To switch or not to switch, that is the question
To switch or not to switch, that is the question
Hello fellow lemmings! Fedora KDE user here, and quite happy about it, it didn't break a single time and packages are up to date. The only thing that bother me is DNF's speed... a single search may take up to 5 seconds, and if I'm dependency-hunting I may need several searches, summing up the delays. I'm asking if switching to openSUSE Tumbleweed could be a good idea or not. The idea of the rolling release is really intriguing, whole system upgrades always makes me nervous, and zypper, being written in C++, should be faster than DNF.
I would stick to Wayland KDE, as my current fedora setup.
Other than this, I don't see any other obvious pros or cons, so I'm asking you: why should I switch and why shouldn't I? any tips from someone who used both?
thanks in advance!
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I have been a chronic distro hopper and I have to say Zypper did not appear appreciably faster than dnf for most operations. Fastest package managemer I have ever found is pacman on arch, which is not an advertisement for arch.
I have a love hate relationship with OpenSUSE. Everything they do feels like the uncanny valley of Linux. Just a little different than the others. Sometimes in a good way where everything is autosnspped into backups and the OS is nearly indestructible. Sometimes in confusing ways where their is a bin folder included in you Home folder by default and I haven't found a good way to get rid of it. Or that installing packsge suggestions is on by default. Or that the included Firefox includes branding for OpenSUSE and getting the correct repo of Firefox without branding takes additional effort. It keeps going with the strangeness. It will look and feel like Linux but with just enough quirks to confuse you.
All that being said I highly doubt the package manager will be the time suck you will face with a given distro. Your milage may vary but I have found OpenSUSE to be a great server distro but s lackluster desktop experience especially with drivers and any gaming. So it depends on what you are looking for. The best non answer their is.
ObenSUSE is the only distro, I have tried on my intel iMac, that was able to install the correct driver for bt and WiFi automatically.. so pros to that, lol
Could be the newer kernel or the prolific enterprise support. Hard for me to say. My main gripes with OpenSUSE usually occur with Nvidia so it is probably safe to say my real issue is with Nvidia which regrettably controls AI stacks and Laptop GPUs with a vice. Yes yes I know you can run ML using AMD but it is a second class citizen with the poorly maintained docs.
It's kinda unfair to compare with
pacmanas it by nature does way less than the rest, given that Arch is bleeding edge and doesn't have the same kind of dependency hell that other package managers have to struggle with.Sure could be. I calls them like I sees them. Appears fast as a user and I wish myself to never learn about how dependencies are managed. Just wanna slam my keyboard with pacman -Syu and watch that pacman cross the screen fast so I can feel something in my life is under control by watching progress bars go places. Hence my chronic distro hopping. So many loading bars.
Anyways, I am sure I am wrong in creative ways. Just my experience for what it is worth.
Clearly you haven't used void Linux if pacman is the fastest package manager you've seen, xbps is crazy fast
I have not. My fear with void is that I may run into plentiful issues where when I follow documentation tailored to the popular package managers that I am obligated to think and make decisions which I use all available effort to avoid. My battery supplying power to make choices on things is critically low due to having two kids under 5 so I have pigeon holed myself into using something I can reasonably expect people to have already done the work for me. Ignore that I am on arch and a walking contradiction. I have built my own cage forged of the irons of rolling distribution preference.
Sorry for the somewhat unrelated question: how's been your OpenSUSE experience with drivers, especially for Nvidia cards, touchpads, thunderbolt, trackpoints (if any), and with hi-res screen (if it applies)?
I've been thinking of giving it a try and was going to ask some of these questions in some forum. But maybe this is a good place to start as any.
Thank you for the informative post in any case!
thanks for the answer!
lackluster desktop experience especially with drivers and any gaming
why this? is it needed manual work to install the correct drivers?
I find it to be a perfectly good desktop experience using KDE but I don't play games so can't comment on that. The only driver you typically need to install is the Nvidia one. Talking of that, Nividia drivers can cause the occasional problem when updating because they don't always keep up with the pace of kernel changes. At least you can rollback to a working state easily. On my Intel only machine tumbleweed has been utterly reliable and I haven't needed the rollback facility of snapper and btrfs. It's definitely nice to have though!
On Reddit, I used to see complaints about zypper being a slow package manager and to be fair, when updating it does feel slow. However, I've been using it long enough that I can't compare it to other package managers.
I don't need NVIDIA driver so I guess I'm okay then!
used to see complaints about zypper being a slow package manager
oh lol this may be a problem XD
Most recently I got a 2022 Lenovo Legion 5i and tried tumbleweed on it. Installed drivers according to documentation and I get a blank screen on boot now. I alt F2 my way to a terminal and startx to get in but now my background is mysteriously a black screen. I fart around with kernel arguments to try and fix the issue but give up after awhile. Install arch as distributed by endeavouros with KDE de and install using their installer. Works without issue and usb-c display port works great.
To be fair stock mint with xanmod and 5.15 both failed to work properly with the driver. Could not dim the screen. Apparently an issue with cinnamon.
I assume GNOME would work fine but GNOME working fine is an issue for me because I am a child of the 80s and like computers provide me nostalgic feelings of a start menu and desktop regardless of the fact I could use some keyboard shortcut powered DE and be significantly cooler. Coolness has given way to comfort and I prefer Cinnamon or KDE in that order.