On Thu, 8 Mar 2018 09:39:04 +1100 Karl Cheng wrote:

On 8 March 2018 at 08:06, Kaigue7 wrote:

...

Will Leap 15 keep Kernel 4.12 or will it get an upgrade to a more recent kernel once it's launched?

From what I understand SUSE will be maintaining the 4.12 kernel itself, so effectively it will become another LTS version.

The next kernel update should be in about 2 years time with Leap 15.2, just like how Leap 42.2 got a new kernel.

...

Why not use the 4.14 LTS?

As to why 4.14 wasn't used, the openSUSE release team has decided to use whatever kernel SUSE uses unless there is a significant justification.

And for why SUSE decided to use 4.12, only a SUSE employee can provide a real answer, but if I had to guess, they might have wanted more time to audit/stabilise/patch the kernel for enterprise use.

Hi, Ex-SUSE sales engineer here. Why will Leap 15 have 4.12 instead of 4.14 ? Long answer.. sorry. I want the larger community to _really_ understand the thinking behind these kinds of decisions. On the enterprise side you need _lots_ more time for hardware and ISV certification. If SUSE were to wait for 4.14 or switch to 4.14, that would cause both types of certifications to be delayed or force the engineering to be redone. I can speak from experience that the hardware side, providing certification is an expense for the hardware partners, both in engineer time and having the hardware available. For example, I worked with another SUSE engineer on certifying a _single_ blade server and a large storage cabinet. It took took three engineers a few days to get everything properly certified. SUSE flew one of my colleagues across the country to Silicon Valley and me from Seattle. Rough guess is > 10,000 USD in overall costs for a single blade system. I'm not sure if everyone in the openSUSE community is aware of the kinds of hardware certified for SUSE Enterprise Linux, but some of it can be quite exotic and very very expensive. Here are two links to the kind of hardware I am mentioning: 1.https://www.hpe.com/us/en/solutions/sap-hana.html SAP HANA pretty much runs exclusively on SLES. So a 32TB single image system can ingest 5 or 6x the amount of data compressed and hold it memory. So, you are talking about 150 - 180 Tb of data in ram so real time analytics can be performed on the data. Testing that kind of beast requires weeks of engineering. And you need the hardware vendor to make available a multi million dollar machine. 2. SGI systems. SGI was bought by HPE, but these are NUMA systems and can in theory handle 64TB of ram on one single Linux kernel image. https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/05/11/tgac-installs-largest-sgi-uv-300-supercom... One the software side, certain application stacks from software vendors can require many weeks to get certified. They might run certain kinds of stress tests or other QA testing to ensure themselves everything is OK. After all, the software vendor themselves are making a certain level of guarantee to their customers on compatibility and stability they must uphold. A software failure for their customers could cost millions in lost business. So, from the enterprise side of deciding a kernel version is an enormous engineering lift requiring all kinds of coordination internally, as well as with customers and partners. These kinds of decisions are not made lightly. Coming from the openSUSE community, once on the other side of the firewall so to speak, I learned to appreciate the amazing skill set of the SUSE R&D team, along with the product managers and alliance teams who support software and hardware partners. Those partners consistently expressed their appreciation on how easy it was for them to work with SUSE as a partner. For the openSUSE community, we are lucky to be able to leverage this kind of engineering resource. It is literally a many million dollar investment _and_ SUSE not just donates the enterprise code which makes up Leap, but it wants openSUSE to succeed. This comes from the CEO on down. SUSE enterprise loves openSUSE. Moreover, you can be assured there will be probably thousands of back ports from later kernels into 4.12 for security and hardware enablement. They did the same in 4.4 for Leap 42.x. Sorry for the long read, but I did want folks to understand the real reasoning for these kinds of decisions. Peter -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Op donderdag 8 maart 2018 04:20:40 CET schreef Peter Linnell:

On Thu, 8 Mar 2018 09:39:04 +1100

Karl Cheng wrote:

...

On 8 March 2018 at 08:06, Kaigue7 wrote:

...

Will Leap 15 keep Kernel 4.12 or will it get an upgrade to a more recent kernel once it's launched?

From what I understand SUSE will be maintaining the 4.12 kernel itself, so effectively it will become another LTS version.

The next kernel update should be in about 2 years time with Leap 15.2, just like how Leap 42.2 got a new kernel.

...

Why not use the 4.14 LTS?

As to why 4.14 wasn't used, the openSUSE release team has decided to use whatever kernel SUSE uses unless there is a significant justification.

And for why SUSE decided to use 4.12, only a SUSE employee can provide a real answer, but if I had to guess, they might have wanted more time to audit/stabilise/patch the kernel for enterprise use.

Hi,

Ex-SUSE sales engineer here.

Why will Leap 15 have 4.12 instead of 4.14 ?

Long answer.. sorry. I want the larger community to _really_ understand the thinking behind these kinds of decisions.

On the enterprise side you need _lots_ more time for hardware and ISV certification. If SUSE were to wait for 4.14 or switch to 4.14, that would cause both types of certifications to be delayed or force the engineering to be redone.

I can speak from experience that the hardware side, providing certification is an expense for the hardware partners, both in engineer time and having the hardware available.

For example, I worked with another SUSE engineer on certifying a _single_ blade server and a large storage cabinet. It took took three engineers a few days to get everything properly certified. SUSE flew one of my colleagues across the country to Silicon Valley and me from Seattle. Rough guess is > 10,000 USD in overall costs for a single blade system.

I'm not sure if everyone in the openSUSE community is aware of the kinds of hardware certified for SUSE Enterprise Linux, but some of it can be quite exotic and very very expensive.

Here are two links to the kind of hardware I am mentioning:

1.https://www.hpe.com/us/en/solutions/sap-hana.html

SAP HANA pretty much runs exclusively on SLES. So a 32TB single image system can ingest 5 or 6x the amount of data compressed and hold it memory. So, you are talking about 150 - 180 Tb of data in ram so real time analytics can be performed on the data.

Testing that kind of beast requires weeks of engineering. And you need the hardware vendor to make available a multi million dollar machine.

2. SGI systems. SGI was bought by HPE, but these are NUMA systems and can in theory handle 64TB of ram on one single Linux kernel image. https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/05/11/tgac-installs-largest-sgi-uv-300-supercom puter-life-sciences/

One the software side, certain application stacks from software vendors can require many weeks to get certified. They might run certain kinds of stress tests or other QA testing to ensure themselves everything is OK. After all, the software vendor themselves are making a certain level of guarantee to their customers on compatibility and stability they must uphold. A software failure for their customers could cost millions in lost business.

So, from the enterprise side of deciding a kernel version is an enormous engineering lift requiring all kinds of coordination internally, as well as with customers and partners. These kinds of decisions are not made lightly.

Coming from the openSUSE community, once on the other side of the firewall so to speak, I learned to appreciate the amazing skill set of the SUSE R&D team, along with the product managers and alliance teams who support software and hardware partners.

Those partners consistently expressed their appreciation on how easy it was for them to work with SUSE as a partner.

For the openSUSE community, we are lucky to be able to leverage this kind of engineering resource. It is literally a many million dollar investment _and_ SUSE not just donates the enterprise code which makes up Leap, but it wants openSUSE to succeed. This comes from the CEO on down. SUSE enterprise loves openSUSE.

Moreover, you can be assured there will be probably thousands of back ports from later kernels into 4.12 for security and hardware enablement. They did the same in 4.4 for Leap 42.x.

Sorry for the long read, but I did want folks to understand the real reasoning for these kinds of decisions.

Peter Thank you for your elaborate response. With Ludwig's response, those who asked should have their definite answer now.

-- Gertjan Lettink, a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team Linux user #548252 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On 2018-03-08 23:57, Kaigue7 wrote:

Thank you for your time explaining this decision process. Is there a chance that this could go into some kind of FAQ on the openSuse homepage?

Especially the part that the kernel gets backports is quite relevant to a lot of users as I've seen comments about OpenSuse Leap not being recommended because of the 'dated' kernel.

Good point. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)

On Friday, 9 March 2018 14:24 Richard Brown wrote:

On 8 March 2018 at 23:57, Kaigue7 wrote:

...

Thank you for your time explaining this decision process. Is there a chance that this could go into some kind of FAQ on the openSuse homepage?

Especially the part that the kernel gets backports is quite relevant to a lot of users as I've seen comments about OpenSuse Leap not being recommended because of the 'dated' kernel.

There's always a 'chance'.. it just requires someone to do it

Proposed changes to the www.opensuse.org page need to be submitted to https://github.com/openSUSE/landing-page Proposed changes to software.opensuse.org need to be submitted to https://github.com/openSUSE/software-o-o

The Leap pages on wiki are open for editing at any time https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Leap and already has an FAQ section

If someone wants to write such explanation (which would be nice, IMHO, as we have had this kind of discussion with 42.2, 42.3 and 15.0 (not sure about 42.1) so that there is a good chance it's going to be a regular topic for each future Leap release), they can find some inspiration here: https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2016-05/msg00398.html (note that the 42.2 numbers would be much higher now, that mail was sent when 42.2 was still relatively new). If there is interest, I can also provide updated numbers for 42.2, 42.3 and 15.0. Michal Kubeček -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Any suggestion about what page to write this information in?

I'd think https://en.opensuse.org/Features_15.0 is where it best fits. However, not many will find it since www.opensuse.org --> Leap --> More information doesn't have buttons * "Feature highlights" --> https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:15.0/Features * "Technical overview" --> https://en.opensuse.org/Features_15.0. Also, it's confusing that there are 2 wiki pages with "Features" in the name. Joachim -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Thanks for the explanation. Carlos should be able now to choose where to add the information on the kernel choice. Where would be the best place to make a feature request for a button to the feature highlights on the opensuse.org --> Leap --> More information page? I looked at bugzilla but it doesn't seem to have a category for the main website. Joachim -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

www.opensuse.org is at https://github.com/openSUSE/landing-page You can file issues there but AFAIK there is currently nobody who maintains the web site anymore. Volunteers welcome of course.

I was going to look at why News don't show up anymore, but gulpfile was broken, maybe somebody more clever can work out what's wrong with it (I doubt it's on my side only). ​LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On 2018-03-13 14:06, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2018-03-13 11:06, Joachim Wagner wrote:

...

...

Any suggestion about what page to write this information in?

An independent page?

Maybe hanging from here: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Leap On "Common questions". -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)

"Features_15.0" has many paragraphs without text.

It's work in progress. You can see on Features_42.3 and Portal:42.3/Features what these pages should look like at release time.

[...] applies to every Leap release, not only this one. An independent page?

Lot's of content is copied and adjusted between these pages from version to version. If you only write a sentence or two it should be fine to just add it on the features page and it probably will be copied for the next version. If you (or someone else) is willing to revisit what was said and linked in this thread and write a few paragraphs it definitely deserves a page on its own. On the feature page it could then simply say "kernel 4.12 with backports of drivers and bugfixes provided by SLE" and link to the page with the full story. Joachim -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On 2018-03-27 07:26, Sébastien 'sogal' Poher wrote:

Hi all,

Le jeudi 08 mars 2018 à 11:57:41, Kaigue7 a écrit :

...

Thank you for your time explaining this decision process. Is there a chance that this could go into some kind of FAQ on the openSuse homepage?

Especially the part that the kernel gets backports is quite relevant to a lot of users as I've seen comments about OpenSuse Leap not being recommended because of the 'dated' kernel.

French speaking readers here might be interested to know that I wrote an article based on this explanation :

https://www.alionet.org/content.php?813-Comment-sont-choisies-les-versions-d...

or

https://www.volted.net/comment-sont-choisies-les-versions-du-kernel-d-opensu...

I added a link to the first one in the Leap portal Q/A at https://fr.opensuse.org/Portal:Leap/Topics

I also wrote one at https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Leap/Leap_kernel_version -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.3 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)

If both distributions (Leap and Tumbleweed) are "well tested by openQA", "Both distributions are fully capable of being used on a Desktop...", "both can be relied upon to work" and with Tumbleweed currently using kernel 4.15.7 then why is Leap 15 going to be "held back", so to speak, by being unleashed on the world with with an "aged" kernel 4.12?

BC Certainly because You as community member doesn't give a S.. to work

On dimanche, 11 mars 2018 07.47:05 h CET Basil Chupin wrote: like reporting bugs, doing the package maintenance. Using bits to build bytes here doesn't count. -- Bruno Friedmann Ioda-Net Sàrl www.ioda-net.ch Bareos Partner, openSUSE Member, fsfe fellowship GPG KEY : D5C9B751C4653227 irc: tigerfoot -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Op zondag 11 maart 2018 07:47:05 CET schreef Basil Chupin:

On 08/03/18 19:01, Ludwig Nussel wrote:

...

Kaigue7 wrote:

...

Will Leap 15 keep Kernel 4.12 or will it get an upgrade to a more recent kernel once it's launched? Why not use the 4.14 LTS?

As others have pointed out Leap will use whatever SLE uses. The version number is actually not that meaningful as SUSE kernel engineers do a lot of backporting and hardware enablement.

If you have the chance to test Leap 15 please take this kernel under stress. If there are any issues please file bug reports. The majority of Leap kernel bugs are SLE kernel bugs so they have to be taken serious.

I have read what Peter Linnell wrote but still find it difficult to reconcile what he wrote with which kernel ought to be included in Leap 15 when it is released. The reason is that he is stressing why SUSE needs to have the 4.12.x kernel but we are talking about openSUSE which is supposed to be a Community effort and less likely (I am assuming) to be used in a commercial environment unlike SUSE.

The other thing of course is the "fly in the ointment" called Tumbleweed. Tumbleweed at the moment comes with kernel 4.15.7 -- well ahead of even the 4.14 talked about here.

Furthermore, one reads this -- about Leap and Tumbleweed -- when one brings up the openSUSE webpage ( https://software.opensuse.org/ ):

(/quote)

Both distributions are well tested by openQA as well as by human openSUSE contributors so both can be relied upon to work.

Both distributions are fully capable of being used on a Desktop PC, laptop, server, or in the cloud.

If you are still not sure, download openSUSE Leap

It is easy to switch to openSUSE Tumbleweed if you change your mind later.

(/unquote)

If both distributions (Leap and Tumbleweed) are "well tested by openQA", "Both distributions are fully capable of being used on a Desktop...", "both can be relied upon to work" and with Tumbleweed currently using kernel 4.15.7 then why is Leap 15 going to be "held back", so to speak, by being unleashed on the world with with an "aged" kernel 4.12? :-)

BC

Please Basil, stop. Peter has explain the reasoning behind all this clearly. IMNSHO we should be damned glad with SUSE sharing it's code base with openSUSE, instead of moaning about aged kernels. With all the backports, optimizations and fixes from SUSE, the actual kernel code isn't much different from 4.14 . The nature of Leap has also been explained over and over again. A renewed discussion is, again IMNSHO, absolutely unnecessary and useless. My $ 0.02 -- Gertjan Lettink, a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team Linux user #548252 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org