7 ms·

> By 'niche distro' do you just mean 'not Ubuntu or RHEL'? Well, no, I specifically mean niche. > openSUSE is neither unconventional nor obscure. Outside of

> By 'niche distro' do you just mean 'not Ubuntu or RHEL'? Well, no, I specifically mean niche. > openSUSE is neither unconventional nor obscure. Outside of Europe it sure is.

spookie 2y ago
Europe is a big place. Either way, it's the most rock solid distro in my personal experience. YaST, their system configuration tool, is the best there is. It has a GUI, TUI, and sets of commands that let you configure everything without having to guess much of anything. I am often tinkering too much with my system, and have been burned a lot in other distros, but somehow openSUSE always has my back. Not to mention the great docs, great community and their open build system. I run Leap, but those that want something more "up to date" can choose Tumbleweed. If you want a rolling distro but are more cautious about it, you can run Tumbleweed Slowroll. Their NVIDIA support is great as well, as others have pointed out. It's not just the fact that you can secure boot, it also allows you to easily add an official NVIDIA repo for anything CUDA, profilling, container and video game development related (NVIDIA's texture tools). Sure there is Ubuntu and Redhat, but the former is quite opinionated, and the latter's community version is a bit too flaky for my taste given it runs the latest and "greatest" of everything.
- DEADMINCE 2y ago
  Relative to the rest of the world, Europe is pretty small. And even then, OpenSUSE being used more often in Europe doesn't mean it's more popular than the other big distros in Europe. Besides all that though, my point was non europeneans runnin it outside of europe are doing so liekly because it's niche. You've given some good points about OpenSUSE, but my point is there is nothing special about those points and OpenSUSE. All the main distros are stable and handle whatever issues you think they might not. Dependency hells are no longer a thing, hardware not working, software not being available or being buggy etc. These are all solved issues on every main distro. > but somehow openSUSE always has my back This has to be nothing more than confirmation bias. There's nothing really different about OpenSUSE over Ubuntu or Debian except preference. There is certainly no objective advantage outside of happiness that comes from a user using something they are familiar with. > but the former is quite opinionated, and the latter's community version is a bit too flaky for my taste given it runs the latest and "greatest" of everything. Just like openSUSE has variants so do these, and you can certainly find one that matches your preferences for stability and bleeding edge, or whatever else balance.
  - spookie 2y ago
    One issue that always burned me with Fedora is a little configuration file. Wacom tablet support is basically gimped due to it. Everytime I use it I have to fix that, and no, it's not the wayland issue but one due to poor scroll handling. It's hard to find the fix and I tried looking into it right now. Last time I tried it was on Fedora 39, it has been there since 34. Maybe not in 40 though. I've tried plenty of distros, and sure some of it is personal preference. But still, I have often seen little issues like these be quite difficult to find solutions for. And many distros still ship insane defaults in some more niche circumstances that aren't properly tested. And many a times, those make up preferences in peoples' minds. And, arguably, they are objective reasons for doing so. Be it due to sharing many common parts with its enterprise solution, or simply because a particular guy didn't bork my drawing tablet with some config meant to circumvent GTK scroll behaviour, or because they have a platform that you can use to build and distribute packages for theirs and other(!!!) package managers (so they have good experience automating these kinds of processes)... I don't know the reason, but I've had a better time with this distribution. I just wanted to share that it is a good one.
    - DEADMINCE 2y ago
      > One issue that always burned me with Fedora is a little configuration file. Wacom tablet support is basically gimped due to it. Everytime I use it I have to fix that, and no, it's not the wayland issue but one due to poor scroll handling. It's hard to find the fix and I tried looking into it right now. Last time I tried it was on Fedora 39, it has been there since 34. Maybe not in 40 though. Isn't Fedora the 'testing' or bleeding edge distro/project for Red Hat? Did you on RHEL Desktop? That's the only RHAT based product that should have defaults that work with those tablets, IMO. Don't you think it's likely there is some hardware out there where an OpenSUSE default causes an issue that doesn't happen in other distros? > I don't know the reason, but I've had a better time with this distribution. I just wanted to share that it is a good one. That's more than fair. I'm just so skeptical when people say $distro is so much better or more stable than all the others. Most of the time someone just had a better experience with it, rather than it being objectively better in some way. All the main distros are pretty damn stable and solved all the frustration causing issues a long, long time ago IMO.

> By 'niche distro' do you just mean 'not Ubuntu or RHEL'? Well, no, I specifically mean niche. > openSUSE is neither unconventional nor obscure. Outside of Europe it sure is.

spookie 2y ago

Europe is a big place. Either way, it's the most rock solid distro in my personal experience. YaST, their system configuration tool, is the best there is. It has a GUI, TUI, and sets of commands that let you configure everything without having to guess much of anything. I am often tinkering too much with my system, and have been burned a lot in other distros, but somehow openSUSE always has my back. Not to mention the great docs, great community and their open build system. I run Leap, but those that want something more "up to date" can choose Tumbleweed. If you want a rolling distro but are more cautious about it, you can run Tumbleweed Slowroll. Their NVIDIA support is great as well, as others have pointed out. It's not just the fact that you can secure boot, it also allows you to easily add an official NVIDIA repo for anything CUDA, profilling, container and video game development related (NVIDIA's texture tools). Sure there is Ubuntu and Redhat, but the former is quite opinionated, and the latter's community version is a bit too flaky for my taste given it runs the latest and "greatest" of everything.

DEADMINCE 2y ago
Relative to the rest of the world, Europe is pretty small. And even then, OpenSUSE being used more often in Europe doesn't mean it's more popular than the other big distros in Europe. Besides all that though, my point was non europeneans runnin it outside of europe are doing so liekly because it's niche. You've given some good points about OpenSUSE, but my point is there is nothing special about those points and OpenSUSE. All the main distros are stable and handle whatever issues you think they might not. Dependency hells are no longer a thing, hardware not working, software not being available or being buggy etc. These are all solved issues on every main distro. > but somehow openSUSE always has my back This has to be nothing more than confirmation bias. There's nothing really different about OpenSUSE over Ubuntu or Debian except preference. There is certainly no objective advantage outside of happiness that comes from a user using something they are familiar with. > but the former is quite opinionated, and the latter's community version is a bit too flaky for my taste given it runs the latest and "greatest" of everything. Just like openSUSE has variants so do these, and you can certainly find one that matches your preferences for stability and bleeding edge, or whatever else balance.
- spookie 2y ago
  One issue that always burned me with Fedora is a little configuration file. Wacom tablet support is basically gimped due to it. Everytime I use it I have to fix that, and no, it's not the wayland issue but one due to poor scroll handling. It's hard to find the fix and I tried looking into it right now. Last time I tried it was on Fedora 39, it has been there since 34. Maybe not in 40 though. I've tried plenty of distros, and sure some of it is personal preference. But still, I have often seen little issues like these be quite difficult to find solutions for. And many distros still ship insane defaults in some more niche circumstances that aren't properly tested. And many a times, those make up preferences in peoples' minds. And, arguably, they are objective reasons for doing so. Be it due to sharing many common parts with its enterprise solution, or simply because a particular guy didn't bork my drawing tablet with some config meant to circumvent GTK scroll behaviour, or because they have a platform that you can use to build and distribute packages for theirs and other(!!!) package managers (so they have good experience automating these kinds of processes)... I don't know the reason, but I've had a better time with this distribution. I just wanted to share that it is a good one.
  - DEADMINCE 2y ago
    > One issue that always burned me with Fedora is a little configuration file. Wacom tablet support is basically gimped due to it. Everytime I use it I have to fix that, and no, it's not the wayland issue but one due to poor scroll handling. It's hard to find the fix and I tried looking into it right now. Last time I tried it was on Fedora 39, it has been there since 34. Maybe not in 40 though. Isn't Fedora the 'testing' or bleeding edge distro/project for Red Hat? Did you on RHEL Desktop? That's the only RHAT based product that should have defaults that work with those tablets, IMO. Don't you think it's likely there is some hardware out there where an OpenSUSE default causes an issue that doesn't happen in other distros? > I don't know the reason, but I've had a better time with this distribution. I just wanted to share that it is a good one. That's more than fair. I'm just so skeptical when people say $distro is so much better or more stable than all the others. Most of the time someone just had a better experience with it, rather than it being objectively better in some way. All the main distros are pretty damn stable and solved all the frustration causing issues a long, long time ago IMO.