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I used to run SUSE about 20 years ago and have always thought it was cool but haven't kept up with it much since then. What are some of the things they do that

I used to run SUSE about 20 years ago and have always thought it was cool but haven't kept up with it much since then. What are some of the things they do that make them unparalleled?

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Tumbleweed, the only "pro" rolling distro that gets proper testing. And other stuff like Rancher but I never used it, and I'm sure there's more.
kergonath 3y ago
Rock-solid distros with packages that keep with the times and that are as user-friendly as it gets for Linux installs. Both Tumbleweed and Leap are great. We have far fewer issues in my lab since we replace CentOS with Leap (our experiments with Ubuntu were dreadful and we cannot babysit the computers so anything with complex maintenance is right out). Going all rolling release was a step too far, too much of a culture shock, but we might switch to Tumbleweed in a couple of years if the stability remains as it is now.
deaddodo 3y ago
I ran SUSE around the same time (2001-2002ish), because it was the only major distro (between RH and Mandrake, primarily) that would install on my archaic 128MB PII. Debian worked but my grade school brain had no capacity for setting up Xfree86 manually. I stuck to SUSE for about 1.5 years before switching to Mandrake (and, eventually, Fedora Core) on my new Athlon XP desktop. My nostalgia for them will probably always be strong.
- koyote 3y ago
  Sounds like we pretty much had the same Linux story! I started with SuSE 7 (purchased it!), then Mandrake, then Fedora, then Ubuntu, then Arch and now reluctantly back on Xubuntu because I can't get my laptop to sleep properly on Arch... Do you remember why you switched from SuSE? I only have vague memories but I feel like the package manager might have been a bit clunky? Maybe I should give openSUSE another go, I really dislike Ubuntu's 'ads' and snap.
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    Well, mainly I was young and still exploring a fresh and vibrant scene (much unlike the relatively mature Linux of today), so that was half of it. The other half was that whenever I searched for an RPM for something I needed, it was almost always a Mandrake or RH package. RH was a pain with things like MP3s and proprietary drivers, so Mandrake seemed obvious. And yeah, SaX/YaST was a little clunkier than Drak. I went to Fedora Core in their first version because the third party repositories became seamless enough and they were easily the best supported, especially for on-the-edge software. Went through some Arch, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Pop_OS! etc days in-between there but have mostly settled on Fedora KDE, these days.
  - 7speter 3y ago
    Lol YAST is still clunky. Very functional but also clunky and slow.
canucker2016 3y ago
[flagged]
- rgrieselhuber 3y ago
  Yes I own the company. Decided to take it private again.
- smohare 3y ago
  [dead]
- Takennickname 3y ago
  No. I think he means he took all the employees in SUSE SA, and made them run on some of his treadmills. But I could be wrong.
  - stephenr 3y ago
    Pfft what benefit is running them on treadmills. At the very least he should run them in the Iditarod.
COGlory 3y ago
Open Build System and OpenQA, for automated building and testing of packages. This is what gets updates to their rolling release Tumbleweed faster than Arch, but with no instability ever. I can't emphasize enough how rock solid Tumbleweed is. OBS also doubles as their own AUR equivalent - you can make your own repo and do your own builds and install from the command line, or browse and install what other people have done. Leap is their stable distro, and shares binaries with SLES, their enterprise offering. Both Leap and Tumbleweed have BTRFS by default, with Snapper for automated snapshots at upgrade and boot. Update messed something up? System won't boot? Just run an old snapshot until it's fixed. Zypper, the package manager, has state-of-the-art dependancy resolution, personally the best I've used. They have a number of extremely interesting spinoff projects: MicroOS and MicroOS desktop (recently renamed, but the new names are escaping me) which use immutable root filesystems with automated updates and native Podman support. Snapper integration shines there, as well. If it fails to boot after update, it'll automatically roll back. They're doing quite a bit, and it's all culminating in being very useable. Tumbleweed is the crown jewel, though.
- LanternLight83 3y ago
  ooo, that auto rollback sounds really cool-- got any idea how that's done? I assume it's handled by checking for eg. a dirty-fs-flag just before the initfs boots the real system, but what if there's breakage in userspace (eg. the login manager) or in the initramfs itself?
  - unmole 3y ago
    Snapper creates a Btrfs snapshot before any change in the root filesystem. If something breaks, you choose an older snapshot to boot from via grub.
    - unmole 3y ago
      By a bizzare coincidence, I just had a breaking update today. CUPS was missing some symbols and wouldn't start. Rolled back to an earlier snapshot and all is well.
    - 3y ago
canpan 3y ago
So I just installed it yesterday on my new home PC. Switching from Windows after I sold my old PC. (I do like gaming sometimes). Installation worked flawlessly. Hardware was detected on the spot. I could install NVidia's official driver through YaST. Installing Steam from the package manager. Now I am sitting with a switch pro controller and playing Hogwarts Legacy. All around a solid experience. Their biggest competitor in this space might be Ubuntu. For me Suse has a more solid feeling to it. Also supports KDE better.
- sigzero 3y ago
  Did you go with Leap or Tumbleweed?
  - canpan 3y ago
    I choose Tumbleweed. Reason being that I do gaming and often you need the latest package of something to be able to. Although, I do not have any experience with Leap so maybe it is good as well? I do back up my own files, so there is not much danger in it for me. For a very stable distro experience at work, I use debian (stable). But it lags a few years behind, so is no good for games.
    - 7speter 3y ago
      Leap is not good for gaming, especially if you want cutting edge versions of software and tools. For some software, there just isnt a leap repo.
tempest_ 3y ago
A lot of the sibling comments are talking about this distro itself but they are also neglecting SUSE foray into the container orchestration space with Rancher and K3s. I would assume that is where they are looking to grow.
- alanwreath 3y ago
  I’d be surprised if they made K3S closed source. Isn’t it already a cncf project? —update, sheesh. It’s not even incubating.

I used to run SUSE about 20 years ago and have always thought it was cool but haven't kept up with it much since then. What are some of the things they do that make them unparalleled?

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

Tumbleweed, the only "pro" rolling distro that gets proper testing. And other stuff like Rancher but I never used it, and I'm sure there's more.

kergonath 3y ago

Rock-solid distros with packages that keep with the times and that are as user-friendly as it gets for Linux installs. Both Tumbleweed and Leap are great. We have far fewer issues in my lab since we replace CentOS with Leap (our experiments with Ubuntu were dreadful and we cannot babysit the computers so anything with complex maintenance is right out). Going all rolling release was a step too far, too much of a culture shock, but we might switch to Tumbleweed in a couple of years if the stability remains as it is now.

deaddodo 3y ago

I ran SUSE around the same time (2001-2002ish), because it was the only major distro (between RH and Mandrake, primarily) that would install on my archaic 128MB PII. Debian worked but my grade school brain had no capacity for setting up Xfree86 manually. I stuck to SUSE for about 1.5 years before switching to Mandrake (and, eventually, Fedora Core) on my new Athlon XP desktop. My nostalgia for them will probably always be strong.

koyote 3y ago
Sounds like we pretty much had the same Linux story! I started with SuSE 7 (purchased it!), then Mandrake, then Fedora, then Ubuntu, then Arch and now reluctantly back on Xubuntu because I can't get my laptop to sleep properly on Arch... Do you remember why you switched from SuSE? I only have vague memories but I feel like the package manager might have been a bit clunky? Maybe I should give openSUSE another go, I really dislike Ubuntu's 'ads' and snap.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  Well, mainly I was young and still exploring a fresh and vibrant scene (much unlike the relatively mature Linux of today), so that was half of it. The other half was that whenever I searched for an RPM for something I needed, it was almost always a Mandrake or RH package. RH was a pain with things like MP3s and proprietary drivers, so Mandrake seemed obvious. And yeah, SaX/YaST was a little clunkier than Drak. I went to Fedora Core in their first version because the third party repositories became seamless enough and they were easily the best supported, especially for on-the-edge software. Went through some Arch, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Pop_OS! etc days in-between there but have mostly settled on Fedora KDE, these days.
- 7speter 3y ago
  Lol YAST is still clunky. Very functional but also clunky and slow.

canucker2016 3y ago

[flagged]

rgrieselhuber 3y ago
Yes I own the company. Decided to take it private again.
smohare 3y ago
[dead]
Takennickname 3y ago
No. I think he means he took all the employees in SUSE SA, and made them run on some of his treadmills. But I could be wrong.
- stephenr 3y ago
  Pfft what benefit is running them on treadmills. At the very least he should run them in the Iditarod.

COGlory 3y ago

Open Build System and OpenQA, for automated building and testing of packages. This is what gets updates to their rolling release Tumbleweed faster than Arch, but with no instability ever. I can't emphasize enough how rock solid Tumbleweed is. OBS also doubles as their own AUR equivalent - you can make your own repo and do your own builds and install from the command line, or browse and install what other people have done. Leap is their stable distro, and shares binaries with SLES, their enterprise offering. Both Leap and Tumbleweed have BTRFS by default, with Snapper for automated snapshots at upgrade and boot. Update messed something up? System won't boot? Just run an old snapshot until it's fixed. Zypper, the package manager, has state-of-the-art dependancy resolution, personally the best I've used. They have a number of extremely interesting spinoff projects: MicroOS and MicroOS desktop (recently renamed, but the new names are escaping me) which use immutable root filesystems with automated updates and native Podman support. Snapper integration shines there, as well. If it fails to boot after update, it'll automatically roll back. They're doing quite a bit, and it's all culminating in being very useable. Tumbleweed is the crown jewel, though.

LanternLight83 3y ago
ooo, that auto rollback sounds really cool-- got any idea how that's done? I assume it's handled by checking for eg. a dirty-fs-flag just before the initfs boots the real system, but what if there's breakage in userspace (eg. the login manager) or in the initramfs itself?
- unmole 3y ago
  Snapper creates a Btrfs snapshot before any change in the root filesystem. If something breaks, you choose an older snapshot to boot from via grub.
  - unmole 3y ago
    By a bizzare coincidence, I just had a breaking update today. CUPS was missing some symbols and wouldn't start. Rolled back to an earlier snapshot and all is well.
  - 3y ago

canpan 3y ago

So I just installed it yesterday on my new home PC. Switching from Windows after I sold my old PC. (I do like gaming sometimes). Installation worked flawlessly. Hardware was detected on the spot. I could install NVidia's official driver through YaST. Installing Steam from the package manager. Now I am sitting with a switch pro controller and playing Hogwarts Legacy. All around a solid experience. Their biggest competitor in this space might be Ubuntu. For me Suse has a more solid feeling to it. Also supports KDE better.

sigzero 3y ago
Did you go with Leap or Tumbleweed?
- canpan 3y ago
  I choose Tumbleweed. Reason being that I do gaming and often you need the latest package of something to be able to. Although, I do not have any experience with Leap so maybe it is good as well? I do back up my own files, so there is not much danger in it for me. For a very stable distro experience at work, I use debian (stable). But it lags a few years behind, so is no good for games.
  - 7speter 3y ago
    Leap is not good for gaming, especially if you want cutting edge versions of software and tools. For some software, there just isnt a leap repo.

tempest_ 3y ago

A lot of the sibling comments are talking about this distro itself but they are also neglecting SUSE foray into the container orchestration space with Rancher and K3s. I would assume that is where they are looking to grow.

alanwreath 3y ago
I’d be surprised if they made K3S closed source. Isn’t it already a cncf project? —update, sheesh. It’s not even incubating.