I have always been curious about this, so … figured, why not ask the community at large? I would be super interested in hearing what made people here choose OpenSUSE over the multitude of others available. Would like to get as many perspectives as possible; personal, corporate, small business. I have chosen it for an older laptop I have; he’s about six, now, and I think his Windows days are over. (I have both a desktop and my primary laptop running Windows 10). I will also have OpenSUSE as my chosen WSL distro on my desktop, as well. thoughts, comments, stories, sound off in the replies.
Every user is different. We all have our different tastes and preferences.
I originally used “slackware” back in 1995. I also experimented with Redhat, Mandrake and Ubuntu. That was a while back, so the distro landscape has changed since then.
Of the ones that I originally tried, I preferred Slackware for its flexibility during install.
Due to considerations at work, I found myself mainly using Solaris, though I occasionally booted into slackware.
Then – around 2006, while nearing retirement – I was ready to return to linux. I seem to recall picking up some “java desktop” CDs distributed by Sun, and those install SuSE. So I then went with SuSE 10.1. I think that was before openSUSE existed. I replaced the SuSE 10.1 with openSUSE 11.0 maybe 3 or so years later. And I’ve been an openSUSE user ever since.
When I first picked up OpenSuSE, I was looking for an alternative to MSWindows. Not to replace, but to supplement the work I was doing.
The distro I wanted had to have a low bar for setup and learning because I needed a practical solution to create things that worked, I wasn’t doing it for chauvinistic reasons. If something ran best on Windows, I’d keep running it on Windows. If something ran best on Linux, I wanted a Linux that would run that app like a champ. YaST was an attractive tool that worked for me in the beginning because of my MSWindows background.
Secondary reason I chose OpenSuSE at the time was for components availability. The first projects I ran on Linux needed to work with a minimal amount of fuss… I had to be able to find whatever was necessary easily. And, some of the things I was working on might be called “leading edge” for various reasons… when an app is being written, no one wants the app to be “old” by the time it’s released so you often have to be building on “next version” technologies.
Today is probably a bit different…
We can take for granted that so many things “just work.”
Many common apps are now pre-packaged.
There are some good GUI frontends for popular User apps.
Some of the artwork is really nice, almost fine art.
I’ve found that from those early beginnings of OpenSUSE to today’s openSUSE,
our distro has somewhat surprisingly supported nearly everything I’ve wanted with one exception… Pentesting but that is because many of the most necessary tools were written decades ago for the Debian system, and can’t easily be ported when a dependency exists only in deb.
But for just about everything else both simple and complex(a few exceptions only because SUSE was a bit slow to address but are mostly up to date now), openSUSE really does do it all which is one thing very few other distros can claim.
TSU
Well I flirted with Red Hat some years ago and although I had to sue both OS/2 and Windows at work (that first one hints where I worked;)) I was never a fan of Windows. At home we had Amiga computers my last one being an A4000 and my youngest son had an A1200, I even had a Mac emulator on the A4000. So when I finally retired and the A4000 went I did have Windows for a very short while (well it came with the PC) I decided to go back to Linux and tried various distros and eventually ended with openSUSE now using Tumbleweed on the desktop and one laptop, my second laptop has Leap 15.2 as does my wife’s laptop all running KDE and she never really noticed the change from Windows 7! I do like a rolling distro and so far TW has been good to me. I do have one small brick PC running Windows 7 for my weather station as one piece of s/w I use on that is Windows only, sadly been unable to get the author to change:( and I don’t want a big PC to run a VM and Linux just for the weather s/w…
Stuart
I started with Caldera and when that went belly up I switched to SUSE because it also had KDE and used rpms which I was familiar with.
I can’t remember what year I first install Linux. It was a home built Pentium 4 system, and I recall I had a floppy drive installed in it. I tried three different Linux flavours before I found one that would boot: Fedora. I stuck with Fedora until the aggravation of having to do a complete reinstall for every version upgrade led me to try openSUSE. I didn’t like it and ended up using Ubuntu. I stuck with Ubuntu until a few years ago when it became boring. I began experimenting with rolling release distributions in a virtual machine and Tumbleweed was the only one that proved reliable, and I have used it ever since. The frequency of the updates can be challenging, but going a few days without an update is unnerving 
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s while living in North America I had some very limited Unix and VMS experience. Finally, in 1998 while living in Asia, I decided to try GNU/Linux and I started with Red Hat, installed on my old Compaq LTE-5200 laptop (which was at the time the only PC that I had). Then in year 2000 (after a move to Europe) I went for a few month period with no home computer (as my laptop that I had been using with Red Hat at the time, died). So when later in year 2000 I finally obtained a replacement PC (a desktop and then later a laptop) I of course installed GNU/Linux on them. Since I was then living in Germany, I thought why not try a GNU/Linux produced also in the same country that I was living, so I tried SuSE-Pro. It turned out to be a good choice, and I have remained with different variants of SuSE and openSUSE since.
I started 1983 with RS-DOS on a Color Computer. Soon after I could afford a P.C. and after abandoning Windows moved to Caldera>Red Hat>Slackware>D.S.B.>Debian>and so on. I have been using openSuse varieties since 9.1 while trying a number of others in case I wanted to change. Well occasionally I do run a separate box with MX-19 as my VPN does not support openSuse. But for me the support I get from this forum outweighs any short term benefits I might gain by using others distros.
Many thanks to all of you
I am still more of a new openSUSE user even though I tried and used it before but my background is Debian, more specifically Debian sid.
I see openSUSE as a natural progression of using a real rolling release in the form of Tumbleweed.
As a matter of fact I am using it right now because I decided to see if I can live with Suse for a month. I think three weeks are already over and it is still installed and running perfectly on my laptop.
What attracted me to openSUSE in general and again is that it feels like a professional system for various use cases just like Debian. It offers enterprise grade stability and a tested rolling release with snapshots. It has all major desktop environments, window managers and all the software I need.
I think I will second that.
I like the community here on the Forum, and I have been fortunate to later meet in person a number of the people I first met on the forum … all good people.
There have been many times when I have had issues, where I had excellent forum suggestions/solutions provided to sort my issues … and in other cases RPMs of packages not yet packaged for openSUSE, made by packagers when I failed in my efforts to build/compile. I’ve written bug reports and had excellent support in solving my problem from the Nuremburg SuSE/openSUSE packagers. Some years back I also contributed to the mailing lists and the IRC chat, and both received and provided support there.
I have found the longer one stays with one GNU/Linux distribution, one gets to know its ins and its outs, and its workarounds where needed. The longer one uses a given distro, the easier it is to use that distro, and the better one’s GNU/Linux works. I am definitely not a believer in distro hopping, for a distro hopper never really gets to know a distro well that way - instead IMHO one by distro hopping only has a superficial assessment which can be far off the mark at times, being stuck on some point where those who use the distro know the easy to apply (but illusive to find) work around.
I would find the openSUE community very difficult to leave. Couple that with a nicely packaged GNU/Linux and as long as openSUSE is available, I can not see myself changing.
I agree with others, this community is one of (if not) the best I have used. It is friendly, professional and courteous even when I have a senior moment and forget to provide something I should have to aid debugging!
Stuart
When I was trying it out for the first time around openSUSE 11.3 version I saw some hate towards the distribution for having some “shady ties” to Microsoft. I wanted to see for myself if this was true and it turned out it wasn’t. I also liked zypper much more than different apt-something commands for managing software. Last but not least (maybe in fact most important) the people on the forums were friendly and helpful so I stayed. Turned out it was a pretty good decision as it’s a great distribution and I learned a lot in the process.
I tended to use only SuSE from 2000 till 2013,
at which point I switched to Ubuntu.
I find Ubuntu easier to use, and it’s a better design.
I have also played with OpenBSD, FreeBSD since 2008.
OpenBSD was the only OS which worked on my Sun Blade 100.
If the BSD ecosystem had more depth beyond servers, I’d use it
on some of my computers natively instead of VM’s, but as a general use OS,
Ubuntu is better, although I trust OpenBSD more than any Linux
with respect to security.
I still follow the OpenSuse forums for entertainment;
I came in from Ubuntu to SUSE 10.0. Ubuntu is Ok but at the time the it was Breezy badger as I recall. the rightly so for beginners most things there was done for you. at the time I didn’t know that. This included the video drivers while ubuntu is okay their thing about upgrading it every 6 months to me became a bit of a pain as some of those updates were kind of like half baked.
So I went to fedora where I thought they would have better updating then they did had Ubuntu. It was then I found out about video drivers and how they’re necessary. When I asked at that forum one of their members told me, “to go back and suck on the *** of Windows where I belonged!”
That’s no way to treat people I don’t care what you are so I left.
In the Mozilla browser forums one of the posters there recommended Suse 10 so I came here.
I noticed that Suse that upgraded every 8 months I figured that to mean that they would have their stuff together on the updates. I mentioned the video drivers because when I came to Suse I didn’t know about these things. Adopting my usual procedure of ignorance is not an obstacle. I took out to learn about video drivers. I have nothing but praise for this community in this forum who not only taught me about video drivers But ultimately where I could get them for Suse. Also for having the patience to put up with my ignorant questions because of well my ignorance! Though I since become more of a lurker lately than a poster I always get and learn more things from here. Also I’m not treated as stupid here!
4 things in this order got me to stay here
1 this community for the aforementioned reasons
2 the fact that I can put almost anything on to this distro and it will stick flatpack or not
3 YAST
4 OBS
I was familiar with SuSE from years ago.Then I got away from it, for a number of years. When it was time to get away from Win10,It was a natural choice for me.
IMO, OpenSuse installed easier, and is more user friendly than others I tried(and I did try a more than a a few).
I used Centos until Walmart went with SLES 11 in 2009 from HPUX (Walmart was not happy with Itanium HPUX).
Since I supported Walmart - I switched to OpenSUSE on my machines (HP did not give me a HPUX machine - I had my Centos pc to support HPUX then OpenSUSE.)
I was used to YUM and had to learn zypper. Not really difficult to switch.
OpenSUSE forum was much better than Centos.
I still have Ubuntu virtual machine with MATE and Ubuntu on my Raspberry Pi4 8GB - their Pi4 version everything works sound USB ports multiple video. I could not get sound to sync in VLC on OpenSUSE for Pi4 (and no MATE version - you have to load server and then add MATE).
I started with Mandrake, then Debian, Fedora, Centos, and now OpenSUSE.
In 1986 I began an intimate working relationship with Ultrix – the DEC UNIX®.
Interim period with VAX/VMS and, a continued intimate working relationship with DEC 16-bit operating systems …
Around 1998 I walked into a local university bookshop and bought a “Power Linux” box (LST Software GmbH) – book plus diskettes – it was OK …
Noticed that, Power Linux was compatible to Caldera and Red Hat – noticed a Red Hat box in another bookshop and bought that – installed it and sort of got used to it.
Was busy with other things for a few years.
Noticed that, there was another distribution near here and, that boxed versions were available in the local book stores – and, a colleague mentioned that the Handbook was detailed and good – bought a SuSE 8.1 Professional box.
Despite a brief encounter with Red Hat on a customer’s site, personally, I’ve not moved away from openSUSE …
I’m using openSUSE on this netbook because it is the only distro I’ve tried that works with only minor tweaking. I’m using Leap with Gnome, as I had problems with KDE. I’m using a low spec HP netbook for this, and it has a touch screen, bluetooth, WiFi but no RJ45 connector. I had Ubuntu on it, but that stopped rand I got fed up with hunting for fixes on Google.
I have a larger Notebook running Windows 10, but Microsoft keeps messing around with the OS, and they are insisting that I use scammy Cortana and Onedrive, and it is getting impossible to remove or disable them. It’s far easier to swop out the hard drive, and install a Linux variant. I wanted to use Kali for pen testing, but I’m tempted to standardise on openSUSE between all machines. It seems to be pretty efficient, so it might be ideal for use as a solar powered 12volt system as a permanent comms centre in my van.
Well along process of adding apps to new Leap build. I had learned a lot with Suse in 2001, struggled with many competing os lately. Pleased to finesse the install with fewest problems of the last 2 weeks. Now to set up Zoom for meetings, and build some obscure CAD software for work!
Thanks to the openSuse team for all their good work!
I am using this distro since version 9.1, probably 16 years now.
My kids grew up using suse then opensuse in their pc.
I had tried some flavors before, some no longer exist and I find this one is the one suited for my needs.
The forum also is one of the best and members and moderators are very professional in handling each post.
You will seldom if not see none hot headed and insulting /degrading post throw at posters here.
And lastly this forum has member that will care to package you an app if it is not in the repo.