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Choosing a distro
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Definitely! Depending on your hardware configuration and the games you play, it might even give you a significant performance boost. For completeness' sake, it's important to note that most of the (potential) gains in performance are related to having a more recently released kernel. So similar gains would have been had simply by using something like Arch or Fedora. Furthermore, other factors -like scheduler, custom kernel patches for additional performance and how the packages have been compiled etc- are perhaps also avenues worth exploring in that regard. However that's a potential can of worms I would rather keep closed in this discussion.
Furthermore, openSUSE Tumbleweed comes with great defaults, which is in clear contrast to Arch that comes with (little to) no defaults. This makes it significantly easier to just install and get on with business, something which you might be already familiar with if you've used Linux Mint and Ubuntu. However, compared to those, openSUSE Tumbleweed might require you to perform some additional steps related to codecs and whatnot. This is nothing out of the ordinary as Fedora would have required it as well. Out of 'the big bois', only Ubuntu has been able to solve this through a single-click during installation. Note; this is not a technical matter but a legal one. Thankfully, openSUSE offers great documentation to solve this as smoothly as possible.
Perhaps it's worth mentioning that openSUSE Tumbleweed, contrary to all the other distros that have been mentioned, is configured with Snapper+Btrfs out of the box. This is IMO a must-have on any reliable system as it allows one to rollback to a working system whenever your system seems to have been borked somehow. The other distros allow you to set this (or similar solutions) up yourself, however openSUSE is the only one that does this for you. Furthermore, if security is of any concern to you, but you're not that knowledgeable on the subject, thus requiring your distro to do the heavy-lifting, then once again openSUSE Tumbleweed (together with Fedora) performs best out of 'the big bois'.
After mentioning such praise one might ask "What's the catch?", because -somehow- openSUSE Tumbleweed isn't as represented in the online discourse compared to Arch, Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora. And honestly, I don't know why it is so criminally underrated. So in that regard, it's quite unfortunate that it can't quite reap the benefits of having a huge involved community like the others have. And perhaps that's where the catch is...; it doesn't have as big of a user base -> limited user base isn't able to contribute to it so that it becomes as 'competitive' as the more popular distros -> potential new users don't pick or stick to openSUSE because package/function X (or whatever) is absent -> it doesn't have as big of a user base... To give an example; I really like to have a secure system. And while openSUSE is one of the best to offer that out of the box, it unfortunately doesn't allow me to further harden it by installing a hardened kernel without myself becoming the maintainer of said package. This is in clear contrast to Arch, Debian and Fedora that offer access to repos that contain a hardened kernel; be it through the AUR, COPR or the repo maintained by the folks over at Kicksecure.
Perhaps openSUSE Tumbleweed will require you to put in more effort -compared to Ubuntu- to make sure this works as intended. However, thankfully, the documentation has got you covered.
Thanks for the detailed reply! The limited userbase is definitely something to think about. Thankfully, I like reading documentaion and it's nice to know openSUSE has that!
Thank you for being appreciative!
Though, I couldn't help but wonder the motivation behind your inquiry. Are you just exploring the waters beyond Ubuntu? Are you interested in rolling release and got curious when you learned what openSUSE Tumbleweed had to offer in that space? Were you perhaps looking for a distro well-suited for gaming and did you perhaps come across someone mentioning openSUSE Tumbleweed which subsequently peaked your interest? Are you perhaps unhappy for some reason with Ubuntu and looking for something to replace it with?
Lots of questions, of which I don't expect you to answer more than a couple (if at all). I would already be more than happy if you could provide us a bit more insight regarding the motivation behind your inquiry.
Oh no worries. I'll try to answer what I can.
I'm currently daily driving Windows due to uni but once that's done I want to fully switch to Linux. I'm just starting to spread my wings outside of Ubuntu right and see what's out there. Heard of openSUSE Tumbleweed from websites and youtube and thought "Hey why not give it a shot". The UI looks real neat as well. I'm not really looking for a gaming focused distro right now. Just something that I can daily drive and occasionally play games with.
One more point that you shouldn't let scare you away, but just something nice to know going into OpenSUSE: by default, the distro is FOSS only, the official software repositories don't have things like proprietary multimedia codecs or other non-free (as in free speech) software included. You have to enable these yourself if you want them (to, say, watch MP4 files perhaps).
This has gotten so dead simple recently that it can be done in a couple of terminal commands, it's just important to mention. If you know it going in, it saves the step of "what the heck, why aren't my media files playing??"
sudo zypper install opiopi codecsOPI is a package manager for installing software from a few sources, namely the openSUSE Build Service (which is where OPI gets its name, OBS Package Iinstaller), Microsoft, the Packman repositories, and a few others. Installing codecs is the only thing I have ever used it for, though.
EDIT: zipper to zypper
Just a nitpick; its zypper not zipper.
You know, I was talking about actual zippers in another thread at around the same time I was writing this, and my brain just went with it. Doesn't help that I have aliases for all my regular zypper commands and haven't actually typed it out in awhile. 😅
😂
Thank you!
As you must have been aware of by now; there are hundreds of distros out there. Which obviously makes it a daunting task to find your distro with that overwhelming amount of distros to potentially choose from. However, quite fortunately, the vast majority is actually not even worth considering as a daily driver. Arguably only the popular independent distros (Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, Slackware and Ubuntu^[1]^ etc^[2]^) are noteworthy, unless you've got very specific wants and/or needs that are only easily accessible through a derivative of theirs. Out of these, Gentoo is perhaps too much of a deep dive at this point in your Linux journey. Slackware ain't bad, but as you've already had some experience with modern Linux distros, I find it rather unlikely that you would enjoy using it; though, perhaps, you might one day (read: decades down the line). So..., only five distros remain... On that note, for whatever it's worth, openSUSE Tumbleweed definitely stands out positively among these IMO (though perhaps another one might be shining even brighter (obviously biased 😜)).
Interesting. Are you referring to the desktop environment? Which -actually- should be reproducible on most other distros*. Or perhaps you're actually referring to YaST? Which is openSUSE's excellent configuration tool; perhaps closest thing that Linux has to Windows' Control Panel. Some even regard it as openSUSE's killer-feature, especially because most other distros (aside from MX Linux) only come with relatively basic configuration tools by comparison. In retrospect, I probably should have mentioned it in my earlier comment 😅.
I'm actually glad you aren't; they generally tend to miss out on polish. If you do end up looking into one, then I'd argue it's better to run a dedicated distro as such -perhaps as a dual boot- for all your gaming needs instead of trying to game heavily on your daily driver, unless you find that too cumbersome and/or fear for issues related to storage. I'm aware that this is probably an unpopular take*.
Aight, got ya. Well, in that case, openSUSE Tumbleweed is definitely worth considering.