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What's the package management like? Does it support flatpaks? And what about LTS?
by FeistySkink 6y ago
What's the package management like? Does it support flatpaks? And what about LTS?
- zxspectrum1982 6y agoPackages are RPMS, managed with zypper. You may also use dnf but you will miss some of the advanced features provided by dnf (e. g. the concept of patches vs updates), there was a zypper vs dnf thread recently in the openSUSE mailing lists. It does support flatpaks. There is no free openSUSE LTS. The LTS is called SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, costs some money (unless you are a developer, in that case you get free subscriptions) and the LTS lasts for a minimum of 13 years.
- happyjack 6y agoI have always wanted to try SUSE!
- zxspectrum1982 6y agoOoops, I meant "you will miss some of the advanced features provided by zypper". It's dnf what's lacking the concept of patch, and many more.
- Arnavion 6y agoOn the other hand, dnf/yum downloads repos and packages in parallel while zypper still does everything one at a time, which means every kilobyte-sized package takes a second or two each to download, from setting up and tearing down a new TCP connection each time. It's especially annoying in Tumbleweed because rolling distro == lots of tiny packages updates all the time.
- pnutjam 6y agoZypper is awesome. The newest version of LEAP is identical to Suse Enterprise, you can convert with a simple script if you decide you want extended support. The root filesystem uses btrfs, so it's easy to roll back update problems. There is also a newer version that uses a read-only root filesystem and updates are applied to a new snapshot that takes over when you reboot. It's pretty cool.