luboš Kocman told the openSUSE project mailing list that the next build was expected to qualify as the RC. He said it should reach openQA, which is openSUSE’s automated testing system soon.

Kocman said recent changes merged into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 16.1 had caused an additional delay.

The RC build is expect to arrive this week.

Testers can help by grabbing the latest image from get.opensuse.org/testing, picking a test from the Leap 16.1 manual test plan (high-priority and untried tests help most), and recording their result with their openSUSE username and build number; participants will receive an openSUSE Kudos badge as a thank-you.

The official roadmap had the RC build set for Sept. 16. The build is now running about a week behind that date.

The team plans to produce about one build per week during the RC phase to find and fix any remaining release blockers.

The release team says testing matters most at this stage. Users and contributors can help by:

• Running their usual workflows on the RC builds and reporting critical issues to openSUSE Bugzilla.
• Checking the non-blocking bug list for items assigned to them.

Saved bug queries and known issues are on the openSUSE Known Bugs 16.1 wiki page, and the full schedule is on the openSUSE Roadmap.

Leap 16.1 and SLES 16.1 will launch on the same day because of feedback from the Leap 16.0 release retrospective. Shipping together means Leap users won’t face a gap between the release and the first maintenance updates. Those updates arrive with the SLES 16.1 GA and flow directly to Leap.

What’s New: Notable Package Updates

Leap 16.1 brings a range of desktop, developer, and server updates compared with Leap 16.0:

Package	Leap 16.0	Leap 16.1
KDE Plasma	6.4.2	6.6.4
KDE Frameworks	6.16.0	6.25.0
Qt	6.9.1	6.11.0
GNOME Shell	48.4	48.8
LibreOffice	25.2.5	26.2.5
PipeWire	1.4.6	1.6.8
NetworkManager	1.52.0	1.54.3
GRUB	2.12	2.14
QEMU	10.0.13	11.0.3
Podman	5.4.2	5.8.2
LLVM	19	21
PHP	8.4.24	8.5.8
MariaDB	11.8.8	12.3.2
Samba	4.22.11	4.23.10
Git	2.51.0	2.53.0

KDE users get the biggest jump: two Plasma feature releases and nine Frameworks releases, built on a newer Qt 6.11. On the server and virtualization side, QEMU moves to a new major version, MariaDB jumps to the 12 series, and PHP moves to 8.5.

There are currently no known release blockers.

The original announcement and follow-up are in the openSUSE project mailing list thread.

banzainetsurfer hat dem Pool ein Foto hinzugefügt:

Eiheiji (永平寺) is a large temple complex and active monastery standing on a cedar-covered slope in the mountains just outside Fukui City. The temple was founded in 1244 by Dogen, the Buddhist scholar who introduced Soto Zen from China to Japan in 1228. Eiheiji is one of two head temples of the Soto Sect of Zen Buddhism (the other was formerly Sojiji Temple on the Noto Peninsula before its head functions were transferred to Yokohama).

The sizable temple complex consists of over 70 buildings, which are connected to each other by covered walkways that protect from the heavy snow seen in the region from December to March. The warmer months bring lush vegetation to the temple grounds, which are especially beautiful from late October to early November when the autumn colors typically peak.

Source: www.japan-guide.com/e/e6601.html