From beta-programs at suse.com Fri Sep 11 08:23:24 2026 From: beta-programs at suse.com (SUSE Beta Program) Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:23:24 +0000 Subject: [ANNOUNCE] SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1 RC3 is out! Message-ID: <6aa3ba7c295c8_ba2ae7d683e5f89592c@eca8fdd23f8e.mail> SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1 - the RC3 Milestone has been achieved! SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 16.1 Release Candidate 3 (RC3) is now available. This is an intermediate milestone on the road to General Availability. Release Highlights (changes since RC2) Covers SLES, SLES for SAP, and SLE High Availability across all four architectures: x86?64, Arm64 (aarch64), IBM Power (ppc64le), and IBM Z (s390x). As a Release Candidate, this build is intended for validation and feedback, not production. RC3 is a broad maintenance and hardening refresh rather than a feature defining milestone. The full distribution was rebuilt for the RC3 code stream, with roughly 160+ source packages carrying real content changes on top of the rebuild. On a base SLES install that nets out to about 23 packages added, 34 removed, and several hundred genuinely upgraded (the remainder are rebuilds). The emphasis this cycle is clear: a large security roll-up, a step forward in SELinux and system-integrity tooling, refreshed developer toolchains, and a modernized VPN/networking and virtualization stack. The kernel stays on 6.12.0 although traded stability kABI in the RC3 kernel in favor of adding Post Quantum Cryptography feature. Dropped kernel modules: - The preparatory sha3 patches remove the individual arch-optimized kernel modules: sha3-ce.ko (arm64), sha3_256_s390.ko (s390x), sha3_512_s390.ko (s390x). - The arch-optimized code now lives in the new common sha3 code. - The sha3-generic module is gone. A few things worth knowing about 1. Sizeable security roll-up. RC3 folds in a wide set of CVE fixes. Highlights include RabbitMQ (ten CVEs ? management-UI XSS and OAuth/authorization issues, addressed via the move to 4.1), 7?Zip (heap-overflow RCE, CVE?2026?14266), and kronosnet in the HA stack (three CVEs). Alongside these, security-relevant components were refreshed: Firefox 140.13 ESR, Samba 4.23.10, Wireshark 4.6.8, BIND 9.20.26, Unbound 1.25.2, dnsdist, libssh, and OpenJDK 17/21/25 . 2. SELinux moves up a version ? and becomes harder to skip. The full SELinux userspace goes 3.10 ? 3.11 (libselinux, libsepol, libsemanage, policycoreutils, checkpolicy, mcstrans, setools) with a refreshed selinux-policy. Notably, RPM now automatically pulls in rpm-plugin-selinux whenever a SELinux policy is installed , and new himmelblau-selinux / drbd-selinux policy modules ship. Teams running enforcing mode should re-run policy validation against this build. 3. RPM integrity/audit plugins are now modular. The RPM plugins have been split into individually installable packages ? rpm-plugin-ima, rpm-plugin-imaevmsign, rpm-plugin-fapolicyd, rpm-plugin-selinux, rpm-plugin-prioreset, rpm-plugin-syslog . This makes IMA/EVM measured boot, fapolicyd application allow-listing, and audit integration opt-in and easier to compose for hardened deployments. 4. Post-quantum cryptography advances. liboqs 0.15 ? 0.16 and the OpenSSL oqs-provider 0.9 ? 0.11, keeping the PQC stack current for early adopters testing quantum-resistant TLS/KEM algorithms. 5. Developer toolchains refreshed ? mind the Go rotation. GCC 16.2, Rust/Cargo 1.97, Node.js 24.18.1, Python 3.14.7, and quarterly OpenJDK 17/21/25 updates. Important for CI pipelines: the Go toolchain rotated ? go1.24 and go1.25 (including the FIPS -openssl variants) were removed, go1.27 was added, and go1.26 remains the default (now 1.26.6, openssl variant 1.26.7). Pin your builders accordingly. 6. VPN and networking modernization. OpenVPN jumps 2.6.x ? 2.7.5 , accompanied by a new in-kernel OpenVPN Data Channel Offload module (ovpn-kmp) for higher throughput. Also refreshed: HAProxy 3.4.4, dhcpcd 10.5, dnsdist 2.0.7, and open-lldp . Validate OpenVPN configs against the 2.7 series before rollout. 7. Virtualization, cloud, and management. QEMU 11.0.3 , iPXE 2.0 , updated Intel microcode (20260812) and Intel QAT libraries (26.02) , and refreshed public-cloud agents (Azure azure-vm-utils 0.7, Google guest configs). Management tooling advances with the Agama 24 installer, SUSEConnect 1.23, RMT server 3.1 , a new Cockpit bootloader module, and new MCP servers (mcp-server-snapper, mcp-server-suseconnect) for AI/agent-driven administration. 8. Notable removals, plus a High Availability refresh. ProFTPD, OpenBLAS (serial/OpenMP variants), and the fwts firmware test suite have been dropped ? audit any dependencies on these before upgrading. On the HA side, Pacemaker moves to 3.0.3 , resource-agents and ldirectord are promoted to the 4.18.0 final release , the full fence-agents set is refreshed, and DRBD/corosync/kronosnet are rebuilt with the kronosnet CVE fixes noted above. Try it out! RC3 is available for testing across public cloud providers, download portals, and container registries. We encourage our user base and partner ecosystem to deploy this candidate, validate workloads, and report any findings through official support channels before we lock things down for GA. For more information about the SLES 16.1 Beta program, please visit https://www.suse.com/betaprogram/sles16-beta . As this is not a final release, please report bugs via bugzilla[1]. We will release the release candidates publicly and finally we plan to release the gold version in November 2026. Download The following beta products are available for download: - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1[2] - SUSE Linux Enterprise for SAP applications 16.1[3] - SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 16.1[4] SLE Beta Subscription and Registration Code Please note that your regular SLE key will not activate the beta environment. A special Beta Registration Code is required to access the SUSE Linux Enterprise 16 beta online channels and repositories within the SUSE Customer Center. Without this code, you will not be able to access the beta content. To obtain a Beta Registration Code and unlock your Beta Subscription, please submit a request to beta-programs at suse.com. When requesting, specify the desired products (SLES 16.1, SLES for SAP 16.1, SLE HA 16.1, or all) and the relevant architectures. Documentation Draft release notes are currently available: - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1: susedoc.github.io/release-notes/sles-16.1/html/release-notes/ - SUSE Linux Enterprise for SAP Applications 16.1: susedoc.github.io/release-notes/slesap-16.1/html/release-note s/[5] - SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 16.1: susedoc.github.io/release-notes/sleha-16.1/html/release-notes /[6] Draft product documentation can be found at susedoc.github.io/#sles16 The beta allows for both online and offline installation using the Agama installer. More details are available at agama-project.github.io[7] Please be aware that documentation for the beta is still under development, and not all content is finalized or available yet. Questions? For additional details, please consult the dedicated Beta webpage[8]. If you want to contact us for any inquiry, we are at your disposal via email at beta-programs at suse.com. The SUSE Linux Enterprise Team. Your SUSE Linux Enterprise team Click here to unsubscribe[9] [1]:https://bugzilla.suse.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=SUSE%20Li nux%20Enterprise%20Server%2016.1 [2]:https://www.suse.com/download/sles/ [3]:https://www.suse.com/download/sle-sap/ [4]:https://www.suse.com/download/sle-ha/ [5]:https://susedoc.github.io/release-notes/slesap-16.1/html/ release-notes/index.html [6]:https://susedoc.github.io/release-notes/sleha-16.1/html/r elease-notes/index.html [7]:https://agama-project.github.io/ [8]:https://www.suse.com/betaprogram/sles16-beta [9]:mailto:sle-beta-leave at lists.suse.com?subject=Unsubscribe% 20from%20SLES%20Public%20Beta%20Program&body=Unsubscribe%20fr om%20SLES%20Public%20Beta%20Program -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: