Marcus Meissner, SUSE’s engineering director, issued an announcement on the official website, announcing that the life cycle of openSUSE Leap 15.3 is coming to an end, recommending users to upgrade as soon as possible.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3 will end its regular maintenance and support phase on December 31, 2022. Since openSUSE Leap 15.3 uses the SLES 15 SP3 update, maintenance and security support for openSUSE Leap 15.3 will also end on December 31, 2022.

Because this version no longer accepts security and maintenance updates, people who continue to use the EOL version will be potentially exposed to vulnerabilities in the future. All users need to upgrade their systems to the latest minor version as soon as possible – openSUSE Leap 15.4 .

Users can upgrade from 15.3 to the latest 15.4 by downloading the iso image or following the upgrade instructions provided on the official website. openSUSE Leap 15.4 was released in June this year and will receive security patches and updates until the end of 2023. According to the roadmap, the subsequent version openSUSE Leap 15.5 is expected to be released in June 2023.

Users interested in moving from point releases to rolling releases can also take this opportunity to move from Leap to Tumbleweed (commonly known as “Tumbleweed”), which provides a large number of daily and frequent updates to all software in the official repositories. updated, and always on the “latest version”. The Tumbleweed version can be downloaded here.

Whether upgrading to Leap 15.4 or switching to Tumbleweed, it is best to back up the system and files in advance to avoid data loss due to upgrade failure.