5 ms·

I use openSUSE Leap 15 as my daily driver. Since I don't want to tinker every weekend with my distro anymore I need something stable. openSUSE Leap, based on S

by v0lta 8y ago

I use openSUSE Leap 15 as my daily driver. Since I don't want to tinker every weekend with my distro anymore I need something stable. openSUSE Leap, based on SLE, offers this. Additionally KDE is a first-class citizen and just works as intended. There's also a rolling release version, Tumbleweed, but I didn't try it yet.

dkersten 8y ago
> Since I don't want to tinker every weekend with my distro anymore Do many people actually do this, though? A few years ago, I used Arch as my main distro, and, besides the initial setup, almost never tinkered with it. I would imagine that more approachable distros would be more tinker-free too.
- eikenberry 8y ago
  It really depends on what you qualify as tinkering. I switched to Debian stable as I found the constant upgrade cycle of rolling distros to require to much tinkering.
  - xnyan 8y ago
    Exactly. Arch is less work to maintain for me, even less than Ubuntu 16.04
- morganvachon 8y ago
  It's true that the most approachable distros (SUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu and its derivatives like Elementary OS) are more or less "tinker free" these days. For those of us who still like to tinker while maintaining a stable base, there are distros like Debian, Slackware, Void, and so on. And finally, for those who consider Linux a hobby or pastime (or who are comfortable living on the bleeding edge) there are projects like Arch, Neon, and Gentoo.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    I think I would group Arch with [Debian, Slackware, Void] rather than with Gentoo (if we're restricted to those two groups).
    - morganvachon 8y ago
      No, because Arch is a rolling release whereas you have to run Unstable and -current respectively in Debian and Slackware to be closer to the bleeding edge. But having said that, I should actually have put Void in with Arch and Gentoo.
      - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        But Gentoo is build-everything-from-source, which makes it rather different from Arch or Void.
        morganvachon 8y ago
        It doesn't have to be "build everything from source", they have installs based on different stages. You can even do a binary only install if you wish. And it is rolling, so it does fit in with Arch and Void in that sense.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    Neon stable is pretty tinkerfree as well IMO.
    - morganvachon 8y ago
      I lumped it in with the more bleeding edge distros because its goal is to showcase the latest and greatest that KDE Plasma has to offer. In that sense, it's a bit unstable on the user-facing front. Also, KDE itself is a pretty wild beast that takes a ton of tinkering to get it to any one person's liking. I'm not saying it's unusable out of the box, but it definitely is a tweaker's wet dream; its options have their own options in nearly every configuration panel.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  I know I do this from time to time with Slackware, but only because Slackware is nice about staying out of my way when I do so.
pnutjam 8y ago
I use tumbleweed of my work laptop and leap on my home server. Both are solid.
krylon 8y ago
FWIW, I run Tumbleweed on my private desktop, and it works pretty well for the most part. The only major annoyance is that I have to reinstall the nVidia driver every time a new kernel comes around, but other than that, it is very nice.
- loggedinmyphone 8y ago
  Isn't there some kind of DKMS package to automate this?
  - krylon 8y ago
    The last time I checked, the only thing I could find were instruction on how to install the nVidia driver manually. Turns out nVidia has a repository for Tumbleweed! =D Thank you so much for making me look it up!
    - loggedinmyphone 8y ago
      Very cool, I've been wanting to try Tumbleweed as it looks like the most noob-friendly rolling-release distro. Glad to hear the positive reports.
      - krylon 8y ago
        Just to be clear, things do break a little sometimes. But on the plus-side, openSUSE uses btrfs snapshots - every time updates are installed, the system creates two snapshots, one before and one after installing the updates. So if something breaks, one can always roll back to a known good state and wait for a couple of days before giving updates another try.
yellowapple 8y ago
Worth noting that GNOME and Xfce are also first-class citizens in those respective versions of openSUSE. openSUSE is the reason why I don't hate GNOME3 with a burning passion, and the Xfce version is what I tend to install on desktops by default.

by v0lta 8y ago

dkersten 8y ago

> Since I don't want to tinker every weekend with my distro anymore Do many people actually do this, though? A few years ago, I used Arch as my main distro, and, besides the initial setup, almost never tinkered with it. I would imagine that more approachable distros would be more tinker-free too.

eikenberry 8y ago
It really depends on what you qualify as tinkering. I switched to Debian stable as I found the constant upgrade cycle of rolling distros to require to much tinkering.
- xnyan 8y ago
  Exactly. Arch is less work to maintain for me, even less than Ubuntu 16.04
morganvachon 8y ago
It's true that the most approachable distros (SUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu and its derivatives like Elementary OS) are more or less "tinker free" these days. For those of us who still like to tinker while maintaining a stable base, there are distros like Debian, Slackware, Void, and so on. And finally, for those who consider Linux a hobby or pastime (or who are comfortable living on the bleeding edge) there are projects like Arch, Neon, and Gentoo.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  I think I would group Arch with [Debian, Slackware, Void] rather than with Gentoo (if we're restricted to those two groups).
  - morganvachon 8y ago
    No, because Arch is a rolling release whereas you have to run Unstable and -current respectively in Debian and Slackware to be closer to the bleeding edge. But having said that, I should actually have put Void in with Arch and Gentoo.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      But Gentoo is build-everything-from-source, which makes it rather different from Arch or Void.
      - morganvachon 8y ago
        It doesn't have to be "build everything from source", they have installs based on different stages. You can even do a binary only install if you wish. And it is rolling, so it does fit in with Arch and Void in that sense.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  Neon stable is pretty tinkerfree as well IMO.
  - morganvachon 8y ago
    I lumped it in with the more bleeding edge distros because its goal is to showcase the latest and greatest that KDE Plasma has to offer. In that sense, it's a bit unstable on the user-facing front. Also, KDE itself is a pretty wild beast that takes a ton of tinkering to get it to any one person's liking. I'm not saying it's unusable out of the box, but it definitely is a tweaker's wet dream; its options have their own options in nearly every configuration panel.
yellowapple 8y ago
I know I do this from time to time with Slackware, but only because Slackware is nice about staying out of my way when I do so.

pnutjam 8y ago

I use tumbleweed of my work laptop and leap on my home server. Both are solid.

krylon 8y ago

FWIW, I run Tumbleweed on my private desktop, and it works pretty well for the most part. The only major annoyance is that I have to reinstall the nVidia driver every time a new kernel comes around, but other than that, it is very nice.

loggedinmyphone 8y ago
Isn't there some kind of DKMS package to automate this?
- krylon 8y ago
  The last time I checked, the only thing I could find were instruction on how to install the nVidia driver manually. Turns out nVidia has a repository for Tumbleweed! =D Thank you so much for making me look it up!
  - loggedinmyphone 8y ago
    Very cool, I've been wanting to try Tumbleweed as it looks like the most noob-friendly rolling-release distro. Glad to hear the positive reports.
    - krylon 8y ago
      Just to be clear, things do break a little sometimes. But on the plus-side, openSUSE uses btrfs snapshots - every time updates are installed, the system creates two snapshots, one before and one after installing the updates. So if something breaks, one can always roll back to a known good state and wait for a couple of days before giving updates another try.

yellowapple 8y ago

Worth noting that GNOME and Xfce are also first-class citizens in those respective versions of openSUSE. openSUSE is the reason why I don't hate GNOME3 with a burning passion, and the Xfce version is what I tend to install on desktops by default.