A new version of openSUSE Leap 16 is coming soon, Leap 16.1,the first minor release the 16 family will receive,until EOL with 17.1 .
If you want to know more about it,you can read the official RC article:
or try the distro:
DISCLAMER: the current stable release,openSUSE Leap 16 is available and the one you should try,this is an RC and some issues may be encountered,every Leap release has a 2 years support and it’ll become EOL in 2027 with 16.2 .
I used openSUSE for a couple of years and i use it as my daily driver,i tried all their available versions(both normal and immutable),this review isn’t based on what i heard but what i experienced,this is my personal take onthe distro.
openSUSE Leap 16.1 RC is the latest iteration you can try or install on your system,still an RC but it comes with new interesting features and package versions, a small recap of the features i consider important:
- Immutable installation
- Agama’s unattended installation process
- Updated packages
- Auto install iso
…
I installed the system directly on my main machine,no VM’s,this is based on real world experience and usage,i suggest you not to do it, if you’re not used to openSUSE or the tools used in this review.
IMMUTABLE INSTALLATION
The installation process can be an issue if you have an nvidia card,you can find the parameter for kernel boot in the official leap 16 release notes:
On my system i used the check installation media option,it was straight forward,even with an nvidia gpu.
Just select the options you want,one feature it does quite well is the language and keyboard support,no more scrolling in the infinite listsjust type the language and it’ll pop up.
For the immutable installation,select the option provided at the installer first page,that’s how you select the type of system,some example images(screenshots made from a virtual machine install ) :
The immutable option can be used with every DE available and pattern selected,you can mix them and match them but you can still install a minimal version of the distro and install your packages/patterns on top,unlike other opensuse offerings based on tumbleweed/micro os that have a strict set of packages and a single desktop you can’t remove(Aeon,Kalpa).
The older openSUSE Leap micro,available as of today in a different iso,is integrated to provide the immutable option,thanks to SLFO which provides the common base shared by SLE and Leap.
Obviously,you have to deal with the differences,a desktop usage must get rid of the separated /var btrfs subvolume, as the home partition should have the space for any meaningfull usage,unless your system is for containers,as Leap micro and SLES micro were designed for.
I personally removed it to have a full size home and i can still use it fot every podman/distrobox container i want.
AGAMA’S UNATTENDED INSTALLATION
Agama is the installer that replaced yast and the auto-yast option,now you can have a more user friendly installer that supports modern and older features,for more information:
The unattended installation process is the replacement of auto yast,agama is able to install a system without user interaction and it’s configuration profiles can use either JSON or Jsonnet,you can have a fully scripted install and inject the installation profile into the iso image.
You can access the script made by the installer,just clicking on the top right icon:
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
The updated packages are welcome,gnome is now at 48.8 ,kde is updated to 6.6.4.
I like the immutable pardigm employed by SUSE,unlike rpm-ostree used by fedora and rhel variants,it’s based on their in house snapper tool tightly integrated with the zypper package manager and the transactional-update used by these distros,automatic updates can be used,it has many features and tight integration with systemd tools like systemd soft reboot and many others that won’t be talked into this review,it would be too long to read 
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I choose the immutable option to reduce even more the time spent managing my system,which was really low with Leap 16, now it’ll be even lower…
THIS IS THE ONLY STABLE DISTRO avaialble with an official immutable option(not an enterprise only option).Leap gets patches and updates directly from sles,no hundreads of packages to update like tumbleweed,rollbacks are automated if something goes wrong and auto updates are enabled,with all the things we know and like from openSUSE regarding the btrfs file system,you can look at them with : systemctl list-timers and change things based on your personal taste.
SUSE is developing more options for cockpit to manager your system with it(it’s complete now,they want to make it a complete yast replacement),instead of using yast(old and difficult to mantain),it supports transactional-updates,containers and many more…even bootloader option!..since leap 16,myrlyn replaced yast package management, a modern,fast,easier to mantain application.
NVIDIA USERS:if you install the distro,you’ll have the official repo available oob,then you can install the driver version you want,leap is officially listed on the nvidia guide,you’ll have to add the cuda repo for the computing packages and nsight,take a look at the official docs to install the nvidia drivers:
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers#Manual_installation_via_command_line
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I’ll update the article when the official release will be available,in my opinion openSUSE is an underrated family of distros and lacks coverage,i did my own part guys 
…aside from the jokes,feel free to try it and tell me your opinions on it.