openSUSE Wants to Replace Leap With a New Offering
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openSUSE Leap is set to be replaced with a new option. Learn more about
it here.
Richard Brown, a long-time contributor to the openSUSE project, shared some results from a recent contributor survey.
It was about the interest and feasibility of replacing openSUSE Leap with a new community-built offering. Yes? A replacement to openSUSE Leap?
Interesting news, right? 😳
It's not shocking. The openSUSE team [hinted][1] at Leap being discontinued in **2022** with the introduction of the **Adaptable Linux Platform** (ALP). So, it was expected.
But, what are the options to replace openSUSE Leap with?
### A Derivative of Tumbleweed Likely to Replace Leap
As per the replacement proposal, we have two options:
* **Linarite** : _A regular old-fashioned release desktop distribution, likely with a narrower package selection than we're used to with Leap unless we find significantly more contributors to be able to support everything_
* **Slowroll** : _A derivative of Tumbleweed, built automatically as much as possible, using automation and metrics to copy packages from Tumbleweed only after certain conditions (max age, X weeks without change, etc). Basically an attempt to provide something less scary than full speed Tumbleweed._
However, the survey results show a mixed bag of opinions.
Most **users** choose " **Slowroll** " as a viable replacement going forward, which they would like to contribute to.
In contrast, **contributors** voted not to replace openSUSE Leap or use Tumbleweed instead.
But, when choosing one option, the contributors chose " **Linarite** ".
So, the users and existing contributors have different choices.
OpenSUSE decides to go with the users' preference as Slowroll, a rolling release distro. It would need more contributors than what the survey highlights as interested.
Richard also revealed that either of the **two replacements will need more effort than Leap** , and as of now, the **contributors interested in both options are fewer in number when compared to Leap**.
> Leap has struggled even with 61 folk contributing directly to the codebase and backports/PackageHub. And this is when we've had the SLE codebase to borrow from, which dramatically reduced the work required.
>
> Either Slowroll or Linarite would require considerably more packaging and maintenance work than Leap.
He also emphasized that **any Leap replacement should focus on desktop use cases** rather than trying to cater to both server and desktop.
### To Replace or Not?
The [announcement of survey results][2] challenges the community to answer if openSUSE should proceed with replacing Leap or not.
And, if they go ahead, can the community help them support it?
_💬_ _What do you think should be the final decision for openSUSE? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below._
