Leap vs Tumbleweed installs

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi,

i just downloaded the latest Leap version and a Tumbleweed version dated 02/14. I haven’t updated my laptop for about 2 years. I first installed Leap. It pretty much went fine, and everything seemed to be about the same with installation and working as before. Specifically, Yast gave me access to all the programs and repositories, much the same as before.

However. I then replaced this install with Tumbleweed. Yast only gives me access to Filesystem Snapshots and System Log files. No full access to programs and repositories.

Is this somehow how it’s supposed to be? All the Tumbleweed files are downloaded once with the install, and if you want any upgrade, you need to install a later version of Tumbleweed? But with the Leap version you get continual updates via Yast? I don’t know if it’s just me, and the way I’ve been used to. But I feel more comfortable with the Leap version, getting continual updates with Yast, until a newer Leap version is released.

Is there any way to retrofit the Tumbleweed on my Laptop with the latest Leap version? Or does it require a completely new install of Leap over the Tumbleweed version?

Thank you.

2

TW is different. THe only way to update is to use zypper dup. Do not use Yast or aby desktop widget to update!!!

3

That’s my preference, too.

Best to do a clean install of Leap.

However, since you currently have Tumbleweed – my suggestion would be to stick with it for a few weeks, and gain some experience. The newest Leap 15.1 will be released soon (I think in March). That would then be a good choice for installing Leap.

4

As a “new” openSUSE User,
You might find useful the slide deck from my intro to openSUSE…

https://slides.com/tonysu/opensuse

My apologies that my presentation style is rather extemporaneous (I talk a lot about stuff not in the slide deck),
But you’ll find a general outline of various important topics like LEAP vs TW, installing, choosing Desktops, and recommended things to do after the initial install…

This presentation deviates from most previous “What is openSUSE?” presentations which in the past have mainly focused on comparing openSUSE to other distros, this presentation is largely based on a new installation experience, getting a new User off to a good start.

HTH,
TSU

5

The difference:

  • For me, I love Tumbleweed, I even kind of like things happening like a complete rebuild due to f.e. gcc upgrades
  • For the ones I support: Leap 15. My kids, friends, they all update their systems on their own. And, they learned ( who ) to ask :).
    My 2 cents:
  • Install Leap 15.0
  • Get the daily workflow, YaST and move to Tumbleweed when you feel you’re ready.
    An extra cent:
  • Enjoy
6

To me, Tumbleweed seems most ideal as a dev platform. It is much less likely to break because obs can do rebuilds when dependencies are updated, and snapshots are testable. It also helps having an abi naming convention for library packages like debian does, which makes updates with out of date packages possible, too. In fact, it is probably at least as stable as debian testing, perhaps even more so since packages get auto-rebuilt when dependencies change. One of the dirty secrets of Debian, and especially the Ubuntu universe archive, is that if a package is not updated, it often never gets rebuilt either, and you can end up collecting stale binaries tied to old library releases.

While it seems rather stable and safe to use for a rolling release, of course tumbleweed is changing all the time, and that may be less comfortable for many end users. For many, LEAP seems more logical. It has a decent lifespan, but not so long that it becomes stale. Annually updating to new point releases makes sense, as 6 months is just too frequent. And every few years doing a major update is not so bad, either. I would prefer this to Ubuntu’s release cycles over time, for one example. Of course, for enterprise development, I gather LEAP also aligns with SUSE enterprise.