How Do You Change From Tumbleweed To Leap or Tumbleweed-cli Snapshot?

Hello,

I have a fully updated Tumbleweed and would like to switch to Leap or a snapshot. I just have / and /home. My partitions are all EXT4. I also don’t use swap and instead use a RAM Disk located at /tmp. I’ve done that for years and my browser temp files go there too, in /tmp/chromium. They’re cleared at every reboot. I wondered if this would be a problem and if it should be switched back to a swap file? I always create and set up swap, then switch to a RAM Disk, so I can enable swap by commenting out that line in fstab.

I’ve also read about tumbleweed-cli and installing a snapshot. My reason is, I’d like to get away from so many daily updates but keep current or very close to it. I didn’t realize skipping two or three weeks of updates could break it. I assumed it’d just update, but after using it I realize missing even a few days could break something. The newest info for switching from TW to Leap that I’ve found was from 2015, so I wanted some newer info and opinions.

From what I read about tumbleweed-cli you can “switch” to a snapshot and stay there. If that’s correct, how long can you stay and does snapshots get regular updates like security and minor bug fixes etc? Is snapshots more like a fixed distro? And then can you switch to another snapshot that’s 2 months newer when you spot a nice stable 98 rated snapshot? This seems like the perfect solution, absolutely awesome, the best of both worlds!

Leap would work if that’s my best option but I don’t know the easiest way to switch repos. I downloaded and burned the Leap 15 DVD that would be the main repo to get it started and save download time. I know how to edit the Grub2 boot line and boot to a terminal. Also, I am using wired Ethernet, I wired the whole house a couple of years ago with good quality POE switches and routers. I do have wifi but I wanted a wired Gigabit network for video.

I think the only info I need on tumbleweed-cli and snapshots is info about how it updates and info on using it with EXT4 partitions. Everything I read seemed to be geared toward Btrfs and explained how it backed up your old repos and files etc. I figured asking and getting this right would not only help me, but would help others who may be looking to do the same thing.

Thank you.

You misunderstand. Snapshot is exactly that - it is frozen state of Tumbleweed at some time point in time. No development happens for this snapshot. It is there so that you can install additional packages without being forced to upgrade. But when you upgrade to the next snapshot, you upgrade to next Tumbleweed. Period. So there is no difference between not updating Tumbleweed for some time and using snapshots - in both cases you skip some regular updates and make big jump.