openSUSE Tumbleweed: New features of the rolling release Linux distribution at a glance for January 2024

openSUSE Tumbleweed is a Linux distribution that is continuously updated, similar to Arch Linux, but also uses a package creation and control mechanism called the Open Build Service. Recently, the openSUSE Tumbleweed team started to summarise the changes at the end of the month, giving users an overview of the most important package changes of the month.

"Welcome to the monthly update for openSUSE Tumbleweed for January 2024. This will be the new format going forward as recommended by those contributing to the marketing efforts of openSUSE. These updates will highlight major changes, improvements and key issues addressed in openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots throughout the month," writes Douglas DeMaio on the openSUSE News blog.

New features and enhancements in January 2024

The Linux kernel of openSUSE Tumbleweed made the leap to version 6.7 in January, with the following kernel versions through January 2024: 6.6.7, 6.6.9, 6.6.10, 6.6.11 and 6.7.1. The kernel updates included fixes for security vulnerabilities and memory leaks, and extended the rolling Linux distribution's hardware support to include the audio system of the Lenovo Legion Slim 7 Gen 8 and some Dell models.

The distribution's own Firefox package has been updated to versions 121.0 and 121.0.1, and the Mesa open source graphics stack, which provides Vulkan and OpenGL under Linux, has been updated to the current version 23.3.3. The systemd startup service has been updated to version 254.8, and there have also been bugfix releases for the X11 display server and XWayland. The full list of changes can be found in the news post on the openSUSE blog.