Is LEAP more unstable than TUMBLEWEED?

English Open Chat
1

Hello all,

Some info from me first before I write what I want to write:
I will install Tumbleweed next week on my desktop, I am now on holiday using my laptop which for the time being will remain using Manjaro.
At the moment I still use Manjaro Linux KDE, Unstable branch. What does that mean? Arch Linux creates a distro which in its ultimate level is Arch Stable. At that moment it is a stable, be it a rolling, distro. Manjaro comes along and copies the Arch packages and places them into Manjaro Unstable, together with some Manjaro stuff as well.

  • When no problems are mentioned by the Unstable users,

  • the software goes one step up the ladder to Manjaro Testing, where the “professional” testers take over.

  • Also when no problems are found here it is all moved to Manjaro Stable.

  • Unstable has daily updates, just a few packages at the time.

  • Testing has more or less weekly updates, with larger amounts of packages.

  • Stable has 2-4 weekly updates with large amount of packages.

Stable and Testing updates are mentioned in the forum and problems can be reported in those threads. It seems to me that with every update there are problems in Testing and even more in Stable. Unstable updates, like I receive, seldom to never have problems even though we are talking about the same software here, which just a bit later is moved to Testing and then to Stable. So I started thinking. How come I don’t have these problems and why they exist in the other 2 branches? Is it because the update packages are larger, does something go wrong while updating larger amount of packages? I don’t know, just thinking out loud.
If so, it would explain the gigantic problems Windows 10 users have with their bi-annually Giga byte updates which destroy data, cripple drivers, etc.

Now about openSUSE. We have Tumbleweed, rolling distro with regular small updates, and we have Leap, a fixed update distro where the updates are probably much larger than in TW. Am I correct so far?
Leap as being the solid, the stable of the two, made for people who just want a distro that works, copied over to SLES because it is so stable, Tumbleweed as the rolling cutting-edge distro with the latest packages possible.
When I look in the help forums here I see (and I didn’t count them) not less threads for Leap than I see for TW. So, how is that possible?

Can it be:

  1. Leap is used by people who are less computer savvy and manage to do something wrong and then need help, or need help before they do it because they don’t know how to do it?
  2. There are more people using Leap than there are people using TW?
  3. Leap users have “normal”, of the shelf, PC’s, bought with a Windows license and maybe not really cut out to be used with a Linux OS, while the more computer savvy TW users study first which hardware to buy to get a good working system? (networkcard, wireless, GPU)
  4. The updates in Leap are bigger than in TW and just as I wrote above tend to break the updates?

What is the reason there are so many Leap threads in here when Leap is supposed to be so stable? Is it 1 of the 4 reasons I gave here or is there another which I didn’t think about? Who has an idea of how this is possible? Now that I write this I am thinking is SLES having the same problems Leap has? If so it would mean SLES is, for a production environment, having too many problems. Or are they resolved by IT specialists who install and maintain the software (instead of non savvy Leap users), special hardware (instead of of the shelf pc’s)?
What is happening here? Who likes to give us his/her thoughts about this subject?

Or am I just rambling about nothing?

2

That seems completely wrong.

I updated Tumbleweed today. There were 66 packages to update. My previous update was yesteday.

I often see 100 or more packages in an update.

I last updated Leap 15.1 on Monday morning. Checking now, there are 55 packages waiting to be updated. Of those, 50 are updates from the packman repo. Most of the time, there are very few packman updates. The other 5 updates are from the openSUSE Update repo. That’s probably around typical.

There are many more updates for Tumbleweed than for Leap.

Leap as being the solid, the stable of the two, made for people who just want a distro that works, copied over to SLES because it is so stable, Tumbleweed as the rolling cutting-edge distro with the latest packages possible.

That’s not quite right, either.

SLES is not copied from Leap. It is built separately, but it is partly based on what is tested in Tumbleweed over the previous year or so.

Leap is partly based on SLES, except some parts come from Tumbleweed because there isn’t an SLES equivalent component (Plasma, for example). But Leap does not update those parts whenever Tumbleweed updates. So it changes more slowly than Tumbleweed.

Leap has been very stable here. Tumbleweed has also been pretty stable, but with a few more glitches than I see in Leap.

When I look in the help forums here I see (and I didn’t count them) not less threads for Leap than I see for TW. So, how is that possible?

I’m not quite sure what you tried to say there. But you cannot judge stability by number of forum posts. Some of the forum posts are related to hardware issues. Some are related to user mistakes.

Can it be:

  1. Leap is used by people who are less computer savvy and manage to do something wrong and then need help, or need help before they do it because they don’t know how to do it?
  2. There are more people using Leap than there are people using TW?
  3. Leap users have “normal”, of the shelf, PC’s, bought with a Windows license and maybe not really cut out to be used with a Linux OS, while the more computer savvy TW users study first which hardware to buy to get a good working system? (networkcard, wireless, GPU)
  4. The updates in Leap are bigger than in TW and just as I wrote above tend to break the updates?

I can’t read people’s minds. But your 4th point is totally wrong. Updates for TW are far larger than updates for Leap.

Or am I just rambling about nothing?

Could be. But it’s up to you to decide that.

3

Thank you nrickert for your answer and explanation. It seems I have to study more to know how things work in openSUSE. From what I have read in the last 2-3 weeks, on a lot of web pages here I got the idea that things are as I wrote but I am wrong.
So, it turns out I was rambling after all. lol!

4

As @nrickert already answered a lot of your statements/questions, I only want to add a bit about why I use Leap and not TW (a sort of answer to your numbered list lower in your post).

I do not think you can rate me as “less computer savvy”, having started in ICT (before it was called like that) in 1968 and being involved in system management on Unix systems since about the beginning of the 1990s (using Unix, alongside other operating systems, much earlier already).

I prefer Leap above TW.
In using the comupters here in the house, I have several rolls. One is the same as the other comnputer users here, that of “end-user”. using web browsers, mail programs, photo editing, multi-media, for things like banking, finding information, entertainment, all those things where the systems are in fact made for.
A second role is system manager (administrator in MS parlance) for the systems in the house.

Now as an end-user (and I can speak for my wife also), I do not like any change in how I have to work wth the system (the user interface). Stability is: the same button to click on in the GUI on the same place to morrow and many days thereafter, to enable me to click without looking. That is what end-users call stability.
Thus, no distro hopping, no new versions of software that,without warning, wll change interfaces and/or have new functionality (that is not switched off by default, to let the user decide if (s)he wants to be bothered by that it). The system should just work as it worked yesterday.

Thus Leap. And a thourough check on what the changes are in a new Leap version before I communicate those to my end-users.

And for hardware I assume you would call them “shelf PCs”. They must function for years to come and I need some guarantee on repairs, etc. The Windows licence is almost unavoidable (I do regret the money lost on that), but after a first start of the PC, which should show that at it at least will switch on, it is interrupted at the first impertinent question of Windows. Then the openSUSE DVD is put in and an installation using the whole disk option is performed.

5

Same preference here, and I’m reasonably proficient as well. I use openSUSE Leap at home and at work in my role as a network engineer. OS stability/reliability/familiarity is important to me and Leap provides that environment.

6

So, are you both (Henk and Deano) saying Leap is much more stable than TW, or is it the stability Henk talks about: no changes in a very long time.
If Leap is so stable, as I imagined it would be, then why the many cries for help? What is the reason for that? Could it be the huge amount in hardware components, each needing a different way of approach? Or is it one of the reasons I wrote in my OP?

7

I assume that is very objective. Why “the many”. IMHO it is rather quite on the forums.Shortly after a new verision is released, questions/problems are far more frequent.

And please, when you say there are more Leap questions then TW ones, please offer us some statistics so we can believe you.

And then again, you have to look into those questions. How many of them are real problems due to bugs. Many, both on Leap and TW are only showing less of knowledge/understanding. That is fine, that is where the forums are for. But those sort of questions of problems haven’t much to do with TW vs. Leap. They are often showing lack of knowledge in Unix/Linus or even operating systems in general.

8

Some of the questions we see are because people install additional software that is not part of Leap. And sometimes they mess up their repo configuration while doing that.

9

Back with Leap 15.0 I did this and can attest to this. Though I didn’t post anything here Because I knew who and how it happened. In essence I knew I did it to me. As to why I was curious. While this particular cat wasn’t killed he did learn the fewer repos the better.
So for me as you can see in my sig I use TW and keep my repos few.

geekosnewhome:~ # zypper lr -d
# | Alias                 | Name                        | Enabled | GPG Check | Refresh | Priority | Type   | URI                                                                        | Service
--+-----------------------+-----------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+--------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------
1 | openSUSE-20190307-0   | openSUSE-20190307-0         | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | rpm-md | cd:/?devices=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-HL-DT-ST_DVDRAM_GH24NSB0_M64IBFB4310      |        
2 | openSUSE_Tumbleweed   | Packman                     | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   96     | rpm-md | http://ftp.fau.de/packman/suse/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/                        |        
3 | openSUSE_Tumbleweed_1 | Mozilla                     | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   97     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/mozilla/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/     |        
4 | openSUSE_Tumbleweed_2 | KDE Extra                   | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Extra/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/ |        
5 | repo-debug            | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Debug   | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/tumbleweed/repo/oss/                    |        
6 | repo-non-oss          | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Non-Oss | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/                      |        
7 | repo-oss              | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss     | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss/                          |        
8 | repo-source           | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Source  | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/source/tumbleweed/repo/oss/                   |        
9 | repo-update           | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Update  | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/tumbleweed/

The only real problem I’ve got is sporadic and something many plasma users have (even in Manjaro I see) is the Plasma freezes. Even that though tends to appear then disappear then re appear depending on the kernel. Tw for me has been very stable enough so that I use as My main OS. Now getting back to your original question should you wish to do so check out some of those leap posts you’ll likely see quite a few requests for

zypper lr -d

more often than not too many as well as contradictory repos (like packman & vlc)

I hope that my experience unposted as it was helps answer your question.

10

A lot of my experience had been with Debian stable, so I kinda appreciate the slow and stable boat too. To me though it feels a bit strange there is a speed bump every year with point releases, in the sense that they are not just subsumed but require explicitly repointing repos. I guess this is part of how Leap updates and syncs up with tumbleweed and sles point releases.

11

I also use Leap as I don’t like constant change and I think I’m pretty good with computers (at least I hope so:)). You have a point though that with Tumbleweed you never have to do a big distribution update (version switch in Leap terms) because you are constantly doing them with zypper dup. The problem with this as I’ve heard from Arch users is if you don’t update with reasonable frequency your system drifts too far away from the upstream and another update doesn’t work or breaks your system.
With Leap you do a distribution update rarely but then there is a lot of packages to download and install so I guess you could say that is a bigger change on your system than constant incremental changes on Tumbleweed. Having said that standard updates on Leap (without version switch) are much smaller as others mentioned.

12

I don’t think that’s a real problem with Tumbleweed. I have noticed that when using other rolling distros (KaOS and Solus).

Tumbleweed will remove out-of-date software.

I do occasionally look for orphaned packages, and remove those unless a conflict prevents. And when a conflict blocks that, the issue usually goes away after a few more updates.

It is also a good idea to occasionally run rpmconfigcheck and update any affected files. I’ll admit to not always being sure what I am doing when I do that.

13

I have 2 pretty identical machines running Tumbleweed:

  • the i7-6700K gets virtually every update
  • the i3-4130 gets quarterly updates

No adverse effects were observed on the latter during a 3 year period. Size of downloads doesn’t matter, since even with the i7-6700K, it amounts to a small fraction of total downloads.

14

That’s great to know.

15

Like debian (and unlike redhat) Suse does abi package naming, and this is why it is easier to reliably and constantly update Tumbleweed (and Debian testing) in place even with extended time gaps. Arch only does abi naming for glibc/core libs so that at least pacman is stable during the upgrade process. This lack of abi naming is why Redhat and Fedora was so hard to upgrade in place, and why Fedora had to settle on a method involving a boot to install upgrades to finally get it reliable. I also do feel more comfortable and confident rolling with a Debian Testing or Tumbleweed than with arch.

16

This is an old post, but I would like to share my opinion on why leap is better than tumbleweed ( sorry for my bad en language)

The purpose of building a car is transportation to reach the destination, and the car itself is not the goal for most people and is only a means of transportation. Car structure is only important and interesting for mechanics.
The operating system is the same, it is the tool through which the computer can be turned on and used, the operating system itself is not goal for most people, the operating system can only be goal for developers, not for most people. This is why the most important thing in an operating system is stability, so that it can be used for years without problems, one of the most important reasons why most people use Windows is this stability. which is not seen in linux, i still know people who use windows xp and 7 on their pc, these operating systems were so stable in their time that they are still usable after all these years, this is the secret of superiority Windows over Linux for most people.
Operating systems such as Arch or tumbleweed are not operating systems at all, they are a tool to help developers.

17

Hear, hear!