Daniel Nashed's Blog

A First Look at SUSE Leap/Enterprise 16 Shipping in Fall 2025

SUSE is preparing to release Leap/Enterprise 16 in November 2025.

A release candidate is already available, although I haven’t seen a container image yet. Other vendors often release container images first to make testing easier.
SUSE skipped providing 15.7 for openSUSE Leap because version 16.0 is around the corner, although the enterprise container image of 15.7 is still available.

I gave Leap 16.0 a quick test in a Proxmox VM, and there were no major surprises in terms of compatibility—especially compared to Debian 13, which I tested recently.

SUSE Enterprise remains one of the two fully validated Linux distributions, along with Red Hat Enterprise, which makes this release candidate worth an early look.

Since SUSE Enterprise and openSUSE Leap share the same code base, I focused on Leap—it’s much easier to get hands-on access (Download: https://get.opensuse.org/leap/16.0/)

Installation

The installation menu has been completely reworked.
It’s now cleaner, HTML-based, and even easier to navigate than in previous versions.

Package Versions

The included package versions look solid and align with what you’d expect from a modern distribution:
 

• Kernel 6.12.0
• glibc 2.40
• OpenSSL 3.5.0 (8 Apr 2025)
• curl 8.14.1

This should ensure compatibility with current workloads.

Docker Build/Run-Time Support

The official Docker convenience installer didn’t work.
However, SUSE 16.0 ships with an up-to-date Docker version: 28.3.2-ce.

My container setup script reported the failure of the convenience installer. Hopefully, Docker will update their scripts before SUSE 16.0 ships.
If not, I’ll add a work-around into my setup scripts.

Conclusion

From a Domino perspective, everything looks good so far.
The kernel and glibc versions are comparable to RHEL 10, so no surprises should be expected once SUSE 16 officially ships.

Personally, I’m moving toward Ubuntu for some use cases—mainly because of built-in ZFS support.
Still, openSUSE Leap/Enterprise 16 looks like it will be an excellent platform choice for an European based Enterprise Linux.

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