3 ms·

personally I'm a pretty big fan of opensuse tumbleweed for a rolling distribution because they ship fully tested snapshots each day rather than individual packa

personally I'm a pretty big fan of opensuse tumbleweed for a rolling distribution because they ship fully tested snapshots each day rather than individual packages. If I understand the article correctly Google's Sieve is similar to the Opensuse Build Service in that regard. It seems like they went for Debian because of the proximity to Ubuntu but I wonder if they ever considered Suse, the ecosystem is pretty good.

themodelplumber 4y ago
Thanks for your comment. I have been thinking about Tumbleweed or Manjaro to try out a rolling release. Not sure yet which to choose, as they seem quite different in a lot of ways.
compiler-guy 4y ago
The upgrade-in-place plan is made more difficult the more distant from Ubuntu you get. Suse has a great ecosystem, but the transition costs would have been quite a bit higher.
abirch 4y ago
I liked Suse before Novell acquired it. Is it still good?
- Arnavion 4y ago
  Yes. I've been using it for over a decade and it's still great. Like Fedora it's leading the charge in modernization (btrfs, /usr/etc, snapper, Yast, etc) and like Arch it has a big set of up-to-date packages, except they're in the main repo instead of an untrusted AUR.
  - nyanpasu64 4y ago
    You need third party repositories if you want full ffmpeg with h.264 support, and since these are binary (IIRC) repos, each third-party package is often either compatible with the latest or older snapshot, or tumbleweed, but often not both (unlike Arch's AUR which only has one distro to target, though it's a moving target).
    - Arnavion 4y ago
      >You need third party repositories if you want full ffmpeg with h.264 support Repository. Singular. Packman. >each third-party package is often either compatible with the latest or older snapshot, or tumbleweed, but often not both The conversation was about TW. There is a packman repo for TW.
      - nyanpasu64 4y ago
        The conversation was about getting packages "in the main repo instead of an untrusted AUR". I used Tumbleweed a few years ago. To get a package selection as rich as the full AUR (which is very broad but not 100% comprehensive for niche packages), I had to use multiple package repos besides Packman, and many packages I wanted didn't ship Tumbleweed builds (reminding me of my experiences with Ubuntu's PPAs).
- tyingq 4y ago
  Fwiw, Suse is a public company again and Novell is split up into various different places like NetIq (eDirectory) then Microfocus for most of the "dead-ish" products like Groupwise and File/Print services.
raffraffraff 4y ago
Have to say I didn't expect much from it. I don't distro hop usually, and when I do it's Debian based distros so that I have the familiar package management tools. I also usually stick to XFCE + plank. But for the first time in over a decade I broke tradition and installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE. The config panel you get on first login has an extremely handy feature that lets you choose a layout for KDE, and there's one that almost perfectly matches my XFCE + plank setup. Several weeks on and really I'm happy with it. Wayland, PipeWire, everything up to date. Not a single issue! In thinking about using it as my daily driver in my work laptop.
- dizhn 4y ago
  For other people reading. I like everything you said about tw. I also can't believe I ended up on opensuse and KDE (with a modified bismuth tiling setup). But to me the killer app of tw is btrfs snapshots and rollbacks via snapper. (It can be configured on other systems too but the tw installer takes care of the subvolumes nicely)
merb 4y ago
well if opensuse tumbleweed would use apt I would use it instantly, however zypper is so niche...
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Why is niche an issue? Most of the packages on apt are available on suse. Then you have the Opensuse Build Service(OBS) for therest.

themodelplumber 4y ago

Thanks for your comment. I have been thinking about Tumbleweed or Manjaro to try out a rolling release. Not sure yet which to choose, as they seem quite different in a lot of ways.

compiler-guy 4y ago

The upgrade-in-place plan is made more difficult the more distant from Ubuntu you get. Suse has a great ecosystem, but the transition costs would have been quite a bit higher.

abirch 4y ago

I liked Suse before Novell acquired it. Is it still good?

Arnavion 4y ago
Yes. I've been using it for over a decade and it's still great. Like Fedora it's leading the charge in modernization (btrfs, /usr/etc, snapper, Yast, etc) and like Arch it has a big set of up-to-date packages, except they're in the main repo instead of an untrusted AUR.
- nyanpasu64 4y ago
  You need third party repositories if you want full ffmpeg with h.264 support, and since these are binary (IIRC) repos, each third-party package is often either compatible with the latest or older snapshot, or tumbleweed, but often not both (unlike Arch's AUR which only has one distro to target, though it's a moving target).
  - Arnavion 4y ago
    >You need third party repositories if you want full ffmpeg with h.264 support Repository. Singular. Packman. >each third-party package is often either compatible with the latest or older snapshot, or tumbleweed, but often not both The conversation was about TW. There is a packman repo for TW.
    - nyanpasu64 4y ago
      The conversation was about getting packages "in the main repo instead of an untrusted AUR". I used Tumbleweed a few years ago. To get a package selection as rich as the full AUR (which is very broad but not 100% comprehensive for niche packages), I had to use multiple package repos besides Packman, and many packages I wanted didn't ship Tumbleweed builds (reminding me of my experiences with Ubuntu's PPAs).
tyingq 4y ago
Fwiw, Suse is a public company again and Novell is split up into various different places like NetIq (eDirectory) then Microfocus for most of the "dead-ish" products like Groupwise and File/Print services.

raffraffraff 4y ago

Have to say I didn't expect much from it. I don't distro hop usually, and when I do it's Debian based distros so that I have the familiar package management tools. I also usually stick to XFCE + plank. But for the first time in over a decade I broke tradition and installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE. The config panel you get on first login has an extremely handy feature that lets you choose a layout for KDE, and there's one that almost perfectly matches my XFCE + plank setup. Several weeks on and really I'm happy with it. Wayland, PipeWire, everything up to date. Not a single issue! In thinking about using it as my daily driver in my work laptop.

dizhn 4y ago
For other people reading. I like everything you said about tw. I also can't believe I ended up on opensuse and KDE (with a modified bismuth tiling setup). But to me the killer app of tw is btrfs snapshots and rollbacks via snapper. (It can be configured on other systems too but the tw installer takes care of the subvolumes nicely)

merb 4y ago

well if opensuse tumbleweed would use apt I would use it instantly, however zypper is so niche...

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Why is niche an issue? Most of the packages on apt are available on suse. Then you have the Opensuse Build Service(OBS) for therest.