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
Elementary OS Community Challenge
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