Tumbleweed Has Six Snapshots, Leap Gets Quarterly Respin

This week was filled with good news surrounding openSUSE.

On top of openSUSE Leap 15.4 reaching its beta build phase, rolling release Tumbleweed had six snapshots that updated a few networking packages and Leap 15.3 is putting out its second quarterly respin iso.

The latest snapshot is 20220302. NetworkManager 1.36.0 reworked the handling of Layer 3 configurations that results in more robust behavior when addressing information from multiple sources (DHCP, manually configured, VPN) when applied simultaneously. Performance and memory should also slightly improve with the update. PipeWire 0.3.47 had a fix that removed infinite loops and the buffer size handling was fixed that made some applications stutter. Other packages to update in the snapshot were nftables 1.0.2, ruby3.1 3.1.1, xscreensaver 6.03 and a couple of Python Package Index version updates.

Caching proxy squid 5.4.1 was updated in the 20220301 snapshot; the package had some code cleanup and made some visible developer changes. Window manager screen 4.9.0 eliminated a Common Vulnerability and Exposure that made a denial of service attack possible via a crafted UTF-8 character sequence; this was fixed by replacing the dropped combchar.diff. Other packags to update were autoyast2 4.4.32, yast2-trans and more.

A handful of RubyGem RSpec packages were updated in the 20220228 snapshot and the branding-openSUSE package was updated, which drop systemd icons for the distribution logos. The fwupd package updated to version 1.7.6. The firmware updating package added several new features like the addition of a flag for UEFI devices that never want a capsule header auto-added. It also fixed loading flashrom devices in coreboot mode. The 4.4.45 yast2-installation update fixed an issue with a VNC server during installation.

The 20220227 snapshot updated firewalld to version 1.1.0. The new version added http3 and added a couple service definitions for Web Services Dynamic Discovery. The data storage package hdf5 1.10.8 added new build tools and fixed a few vulnerabilities like CVE-2018-17432, which would have allowed an attacker to cause a denial of service via a crafted hdf5 file. A switch to f-strings was made in the update of urlscan 0.9.9 and the package also updated setup.py.

Optimizing the performance of the thumbnail resizing algorithm was done in the ImageMagick 7.1.0.26 update, which arrived in snapshot 20220226. Some unrecognized coloring was also fixed in image editor. The 3D graphics package Mesa fixed some regressions in the 21.3.7 update. The Embedded Linux library (ell) 0.49 version fixed an issue affecting DHCP server. A dependency of npm 8.4.1 was added to the update of nodejs17 17.5.0 and experimental support to the fetch Application Programming Interfaces was added; this adds a --experimental-fetch flag that installs the fetch, Request, Response and Headers globals. Several Berkeley Packet Filter adjustments were made in the 5.16.11 Linux Kernel updated. The Kernel also made some fixes affecting Direct Rendering Manager drivers. Other packages to update in the snapshot were freerdp 2.6.0, libzypp 17.29.5, zypper 1.14.52 and several translations for for yast2-trans.

The snapshot from last Friday, 20220225, updated ModemManager from version 1.14.8 to 1.18.6. The DBus-activated daemon that controls mobile broadband devices and connections can run now in a ‘quick suspend/resume’ mode; no explicit data disconnection is triggered on suspend, and no explicit device re-probing is done from scratch. Instead, the daemon tries to refresh the state of all interfaces upon suspend. Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn added support for the T99W175 5G wireless module, which includes a built-in FCC unlock procedure, and Foxconn also added a new Intel MBIM Qualcomm Device Update firmware method. Fetchmail 6.4.27 updated Romanian translations and bumped up wolfSSL to version 5.1.1 in order to pull in security fixes. The 2.2.0 rubygem-faraday package was the only other package to update in the snapshot.

Leap Quarterly Respin

The quarterly respin of openSUSE Leap 15.3 iso image is expected to arrive soon. The first quarterly respin of the iso was published in October. Respins refresh the iso images based on General Availability (GA) release and contain all the updates for the past quarter. Respins allow users to take advantage of the latest bug fixes and updates immediately, which helps reduce bandwidth use of the download and online updates after an installation. More information about the release of the quarterly builds can be found on the Leap Roadmap.

Users can download the updated iso at get.opensuse.org.