I just switched from Debian to openSUSE yesterday and started using it properly today. I initially installed openSUSE Leap, but then heard that YaST might be getting removed (or at least that’s what I understood). Someone recommended I switch to Tumbleweed instead, so I did a fresh install of Tumbleweed.
Now that I’m here, I’d love to hear your best tips and tricks for the openSUSE ecosystem — especially for someone coming from Debian. Anything related to daily usage, package management, YaST, snapshots, performance tweaks, or just general “you should know this” advice would be greatly appreciated!
Best to start with not using YaST because it will be removed from Tumbleweed also in the future. Thus you will not get used to it and will learn to live with alternatives.
In any case in my idea choosing btween Leap and Tumbleweed should be based on other arguments then the availability of YaST.
Welcome aboard! When using Tumbleweed use zypper dup for upgrades, or if you prefer a GUI use Myrlyn with its Dist-Upgrade option.
Other update apps might or might not work; namely, Discover or Gnome Software may be used but they are not able to resolve package conflicts if any arises.
Please don’t add third party repositories unless really needed and never ever add home: repos unless you are testing development work.
The above to avoid the most frequent Forum requests for help.
Then please be aware that YaST is on its way out even for Tumbleweed, so don’t spend much time learning it. Use Myrlyn for software and repository management, have a look at Cockpit for other admin tasks.
And ask here if you need help, we are here for that.
Hello & Welcome - just be aware apt install won’t work around here. But here is a useful resource for finding your way around the terminal using Zypper - depending on how much tinkering you want to do. The Zypper dup command already mentioned will keep you up to date. But the following should help with other more complicated stuff should the need arise or you can always ask on here if you are stuck as it is a great community / forum. Zypper Cheat Sheet
for me i always take backup using timeshift you can use snapper if you’re using btrfs
although OS TW is more stable than other rolling distro IMO sometimes it happens so it’s better to have backup plan just in case you encounter some bugs
you maybe want to take a look at openSUSE Slowroll if you want something a little slower (1 month difference than TW )
to playback most patented codecs you could need pakman repo or VLC repo you can read more
in my case i use pakman essential i try to be very restrictive with pakman i only use it for players and codecs your case could be different
the more 3rd part repos you have the more conflicts you have
read more about zypper vendor change it’s was a new concept for me when i switched from debian to openSUSE TW too
personally i like and i wounder why it’s not in other distro but that’s a personal preference https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Vendor_change_update
another thing is openSUSE has tighter security than debian based distros so you could find some blocked modules that you could need like in my case i needed RNDIS to use usb tethering. some people need NTFS3 for example depending on your case
you can easily unblock it. it could be beneficial to read more about it
sometimes you could face problem relating to SElinux so probably it’s good to read about SElinux
one more thing TW use grub2-bls by default now and some people having problems with it you can change it to grub2-efi and i heard that you can change it from the installer too
it would be different than debian in multiple ways
Not necessarily, most users don’t need that, specially if you have a modern GPU with HW decoding or a decent Vulkan implementation.
Most likely you need Packman (or Videolan) for h265 videos (AKA HEVC) or .heic Apple images; everything else in wide use should be available with the standard install.
