Anytime I see openSUSE-news in the non-openSUSE channels, I am immediately interested. Good or bad, I am going to read it. It often seems as though openSUSE doesn’t get its fair shake of time in the public, open-source discourse. It befuddles me because openSUSE is a technically very sound distribution, not only in the static release, Leap but also the rolling distribution, Tumbleweed which is what I use quite happily and [mostly] problem free on my primary machine that is my daily driver.
Jason Evangelho a contributor writer for Forbes.com has begun his 2nd Linux Community Challenge, to run openSUSE Tumbleweed. Previously, he conducted an Elementary OS challenge which, to my understanding, went fantastically well. I had watched from a little bit of a distance but I did kick the tires on ElementaryOS a bit but not the full two weeks.
Although I don’t consider using openSUSE for two weeks to be a challenge, I was intrigued by this and wanted to do what I could to be a positive engaging ambassador of the openSUSE community to this Linux Community Challenge. As I have been playing with a variety of Linux distributions lately, I am starting to understand more what could be the rub of going from an Ubuntu base distribution to openSUSE. Having had great experiences on many distros, I know that I could help “translate” some of the different “features” new users might have.
One such feature is the software management tool, zypper. It does things a bit different than DNF, YUM or APT and since I am familiar with all of them, I know that I can help with any command line questions there.
A very cool thing that has also happened is that the openSUSE community created a #challenge channel on their Discord server which is bridged to a Matrix channel that is bridged to this Telegram channel Jason Evangelho has set up. I had hoped that a few of the good folks of the openSUSE community would pop into the Telegram group but instead they brought the openSUSE community into the Telegram group through some clever bridging.
Final Thoughts
I am quite excited to offer my limited knowledge in helping others out with trying openSUSE. I very much believe that openSUSE is the perfect blend of “Done” and “Modify it to your liking” distribution of Linux and I hope that through this challenge more people will see the value, use and ultimately contribute back to this fine distribution.
I am quite interested in compiling what issues or difficulties people have with running a rolling distribution and the various tools. I am of the (possibly misguided) belief that if you have a basic understanding of what an operating system requires, you can run any version of Linux, some just take a bit longer to get it going, depending on how much time the developers have put toward hand-holding the user. openSUSE is somewhere in the middle of the pack, take your time and it is easy enough to get going on your Linux journey and yet the inner workings are well documented, accessible and you are encouraged to really dig into it, tweak it and make it your own.
Further Reading
Introducing The Linux Community Challenge #2: openSUSE Tumbleweed on Forbes.com
You are right openSUSE doesn’t get the exposure it deserves. My day job requires me to work with Linux – mostly on CentOS/RHEL/Ubuntu and infrequently SLEs. Generally I am very pleased with my openSUSE Tumbleweed Leap and Tumbleweed installations at work and home. However there are somethings that perhaps openSUSE devs can look into:
1. “Forced” selection of apps – for instance, I personally prefer XFCE over GNOME or Plasma and will remove Pragha and install VLC instead – however after every zypper dup or zypper up – there it is again as an option or part of some dependency thing. I understand that a simple zypper al pragha will do – but why?
2. Continuing from point 1 – perhaps they can do provide bare-bones install options (or at least make it more obvious – I couldn’t find any such options) like what xBuntu is providing. Not everyone needs everything.
3. I generally feel that openSUSE is slightly more sluggish (I work with a lot of distros at work) when compared to Xubuntu, Ubuntu or even Kubuntu on the desktop – don’t know why but it seems to be so. Same issue when I install Leap as Server – even after removing fluff like wireless drivers, gstreamer etc – it still seems to boot slower than say CentOS with Minimal Install or Ubuntu Server. I have tried openSUSE Tumbleweed with GNOME and XFCE – still lags or at least feels like it lags behind Ubuntu or even Manjaro.
4.Wifi network support, landing pages – except for Plasma and GNOME – running XFCE/Cinammon/MATE on openSUSE Leap/Tumbleweed often makes loading a corporate wifi authentication web page challenging. SInce I move often between sites – I come across this one issue very sore and have since moved to GNOME so that I could *just* get to my data.
I use openSUSE as my primary platform for work and recreation (music, vids etc) and am always recommending it for people looking into Linux. I realise that I can help more but was taken aback when someone in the chat room said that I should accept it as it is – especially point number 1 – since that was how they “always’ did things.
How can I make things better and my grouses heard?
I can’t speak to all your points but I have done Xfce installations. It is under the “custom” option. I primarily use Plasma or LXQt and I can’t say I notice an appreciable difference between distributions. I too run VLC as my media player. I would recommend filling some bug reports for your specific issues and I’d be glad to help you with that process.