openSUSE Tumbleweed recently changed the default boot loader from GRUB2 to GRUB2-BLS when installed via YaST.

This follows the trending started by MicroOS of adopting boot loaders that are compatible with the boot loader specification. MicroOS is using systemd-boot, a very small and fast boot loader from the systemd project.

One of the reasons of this change is that simplify the integration of new features, like a full disk encryption based on the systemd tools, that will make use of the TPM2 or FIDO2 tokens if they are available.

What is GRUB2-BLS

GRUB2-BLS is just GRUB2 but with some patches on top ported from the Fedora project, that includes some compatibility for the boot loader specification for Type #1 boot entries. Those are small text files stored in /boot/efi/loader/entries that the boot loader reads to present the initial menu.

Each file contains a reference to the kernel, the initrd and the kernel command line that will be used to boot the system, and can be edited directly by the user or managed by tools like bootctl and sdbootutil.

The next version of GRUB2 (2.14) those patches will be included as part of the project itself, and the upgrade process will be transparent for the final user.

Should be noted that the way that openSUSE deploy GRUB2-BLS is different from the classical GRUB2. GRUB2-BLS is deployed as a single EFI binary installed (copied) in /boot/efi/EFI/opensuse that will have embedded all the resources (like the modules, configuration file, fonts, themes and graphics) that previously where placed in /boot/grub2.

Installation

The good news is that with the last version of YaST the process is automatic. The used just needs to follow the default steps and the system will be based on GRUB2-BLS at the end.

The installed will propose first a large ESP partition of about 1GB. This is required because now all the kernel and initrds will be placed in the FAT32 ESP partition, in /boot/efi/opensuse-tumbleweed.

Of course the user can select during the installation a different boot loader, like the classical GRUB2 or systemd-boot. This can be done in the “Installation Settings” screen presented at the end of the installation proposal. Just select the “Booting” header link and choose your boot loader from there.

Usage

With GRUB2-BLS we will not have anymore the grub2 tools, like grub2-mkconfig or grub2-install. Most of them are not required anymore. The boot entries are generated dynamically by the boot loader, so there is no need anymore of generating GRUB2 configuration files, and the installation is just copying the new EFI file into the correct place.

The upgrade process is also done automatically calling sdbootutil update by the snapper plugins or the SUSE module tools, so if btrfs is used all the management will be done transparently by this infrastructure, as was done in the traditional boot loader.

Updating the kernel command line can be now be done by editing the boot loader, or the /etc/kernel/cmdline and calling sdbootutil update-all-entries to propagate the change into the boot entries of the current snapshot.

A new Hack Week 25 project aims to display appreciation and recognition for contributors across the openSUSE Project.

Called Kudos, the application is designed to give members of the project an easy way to acknowledge contributions beyond code submissions alone.

Lubos Kocman joked during the naming discussion that “We also had an option to call it ReKognize and have a Mortal Kombat announcer behind the menu items.”

Kudos began shortly after the release of Leap 16.0 with the goal of creating a simple and friendly way for community members to thank one another for their efforts and contributions.

As a Release Manager, Kocman and other release managers have long recognized core Leap contributors after each release.

“We used to send people Leap DVD boxes,” he said, but these DVDs are no longer produces.

An internal SUSE recognition platform allows for employees to acknowledge one another since DVDs were no longer an option. Kocman began sending emails mimicing SUSE’s recognition messages.

“But at some point I was fed up and thought to myself, we can do better,” Kocman said, who created the Kudos Hack Week project.

He notes that openSUSE relies on extensive, often invisible efforts. These include contributions with translations, documentation updates, wiki curation, infrastructure maintenance, moderation, booth staffing, testing, talks, and countless other efforts that rarely show up in a traditional form of recongition.

Kudos aims to bring those contributions into the light.

The visablity of these recogniztion will take place in areas where members of the project communicate. Sharing could take place on chat.opensuse.org, on social media through bots, Slack, and other options, which will be explored during Hack Week and beyond.

Kudos resources include the application’s source code, a dedicated badge repository, and an issue tracker. Existing badge templates can be used, but the maintainer asks participants not to create new badge requests during Hack Week unless they also plan to complete them during the event.

Developers and contributors interested in participating can join or follow the project’s progress through the GitHub repositories.

Hack Week, which began in 2007, has become a cornerstone of the project’s open-source culture. Hack Week has produced tools that are now integral to the openSUSE ecosystem, such as openQA, Weblate and Aeon Desktop. Hack Week has also seeded projects that later grew into widely used products; the origins of ownCloud and its fork Nextcloud derive from a Hack Week project started more than a decade ago.

For more information, visit hackweek.opensuse.org.

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

This week has been really slow for Tumbleweed snapshots—at least as far as the published ones are concerned. Since my last review, only two snapshots were shipped, and 5 more were passed on to openQA for testing and discarded. This was not really a surprise to us; we somewhat expected this to happen. The major change (in the next snapshot to be published) is the switch to grub2-bls on UEFI-based systems. The technical change itself was ok for a while, but it took a while to get a good feel for the openQA results, without masking other errors behind the ‘bootloader does not look as expected by QA’ step. And to confirm: it was good for us to hold back some snapshots, as there were indeed some fun bugs hiding behind closed doors.

Enough of the history, let’s look at what the two snapshots (1030 and 1031) brought you this week:

• Mozilla Firefox 144.0.2
• ImageMagick 7.1.2.8
• pam-mount 2.22
• Mesa 25.2.6
• Linux kernel 6.17.6

The next snapshot to be published will hopefully bring a few more changes. Staging areas and QA are currently busy testing integration of:

• GRUB2-BLS as the default bootloader selected by the installer on UEFI-based systems; This will only impact new installs. An automatic migration from grub2-efi to grub2-bls is not planned
• Linux kernel 6.17.7
• KDE Plasma 6.5.2
• Qt5 5.15.18
• openSSH 10.2p1
• LXQt 2.3.0
• Mesa will bring Vulkan support to WSL
• transactional-update 5.5.0: enables soft-reboot if possible
• openSSL 3.6.0: regression detected, which causes nodejs22 testsuite to fail
• kernel hardening: prevent normal users from seeing dmesg

This is a roundup of articles from the openSUSE community listed on planet.opensuse.org.

The below featured highlights listed on the community’s blog feed aggregator are from November 1 to 6.

Blog posts this week highlight a post-mortem with the Open Build Service, a Tenerife LanParty, a security issue announcement by SUSE Security Team, Quantum computing in open source and much more.

Here is a summary and links for each post:

Hack Week Project Aims to Rebuild Classic Games

Hack Week 25 is Dec. 1 - 5 and it has a project that is reverse-engineering 1990s PC games like Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares, Chaos Overlords and others to build clean versions capable of running the game. The goal is to have playable prototypes built during the week.

Third update of KDE Gear 25.08

The KDE Blog highlights the third update of Gear 25.08 and introduces several bug-fixes across apps, libraries and widgets to improve stability and translations for Konqi users. Some fixes were made for Kdenlive, KWalletManager and more.

scx: Unauthenticated scx_loader D-Bus Service can lead to major Denial-of-Service

Posts like this don’t happen too often, but this SUSE Security Team Blog should get people’s attention. This security blog post highlights scx project’s scx_loader. The D-Bus service could run with root privileges and no authentication, which could allow any unprivileged user to manipulate system schedulers and potentially cause a denial-of-service.

Tenerife LanParty (Podcast Linux #31)

The KDE Blog post revisits episode #31 of the Podcast Linux series, which is a special feature recorded at the Tenerife LanParty (TLP 2017).

Severe Service Degradation: OBS Unreliable/Unavailable

The Open Build Service team published a service post-mortem discussing recent operational issues and outlining improvements to monitoring and response workflows. Lessons learned from the post-mortem are that the team set sensible limits for build service requests (and possibly other areas) as serving all results at once for a request with 6,000+ actions is unsustainable.

Plasma 6.5 Second Update

The KDE Blog and Plasma 6.5 team released its second update for the desktop environment on Nov. 4. It focuses on improving stability, better translations and bug fixes. A couple fixes included having a smoother automatic shift between light and dark themes and enhancing global WiFi password storage.

Compilation of the Free Software Foundation newsletter – November 2025

Victorhck puts out a new post collecting major FSF updates including their 40-year anniversary projects, the upcoming hackathon (Nov. 21-23), and recent advocacy on software freedom and patents. Victorhck also goes into some details about the announcement of the FSF’s Librephone project.

SUSE delivers Raspberry Pi 5 support

The openSUSE Project announces support for the Raspberry Pi 5, which includes enabling boot to graphical desktop with working Ethernet, WiFi, and USB. The blog acknowledges the extensive contributions by the SUSE Hardware Enablement team related to U-Boot, PCIe and kernel driver support.

LliureX as a tool for educational innovation

The post introduces the UjiLliurex 2025 programme, which leverages the LliureX Linux distribution as a tool for educational innovation in higher education. Its aim is promoting ICT skills and collaborative coordination across the academic community.

Leap Fuels Hands-On Learning, Exploration

The openSUSE Project highlights how users can turn their setups into home labs. It highlights the use case of learning. From tracking aircraft with SDR to deploying Kubernetes clusters, Leap can be used to learn through experimentation on a stable, production-grade base.

Quantum computing and open source: the future is already in open source on Compilando Podcast

The hosts dive into the world of quantum computing during this episode of the Compilando Podcast. What qubits are? Why do ultra-cold conditions matter? The hosts explore how open-source tools like Qiskit and Cirq are helping researchers collaborate globally.

Framework Laptop 13 Protective Bumper

Tech-enthusiast Nathan Wolf goes into a custom 3D printed TPU 98A bumper for the Framework Laptop 13 to improve durability during travels. After 13 major design revisions, he settles on a 10 mm frame that balances protection and usability.

Controlling frame intensity and image focus

The KDE Blog dives into “This Week in KDE Plasma” and highlights two major upcoming features; adjustable boldness for window frames and outlines in Breeze themes, and a global sharpness slider for display content when using a compatible Linux kernel.

View more blogs or learn to publish your own on planet.opensuse.org.

Community developers plan to bring new life to classic 1990s video games by reviving and reverse engineering some classic games during a project during Hack Week 25.

The project calls on participants to select an older game, analyze its data formats and underlying rules, and write a clean-room engine capable of running the original game content.

Many games from the era are simple enough that contributors can produce a playable prototype within the week.

The classic-games project, which has grown over multiple years, has titles listed such as Master of Orion II, Chaos Overlords, and Signus: The Artifact Wars.

Work on Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares is regarded as one of the defining 4X strategy games of the 1990s and has become one of the project’s flagship effort. Developers have decoded savegame formats, resource files and interface screens across several Hack Weeks.

The team working on Chaos Overlords identified resource formats, mapped much of the logic and begun developing a Qt-based interface resembling the original’s mouse-driven design. The game’s AI remains one of the toughest puzzles. Contributors are calling it critical to the game’s identity.

Earlier efforts include Signus: The Artifact Wars, a Czech turn-based strategy title open-sourced in 2003. Developers continue to refine support for original file formats and work toward packaging improvements for openSUSE.

Participants frequently suggest new candidates. Companies and individuals are encouraged to join the project and hack on it for fun.

Another Hack Week 25 effort underway and the project aims to bring missing YaST features into Cockpit and System Roles; this comes following YaST’s deprecation from openSUSE Leap 16.0.

Hack Week, which began in 2007, has become a cornerstone of the project’s open-source culture. Hack Week has produced tools that are now integral to the openSUSE ecosystem, such as openQA, Weblate and Aeon Desktop. Hack Week has also seeded projects that later grew into widely used products; the origins of ownCloud and its fork Nextcloud derive from a Hack Week project started more than a decade ago.

For more information, visit hackweek.opensuse.org.

Table of Contents

• 1) Introduction
• 2) Overview of the Unauthenticated scx_loader D-Bus Service
• 3) Passing Arbitrary Parameters to Schedulers
  • The --pin-root-path Option
  • The --kconfig Option
  • The --btf-custom-path Option
  • The --bpf-token-path Option
• 4) On the Verge of a Local Root Exploit
• 5) Affected Linux Distributions
• 6) Suggested Fixes
  • Restrict Access to a Group on D-Bus Level
  • Use Polkit for Authentication
  • Making the API more Robust
  • Use systemd Sandboxing
• 7) Missing Upstream Bugfix
• 8) CVE Assignment
• 9) Timeline
• 10) Links

1) Introduction

The scx project offers a range of dynamically loadable custom schedulers implemented in Rust and C, which make use of the Linux kernel’s sched_ext feature. An optional D-Bus service called scx_loader provides an interface accessible to all users in the system, which allows to load and configure the schedulers provided by scx. This D-Bus service is present in scx up to version v1.0.17. As a response to this report, scx_loader has been moved into a dedicated repository.

A SUSE colleague packaged scx for addition to openSUSE Tumbleweed, and the D-Bus service it contained required a review by our team. The review showed that the D-Bus service runs with full root privileges and is missing an authentication layer, thus allowing any user to nearly arbitrarily change the scheduling properties of the system, leading to Denial-of-Service and other attack vectors.

Upstream declined coordinated disclosure for this report and asked us to handle it in the open right away. In the discussion that followed, upstream rejected parts of our report and presented no clear path forward to fix the issues, which is why there is no bugfix available at the moment.

Section 2 provides an overview of the scx_loader D-Bus service and its lack of authentication. Section 3 takes a look into problematic command line parameters which can be influenced by unprivileged clients. Section 4 looks into attempts to achieve a local root exploit using the scx_loader API. Section 5 lists affected Linux distributions. Section 6 discusses possible approaches to fix the issues found in this report. Section 7 takes a look at the upstream efforts to fix the issues.

This report is based on version 1.0.16 of scx.

2) Overview of the Unauthenticated scx_loader D-Bus Service

The scx_loader D-Bus service is implemented in Rust and offers a completely unauthenticated D-Bus interface on the system bus. The upstream repository contains configuration files and documentation advertising this service as suitable to be automatically started via D-Bus requests. Thus arbitrary users in the system (including low privilege service users or even nobody) are allowed to make unrestricted use of the service.

The service’s interface offers functions to start, stop or switch between a number of scx schedulers. The start and switch methods also offer to specify an arbitrary list of parameters which will be directly passed to the binary implementing the scheduler.

Every scheduler is implemented in a dedicated binary and found e.g. in /usr/bin/scx_bpfland for the bpfland scheduler. Not all schedulers that are part of scx are accessible via this interface. The list of schedulers supported by scx_loader in the reviewed version is:

scx_bpfland scx_cosmos scx_flash scx_lavd
scx_p2dq scx_tickless scx_rustland scx_rusty

We believe the ability to more or less arbitrarily tune the scheduling behaviour of the system already poses a local Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack vector that might even make it possible to lock up the complete system. We did not look into a concrete set of parameters that might achieve that, but it seems likely, given the range of schedulers and their parameters made available via the D-Bus interface.

3) Passing Arbitrary Parameters to Schedulers

The ability to pass arbitrary command line parameters to any of the supported scheduler binaries increases the attack surface of the D-Bus interface considerably. This makes a couple of concrete attacks possible, especially when the scheduler in question accepts file paths as input. Apart from parameters that influence scheduler behaviour, all schedulers offer the generic “Libbpf Options”, of which the following four options stick out in this context:

--pin-root-path <PIN_ROOT_PATH>      Maps that set the 'pinning' attribute in their definition will have
                                     their pin_path attribute set to a file in this directory, and be
                                     auto-pinned to that path on load; defaults to "/sys/fs/bpf"
--kconfig <KCONFIG>                  Additional kernel config content that augments and overrides system
                                     Kconfig for CONFIG_xxx externs
--btf-custom-path <BTF_CUSTOM_PATH>  Path to the custom BTF to be used for BPF CO-RE relocations. This custom
                                     BTF completely replaces the use of vmlinux BTF for the purpose of CO-RE
                                     relocations. NOTE: any other BPF feature (e.g., fentry/fexit programs,
                                     struct_ops, etc) will need actual kernel BTF at /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux
--bpf-token-path <BPF_TOKEN_PATH>    Path to BPF FS mount point to derive BPF token from. Created BPF token
                                     will be used for all bpf() syscall operations that accept BPF token
                                     (e.g., map creation, BTF and program loads, etc) automatically within
                                     instantiated BPF object. If bpf_token_path is not specified, libbpf will
                                     consult LIBBPF_BPF_TOKEN_PATH environment variable. If set, it will be
                                     taken as a value of bpf_token_path option and will force libbpf to
                                     either create BPF token from provided custom BPF FS path, or will
                                     disable implicit BPF token creation, if envvar value is an empty string.
                                     bpf_token_path overrides LIBBPF_BPF_TOKEN_PATH, if both are set at the
                                     same time. Setting bpf_token_path option to empty string disables
                                     libbpf's automatic attempt to create BPF token from default BPF FS mount
                                     point (/sys/fs/bpf), in case this default behavior is undesirable

libbpf is a userspace support library for BPF programs found in the Linux source tree. The following sub-sections take a look at each of the attacker-controlled paths passed to this library in detail.

The --pin-root-path Option

The --pin-root-path option potentially causes libbpf to create the parent directory of this path in bfp_object__pin_programs(). We are not entirely sure under which conditions the logic is triggered, however, and if these conditions are controlled by an unprivileged caller in the context of the scx_loader D-Bus API.

The --kconfig Option

The file found in the --kconfig path is completely read into memory in libbpf_clap_opts.rs line 91. This makes a number of attack vectors possible:

• pointing to a device file like /dev/zero leads to an out of memory situation in the selected scheduler binary.
• pointing to a private file like /etc/shadow causes the scheduler binary to read in the private data. We did not find a way for this data to leak out into the context of an unprivileged D-Bus caller, however. This technique still allows to perform file existence tests in locations that are normally not accessible to unprivileged users.
• pointing to a FIFO named pipe will block the scheduler binary indefinitely, breaking the D-Bus service. Also, by feeding data to such a PIPE, nearly all memory can be used up, keeping the system in a low-memory situation and possibly leading to the kernel’s OOM killer targeting unrelated processes.
• by pointing to a regular file controlled by the caller, crafted KConfig information can be passed into libbpf. The impact of this appears to be minimal, however.

The following command line is an example reproducer which will cause the scx_bpfland process to consume all system memory until it is killed by the kernel:

user$ gdbus call -y -d org.scx.Loader -o /org/scx/Loader \
    -m org.scx.Loader.SwitchSchedulerWithArgs scx_bpfland \
    '["--kconfig", "/dev/zero"]'

The --btf-custom-path Option

The --btf-custom-path option offers similar attack vectors as the --kconfig option discussed above. Additionally, crafted binary symbol information can be fed to the scheduler via this path, which will be processed either by btf_parse_raw() or btf_parse_elf() found in libbpf. This can lead to integrity violation of the scheduler / the kernel, the impact of which we cannot fully judge as we lack expertise in this low level area and did not want to invest more time than necessary for the analysis.

The --bpf-token-path Option

The --bpf-token-path, if it refers to a directory, will be opened by libbpf and the file descriptor will be passed to the bpf system call like this:

bpf(BPF_TOKEN_CREATE, {token_create={flags=0, bpffs_fd=20}}, 8) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)

This does not seem to achieve anything, however, because the kernel code rejects the caller if it lives in the initial user namespace (which the privileged D-Bus service always does). The path could maybe serve as an information leak to test file existence and type, if the behaviour of the scheduler “start” operation shows observable differences depending on the input.

4) On the Verge of a Local Root Exploit

With this much control over the command line parameters of many different scheduler binaries, which offer a wide range of options, we initially assumed that a full local root exploit would not be difficult to achieve. We tried hard, however, and did not find any working attack vector so far. It could be that we overlooked something in the area of the low level BPF handling regarding the attacker-controlled input files discussed in the previous section, however.

scx_loader is saved from a trivial local root exploit merely by the fact that only a subset of the available scx scheduler binaries is accessible via its interface. The scx_chaos scheduler, which is not among the schedulers offered by the D-Bus service, supports a positional command line argument referring to a “Program to run under the chaos scheduler”. Would this scheduler be accessible via D-Bus, then unprivileged users could cause user controlled programs to be executed with full root privileges, leading to arbitrary code execution.

From discussions with upstream it sounds like the exclusion of schedulers like scx_chaos from the D-Bus interface does not stem from security concerns, but rather from functional restrictions, because some schedulers are not supported in all contexts, or are not stable yet.

5) Affected Linux Distributions

From our investigations and communication with upstream it seems that only Arch Linux is affected by the problem in its default installation of scx. Gentoo Linux comes with an ebuild for scx, but for some reason there is no integration of scx_loader into the init system and also the D-Bus autostart configuration file is missing. Thus it will only be affected if an admin manually invokes the service.

Otherwise we did not find a packaging of scx_loader on current Fedora Linux, Ubuntu LTS or Debian Linux. Due to the outcome of this review we never allowed the D-Bus service into openSUSE, which is therefore also not affected.

6) Suggested Fixes

Restrict Access to a Group on D-Bus Level

A quick fix for the worst aspects of the issue would be to restrict the D-Bus configuration in org.scx.Loader.conf to allow access to the interface only for members of a dedicated group like scx. This at least prevents random unprivileged users from abusing the API.

We offer a patch for download which does exactly this.

Use Polkit for Authentication

By integrating Polkit authentication, the use of this interface can be restricted to physically present interactive users. Even in this case we suggest to restrict full API access to users that can authenticate as admin, via Polkit’s auth_admin_keep setting. Read-only operations can still be allowed without authentication.

Making the API more Robust

The individual methods offered by the scx.Loader D-Bus service should not allow to perform actions beyond the intended scope, even if a caller would have authenticated in some form as outlined in the previous sections.

To this end, dangerous parameters for schedulers should either be rejected (e.g. by enforcing a whitelist of allowed parameters) or verified (e.g. by determining whether a provided path is only under control of root and similar checks).

Regarding input files, the client ideally should not pass path names at all, but send file descriptors instead, to avoid unexpected surprises and the burden of verifying input paths in the privileged D-Bus service.

Use systemd Sandboxing

The systemd service for scx_loader could make use of various hardening options that systemd offers (like ProtectSystem=full), as long as these do not interfere with the functionality of the service. This would prevent more dangerous attack vectors from succeeding if the first line of defense fails.

7) Missing Upstream Bugfix

Upstream showed a reluctant reaction to the report we provided in a GitHub issue, rejecting parts of our assessment. An attempt to introduce a Polkit authentication layer based on AI-generated code was abandoned quickly, and upstream instead split off the scx_loader service into a new repository to separate it from the scx core project. Our original GitHub issue has been closed, and we cloned it in the new repository to keep track of the issue.

Downstream integrators of scx_loader can can limit access to the D-Bus service to members of an scx group by applying the patch we offer in the Suggested Fixes section. This way access to the problematic API becomes opt-in, and is restricted to more privileged users that actually intend to use this service.

8) CVE Assignment

We suggested to upstream to assign at least one cumulative CVE to generally cover the unauthenticated D-Bus interface aspect leading to local DoS, potential information disclosure and integrity violation. We offered to assign a CVE from the SUSE pool to simplify the process.

Upstream did not respond to this and did not clearly confirm the issues we raised, but rather rejected certain elements of our report. For this reason there is currently no CVE assignment available.

9) Timeline

10) Links

• scx GitHub repository
• scx GitHub issue for this report
• newly created scx_loader GitHub repository
• cloned GitHub issue in the new scx_loader repository
• openSUSE Bugzilla review bug
• suggested patch to restrict access to the D-Bus service

SUSE delivers Raspberry Pi 5 support

It is finally happening. Raspberry Pi 5 users can now look forward to proper support in openSUSE Tumbleweed.

And it is not just about U-Boot, it is so much more. This is thanks to the hard work of many parties like SUSE Hardware Enablement team, RaspberryPi, Ideas on Board, Linaro, and many other engineers, along with Linux and U-Boot subsystem maintainers and many other engineers were patient enough to review our patches.

Many maybe wondering why it is taking so long to enable Raspberry Pi 5-based devices to work on anything other than Raspberry Pi OS; they no longer need to wonder.

About the boot process

First, let’s highlight the simplified OS-level boot architecture differences.

In Raspberry Pi OS, firmware located in the device’s EEPROM directly runs the vendor-developed Linux kernel.

In openSUSE, we use GRUB2. However, GRUB2 itself requires the machine to have UEFI firmware interfaces to be able to locate boot artifacts. Therefore, openSUSE uses the popular Das U-Boot bootloader to provide these interfaces.

This software combination works fine for (open)SUSE products. But this means we have had to add the missing RPi 5 features to U-Boot and the Linux kernel.

New RPi 5 hardware enhancements

Now, on the hardware side, there are some significant differences between the RPi 5 and all previous generations of devices.

Before the RPi 5, all controllers (like USB, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, GPIO, CSI, and so on) were part of the main SoC (BCM2835, BCM2836, BCM2835, BCM2710, BCM2711) and were more or less the same across different generations of these SoCs. Adding support for them in U-Boot and Linux was more or less straightforward.

On the RPi 5, things changed significantly. There is a new “south bridge” chip, the RP1, which contains all of the above controllers. The RP1 is connected to the main SoC (BCM2712) via a PCIe bus.

Fortunately, one thing has remained the same: The MicroSD card controller is still part of the main SoC. So, besides a few small differences in the SD controller’s internals, adding support for it to U-Boot and the Linux kernel was relatively easy.

Initial U-Boot support for bcm2712 SD controller

Add minimal boot support for Raspberry Pi 5

This led people to think that openSUSE was ready to run on this device.

But this was just the beginning of a long journey.

Let’s go back to PCIe. Older RPi’s also have a PCIe root complex, but the RPi 5’s is a little bit different. So, for U-Boot or Linux to be able to access all of the interesting controllers devices, we had to add support for it in U-Boot and the Linux kernel. This was done by this patch set:

Add PCIe support for bcm2712

There are a few other important pieces that landed in the Linux kernel:

• Add support for new MSI-X Interrupt Peripheral

• Add support for pin control driver for BCM2712 SoC

• Add support for clocks provided by RP1

• Implement RaspberryPi RP1 gpio support

After the PCI Express driver was working and Linux could see devices attached to the PCIe root complex, we had to port the driver that handles the new RP1 chip, behind which are the USB, Ethernet, and so on… This became a difficult task because many people had different views on how this should be implemented. But in the end, we got it merged:

Add support for RaspberryPi RP1 PCI device

Now Linux was able to see devices that were attached behind the RP1 chip. Of course, these controllers (Ethernet, for example) were a little bit different than those on the BCM2711, so a new set of patches was required:

Add support for Raspberry Pi RP1 ethernet controller

Of course, there were many more patches required to make this device usable. A really, really short list of them can be found below.

Currently openSUSE Tumbleweed is booting fine from SD card up to the graphical Desktop Environment using HDMI output.

What you should expect to be working once booted into Tumbleweed:

• Ethernet
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• USB
• HDMI
• …

What is coming

Hopefully U-Boot will soon gain support for BCM2712 PCIe root complex controller. This will bring in ability device to boot from disk. Fixes for Ethernet controller are also on it is way.

Improve Raspberry Pi 5 support

Before you start

Before diving into your openSUSE on Raspberry Pi 5 adventure, make sure your device has the latest EEPROM update.

If you just received your Pi 5 without any system on it, you can prepare a MicroSD card with the EEPROM updater using Raspberry Pi Imager, or simply run the following commands from an existing image on your Pi 5:

sudo rpi-eeprom-update -a
sudo reboot

Do not skip the Debug Probe

If your RPi 5 seems to hang at the U-Boot stage when testing images, you are not alone. This is a known issue being tracked under:

boo#1250992.

This is a temporary workaround, and the issue is expected to be resolved soon.

Using the Debug Probe will save you a lot of time and frustration while experimenting with openSUSE on your RPi 5. It is also a handy tool to keep around for future embedded projects.

Really short list of RPi 5 related patches.

• Add DRM HDMI Codec framework

• Add support for BCM2712 HVS

• Add support for BCM2712 / Pi5 display hardware

• Add watchdog support for BCM2712

• Add Raspberry Pi’s RP1 ADC

What images should I try

You can now run most Raspberry Pi 4 compatible Tumbleweed appliance images or MicroOS if you prefer the immutable variant on your Raspberry Pi 5. openSUSE Leap and Leap Micro are currently out of scope for the effort, but are expected to gain full support in their next releases (16.1 and 6.3 released in late 2026).

Before you begin, make sure that you have the Debug Probe connected. Then write one of the Raspberry Pi images from openSUSE Tumbleweed appliances to your microSD card, and you should be ready to go.

If you can’t decide which image to start with, the Tumblweed Arm GNOME image for raspberrypi is a safe choice.

xzcat image.aarch64.raw.xz | dd of=/dev/sda bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync; sync

If you run into any issues, we highly recommend reaching out on the openSUSE Arm matrix channel or subscribing to the openSUSE Arm mailing list. Alternatively, you’re welcome to use forums.opensuse.org for general openSUSE questions. For general ARM information, visit the openSUSE ARM Portal.

Why run openSUSE on your RPi 5

The official Raspberry Pi OS offers a simple desktop experience, but it is mostly geared toward desktop use and does not include features like containers by default.

With SUSE’s hardware enablement work, you can now get the full openSUSE experience on your Pi. Personally, I enjoy running Cockpit with combination of automatic updates, and I even run containers with my private openSUSE mirror and Nextcloud AIO in containers on my RaspberryPi.

Time to celebrate

To celebrate the hard work of the SUSE Hardware Enablement team, we have sent Raspberry Pi 5 starter kits and Debug Probes to our friends Dale from LowTechLinux and Liam from The Register to share their first impressions with the community.

We also brought a smile to the face of Tomáš, one of last weekend’s openALT.cz attendees, who won a Raspberry Pi 5 and Debug Probe in our openSUSE Quiz. The quiz application, widely used by the openSUSE Booth crew around the world, now features an “openSUSE Arm” section that helps participants learn more about openSUSE’s Arm efforts.

Stay tuned and keep watching our Raspberry Pi 5 Hardware Compatibility page. We will share more updates once USB boot and PCIe are fully functional on the Raspberry Pi 5.

SUSE delivers Raspberry Pi 5 support

It is finally happening. Raspberry Pi 5 users can now look forward to proper support in openSUSE Tumbleweed.

And it is not just about U-Boot, it is so much more. This is thanks to the hard work of many parties like SUSE Hardware Enablement team, RaspberryPi, Ideas on Board, Linaro, and many other engineers, along with Linux and U-Boot subsystem maintainers and many other engineers were patient enough to review our patches.

Many maybe wondering why it is taking so long to enable Raspberry Pi 5-based devices to work on anything other than Raspberry Pi OS; they no longer need to wonder.

About the boot process

First, let’s highlight the simplified OS-level boot architecture differences.

In Raspberry Pi OS, firmware located in the device’s EEPROM directly runs the vendor-developed Linux kernel.

In openSUSE, we use GRUB2. However, GRUB2 itself requires the machine to have UEFI firmware interfaces to be able to locate boot artifacts. Therefore, openSUSE uses the popular Das U-Boot bootloader to provide these interfaces.

This software combination works fine for (open)SUSE products. But this means we have had to add the missing RPi 5 features to U-Boot and the Linux kernel.

New RPi 5 hardware enhancements

Now, on the hardware side, there are some significant differences between the RPi 5 and all previous generations of devices.

Before the RPi 5, all controllers (like USB, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, GPIO, CSI, and so on) were part of the main SoC (BCM2835, BCM2836, BCM2835, BCM2710, BCM2711) and were more or less the same across different generations of these SoCs. Adding support for them in U-Boot and Linux was more or less straightforward.

On the RPi 5, things changed significantly. There is a new “south bridge” chip, the RP1, which contains all of the above controllers. The RP1 is connected to the main SoC (BCM2712) via a PCIe bus.

Fortunately, one thing has remained the same: The MicroSD card controller is still part of the main SoC. So, besides a few small differences in the SD controller’s internals, adding support for it to U-Boot and the Linux kernel was relatively easy.

Initial U-Boot support for bcm2712 SD controller

Add minimal boot support for Raspberry Pi 5

This led people to think that openSUSE was ready to run on this device.

But this was just the beginning of a long journey.

Let’s go back to PCIe. Older RPi’s also have a PCIe root complex, but the RPi 5’s is a little bit different. So, for U-Boot or Linux to be able to access all of the interesting controllers devices, we had to add support for it in U-Boot and the Linux kernel. This was done by this patch set:

Add PCIe support for bcm2712

There are a few other important pieces that landed in the Linux kernel:

• Add support for new MSI-X Interrupt Peripheral

• Add support for pin control driver for BCM2712 SoC

• Add support for clocks provided by RP1

• Implement RaspberryPi RP1 gpio support

After the PCI Express driver was working and Linux could see devices attached to the PCIe root complex, we had to port the driver that handles the new RP1 chip, behind which are the USB, Ethernet, and so on… This became a difficult task because many people had different views on how this should be implemented. But in the end, we got it merged:

Add support for RaspberryPi RP1 PCI device

Now Linux was able to see devices that were attached behind the RP1 chip. Of course, these controllers (Ethernet, for example) were a little bit different than those on the BCM2711, so a new set of patches was required:

Add support for Raspberry Pi RP1 ethernet controller

Of course, there were many more patches required to make this device usable. A really, really short list of them can be found below.

Currently openSUSE Tumbleweed is booting fine from SD card up to the graphical Desktop Environment using HDMI output.

What you should expect to be working once booted into Tumbleweed:

• Ethernet
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• USB
• HDMI
• …

What is coming

Hopefully U-Boot will soon gain support for BCM2712 PCIe root complex controller. This will bring in ability device to boot from disk. Fixes for Ethernet controller are also on it is way.

Improve Raspberry Pi 5 support

Before you start

Before diving into your openSUSE on Raspberry Pi 5 adventure, make sure your device has the latest EEPROM update.

If you just received your Pi 5 without any system on it, you can prepare a MicroSD card with the EEPROM updater using Raspberry Pi Imager, or simply run the following commands from an existing image on your Pi 5:

sudo rpi-eeprom-update -a
sudo reboot

Do not skip the Debug Probe

If your RPi 5 seems to hang at the U-Boot stage when testing images, you are not alone. This is a known issue being tracked under:

boo#1250992.

This is a temporary workaround, and the issue is expected to be resolved soon.

Using the Debug Probe will save you a lot of time and frustration while experimenting with openSUSE on your RPi 5. It is also a handy tool to keep around for future embedded projects.

Really short list of RPi 5 related patches.

• Add DRM HDMI Codec framework

• Add support for BCM2712 HVS

• Add support for BCM2712 / Pi5 display hardware

• Add watchdog support for BCM2712

• Add Raspberry Pi’s RP1 ADC

What images should I try

You can now run most Raspberry Pi 4 compatible Tumbleweed appliance images or MicroOS if you prefer the immutable variant on your Raspberry Pi 5. openSUSE Leap and Leap Micro are currently out of scope for the effort, but are expected to gain full support in their next releases (16.1 and 6.3 released in late 2026).

Before you begin, make sure that you have the Debug Probe connected. Then write one of the Raspberry Pi images from openSUSE Tumbleweed appliances to your microSD card, and you should be ready to go.

If you can’t decide which image to start with, the Tumblweed Arm GNOME image for raspberrypi is a safe choice.

xzcat image.aarch64.raw.xz | dd of=/dev/sda bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync; sync

If you run into any issues, we highly recommend reaching out on the openSUSE Arm matrix channel or subscribing to the openSUSE Arm mailing list. Alternatively, you’re welcome to use forums.opensuse.org for general openSUSE questions. For general ARM information, visit the openSUSE ARM Portal.

Why run openSUSE on your RPi 5

The official Raspberry Pi OS offers a simple desktop experience, but it is mostly geared toward desktop use and does not include features like containers by default.

With SUSE’s hardware enablement work, you can now get the full openSUSE experience on your Pi. Personally, I enjoy running Cockpit with combination of automatic updates, and I even run containers with my private openSUSE mirror and Nextcloud AIO in containers on my RaspberryPi.

Time to celebrate

To celebrate the hard work of the SUSE Hardware Enablement team, we have sent Raspberry Pi 5 starter kits and Debug Probes to our friends Dale from LowTechLinux and Liam from The Register to share their first impressions with the community.

We also brought a smile to the face of Tomáš, one of last weekend’s openALT.cz attendees, who won a Raspberry Pi 5 and Debug Probe in our openSUSE Quiz. The quiz application, widely used by the openSUSE Booth crew around the world, now features an “openSUSE Arm” section that helps participants learn more about openSUSE’s Arm efforts.

Stay tuned and keep watching our Raspberry Pi 5 Hardware Compatibility page. We will share more updates once USB boot and PCIe are fully functional on the Raspberry Pi 5.