The community Linux distribution openSUSE has announced that it has released a 64-bit image for its stable branch, Leap, that runs on the Raspberry Pi 3.
The distribution is supported by the Germany-based SUSE Linux which has already released a 64-bit image for its enterprise server distribution, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, for the Raspberry Pi 3.
Developer Dirk Mueller said: “The ARM and AArch64 Images for openSUSE Leap 42.2 are not a once-only release.
“They get continuously updated and include fixes as the Leap 42.2 port matures over time. These are the first usable images, and more variants with more fixes will come over time.”
{loadposition sam08}Mueller said having the stable code base of Leap images, which provides fewer updates than Raspberry Pi 3 images for the openSUSE rolling release Tumbleweed, would give people more stability and expand user opportunities for those who wanted to use the Raspberry Pi 3 for home automation, mail services or as a small, low-power server.
“Overall, the most exciting thing about having Leap on the Raspberry Pi 3 is that this is a fully working upstream-based image with full 64-bit support, which is something that even the Raspberry Pi Foundation doesn’t have,” said Alex Graf, another developer.
Graf and Mueller are among the developers who first had the idea of porting SUSE Linux to the ARM platform.
The Raspberry Pi 3 works with ARMv8, but a previous 32-bit version of the ARM instruction architecture, which is the architecture used on the Raspberry Pi 2, is enabled in the openSUSE Leap 42.2 release.