If not openSUSE, then what?

English Open Chat
#1

Linux is all about freedom, right? I’m not sure how many here are fellow distro hoppers or have main machine/distro and then test subjects. But, if you weren’t using SUSE, Leap or Tumbleweed, what distribution would you choose?

For me, it’s Solus. I run Solus Budgie on my main desktop. But I also hope frequently.

Long story of how I got to SUSE, feel free to skip this…

I came to SUSE out of happenstance, I wanted a distro with access to everything I needed with native packages, and it needed to be mostly stable since this is my main work laptop, so that meant .rpm or .deb distros. I just couldn’t bring myself to use Ubuntu or one of it’s derivatives like Pop or Zorin (though both are good), Debian is too far behind on some packages I needed and I really didn’t want to build them myself. I wanted Fedora 33, but couldn’t get it to install and run for some reason, so I tried Leap 15.2. It’s wonderful, it just works. I’m getting used to zypper and YaST, and I enjoy having most everything available through a .rpm package. But sometimes I just want to blow it up and go with Tumbleweed or something more flashy and bleeding edge. There’s no issues, no excitement with Leap, it just works. And then I don’t, because that’s what I need for work…but still, the urge to hop is there.

#2

I’m not sure what I would use. At one time, I thought I would go with Fedora if I ever needed to change. But, since then, I have soured on Fedora.

For me, it’s Solus. I run Solus Budgie on my main desktop. But I also hope frequently.

May I suggest that you give Solus Plasma a try.

Solus is a rather well managed distro. I have it running on an alternate system here. But it would not be my choice to replace openSUSE. That’s mainly because I do not like the way it manages booting.

To illustrate: I have openSUSE installed on an external USB drive, and configured so that I can plug that USB drive into either a UEFI box or a legacy BIOS box and have it boot. I cannot do that with Solus. The way that Solus boots with UEFI is not compatible with the way that it boots with legacy BIOS booting.

#3

I would use OpenMandriva because on my early Linux days I have managed to get Mandrake/Mandriva on fancy hardwares (in fact SuSE and Mandrake/Mandriva were the only ones whose worked pretty fine) and tried Lx 4.1 which is quite impressive regarding how small is its core team.

#4

I’ve tried Plasma on Solus and a few other distros, just not a fan. Having options to change sub-settings of sub-settings isn’t for me. Budgie hits the sweet spot of performance, customization, and look for me. It’s almost as resource light Mate, looks more modern, and has enough options.

That’s how I’m currently running Leap. I have it installed to an external HDD I set up and can boot from anywhere. Though I primarily use UEFI boot and it’s almost always connected to my work hardware.

#5

If not openSUSE I would go for Ubuntu. Not sure why you don’t like it but I guess you have some reasons. On my rpi I’m using raspbian because openSUSE for ARM was not redaily available at the time I bought the rpi but as you say most software is really old there :slight_smile:

#6

It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just not quite to my tastes. I also feel like some other distros have done better with features or appearance. SUSE is rock solid stable, undeniable workhorse. Elementary is beautiful and a wonderful way for macOS users to cross over, Zorin is so intuitive and easy to use out of the box it’s crazy, and Pop’s auto-tiling is on another level.

This is probably why I hop around so much, there’s too much good stuff out there :joy:

#7

If no Opensuse and for so far I would have the time, I’d go (back) to Arch Linux. No Opensuse and no time for maintenance, than something like Manjaro, Debian or ?buntu. And should it have better support for Desktop environment, FreeBSD.

#8

Fedora. I am a RH guy. Not necessarily a fan but tinkering with RHEL based clusters is what pays my rent.

#9

Agreed, those are valid reasons for personal preference. As you say it’s really cool that there is so much choice.

#10

I don’t distro hop because my approach to computing is utilitarian… I use whatever works or is best for the particular job. I’m not a chauvinist when it comes to distros although because practically everything runs on openSUSE (except pen testing) one way or another, it’s my workhorse.

But,
Every now and then particularly when I hear that something significant is introduced in a distro, I’ll check it out.
The current concept that intrigues me in another distro is Kali’s “rootless” security.
Yup.
No accessible root account.
Any logged in User gains elevated permissions using sudo, and sudo itself either doesn’t prompt you for a password or you use the User’s own password.
If you thought that openSUSE might be a bit risky installing the same password by default for both root and the first User, wait until you see Kali or if “rootless” is adopted elsewhere.

And, of course I installed Fedora 33 to see its new adoption of BTRFS as its default filesystem.

TSU

TSU

#11

If it should ever happen ( i hope it doesn’t) I have 3 backup distros in this order

1 Manjaro

2 Ubuntu using KDE Neon

3 PCLOS

I’ve used all 3
Manjaro has the AUR so it has almost everything just like openSuse and the OBS

Ubuntu has just about everything and most everything is written for it you know

sudo apt-get whatever

PCLOS it doesn’t quite have everything but with Flatpak and Appimage comes about as close as the prior 2

#12

I’d just check out the top 5 (or top 10 RPM-based, or most popular KDE-oriented) distros on DistroWatch. Of course, any non-RPM/non-KDE distro with a good enough track record is worth evaluating, too.

Looking at the DistroWatch statistics, imagining all the work those developers, designers, writers and maintainers have done for each individual distro, my mind staggers. Then, I remind myself of the many times I thought that YaST/AutoYaST/zypper/OBS/Kiwi are pretty neat, and of that one year I worked for S.u.S.E. in Nuremberg back in 1996. I’ll probably stay with openSUSE as long as either of us exist. :slight_smile:

#13

I’m beginning to suspect that, things on the Net such as DistroWatch are easily influenced – I admit to having repeatedly voted for openSUSE with various reasons for liking openSUSE …

  • It possibly had a small effect on moving openSUSE up in the rankings but, I also admit to have given up after about a week …

Bottom line, I no longer trust user ratings on the Net …

#14

Does that imply you did trust them earlier :question:

#15

Yes, a waste of time an energy.

#16

Always had more than a little bit of distrust about the things … >:)

#17

From my point of view, the choice to be made revolves around:

  • How is the distribution being funded – who is paying the bills to keep the servers running?
  • Is there a team of professional employees maintaining the infrastructure needed to have the distribution available on the Internet?
  • Who is involved with, building the distribution’s components and, applying the patches and updates as they arrive from the up-stream components?
  • Is there a management team and, who are they?
  • Who is maintaining the distribution specific tools?
  • Who is maintaining the distribution’s documentation?
  • Is there an infrastructure which ensures that, the versions of the upstream components are compatible with another?
  • Is there an infrastructure for reporting failures and requesting changes?
  • Is there an organised team assigned to the task of working through the reported failures and change requests?
#18

I’m definitely a distro hopper…

I’ve returned to Linux less than six months ago after a break from computing all together of about 10 years… (long story)

So like everyone else I jumped on Win 10 to see what the latest OS was like and after a short while got to realise like every other Linux user that it’s just more Microsoft bloatware so came back to Linux somewhere I’ve not been since the early days of Ubuntu, when they used to give away cd’s with the os on.

Needless to say I was very, very pleased to see how far Linux in general had come, dare I say it… It’s better than windows, yes by a country mile…

so after much, much, much distro hopping I am currently running:-

1/ MX Linux - My go to distro, yes it’s not as up to date out of the box but it is very stable and the Live USB has managed to recover many issues that at the time I had no idea of how to recover myself.

2/ OpenSUSE (tumbleweed XFCE) - very very up to date, with daily updates, It to seems very stable, takes a little longer to boot, but that’s no biggy, once running it’s fine, just as quick as the majority of other distros out there. I like it, I like it a lot.

3/ Sparky Linux - Yes another Debian based system, much like MX (minus all the bespoke tools (I know it has some of its own)) but far more up to date out of the box, with a much newer kernel and the latest xfce desktop.

4/ PCLinuxOS - An independent distro this one. Again bang up to date with a slew of bespoke utilities.

Honourable mentions :-

Solus - Before I discovered the EFI partition scheme Solus worked just fine, but running an EFI based system I simply cannot get it to boot properly (sometimes not at all) and reading their forum it’s a known issue but the team there seem oblivious to it, shame I really liked Solus.

Manjaro - Possibly the best Arch based system and very attractive too.

Arco - Another arch based system with their own bespoke tools and a slew of tutorial videos.

Zenwalk - A Slackware system that has possibly the most attractive out of the box XFCE setup and some great wallpapers. However, while the distro itself is great and simple to install and stable for that matter, The whole slackware way of doing things just annoyed me too much.

So that’s my setup, I’ll definitely be hanging on to openSUSE for the forceable…

#19

I feel seriously insulted by this. Please do not take for granted that what you do can be projected on “everyone else”.

#20

great choice, me too was a Mandriva user, its too sad went away :frowning: OpenMandriva Lx is coming up super good and very promising. Here is a small user review . Mageia is another better choice if not OpenSuse.