A beta version of openSUSE Leap 15.0 is now available
Leap 15 finally got a fresh look and with a Plasma 5.12 beta version the default desktop environment got close to the target version. The base system also is pretty much complete. There are still two bigger changes known to be upcoming. One is rpm 4.14 that was only included in Tumbleweed two weeks ago. The other one is the combined /var subvolume for fresh installations.openSUSE Leap 15.0 Beta released
So overall Leap 15 now enters the Beta phase with Build 109.3 that reached the mirrors on Friday. Everyone is encouraged to download the current builds and help testing. In fact, this announcement was sent from a Leap 15.0 system already
As with 42.3, Leap 15.0 will also use a rolling development model until it's final build. That means no concrete milestones but new builds as soon as openQA gives a green light. Watch out for announcements of new builds on the opensuse-factory mailinglist.
A known issue is, that upgrades from older versions lead to file conflict errors with renamed packages. So testing should focus on fresh installs until that is fixed. Also, when installing as dual boot with Windows on UEFI, the Windows entry may be missing from the bootloader menu.
Since this is a major update compared to 42, this time even more testing is required! Please check your your own use case, work load, software deployment, hardware support etc early so there's a chance left to get it fixed before the release. To help with that, live images are in the works and will be announced separately when ready. Also, please have a look at the test plan and report your findings there. Use bugzilla to report bugs⁵. Issues that deserve discussion in a broader audience should be taken to the opensuse-factory
mailinglist.
If you are maintaining a package in Factory that is not in Leap 15 yet, feel free to submit it to openSUSE:Leap:15.0. Contrariwise if your package ended up in Leap 15 while it shouldn't, please talk to the release team.
Regarding the schedule, the goal would be to be ready to release in May. Since the openSUSE conference is there too, it would be a good opportunity to work together to apply some final polishing. Especially documentation in the wiki, release notes and translations. After a bug screening session the decision whether to release or not would be made at the conference.
With that, the beta phase would last from now until mid April. Bigger version updates should be done by end of February to leave some time for testing. The time between mid April until the release should be used for bug fixing only.
