openSUSE Leap 16 Arm64

Azure Operating Systems

openSUSE Leap 16 for 64 bit Arm, a free community enterprise Linux sharing its core with SUSE Linux Enterprise 16, for Azure Cobalt 100 Arm virtual machines.

Base

Hardened build

minimal ports, security patches applied at build time

Access

Unique credentials

generated on first boot, readable only by root

Verified

Boots working

services pass a health gate before release

Support

24/7, 365 days

by email and live chat, 24 hour response SLA

Overview

openSUSE Leap 16.0 is a community enterprise Linux distribution produced by the openSUSE Project, sharing its core codebase with SUSE Linux Enterprise 16 and running the 6.12 kernel. It reached general availability on 1 October 2025 and is supported until 31 October 2027. This is the 64 bit Arm (AArch64) build with the standard 4k page size kernel, for the Arm based virtual machine sizes powered by the Azure Cobalt 100 processor, which pair strong per core performance with lower cost than comparable x86 sizes.

It suits teams who want a SUSE aligned Linux baseline on Arm: general purpose servers, web and application tiers, build and test agents for software that ships aarch64 binaries, and development environments that need to match a SUSE Linux Enterprise 16 production target without a subscription. The image is built from the official openSUSE disk image published by the openSUSE Project, with its checksum verified against the published upstream value, so it carries no Marketplace purchase plan and there are no vendor terms to accept beyond cloudimg's own.

Why the cloudimg image

The cloudimg image is an openSUSE Leap 16.0 Arm64 base brought fully up to date at build time and again immediately before capture, booted on its newest kernel with superseded kernels removed, with SELinux left in Enforcing mode and the root password locked. No credential is baked in: access is by the SSH key you choose at launch, root cannot log in over SSH, the build account is removed before capture, and SSH host keys and the machine id are regenerated per machine, so no two instances share a secret or an identity. Automatic security patching, which openSUSE ships no mechanism for at all (there is no dnf-automatic and no unattended-upgrades), is installed and armed as a daily zypper patch timer, so the machine keeps patching itself. SSH on port 22 is the only network listener, checked by comparing the whole listening port set rather than a list of known ports, and rpcbind is left disabled but re-enablable in one command. A five minute first boot stall in the stock upstream image, where cloud-init waits out a 300 second DHCP timeout on every boot and then reports a degraded state for the life of the machine, is diagnosed and fixed: boot time measured 5 minutes 19 seconds before and about 10 seconds after.

Common uses

General purpose Linux servers on Azure Cobalt 100 Arm virtual machines
Build and test agents for software shipping aarch64 binaries
Development environments matching a SUSE Linux Enterprise 16 production target

Overview

Why the cloudimg image

Common uses

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