Last Update: 2023-04-21

Table of Contents

Introduction

Welcome to the dedicated web page for the beta of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES®), SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing(SLE HPC), SUSE Linux Enterprise For SAP Applications (SLES for SAP), SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED®) and SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability (SLEHA). They are all part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise products family, thus are sharing the same core and have the same planned releases dates, from Beta to First Customer Shipment.  

Major Theme

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 5 is a Consolidation Service Pack which mean we are focusing on:
    • Bug/Security fixes from maintenance updates,
    • Improvements for existing features,
    • Feature parity between SLE 15 and SLE 12,
    • Selected new features,
    If you would like to have more information about our Refresh/Consolidation Service Pack, please check out this blog post.
  • Migration from openSUSE Leap Thanks to the Closing the Leap Gap project, it's now easier than ever to migrate from openSUSE Leap 15 to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15. You can find out more from here.
  • Less pre-releases, More updates In the past, like for SLE 15 SP1 Public Beta Program, all testers (Internal, Technology Partners, Public) were receiving the same images with the same cadence, about 2-3 weeks. However for Internal and Partners, the 2-3 weeks cadence of official and fully tested images, from our internal automated and manual QA, was too long. And providing around 7-8 pre-releases to our Public beta testers, was difficult for them to cope with. Thus as part of the examination of the new challenges we took three major decisions:
    • Increase the cadence of internal milestones to our developers and Technology Partners, Bring more flexibility into the testing schedules of our developers and Technology Partners.
    • Reduce number of Public Pre-Release images to 3, Only one Beta, one Release Candidate and one Gold Master Candidate will be available for download.
    • Provide more updates through our Beta Online Channels, Changes in the weekly internal milestones will be provided to the Public as updates through our SLE 15 Beta Online Channels.
    We hope this approach will address the needs of our different beta stakeholders. The most "devoted" testers get more frequent images to test and validate, our Public testers get fewer ISOs to install but still get frequent updates from our Engineering.

 

Notable Changes

As always, we highly recommend to check our Release Notes for a complete overview of the changes in this new version.

 

Planned Releases

Our plan is to release only two Public Pre-Release ISOs, one Public Beta, one Public Release Candidate from February 2023 to March 2023.   Scheduled releases:

  • Public Beta — February 21, 2023
  • Public RC — April 20, 2023
  • First Customer Shipment — End of June 2023
Important

Please note that we reserve the right to change or adapt this schedule depending on various factors. Rest assured that we will communicate if there is any change to the plan.

 

Download
Note: SLE 15 Unified Installer.

Thanks to the Unified Installer introduced with SLE 15, you only need a SLE 15 Full or Online Media1 ISO to install all SLE products (SLES, SLED, SLEWE, SLEHA, SLEHPC, SLES for SAP and SUSE Manager).

x86_64

aarch64

ppc64le

s390x

  • SLES is available on the following architectures: aarch64, ppc64le, s390x and x86_64.
  • A bootable image of SLES is available for Raspberry Pi.
  • SLES for SAP is available only on x86_64 and ppc64le.
  • SLEHPC is available for x86_64 and aarch64.
  • SLED & SLEWE is available only on x86_64.
  • SLES Minimal-VM is available on: for x86_64 and aarch64 on KVM but x86_64 only for XEN, Hyper-V, VMware and OpenStack Cloud.
  • SLEHA is avalable only on ppc64le, s390x and x86_64
Media 1 and Media 2

As a reminder Media1 contains the binaries (usual installation ISO), Media2 contains the sources and Media3 which contained debuginfo packages is _not_ provided as ISOs images anymore but available as Online Channel. Thus we are kindly asking you to request a Beta Registration Code and register your system to retrieve any needed debuginfo packages.

 

Documentation
Note: The following Documents are drafts.
And will remain as such through out the SLE Beta Program. Documentation for Beta Products do not yet have the quality, accuracy and content of our official documentation. However we will update these documents on the fly during the SLE Beta Program.

All documentations are available at https://susedoc.github.io/:

Release Notes

 

Changelogs

The following changelogs include changes from all architectures: 15SP4 GA - 15SP5 Public Beta:  

Known Issues

Resolved Issues
Feedback

Whenever you find a bug or have a question while using SUSE Linux Enterprise, we highly recommend that you use our mailing list first, then if it really make sense you should open a bug report.

Private Channel

In case you are a SUSE's partners or customers and would like to share some sensitive data with us (data for bug reports, feedbacks, etc), please contact us at beta-programs@suse.com, and we will review your case and provide a private channel with us.

Public Mailing List

sle-beta@lists.suse.com is our dedicated Public Mailing List to discuss SUSE Linux Enterprise Beta products. It is used by the SUSE Release Team to announce new beta images and technical information, as well as for general or technical questions, feedback, or defect reports related to SUSE Linux Enterprise Beta products from our beta testers community. Only subscribers can post to our mailing lists. To subscribe, please go to http://lists.suse.com/mailman/listinfo/sle-beta. Only subscribers can post to our mailing lists. To subscribe, please go to http://lists.suse.com/mailman/listinfo/sle-beta. Please refer to our Mailing Lists Guideline for more information.  

Bugzilla

Here are the links to the SLE Bugzilla product that you will use for reporting the defects of the following products: Create a new bug for:

Please refer to our complete Bugzilla guideline for more information and before creating your first bug report: how to use Bugzilla  

Frequently Asked Questions
- Why are there 2 ISOs available per product?

We offer 2 Media ISOs per Product, for instance with SLES we have:

  • SLE-15-SP5-Full-x86_64-PublicBeta-Media1.iso = Media1 contains the binaries
  • SLE-15-SP5-Full-x86_64-PublicBeta-Media2.iso = Media2 the sources

For installation purposes you just need Media1 for your architecture. Please verify the sha256sum of the ISO using the SHA256SUMS file, which can also be found on the download page.

Note
Note: Media 3 and Debuginfo packages
We are not providing the Media3 (debuginfo packages) isos for the SLE Beta Program anymore! However debuginfo packages are available in our Beta Online Channels. Thus we are kindly asking you to request a Beta Registration Code and register your system to retrieve any needed debuginfo packages.

 

- Beta Subscription and Registration Code
Warning
Warning: Beta Registration Code
Registration is not working with your regular SLE key, special Beta Registration Code is required. Thus, you don't have access to the SLE online channels/repositories and Modules without a Beta Registration Code.

The Beta Registration Code is the key to unlock the Beta Subscription in our SUSE Customer Center. The Beta Subscription consist of giving access to our SLE 15 Beta Online Channels. We will not provide a beta product subscription or beta product registration code by default for the SLE 15 Beta Program. You might request one via beta-programs@suse.com, please specify if you want a registration code for SLES, SLED, SLEHA or for all of them and for which architectures. Without a beta registration code for SLES 15 Beta, you won’t be able to access the online SLE 15 Modules.  

- Is SLE 15 SP5 Beta available in the Public Clouds?

For those interested in beta testing SLES 15 SP5 in the Public Cloud it is possible to migrate a running instance using 'zypper migration' or 'yast2-migration'. For BYOS users you will need to request and use a beta registration code.  

- Migrating from SLE 15 to SLE 15 SP5 Beta

This is the usual "Service Pack Migration" that can be done with YaST, zypper, AutoYaST or SUSE Manager. Of course you should always migrate to the latest Beta version. For a complete and detailed Upgrade process, please refer to the following documentation in our Upgrade Guide:

 

- Upgrading from SLE 12 to SLE 15 SP5 Beta

We have made the necessary changes to our SCC Online Channels setup for SLE 15 SP5 to allow beta testing the migration to SLE15 SP5. Keep in mind that you can only upgrade from SLE 12 to SLE 15 via booting on a SLE 15 Installation Medium. Please refer to the Upgrade Guide for a complete and detailed Upgrade process.  

- Updating from SLE 15 SP5 Beta to the next SLE 15 SP5 Beta

Even if it's completely feasible and working, we do not recommend to update from "SLE 15 Service Pack 3 Beta X" to "SLE 15 Service Pack 3 Beta X+N" for your thorough beta testing. Why? Because this scenario is specific to beta and can not be compared to any SLE production update scenario. During the beta phase of our products, we need the flexibility of doing important changes to packages (libraries, configuration files, features, etc), like upgrading or downgrading to different versions. Thus changes between SLE Beta might look very different from regular updates we make in official SLE Service Pack releases. We highly recommend to test the following scenarios, whenever a new Beta version is released:

  • Fresh install of new SLE 15 SP5 Beta,
  • Migration from SLE 12 SP5 to new SLE 15 SP5 Beta.
  • Migration from SLE 15 to new SLE 15 SP5 Beta.

 

- Updating from SLE 15 SP5 Beta to SLE 15 SP5 GM
Warning
Warning: Migration from Beta to Gold Master
Migrating from SLE 15 SP5 Beta to SLE 15 SP5 Gold Master (the final version of SLE 15 SP5) is NOT SUPPORTED. If you want to put the final version of our product in production, you need to do a fresh installation or a migration from an existing supported version. We will not support the migration from a beta product to a final release of the product.

As a reminder, our SUSE Beta EULA states that you should not put SUSE Beta Products in production.  

- Migrating from openSUSE Leap to SLE 15 SP5 Beta
Warning
Warning: openSUSE Leap and SLES versions
We only guarantee a seamless migration from openSUSE Leap to SLES starting with openSUSE Leap 15.3 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 Service Pack 3! This is due to the fact that we have made some important changes starting with 15.3/15SP5, you can find more information on them from this blog post.

openSUSE Leap 15.3 and SLES 15 SP5 have their beta phases in parallel, thus you should be able to download and get more information on openSUSE Leap 15.3 from the openSUSE Wiki. The following is the current abstract procedure to migrate from openSUSE Leap 15.3 to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 Service Pack 3:

  1. You will need to install SUSEConnect and yast2-registration.
  2. Register your system with a valid SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 Service Pack 3 Beta registration code.
  3. Run yast2 migration to migrate your system and reboot.
  4. If something fails or you want to try the procedure again use snapper rollback to restore changes on filesystem.

For the complete how to migrate, please refer to our dedicated Upgrade Guide.  

- How to check the beta version of an installed system?
# grep betaversion /etc/products.d/* /etc/products.d/baseproduct: <betaversion>BetaX<betaversion> /etc/products.d/sle-sdk.prod: <betaversion>BetaX<betaversion> /etc/products.d/sle-module-web-scripting.prod: <betaversion>BetaX<betaversion> /etc/products.d/SLES.prod: <betaversion>BetaX</betaversion>

 

- Will SUSE Linux Enterprise Server support a specific Intel microarchitecture ?

Please read the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server–Support for Intel Server Platforms document.

- Contact Beta Manager

Do you have a question or an issue to report on our Beta Program? Want to get in touch with our Product Managers or Engineering team? Or simply share a feedback? Please do not hesitate to contact us via beta-programs@suse.com!