OpenSUSE Tumbleweed made me reconsider rolling release distros!
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
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#Linux #opensuse #linuxdistro
00:00 Intro
00:47 Sponsor: Check out AlmaLinux and TuxCare's support services
01:54 OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
02:53 Installer: not the best
05:47 Default desktop experience
06:42 Yast: managing software
08:39 Yast: configuring the system
12:50 Interesting things
14:40 Conclusion
16:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly, with Tuxedo
17:12 Support the channel
It's a rolling release Linux distro, but they test everything thoroughly through their own build service.
Lets talk about the installer. First, you get a licence agreement.Y ou get very complete network settings, but they're not user friendly at all. Then you get to pick the role of your system: do you need a desktop, with GNOME, Plasma, or XFCE, a generic desktop for a minimal install, or a server. You can also get other desktop environments from the repos afterwards, like Cinnamon, MATE, LXQt, or even just a window manager, like i3.
OpenSUSE tumbleweed is one of the rare distros I installed using all its defaults that did NOT manage to give me a bootable system. I reinstalled it, this time carefully picking my partition layout, and this time it worked.
Once I managed to boot the system, I got a very vanilla GNOME experience, with GNOME 44. No extensions, no themes, it's the default experience, and that's great.
On KDE, there's a tiny bit more customization applied, with an OpenSUSE logo as the menu, and the titlebars defaulting to the breeze classic look, instead of the cleaner "regular" color scheme. It doesn't depart from the base KDE layout, it's still super vanilla.
Tumbleweed comes with a lot of preinstalled software, like Evolution, GIMP, LibreOffice, a few games, Tiger VNC, Transmission, and of course, the Yast utility. Flatpak is preinstalled, and flathub is enabled, which is really good.
Yast is a control center and setup utility that's been the mainstay of OpenSUSE for years, basically since its first version. It lets you configure your system in depth, way more than what the default settings in GNOME or KDE let you do.
So, first, Yast lets you manage software. You can add, remove or edit software repositories, and their GPG keys, and you can install packages or apply patches.
This opens a very complete graphical package manager that reminded me of Synaptic. You can install libraries, drivers, whatever is not available in GNOME Software or Discover. It's all RPM packages.
But YAST is also a super complete tool if you want to configure a lot of advanced settings graphically. Yast lets you configure the boot loader entirely, you also get a services manager, to let you enable, or disable various services that run in the background. There's a sysconfig graphical editor, to set various variables related to your desktop. And then there are security settings, for AppArmor, configuring the firewall, hardening the system by disabling or enabling various features and settings, and you can consult the logs, all graphically.
You can also manage printers and scanners, but, the built in tools for this are... not great.
And then there are things I don't think are really needed anymore in a separate tool, like the date and time settings, the language settings, the network settings, the partitioning tool, all of these have equivalents in the Plasma or GNOME desktops, and as far as I can tell, the Yast utilities don't do more than the built in tools.
Once I used it, I started to wonder why desktop environments don't give users access to these configs, or why there isn't a third party tool to manage these.
Tumbleweed also comes with a graphical btrfs snapshot manager: It lets you create or delete snapshots, which you'll be able to restore to revert your system to a usable state.
OpenSUSE also has a web portal to find and install applications. 
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Hi Nick. Do you have an opinion on Alpine Linux as a desktop distro? Have you tried it? I have been playing with it and have fallen deeply in love with their package manager, to the point that i am considering switching all my machines.
@@themroc8231 p
Hey Nick, can you try some foreign distros and do an overview for those of us in Eastern Europe. Like Alt linux, Rosa linux, etc
TW is great. MicroOS even a bit sharper and even more a piece of the future. Test it.
Please, don’t stop caring about “UI and UX and consistency.” I’m here for these insights!
Hahah I don’t plan to, it’s my bread and butter!
It's the part that mostly holds Linux back from mainstream adoption, period. I am really confused why so many people regard this critical area as a "nice to have".
@@Dosenwerfer That's not true
@@WohaoG What is not true?
@@viacheslavspitsyn2995 that it's the part that mostly holds back linux from mainstream adoption. I believe it's that many people are afraid of bioses
OpenSUSE gives me by far the most professional and no-bullshit vibes of all distros. Of course as a German I am rooting for SuSE 💪😁
Moin Moin und I agree.
That is the reason, why I kinda dislike it. :) Oh and it also did not work at all when I tried (several times) its gnome version in VM. Yast seems great, but it really needs to "look better". Oh there are so many distros... I wish, that one day there will be "the one", which will combine all the best features of those other distros into one package. Gimme that Yast into Mint in Zorin OS graphics (etc.)! :D
Ich habe gestern OpenSuse Leap in meinem Laptop installiert. Ich komme aus Fedora und Debian. Lass uns sehen ob ich mit OpenSuse gewohnt werden sein. Grüße aus Brasilien =)
I started on Suse 9.3
Never looked back at other Distro. This thing just works, and that's what I need - since I use it to work.
SuSE is no German. It is owned by the american company Novell
I love the fact that when you review a distro it's not the classic "the desktop looks good and works" review, you have your reasons to review it over the rest, in this case really focused on yast, good job!
Yeah, I want to focus on what is different, not the things you can change easily and that don’t really have an impact!
Yup, this is why I requested Nobara review. In speak of which, I had one on VM untouched for some time, then I did sudo dnf update -y and it bricked.
@@SirRFI wait, what bricked means? anyways, nobara dev always recommend to use they own update system app, thats why gnome software update section now is not available on that distro either
-non english speaker
@Racsu I think bricked in that case might mean the OS was corrupted to the point it would be easier to reinstall rather than try to salvage it. Hardware bricking imo is a system that won't even POST.
I sometimes feel this focus on yast hurts tumbleweed. What makes it different is the automatic package testing that they do to make it a very stable rolling distro together with snapper so that you can easily boot into the last working snapshot in case something does go wrong (usually nvidia drivers). Yast is a nice to have but its a powertool for people who know what they're doing and most people really dont need it. I think people first try to do even simple stuff in yast because its *thee* unique tool when it would be better to first try it with the DE tools because nowadays you rarely need specific configurations.
I wish the flaws saw more public scrutiny... I'm glad you're talking about it. Thank you! You present a fair and accurate overview, I've used openSUSE Tumbleweed on my production machines for years. The only rolling distro for me.... Rock solid and cutting edge indeed
Two corrections:
1) Yast network manager is nescessarry if you use wicked for networking. Only NetworkManager is supported in gnome/kde
2) Partitioner is way more in-depth than gnome disks/kparted, with things like full lvm, mdam or bcache configs.
Also, one thing worth mentioning (and why yast looks the way it does) is that it supports terminal ui via ncurses. Its awesome you can manage your server via ssh with gui application.
I feel that most of the insights given by people is just their first guess, not actually what it really is.
the downside is that it gives an incorrect insight.
"printer port is firewalled" -- next time if you install something you will see that you didn't disable the firewall....
And yes that makes some other installments easier, but then again, also not well protected security wise.
In other words said: it's not always for linux newbies if you just click around and expect all to work.
Or for experts who think "yeah yeah, no need to read this".
@@RoelandJansen this
And serial connections, old terminals.
Now before you laugh, the IBM power hardware management console'svtmenu is text only, 80*25.
A distro which needs more love from both the community and its developers. Just needs a bit more polish and it'd give Mint and Ubuntu some competition.
Yeah, no one really talks about it! I mean, it took me 5 years 😂
its better than those by far.
Wat? If you want the equivalent, you use Leap, not Tumbleweed. And if you want release levvel KDE or Gnome either get the iso for it or just add the repo, set to higher priority and update.
@@unixrebel Agreed. I use Tumbleweed since 2018 (and OpenSUSE from 2006) and never had issues with it, unlike with the Leap, which I have to upgrade every year. Fortunately, zypper dup is your good friend and hopping versions is relatively easy. I think generally OpenSUSE is a lot more useful than Ubuntu or Mint. Most of my employees in the past were put in front of OpenSUSE from day 1 and I never had issues with them not knowing how to use it if they know Windows.
@@sprockketsBy giving mint and Ubuntu competition they probably mean in popularity for new users who arent linux savvy
Some of the things you found redundant in YAST are there because SuSE gets used on servers that don't have DE's. You can still use YAST at the command line then, or the tui, to easily configure some of the things that you won't have a DE to do it in, and since those YAST modules exist for the headless server administration, they'll show up on the GUI version too; Repetitive or not.
As for the installer not booting after install on the guided install- That one surprised me. I've done so many guided installs and not had an issue that I can't count.
The installation can be overwhelming. Perhaps they could hide more of the advanced options behind advanced tabs or buttons, but the power of the SuSE installer is quite insane, especially with partitions and volumes. I've done some pretty crazy btrfs on luks on lvm with lvm raid (or on top of md raid) that I never could have done with other distro installers. Before I switched to TW, a couple years ago, I used to have to do all that by hand prior to installing another distro.
Ah I didn’t think about that, makes sense!
Everytime i tried something a little out of the ordinary in Fedora's installer it borked itself lol
You totally right, when you are on an OpenSUSE server and need to do a config fassst you will thank God that Yast exist in ncurses version :)
Also yast implemented a lot of the "duplicate functions when those functions weren't graphically configurable at all.
YAST was one of THE killer features of suse back in the day.
There is an issue with a bootable USB image on a USB stick. I just had this issue too. I just increased my / size and had a portable USB Stick parallel to the Ventoy installer, opensuse wouldn't want to start after the installation. I had to pull out the USB Stick and after that the ok installation of grub was correct.
This is what distro review should be, not the typical wallpaper comparision. Good job!
One thing I do like about the installer is that when you get to the summary screen, there’s a blue link you can click under packages that takes you to the YaST package manager. From there you can manually select almost any package you would want that’s available in the Opensuse repos to be pre-installed. It also organizes them into categories for you and lets you choose to install minimal groups for GNOME and KDE (if you just want the desktop environment and main utilities)
13:55 Btw, if you used btrfs if you go and do an update, zypper automatically creates a snapshot for you.
So, if the updates somehow should bork the system: snapper rollback last
Or choose the second oldest snapshot before boot in Grub.
again, most of the time these reviews are not that well because of lack of understanding what is what and why.
Thanks. That was one of the questions I had when reaching that point in the video. I generally don't understand why not more distros have this set up by default.
Woah! Automatically takes a snapshot! Incredible.
These guys don't really use it. Install and play around for a couple hours and make a garbage video.
I just really appreciate your time, effort, patience for making such quality videos. Your videos easily stand out among other Linux RUclipsrs in my eyes. Amazing review full of practical well put out information.
Much ❤️
Thank you very much ☺️
Tumbleweed has been fantastic for me so far, and I agree it is criminally underrated. 100% agree with the issues you brought up, and I hope, with SUSE getting a massive wave of new users lately, these problems get addressed. Absolutely agree with the conclusion, previously, Fedora seemed ideal to me for having stability while getting more updated packages, but after trying Tumbleweed, there hasn't been competition on that front, SUSE nails that.
Many users will quickly leave openSUSE if they encounter such problems.
I was litterally trying it on a VM right now! and was thinking damn wish someone I trust had a video on this your timing is frickin' perfect
Haha nice!
@@TheLinuxEXP do you have any interest in reviewing Nobara aswell? if not have you ever tried it?
Opensuse is so stable and good with KDE. Always with the latest tech updates but implemented professionally. Its also true their installer is convoluted and that Yast UI sucks
Really stable, I was impressed !
Also YasT doesn't integrade with Plasma. Not only does it duplicate a ton of functionality, but it also can't pick up your qt theme because it runs as root.
@@temari2860 weird I just use KDE suse recently I clearly remember the app becoming breeze dark when I set breeze dark it was actually how I found out they were qt applications when 😂😂 I was using gnome that's when it is borked for me 😅
@@manankataria Perhaps something have changed since I used it about 5 months ago. I'm not sure about it respecting dark theme, but I remember it didn't pick up my accent color even after logging out.
I have to agree - it's the only Linux distro I used with KDE Plasma for an extended period of time.
You missed the most important thing in the installer:
On the summary page just before you install, you can klick on Software and choose EVERYTHING that gets installed or that you don't want to have installed. You can even choose Apparnor or Selinux or nothing. You can seriously choose everything that makes your system.
But don't worry. The other one Linux RUclipsr who made a Video about openSUSE also missed that😅
It is not intuitively understandable that you can select something there. The dialog would be much more intuitive if it had been designed by Google or Apple.
@@ettoreatalan8303 if it were designed by apple... haha. really?
It's just about reading and eventualy using the help button. There is no excuse.
Been using tumbleweed as my main distro. Its so perfect for what I do.
What are you doing?
@@ettoreatalan8303 Gaming, Browsing the web. Pretty basic stuff. But works very well.
@@CannondaleCAAD For more complex things, it quickly fails due to specialized applications that are not available for Linux.
@@ettoreatalan8303 sad!
Nice video.
I reinstalled openSUSE TW just today (I accidentally deleted my swap partition, failed to fix the grub by chrooting and made it worse, so user error lol) and I never experience these problems on any of my installs tbh. It detected WiFi automatically, and never did a failed install of grub, weird.
I love the openSUSE, I can daily drive an up to date distro on my work machine. I doesn't even have the package skipping problems that Arch has. I didn't even opened my desktop with TW for a month, updated it with no issue, around 2300 packages.
Also thanks for not talking about Desktop Environments for 10 minutes, lol.
@@act.13.41 I have been thinking about using zram for some time to be honest, but the overhead for compressing, although minimal, seems unnecessary and not worth it for me. I might try it to just so I can get several GBs back from the swap partition back, lol, that that I will probably need it.
YaST is an acronym for "Yet another Setup Tool", it was a part of SUSE almost since the beginning, and it has both graphical and an ncurses command line interface.
The installer is also not very obvious about it's capabilities. Not many people realize that when you get your software list - you can click each individual category and change what's going to be installed. You can pretty much pick stuff down to individual packages. The installer overall is very capable but definitely lacks some "easy mode". It shows what OpenSUSE is aiming for greatly - OS for sysadmins.
I didn’t see that, thanks!
@@TheLinuxEXP I think you also missed all the sub volumes the installer created, not that many installers can do that. Sub volumes are very important when using snapper. If you roll back your system you don’t necessarily want to rollback /usr/local, and there isn’t much point to snapshot /var/tmp or ‘tmp.
Yeah that is true. I thought that you can't disable grub install, but it turned out that you need to click on something in summary that looked kinda like some section title or something like that (I don't remember)
@@act.13.41 i am not sure if I understand
(and I meant grub on previous comment, if someone was wondering what "grzyb" is (now I fixed previous comment))
@@act.13.41 I wanted to not install grub entirely because I already had grub installed.
Later I have read somewhere that it is not recommended to use grub installed from other system with opensuse, because you would need to update grub entries every time opensuse updates or some other reason.
(butI just wanted to install opensuse for testing)
You didn't mention the best feature of the openSUSE installer, which is that at that final screen when it shows you a summary of what will be done to your system, you can actually click on the text "Software" (terrible UI design) and it will open the YaST package manager you were looking at later on, allowing you to completely customise the install exactly as you want it! You can add or remove whatever packages you want before you ever first boot the OS.
I am pretty sure He missed it during install. Just keep pressing next next next...
I always appreciate your sense of humour and the love you put in these videos, Nick. Keep up the great work!
Good video! I run tumbleweed myself and would recommend it too anyone.
Would have been nice too see that OBS (openSUSE Build Sevice) and OPI (OBS package Installer) get a mention. I akin this to the AUR or Fedora Copr.
P.S. I also like their slogan. "The makers choice."
I was just looking for a video some what stable rolling releases with gnome yesterday, and then today I see this video front and center on my feed. This finally convinced me to try openSuse tumbleweed. Great Video!
My favorite thing about YaST is it has the best text-mode interface of any Linux distro I'm aware of. Pretty much anything you can do in the graphical UI you can do in the console with a similar workflow. That's part of why I prefer OpenSUSE on servers.
One of the reasons I switched from manjaro to OpenSuse was that it also supports Secure Boot & TPM out of the box (and yes, I also use dualboot with Windows 11😁). 💪
Thanks. Finally, somebody talks about this amazing distro.
As a long time non-enterprise user everything you said was fair and true and fair. A great video all round. For some context; the yast program isn't just graphical. That's what you used but the tui is just as functional and thus redundancies are unavoidable. I imagine the GUI is just a feature for feature transformation of the the TUI. For anyone else looking at the system: I used to use arch (BTW) but wanted a system I could afford to use while procrastinating a school project due that night and I've been hooked on tumbleweed from the first install.
Things have broken and snapper let's you hit "undo" like magic and I've no higher praise for any piece of software.
Garuda tempted me with it's pretty lights but opensuse always works. Even when it doesn't work it still works. It's incredible, honestly.
I didn’t know it also worked with the command line, thanks!
You said it... Incredible
@@TheLinuxEXP yeah, if you spin up a VM without a GUI (for docker containers maybe?) Then you'll find the exact same yast waiting to greet you. They have an immutable version for that purpose and a purpose made kubernetes version but like I said: I'm just a hobbyist.
The bare minimum knowledge required to get something to work was just using opensuse when it came to a VM purpose built for docker.
One more thing about YaST is that is a TUI app too. Running sudo yast in the terminal brings up an almost identical UI, making it excellent for servers
it is actually. we use it for 95%+
OpenSUSE is underrated, it does rolling release like Arch, btw, but the system maintenance is a breeze, ;), because of this it always feels rock solid
WTF!!! 9:09 just killed me, it's like you were talking to me through the screen somehow!
hey you forgot about 1 thing in the installation that you really overlooked, at the section called Installation Overview, you can fine tune stuff in there by clicking the blue hyperlinks, if you click on software it gives you even more desktop enviroment choices ranging from cinnamon LXQT LXDE, mate bungie etc...
My current daily driver the community is super nice everything seems user first focused. I came from Fedora and not having to faff with btrfs snapshots on the install is a massive win for me. It has some weirdness with dependnecy warnings that need to have the addtional function of giving you the option to download them like I've seen with rpm in Fedora.
I'm on it, and have been for a while. I love it now.
Thank you very much for that review, really great job!
I can just confirm everything you said. Just nailed it and you also kept your focus on the interesting things and basically skipped over the things too many other RUclipsrs do in their reviews like listing all programs that come installed or the default wallpaper. 👍
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed KDE is so F’ing solid it’s crazy. I love it!
That Kevin pun was personal 😭
I think Gecko is the definitive SUSE experience. You get the media codecs and general quality-of-life tweaks outta the box. The ISOs are a bit outdated but once you install all it takes is one sudo zypper dup to get that sweet sweet gnome 44. I run Gecko Tumbleweed on my Macbook Air 2015 and its great!
using currently very happy
The media codecs are simple to install now. ' zypper install opi' then when that installs ' opi codecs' or ' opi install codecs' I can't remember if you have to put install but. That's it. 2 commands , all the codecs you need. Opi is openbuild package installer.
Can someone tell me how do I get the firewall to allow chromecast connections 😢 I have an app called cider music player that has this feature where it has support for dlna Chromecast and airplay
what is gecko?
Gecko is basically just openSUSE Tumbleweed. It's ISOs are outdated because you can just packman and most openSUSE users just use opi making Gecko irrelevant
Thank you for making this video! I started looking into OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because it was one of the few Linux distros I could find that still had a 32-bit version. I have an old 32-bit netbook that I wanted to install Linux on, preferrably with a KDE Plasma desktop environment, so this seemed like the most optimal choice. Good to know about these issues going into it so I know what to watch out for.
I, as an admin, find it quite nice that the firewall blocks first of all everything and that you have to open everything explicit. I ran tumbleweed since the beginning and with some glitches with NVidia, becourse they are sometimes slower in updates than tumbleweed, it was never failing me. For me simply the best distro at all. Also Leap as stabile distro is just perfect. I am a SuSe fanboy since they offspring from Slackware. Maybe becourse they are just my neighbors 5 Minutes away. :-) And Yast is simply the best tool ever.
And before I forget it. The packman repo is a must.
a firewall ALWAYS has a default deny stance, yes. It strikes me that people think that all is open, is a good idea to start.
Always happy to see openSUSE Tumbleweed getting the recognition it deserves.
I think I might try tumbleweed on my desktop, thanks for another great video!
I installed last month and love it
Hello Nick! For a few weeks now, I've been using exactly this distro with the Gnome desktop environment and really can't complain about the performance. The integration of the printer, an old Epson Stylus Office, succeeded perfectly with a little effort. While dealing with YaST is not a source of joy, non-open-minded, technology-aversive users will quickly turn away, but also not bad. I consider the user guidance during the installation process to be sober and targeted. The duplicity of the system settings, YaST and Gnome settings, seems confusing. Maybe they should be fused. - P. s.: I am not a nerd but a 56-year-old dentist with below average IT experience.
I'm using openSUSE for ~15 years, and Tumbleweed for quite a long time (I think for about 6-7 years). While there are some quirks and sometimes bugs crawl through openQA, I still haven't any urge to change my distro. I genuinely can say I'm happy with it.
Installation has downsides, but IMO it's not that complex, especially when this isn't done too often - last time, when I've installed new SSD in my laptop couple of years ago. After that - only updates. Same for codecs and nvidia drivers - they aren't one-click, but that's not everyday operation.
YaST is great. I'll add, that while some KDE or GNOME apps are duplicating YaST functionality, there are still other DE or WM which lacks that, so YaST is still helpful. Also, it works in TUI mode, so could be used on servers through ssh.
Another bright side of openSUSE - free choice of DE and ability to easy install them in parallel. Who likes KDE (like me) - uses KDE, GNOME - GNOME, etc. If you want to try them all - free to do that too. No need to install other distro/spin.
Hehe great video Nick as always. I’m glad you looked at the printing. Yes turn off the firewall to config the printer and to print as well. It’s lucky it’s so good everywhere else because printing is an annoyance.
SUSE was the first distro I ever used over 15 maybe 20 years ago and the installation process looks more or less the same now as it did then as does YaST.., back the you could buy it boxed with two large and very good manuals, ahhh the nostalgia.
OpenSuse is the only distributor I've ever used with any consistency. Started way back in the early 2000's with a boxed version I purchased just to learn about Linux. Now being so familiar with YAST, I don't like other distros because I have to hunt down where to make changes at. I've only ever tried Ubuntu and that was a few years ago. Anyway, I haven't been using Linux much lately (bought a windows laptop a few years ago for gaming) but I'm happy to see you give it good grades as I have Bern preparing to come back into the Linux world again soon
4:22 If it works like other btrfs installers, it will create root and home subvolumes (@, @home), which can be snapshotted, grown or shrunk, which is pretty cool.
I use OpenSUSE since 2006 on my employees laptops and it works great. I use the Leap 15.4 and it does everything an office worker needs. I have 1 laptop with Tumbleweed installed back in 2018 and it works great since then. I have not updated the software since long, but it is not a problem since Tumbleweed will install updates gradually until you get to the current version to avoid crashes. It is great since I do not need to upgrade from an older version to a newer one in in case of the Leap release. I just run an update once or twice a year and my laptop is up to date.
I'm really surprised to hear about the first installation that didn't boot. Over the past two months I've installed it on three systems, two laptops and one workstation, as a secondary OS, with a mix of old and new stuff - legacy BIOS, UEFI and secure boot, SATA, NVME etc etc. and it has always just worked on the very first try.
I'm glad to hear your overall analysis of the distro because it reinforces my own findings and makes me feel like I really managed to pick *the* best distro for me.
I also was surprised. I mean if you totally nuke the partition scheme and want a totally different setup, you can make it not to boot but the click click next net finish install for me always has worked. And it's not limited to 3 times in my life. Not even 30. Many more.
(not because I hop distro's -- it;s that I need to install versions/distro's in vm's to test-build wfview and see if it works or that there are instructions needed to get something working).
the most smooth install for me is openSUSE. Most workable and polisted too. And the QA is great. In 20+ years I have seen one time a kernel with specific hardware not boot, but with one additional grub edit it worked. There are major enterprise distro's where you don't know if the boot after an update will work at all. Like happening a few times a year.
Now it does not tell you that it WILL fail for somebody because of the sheer amount of systems I manage but hey... So many things go wrong. And the QA of SUSE catches generally them beforehand.
Tumbleweed replaced my Ubuntu setup.
opensuse uses subvolume (@/home, @/root, @/var etc) for /home, /root, /var, and some others instead of separate partition. a bit like how fedora uses home and root subvolume for /home and /.
I mainly use Arch with ubuntu style subvolume (@, @home, @cache, @log etc)
Great video as always keep up the good work❤
Thank you!
Yast is really the most memorable part of opensuse. That and it really was the only distro at the time you could easily get the ATI proprietary driver installed. it genuinely is a nice tool, and I agree every distro should have something similar. it just stands out, even after all these years(I think the last time I used it, was right around the time Windows Vista was announced). I believe you are correct in that it was originally made with KDE in mind.
When using just a window manager, such as i3 or sway, having all config options in YaST is kinda nice, actually, since you won't need to install the tools from other DEs and get by with fewer dependencies.
Started using Opensus in 2003 (then SuSE) and the installer was similar the one they use these days. Yast is a nice touch for industrial users.
Great summary and review!! I had some initial post-install issues as well. Turns out using Ventoy added an extra kernel parameter that I had to remove. Still, I always find myself coming back to Tumbleweed. It's great having up-to-date packages and an extremely reliable system! I've only had to roll back once in 4-5 months due to an issue with Nvidia drivers (which was fixed the next day). YaST could definitely use some polish, but it's nice having a GUI for system settings - especially for those of us migrating from Windows!
I'm content with Fedora but I like how OpenSUSE has x86-64-v3 rpm packages and BTRFS snapshots by default.
I've been using Thumbleweed since the beginning of this year and I can confirm: the possibilities to tweak stuff are far more bigger than in any other distributions, and as a rolling release, it is surprisingly stable. I definitely recommend it (especially if you use KDE, as it is a way more polished experience than gnome).
That being said, I also had issues trying to setup my printer because of the firewall, and I can't manage to get the scanner to work even to this day.
So yeah, it's an excellent distribution, but I think that it might need some more polishing in UI and UX and default settings in general (like seriously, I've tried a ton of distributions and none of them had any issue with my printer, but well)
Anyway, great review!!!
tumbleweed is at first position in almost all performance benchmarks, comparing with main Linux distros and Windows too
Been daily driving OpenSuse tumbleweed for years now, very stable. Very strange that you got that error on your first time booting. I have installed this OS so many time on different machines, old and new, without issues at all. It’s the best. ❤
Thanks for another great video, you're one of three channels I never miss.
Thanks!
I've never seen a Distro that had the Firewall active by default..at least not so far. With the appearance of IPP, wireless printers work right out of the box now. (not so with wired printers)
Ah, OpenSUSE. My very first Linux distro. We had to learn to work with it back in college, the leap version to be specific. It's a very powerful distro for professional use, coming with everything a sysadmin could ever want out of the box. (Or well, almost everything.) It's also very much a relic. Yast's UI looks like something from the XP days, because it is from the XP days. In fact, it gets better. SUSE also installs the terminal version of Yast, which runs in ncurses. Yep, you get to setup your computer like they did in the 90s! (If you want to.)
Don't get me wrong, it's a very capable distro. Perhaps even too capable for the average user. There's a good reason why the settings apps in every other distro doesn't have as many features and options as Yast does. Most people will probably never need or want to touch those settings. They want their printer to just be automatically detected and work instead of dealing with a setup wizard. Also, the amount of things you can break by not knowing what you're doing with Yast is frightening. It gives you all the buttons and rarely asks if you're sure about what you're doing.
They're quite conservative though. They've never done a live CD to my knowledge and are rather apprehensive about stuff like media codecs and Steam.
They have live stuff. In fact, they have like a distro builder now.
@@sprockkets Good to hear they do have a live image nowadays. Should really be standard on any OS install media.
The distro builder sounds neat. Might be time for a return visit to the world of SUSE.
No one forces people to use Yast. You can setup your printer with the DE tools like every other distro. To me its like the old control panel in windows. Nowadays its kinda hidden away from the user with the simpler settings app. But occasionally you need some deeper control and its still usefull. Most people will not touch yast much after the initial setup of their system though. I mean you wouldn't stop shipping a terminal emulator just because many people copy paste commands they dont understand into it.
Yast was with SUSE since its beggings in early 90 !!!! Windows XP came a decade later in the 2000 ;)
@@bernhardbinde4865 I remember when I tried to setup my printer in the KDE settings, that function seemed to be locked and so I assumed that using YaST was the only option. I have the same kind of printer setup as described in the video (WiFi only HP printer), so I encountered the same problems: having to manually install hplip (easy enough, but that error message could just as well have a button to allow to install the package with one click) and having to open the ports needed to discover the printer in the firewall (I eventually figured that out, but it took me a long time).
I've used openSUSE with KDE Plasma on my laptop for over a year now and I've been impressed with its stability. Bugs are few and far between even with daily package updates which is pretty cool. Also YaST is a good tool for troubleshooting.
I think an important feature that you missed is the automatic snapshots before and after package installa that are added as grub entries. I know you can set it up on many other distro, but most of the time it’s a pain, whereas on opensuse it comes as default
I fired up a Tumbleweed VM today in HyperV, and I was quite impressed with the responsiveness/snappy feeling within the VM, I will have to consider a bare metal install on my MIniPC and give this OS an extended play-test for daily use. (I used KDE/Plasma over Gnome)
Running Tumbleweed for years on my PC and Laptop with Gnome. Runs amazingly.
I use Fedora GNOME, but always have SUSE KDE in Boxes to test new software, packages and when complete isolation is required. It's super easy to fix and roll back. It also works with RPM!
Love this distro
This sounds exactly like my experience with endeavor OS. Almost a year now without any issues, perfection.
I'm glad you discovered openSUSE. And even more glad that you tested the Tumbleweed version in the right way to be able to evaluate its performance: Install it on a physical machine. I've been using openSUSE for more than 10 years and I just want to make two comments on what you say.
First: Indeed, the openSUSE installer is not for "distrohoppers". The installer is made for people who either already have another operating system and want to have it alongside it or already come from a Linux distribution and want to respect the partitions they already had, reusing them. That's why it's much more powerful than any other distribution and that's another plus point. Any other installer is so basic that it only allows you to install by removing everything or only together with another operating system. Nothing fancy.
Second: As I have already replied to another comment, you are left with only the "ugly face" of Yast. Yast is not pretty because it has to be functional, operational, on ALL desktops and in the terminal (CLI). Any experienced openSUSE user knows that if for any reason you can't start the windowed environment (usually because of Nvidia's private drivers) you can launch the Yast control panel from the terminal itself, and you will get the typical window (no icons and no mouse, but with the same interactive look and feel) from which to manage absolutely everything in the system. Who cares if it's pretty if only the openSUSE development team has bothered to develop something so versatile and powerful?
Finally, I've always been a KDE (Plasma) user because it's so much more powerful, configurable and versatile.
Update: I forgot another thing. In the license agreement, you will see that it says that openSUSE does not come with proprietary software, you have to install it by downloading and installing it separately. That's why it doesn't recognize your WiFi card in the installation (although you could install the driver from a USB stick in these steps). That is, it is NOT a problem of openSUSE, but of the other distributions, which DO include proprietary software in their ISOs.
OpenSUSE was the first district I ever installed on my own home hardware.
The network printer issue is annoying but easy, to solve: Yast - firewall - disable
Search printer and install printers
The enable firewall or manually configure allow services - cups.
Talking about printers: That's also an interesting topic. My own printer is a pretty old Brother ink printer that used to work flawlessly back in the days but refuses to work in today's distros. At least for me, some recommendations for Linux support for modern printers would be interesting.
For each non-debian or non-arch distro that you review, it would be very helpful if you could go over what options are available if the application I want is only available as a deb or on aur. Would be very helpful for me
I like it!
OpenSUSE (back then SUSE Linux 5.3) was my very first Linux experience. Soon after I purchased version 6.0 which came on a couple Floppy Disks and CDs and, most importantly a user manual and reference book. It explained the partition layout hardly anyone still gets to learn.
Anyone complaining about the fancy install GUIs should take a deep dive and install a distro via TUI (Text User Interface). BSD still does so. ;-)
opensuse is imho the best beginner linux, because of yast
also, YAST CAN WORK IN TTY MODE TOO
which is why it DOES make sense to have partitioning and stuff in there also, it means you can do stuff all from in there, instead of having to remember "oh right, I need cfdisk"
Been using TW on my desktop for like a year now. Loved it so far, especially as a KDE diehard, but after spending many hours paying for my beginner misconceptions (like adding too many software repositories via the one click installer…) and setting up things like proper polkit for zypper through KDE Discover that other distros just do by default, I started looking for alternatives.
I picked TW cause I wanna use bleeding edge updates for playing games, but with distros like Nobara out in the wild, I may be switching soon. YAST is pretty awesome. But for some of its features I wonder if in some ways it solves a problem that the distro itself creates, by not having the most modern/user-friendly defaults (KDE Connect was blocked by the firewall… even though it was preinstalled with the distro. kinda funky)
This is exactly my experience too. I made the dumb mistake of picking it for my daily on my work machine though, so now I'm faced with the awful task of migration while tiptoeing around trying not to break anything.
Void Linux has been very stable for me for the last couple of months. Have not tried tumbleweed, it would be interesting to see how they compare.
“Criminally underrated” - well said =)
I'm all for opensuse. Great video
I am a sucker for well maintained Linux distros.
OpenSuse is like a German car. Everyone knows its good but still drives Tesla (Fedora). I actually like SUSE as a company and respect the fact they still offer multiple desktop environments during installation process but I think Red Hat has done a better marketing job including certification paths and docs.
I use suse tumbelweed from 2019 and i still use it now it is now my one os i mean main os , i did everything over on it like video, audio editing, coding, browsing , office and lot more other stuff .
Just watched a video on Cray Unix and it's relation to Suse, which apparently runs many of the world's fastest supercomputers (or did at one point).
I remember first using it in the early 2000s because it was the easiest linux system to install wifi drivers on. No small feat back then. Thinking I'll have to partition some space for a new install!
I'm really glad you talked about the printer issues because I went through that exact hassle as well.
I switched over to Tumbleweed after Solus's issues and it's a good distro, but I've been having a lot more annoyances compared to it, surprisingly.
I'm using Plasma Wayland and it crashes all the time, for no good reason. There is no single official way to find software and its kind of a mess. (Discover, YaST, zypper, opi...). Also it's really bad at handling low memory scenarios, just freezing the entire system (as Linux always does for me, but worse here).
OpenSuse with KDE to me is the best Linux distro and will remain as my favorite one, butttt because of some quirks I still tend to install on the work computer Linux Mint, and for weird experimentos PopOS or Manjaro Gnome. Honestly the thing I enjoy the most is the default experience of OpenSue with KDE, it just feels right and the Options to customise everything are there by KDE and by Suse in YAST.
Now about the installation... OpenSuse was the first Linux distro to make me completely understand what the heck was I doing when partitioning and configuring a lot of stuff, so now it feels standard but yeah comparing it to others is kind of overwhelming for a new user, and still the thing I love the most about it is the default grub screen, no need for grub customizer or anything extra, it looks so good it really simply gives me joy to see a distro improving graphically as you mention also with YAST with a lot of options not being able natively by GUI in other distros.
I had this issue with the Suse Installer around 15 years ago too. Good to know that their still lacking behind
Around 2014-2015 i used openSUS and Mint. People even this day are happy with both. I think time tells a lot. Im personally shocked. Its subjective opinion, but i still think opensuse have best installer. Later void stealed my heart.
Now i use gentoo btw. 🎉
Thank you for, evaluting of SUSe Linux, I'm user of that, and really happy of my choice
I Am a Brazilian that used tumbleweed for almost 2 years. No doubt it is the most reliable rolling release distribution. No just rolling, it was the most stable linux I have used. Always updated with confidence. The best for me.
Thanks. A very fair-minded review. I hear your high and a few lowlights echoed with my experience. On an older PC (3770k + vega64) I recently installed regata os (kde plasma)and so far I'd have no problem recommending the os for work and gaming use. It's very pretty very functional and relatively easy to use, even for someone like me who'd describe as a linux undergrad on the seven year plan. I haven't run the os live on recent hardware, so I can't comment about that--my main motivation was to keep my older hardware relevant despite msft corporate coercion.
That Destiny 2 front hit me right in the face xD
I literally just installed it yesterday, this is a great coincidence, I love your videos :)
Some other notes about snapshots:
- When updating before and after snapshots are made automatically so you can easily rollback if something's wrong
- Snapshots are also accessible from the bootloader so unless you broke the snapshots or GRUB then you can basically recover from anything.
Very rarely do I have to use snapshots but one time I had messed up the shell, basically I had no shell at all so it was impossible to login to the system but all it took was select a snapshot in GRUB and I was back on track.
TW has some rough edges and isn't as widely supported as others distros (if someone provides RPM repo for Fedora it usually for on TW also) but it's really rock solid and I update without fear.
I'm glad you're giving it a try, it was my goto prior to recent Fedora releases and it's still the best way to try out a recent KDE release. Honestly it does have its issues (I never had it not boot from install, and I have installed it countless times. But I have had package install issues in the past which bricked the install) but all in all it's a fantastic experience.
Also, yes the interface of YaST sucks, I wish they would either modernise it or do separate interfaces with the GTK and QT toolkit.
Yast seems awesome!
As always writing a comment to support the channel
I used Suse as my very first Linux distro back, when OpenSuse 6 was around. From a magazine CD (IIRC). This was a buggy experience. But I really like YAST nowadays for its features. But I prefer a cummunist distro ATM.