ORLANDO — At SUSECON, SUSE, a leading provider of open and secure enterprise solutions, unveiled significant advancements in its Linux offerings, providing customers with flexibility and choice in their Linux IT infrastructure, even if they choose not to run SUSE Linux.
What’s that you say? Even if you don’t run SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)? Correct.
How To Ditch Red Hat
Let’s say you run an out-of-date version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or the long-out-of-date CentOS 7, and your business really — really — doesn’t want to update to another version in RHEL’s case or move to a CentOS clone, such as AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux, if you’ve been hanging on to CentOS.
SUSE, via its SUSE Multi-Linux Support, formerly Liberty Linux, will support your “obsolete” Linux distro. This support is available for standalone servers and on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Why would you do this? Simple, you’re happy with your old Linux and you don’t want to pay for an upgrade. As Deutsche Bank Head of UNIX Engineering, Peter Nuff said at a presentation at the show the bank partnered with SUSE to enhance its security. “Our adoption of SUSE Multi-Linux support delivers a robust and secure environment to meet our commitments as a financial services provider.” In short, with Multi-Linux Support you aren’t forced to migrate until you’re ready.
SUSE Proactive Support
Previously, this legacy support was available for major versions. Rick Spencer, SUSE general manager of business critical Linux, explained in an interview that SUSE had only supported “the latest minor release” of CentOS and RHEL, going forward, SUSE will also offer support for earlier minor releases. So, for example, the last version of CentOS was 7.9-2009, but say you’re still running 7.7-1908. Now, SUSE can help you with 7.7-1908.
That said, Spencer continued, “There’s some caveats. If you’re on the latest major release, you get what we call proactive support. We push everything that’s being fixed upstream to you. But if you’re on a previous minor release, we’re only going to do what we call reactive support, which are security packages. People who are on those minor releases, they don’t want a lot of patches. They only want the most important ones. That said, we also call it reactive because if a customer comes and says, ‘hey, like, this bug is really being nasty to us,’ we’ll fix it.”
Role-Based Access Control
To help manage these older distributions and brand new distros, in June, SUSE will release the latest version of SUSE Manager: SUSE Multi-Linux Manager 5.1: This update introduces improved workflow and performance enhancements. It allows customers to manage heterogeneous Linux environments more effectively, with better Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), enhanced Ansible integration, and bulk migration capabilities.
Of course, SUSE would be happy for you to use SLES, and there’s news here as well. First, SUSE will soon be releasing the last version of the SLES 15 line: SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 7 (SP7). This final service pack in the SUSE Linux 15 family provides the longest-term support, ensuring stability for business-critical workloads. It includes strengthened security features like Confidential Computing support and extended hardware enablement.
How long is the “longest?” Try until 2047. Yes. for those of you who pay close attention to the Linux kernel that means it will be supported after the Epoch.
The Epoch is when, on 03:14:08 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2038, we reach the end of computing time. That’s when the time-keeping code in 32-bit Unix-based operating systems reaches the end of the seconds it’s been counting since the beginning of time — 00:00:00 GMT on Jan. 1, 1970, as far as Linux and Unix systems are concerned — and resets to zero. Just like the Y2K bug, that means that all unpatched 32-bit operating systems and software will have fits. The Linux kernel maintainers themselves fixed this problem in 2020’s Linux 5.6 kernel, but many programs above the kernel haven’t dealt with this issue… yet.
SUSE Linux 16
Beyond SLES 15, SUSE will be releasing its next milestone release: SUSE Linux 16. This version is designed for continuous innovation with a modular lifecycle. It offers enterprise-grade security, seamless adoption of modern open source projects, and long-term support cycles. It also introduces a streamlined installation experience and supports migration from older systems. At the same time, if you want to keep older tools such as the Zypper package manager, you can do so.
SUSE believes in both innovation and stability for its Linux distributions. As Spencer said in his keynote, “These new advancements underscore our long-held mission of helping customers accelerate digital transformation, reduce costs, and improve efficiency.”
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