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Ok naive question but SUSE was the first Linux distro I used 15 years ago and never touched it again. For those of HN that use it today, what's their strength c

Ok naive question but SUSE was the first Linux distro I used 15 years ago and never touched it again. For those of HN that use it today, what's their strength compared to RHEL or Ubuntu in the enterprise world?

xtracto 3y ago
Just recently I was reading about OpenSuse thimbleweed rolling release. I read a lot of Great things about it, everyone said it was great. Then I saw a couple of videos and realized its UI (of their control center) is stuck in the 90s and it has several rough edges (like when installing it, I wont show you a list of WiFi access points, but ask you to manually enter the name of your AP and the encryption method... in 2023). I decided to keep Mint. So far it's been the best distros in terms of "not having to bother" so much. I use it as my daily dev environment.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  How many times in a year do you expect to go into the "control center" to change config? And how bad is it to have an old UI stuck in the 90's [1]compared while most distros still expect you to edit config files like in the 70's/80's[2]? Besides I am pretty sure you can configure tumbleweed without even touching that control center. I haven't tried tumbleweed, but I have tried Mint a few months ago and it didn't really striked me as having much more modern tool and I don't think I even used a configuration management tool. [1] that many people would praise nowadays by the way. [2] which still works really well and is still a pretty good UX imho.
Stranger43 3y ago
Firstmost an close relationship to SAP due to being headquartered in the same German region. Secondly SuSE have an relatively good track record of delivering an stable and predictable distribution with SLES, and have been around longer then any other commercial Linux vendor, and despite several changes in ownership over the years it's never been felt as an user. Compared to Ubuntu running SLES is breath of calmness with changes happening slow and well coordinated and while RHEL used to be the same that's changing after being taking over by IBM.
LaLaLand122 3y ago
What's exactly "the enterprise world"? Honestly, all the distributions "just work" and are "stable" (i.e. they don't crash and corrupt your data). You could just pick up a random one. You will find some specific problems affecting you, sure... you will report (or even fix) them and, after a while, the distro will be perfect for you (it will still have some problems, but none affecting you because you have reported/fixed them). The main thing about RHEL is that it's "stable" (i.e. it doesn't change) over a crazy long period of time. If you are selling software, the lack of change makes it easy to support. If you are buying software, it's a good platform to use because developers support it. RHEL being historically the most popular "doesn't change" distro, I have never seen a big point in using other. Nowadays your vendor is probably also supporting Ubuntu, though. SUSE? A lot of them will support it, but not all. As long as the vendors you use support the distro you use it doesn't matter, I guess.

xtracto 3y ago

Just recently I was reading about OpenSuse thimbleweed rolling release. I read a lot of Great things about it, everyone said it was great. Then I saw a couple of videos and realized its UI (of their control center) is stuck in the 90s and it has several rough edges (like when installing it, I wont show you a list of WiFi access points, but ask you to manually enter the name of your AP and the encryption method... in 2023). I decided to keep Mint. So far it's been the best distros in terms of "not having to bother" so much. I use it as my daily dev environment.

prmoustache 3y ago
How many times in a year do you expect to go into the "control center" to change config? And how bad is it to have an old UI stuck in the 90's [1]compared while most distros still expect you to edit config files like in the 70's/80's[2]? Besides I am pretty sure you can configure tumbleweed without even touching that control center. I haven't tried tumbleweed, but I have tried Mint a few months ago and it didn't really striked me as having much more modern tool and I don't think I even used a configuration management tool. [1] that many people would praise nowadays by the way. [2] which still works really well and is still a pretty good UX imho.

Stranger43 3y ago

Firstmost an close relationship to SAP due to being headquartered in the same German region. Secondly SuSE have an relatively good track record of delivering an stable and predictable distribution with SLES, and have been around longer then any other commercial Linux vendor, and despite several changes in ownership over the years it's never been felt as an user. Compared to Ubuntu running SLES is breath of calmness with changes happening slow and well coordinated and while RHEL used to be the same that's changing after being taking over by IBM.

LaLaLand122 3y ago

What's exactly "the enterprise world"? Honestly, all the distributions "just work" and are "stable" (i.e. they don't crash and corrupt your data). You could just pick up a random one. You will find some specific problems affecting you, sure... you will report (or even fix) them and, after a while, the distro will be perfect for you (it will still have some problems, but none affecting you because you have reported/fixed them). The main thing about RHEL is that it's "stable" (i.e. it doesn't change) over a crazy long period of time. If you are selling software, the lack of change makes it easy to support. If you are buying software, it's a good platform to use because developers support it. RHEL being historically the most popular "doesn't change" distro, I have never seen a big point in using other. Nowadays your vendor is probably also supporting Ubuntu, though. SUSE? A lot of them will support it, but not all. As long as the vendors you use support the distro you use it doesn't matter, I guess.