On 1/16/24 07:39, Dan Čermák via openSUSE Factory wrote:
Eric Schirra <ecsos@opensuse.org> writes:

Am 16. Januar 2024 09:30:25 MEZ schrieb Simon Lees <sflees@suse.de>:

On 1/16/24 14:43, Lew Wolfgang wrote:
On 1/15/24 20:03, Lew Wolfgang wrote:
On 1/15/24 19:26, Simon Lees wrote:
Will the anticipated upgrade from 15 to 16 support these use cases? Or,
should we start looking for alternatives now?  I really want to stay with
openSUSE if at all possible, but I have a responsibility to my users to
maintain continuity of operations going forward.  Is it time for (shudder)
RHEL or a BSD?  BTW, before 1998 we used Sun Solaris and SunOS
starting in 1986.

ALP as it sits now is very different to ALP as it was first announced, alongside the read only transactional MicroOS style distro's that will be built from ALP, the successor to SLES 15 will also be built from ALP which is what Leap 16 will be built from.

So containers won't be necessary, in many cases Upgrades from Leap 15 will be supported and you should expect an experience that's much closer to Leap 15 then that of MicroOS, although it won't be completely the same
I know it's too soon to say, but are there guesses for how it will be different?
BTW, our users use KDE., Thunderbird, and SmartCards.
I forgot to mention that we also use X11 display forwarding for remote displays.
As I understand things, Wayland didn't support this, does it now? Will X11 be in 16?
I have a version of X11 building on top of the ALP code base and my plan is to submit it to 16, I also still have several usecases for it. From my research I haven't found a reason why it would be any harder to put KDE on top of Leap 16 then it is for Leap 15 (some decisions around lifecycle might actually make it easier). But at the end of the day that will be up to the KDE team.

Similarly Thunderbird will be up to its current maintainer, but as a worst case you'd need to move to the flatpack if the maintainer decided it was too much effort. This announcement is new and much of the codebase isn't even there on the SUSE ALP side yet so its still somewhat hard for maintainers to gauge the amount of effort they will need to put in.
So it does.
Even Suse people have use cases that don't work with Alp. First reason not to use Leap anymore.
No more KDE under Leap.
Second reason not to be able to use Leap anymore.
No Thunderbird or Firefox under Leap. Only via flatpack? Third reason for no longer being able to use Leap.
Has anyone ever thought about how to install different software (Thunderbird or Firefox etc.) if you are in an internal company network so that you cannot access the Internet?
How can LeapAlp be used sensibly?
This is all pure speculation. SLE 16 is still under development with
many cornerstones still not being fully defined. There will most
certainly be a Firefox in it (it is currently in the ALP codestream) and
there might be a KDE in it, if someone sends it there from Factory. This
is all not different from the way the current Leap works (or doesn't
work, depending on how you see it).

Please, let's not freak out over rumors. Leap 16 will probably come and
it will probably be very similar to what you are used to.

You might have to use a flatpak or two, but I have not yet given up hope
that we'll be able to build these on OBS.

Thanks to everyone who's chimed in on this.  My take at this point is that
Leap 16 "may" be an acceptable successor to 15, but that it might not,
especially in a business environment.

Given my situation it's prudent to hope for the best, but to prepare for
the worst.  Looking for an acceptable replacement for 15 now makes
good business sense.  I assume that 15 and 16 will be out simultaneously
and give us time to test 16 for suitability, but also have time to jump
ship if necessary.  Note that my customer absolutely requires a actively
maintained operating system, so skating along on the last version of 15
after EOL is not an option.

Thanks again for everyone's help on this, I truly hope that everything
works out okay.

Regards,
Lew