Fedora & openSUSE: what is common in the latest releases?

The second half of November brought us two exciting new Linux distribution releases: openSUSE Leap 42.2 and Fedora 25. While both of them are based on the RPM packaging format and cover everything from embedded through desktops to servers, there are also considerable differences.

Fedora 25

Fedora is a bleeding edge Linux distribution. It often provides brand new technologies for the first time in a Linux release. Some of these don’t stick around for long, but those which prove to be useful are often included in the next Red Hat Enterprise Linux release. This is why Fedora is my distribution of choice for syslog-ng packaging: I can test syslog-ng in an ever-changing environment, which helps me to detect early if syslog-ng needs to be adopted to some of the new technologies.

As usual, Fedora 25 brought tons of new features to the distribution. From the syslog-ng point of view, the addition of the Rust compiler is interesting, as syslog-ng 3.8 added support for developing parsers in the Rust programming language. For a complete list of new features, check the ChangeSet page in the Fedora Wiki.

openSUSE Leap 42.2

openSUSE Leap is a healthy mix of two Linux distributions. It is based on the rock solid foundations of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, while many of its applications are coming from Tumbleweed, the bleeding edge rolling release of openSUSE. This provides stability combined with up-to-date desktop and development environments. And since I appreciate both stability and the latest desktop technologies, my desktop uses openSUSE Leap.

Leap 42.2 brought over a thousand new packages to the distribution. It has a new “server” mode of installation and stability is also coming to the desktop side thanks to using an LTS release of KDE. For a more detailed list of new features, check the release announcement.

So, what is common? syslog-ng 3.8.1

Fedora 25 and openSUSE Leap 42.2 are the first two distribution releases that feature syslog-ng 3.8.1, the latest syslog-ng. The most awaited new feature of this release was the addition of disk-based buffering, but of course there are many other features available as well. Most of the features are available in the distribution packages, but some of them could not be included due to policies or technical problems. Missing features include Rust-based parsers and Java-based Big Data destination modules. If you need those, check the 3rd party binaries page where you can download ready-to-use binaries for your distribution of choice.

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