[bitfolk] What do you consider the lifetime of an OpenSUSE L…

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Author: Andy Smith
Date:  
To: users
Subject: [bitfolk] What do you consider the lifetime of an OpenSUSE Leap release to be?

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Hello,

Owing to some fine work by a customer, we will soon be able to list
OpenSUSE Leap as supported:

    https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/User:Moggers87/Installing_Opensuse


This prompts a perhaps somewhat philosophical question:

In the context of our supported distros bit:

    https://bitfolk.com/techspec.html#toc_2_Available_Linux_distributions


what would you consider the supported lifetime of OpenSUSE Leap to be?

I don't know very much about OpenSUSE. From what I have been able to
gather:

- The current release is 15.3
- This was released 2021-06-30
- Support lasts for 6 months after the next minor release
- "Support" means no major updates to packages, just security fixes or
serious bugs fixed
- A minor release roughly every year
- So 15.3 support ends around December 2022, as 15.4 will be
released around 2022-06
- In-place upgrade is supported to next minor release (or even
through major releases?)
- The last 15.x minor version is expected to be 15.5 in 2023
supported until some time in 2024

Do you consider that EOL 2022-12, or EOL 2024-XX?

Since you HAVE to do an update or else don't get security fixes, I
think that is EOL 2022-12. That does make OpenSUSE Leap look like a
little worse option though unless you fully understand this.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I can truthfully state that its EOL
would be 2024-XX as that may lead someone who does not do the
research to think they can only do package upgrades all the way out
to 2024.

So, erring on the side of caution, it should be listed as 2022-12,
right?

(The other entries are also complicated by the different tiers of
support, and I continue to remain conflicted over listing Ubuntu's
ESM which is free but requires registration.)

Cheers,
Andy

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