Merge pull request #286 from lkocman/leapmicro61_alpha

Leap Micro 6.1 Alpha article

_posts/2024/2024-11-20-leap-micro-61-alpha-availability.md

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+---
+
+author: Lubos Kocman
+date: 2024-11-20 12:00:00+02:00
+layout: post
+image: /wp-content/uploads/2022/11/lpm.png
+license: CC-BY-SA-3.0
+title: Leap Micro 6.1 Alpha is now available. Get ready for Leap Micro 5.5 End of Life.
+categories:
+- Announcements
+- openSUSE
+- Leap Micro
+tags:
+- openSUSE
+- Leap Micro
+- SLE Micro
+- Community
+- Open Source
+- Testing
+- Developers
+- EOL
+
+---
+Leap Micro 6.1 Alpha images can be found at [get.opensuse.org](https://get.opensuse.org/leapmicro/6.0/).
+Unless some serious issues are found, users can expect a quick transition to GA within a few weeks.
+
+## About Leap Micro
+
+Leap Micro 6.1 is a rebranded [SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 6.1](https://www.suse.com/products/micro/) which is an ultra-reliable container and Virtual Machine host by SUSE. Leap Micro is released twice a year and has support over two releases.
+
+## Leap Micro 5.5 will be EOL with the release of Leap Micro 6.1
+
+With the release of [Leap Micro 6.1](https://get.opensuse.org/leapmicro/6.1/), [Leap Micro 5.5](https://news.opensuse.org/2023/10/12/leap-micro-55-hands-on/) reaches End Of Life; users will no longer receive maintenance updates and are advised to upgrade to 6.1.
+
+More conservative users can stay on Leap Micro 6.0, which will receive updates until the release of Leap Micro 6.2.
+
+## Notable changes
+
+Users performing clean install will notice visible changes to the first boot wizard.
+The jeos-firstboot wizard can now create an additional user and optionally the 2FA secret but the PAM config is missing. It will be added with the GM builds.
+
+We've added [soft-reboot support](https://microos.opensuse.org/blog/2024-06-13-soft-reboot/).
+
+Inclusion of vhostmd for SAP Virtualization. Addition of chrony-pool-empty and pf-bb-config.
+PREEMPT_RT kernel for Arm, ZRAM support, and support for TOTP 2fa for pam login mainly for the cockpit.
+Working JIT compilation of eBPF rules.
+
+SLE Micro 6.1 received additional support for ppc64le, however, we intend to keep Leap Micro only for x86_64 and aarch64.
+The main reason is that there is no demand from the community to support these arches.
+
+## Understanding individual images
+
+Users can refer to the [Leap Micro 6.0 announcement](https://news.opensuse.org/2024/06/25/leap-micro-60-availability/) where we already covered this part.
+
+## Upgrading from previous release.
+
+A recommendation for migration from 5.X is to make a clean install since this is a brand-new major version. 
+
+For those who'd like to try migration, please follow the [upgrade guide](https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade_to_LeapMicro_6.0).
+
+Migration from 6.0 should work with `zypper --releasever 6.1 dup inside transactional-update shell`
+
+There is a chance that we'll include [a new migration tool](https://hackweek.opensuse.org/projects/new-migration-tool-for-leap) which is expected to be developed as part of hackweek in Leap Micro 6.1 Beta. This would make the upgrade more straightforward for the future upgrades.
+
+## Release Notes
+
+Users can refer to [SLE Micro 6.1 Release notes](https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/index.html) once available.
+
+Leap Micro 6.1 uses [openSUSE-repos](https://github.com/openSUSE/openSUSE-repos) for repository management. It is highly recommended to pay attention to this detail, especially for those who migrate. Here is an [article explaining how openSUSE repos work](https://news.opensuse.org/2023/07/31/try-out-cdn-with-opensuse-repos/).
+
+Just like 6.0, Leap Micro 6.1 has no longer a [dedicated SLE update repo](https://github.com/openSUSE/openSUSE-repos/blob/main/opensuse-leap-micro5-repoindex.xml). This has been merged into the [main repository](https://github.com/openSUSE/openSUSE-repos/blob/main/opensuse-leap-micro6-repoindex.xml).
+
+<meta name="openSUSE, Leap Micro, Open Source, Upgrade, EOL" content="HTML,CSS,XML,JavaScript">