Hello, all! New member of the Forum…and only about 5-6 months in with my Linux adventure.
On an Acer Aspire One 722, I have Gecko Linux Rolling Plasma installed (it all started when I was looking for distros reported to be friendly with the Broadcom BCM-4313 wireless adapter and OpenSUSE turned up…then I saw a YouTube video that highly recommended Gecko Linux as perhaps the easier portal for OpenSUSE).
All has gone very well, actually…and I’m getting used to YaST Software for adding packages. But one package completely stumps me: Geary.
It’s available through YaST Sofware…and it and its dependencies all download and install without a hint of a problem. It appears in the menu under Internet…but, then, when I click on it, simultaneously a small Geary icon appears alongside the cursor and another one appears in the panel…and then they disappear. Geary never opens up. But, on the other hand, there’s never any kind of error message or sign of a “broken” process.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what’s going on here? I feel I’m so close to opening the app…but then there’s horseshoes and hand grenades for the things where “close” counts.
Thanks for the prompt reply, Malcolm! You are correct that there has not been a Static release for GeckoLinux since 2018. But I’m using a rolling edition that’s based on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (and what a titanic struggle that first update after the initial installation was! Over 1700 packages!).
I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to you if I tell you that the GeckoLinux forum has tumbleweeds blowing through it. I don’t think the developer himself (I think I’ve read he’s in Poland) ever looks at it and for the one post I left there, it took weeks before a kind soul left me a reply.
I take your point about solving the matter with OpenSUSE itself. No, I don’t really require a rolling release. I’m sure I’d be happy with Leap. But (and I’m counting on you to be honest here), if I’m someone who has MX Linux as the other distro on this same Acer Aspire and also has seen, used and liked Linux Mint, Deepin and Ubuntu MATE…would “unvarnished” Leap or Tumbleweed be something I want to tackle? I mean, I don’t think OpenSUSE is at the Arch end of the spectrum for required user savvy…but I get a whiff or two of that. Am I wrong?
Hi
It depends on what your end game is for the system, I’m happy with Tumbleweed and a long time GNOME user… Likewise systems with openSUSE Leap and SLE (Entrerprise) with GNOME DE.
If your using third party repositories for the likes of specific kernel modules it can be a waiting game for these to rebuild on the likes of the openSUSE Build Service and Packman for either Leap or Tumbleweed. For Tumbleweed aside from btrfs for snapshots, there is tumbleweed-cli (Installation and usage · boombatower/tumbleweed-cli Wiki · GitHub) to rollback to a specific snapshot.
Actually, I lost track of the major point I was going to make when I mentioned MX Linux as the other distro on this Acer Aspire: I chose that not only for its many handy tools and great community but also because it has a reasonably small footprint…which is important when you’re constrained by the hardware. I mean, 4GB can work…but it’s hardly generous. So the question I forgot to ask about OpenSUSE was whether or not it’s even a good choice for this laptop based on the demands it makes (and GNOME wouldn’t make things any easier!)
This question seems to have been asked so many times recently,
I may create a Wiki page for people to reference.
You have many lightweight options on openSUSE to choose from,
Aside from the two heavy DE that’s offered in a default installation (Gnome and KDE Plasma)
You also have a number of Desktops you can choose from which are full DE but not usually quite as heavy (even MATE if that’s a preference of yours).
The above generally run best with at least 4GB RAM and more.
If you have 2GB RAM, the main choices people prefer are
XFCE which by default is themed somewhat similarly as a relative to Gnome by default.
LXQt which by default is themed somewhat similarly to KDE/Plasma and is built using the exact same Qt framework as KDE/Plasma.
If you want a graphical environment that is even less resource intensive, you can avoid installing a DE altogether and run only a Window Manager. Although the openSUSE installer will refuse to install on a system with less than 2GB RAM, it’s possible to run an openSUSE with only a Window Manager on as little as 768MB of RAM if you generally run only one app at a time. Of course, that just makes your system that much more responsive if you have at least 2GB RAM.
By default IceWM is installed as an option in all default openSUSE no matter your DE choice.
You can choose among many other Window Managers in YaST Software Manager like OpenBox, FVWM2, Awesome, Busybox, many more.
The following is a screenshot of only <some> of what you can choose from when you initially install openSUSE, if you use YaST to add or modify an existing system it’ll look very similar
If you are interested in any of these other options but can’t figure out how to install (I’ve posted a few times in several of these openSUSE Forums), post your question.
Likewise systems with openSUSE Leap and SLE (Entrerprise) with GNOME DE.