Moving from Leap to Tumbleweed - few general questions

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi,

I’ve been running OpenSUSE Leap since version 15.0 on a few dozen desktops clients. I’ve been quite happy with it, though it looks like Leap will be deprecated sooner or later, so I’m considering moving to Tumbleweed, which seems to have its own advantages as well as a few drawbacks.

I bluntly admit I’ve been suspicious of rolling releases ever since I tried to run Arch on a handful of production desktops back in 2006 and got badly bitten. But much time has passed since then, and I decided to give it a go. I’m already running Tumbleweed + KDE on a sandbox machine, I’m experimenting extensively, and I’ve started to write a post-installation script for it: https://gitlab.com/kikinovak/opensuse/-/blob/master/opensuse-setup.sh

Before going into the details, I have a few generals questions about OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

  1. Is there some detailed documentation about Tumbleweed, along with good practices & hints? Something like https://opensuse-guide.org/ aimed at rolling releases?

  2. Is there some mailing list or forum branch informing Tumbleweed users about upcoming changes & caveats? Something like the “Latest News” section on https://archlinux.org where users know what surprises to expect when they launch the next update?

  3. So far I’ve been using a bone-headed ext4-based partitioning scheme on all my installations, both on servers and desktops. But now I’m wondering if I should give Btrfs a spin. Can you recommend any good primer tutorial for Btrfs? I’m no lamer for reading in-depth documentation, as long as it’s competent and well explained.

Thanks & cheers from the blazing hot South of France,

Niki

#2

Hi
For number 1 see https://en.opensuse.org/Category:Tumbleweed whilst some folks use the packagekit/GUI method to update to the next snapshot, commandline screen with zypper -vvv dup has not let me down. What graphics cards are in use, that can be fun at times with nvidia and using the repository, I prefer the hard way…

For number 2 follow: https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/factory@lists.opensuse.org/ plus there are Forum announcements for new snapshot releases.

For Number 3 up to you, stick with what you know, perhaps look at combining ext4 with tumbleweed-cli to rollback… https://github.com/boombatower/tumbleweed-cli

#3

Thanks for the detailed explanation !

#4

Day 3 of my Tumbleweed experience, and already ~ 2 GB of updates. This is insane and makes Tumbleweed unusable here, since we have a very limited bandwidth here and Zypper refuses to play nice with Apt-Cacher-NG.

<rant>As far as I can tell as a long-time Linux user who started out on Slackware more than 20 years ago, OpenSUSE Leap is the best thing that ever happened to Linux on desktops and workstations. I’ve been using it in our local school as well as during my training sessions for some big companies like FranceTV. But as it happens frequently in the free software world, whenever there is a good thing around that JustWorks™, a handful of distribution maintainers decide on a whim that this good thing has to go away and be replaced by something completely useless. These guys - some paid by SUSE - remind me of myself when I was three years old and decided to “repair” my parent’s alarm clock.</rant>

#5

@microlinux:

I can understand your concerns and yes, they’re perfectly valid –

  • Yes, Servers running Linux are facing a problem with versions of scripting languages.
  • But, is this also true for Desktop systems?

Personally, I suspect that, the (non-commercial) Desktop community may well have to present a case to have the ALP as an optional feature on the non-rolling Release systems – Leap & Co. …

  • Yes, (commercial
    ) Server systems are facing the need for ALP. - But, I suspect that, (non-commercial
    ) Desktop systems are not really impacted by the scripting language versions issue – possibly a few but, not the majority …

[HR][/HR]So, commercial versus non-commercial –

  • Without any funding, it’ll be difficult to present the non-commercial
    case …
#6

@microlinux:

Some more ALP information – <https://news.opensuse.org/2022/06/17/ALP-Community-update/>.

#7

Thanks but no thanks. And frankly, after the CentOS debacle in 2020, that’s another distribution that decides on a whim to pull the rug under its users. This kind of nonsense won’t happen with Debian, so I guess it’s farewell OpenSUSE. It was nice while it lasted.

#8

Time has come for switching to a robust rolling release distribution, such as Tumbleweed. I performed the switch in 2016 already and never looked back.

I bluntly admit I’ve been suspicious of rolling releases ever since I tried to run Arch on a handful of production desktops back in 2006 and got badly bitten. But much time has passed since then, and I decided to give it a go. I’m already running Tumbleweed + KDE on a sandbox machine, I’m experimenting extensively, and I’ve started to write a post-installation script for it: https://gitlab.com/kikinovak/opensuse/-/blob/master/opensuse-setup.sh

Always test with a native install on a performant drive with ample space. Use default partitioning whenever feasible: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/541321-Upgrading-the-Hardware?p=3086058#post3086058

  1. Is there some detailed documentation about Tumbleweed, along with good practices & hints? Something like https://opensuse-guide.org/ aimed at rolling releases?

Sure: https://opensuse.github.io/openSUSE-docs-revamped-temp/

  1. Is there some mailing list or forum branch informing Tumbleweed users about upcoming changes & caveats? Something like the “Latest News” section on https://archlinux.org where users know what surprises to expect when they launch the next update?

No surprises to expect. If any occur use “snapper rollback” and discuss here or in the mailing lists.

  1. So far I’ve been using a bone-headed ext4-based partitioning scheme on all my installations, both on servers and desktops. But now I’m wondering if I should give Btrfs a spin. Can you recommend any good primer tutorial for Btrfs? I’m no lamer for reading in-depth documentation, as long as it’s competent and well explained.

Stick to defaults: https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/startup/html/book-startup/cha-install.html#sec-yast-install-partitioning Common sense will work. Have Debian caveats in mind. Don’t follow their recommendations blindly, but take them as a warning: https://wiki.debian.org/Btrfs#Recommendations

Carefully assess what you are doing. Don’t hurry at any point of time. I watched btrfs issues from 2015 to 2019, switched to btrfs system partition in 2019 and fully converted everything to btrfs on 2021-11-24:

erlangen:~ # lsblk -f /dev/nvme0n1
NAME        FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
nvme0n1                                                                            
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat   FAT32       19CF-0B54                             510.4M     0% /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 btrfs              0e58bbe5-eff7-4884-bb5d-a0aac3d8a344    1.3T    25% /var
│                                                                                  /usr/local
│                                                                                  /srv
│                                                                                  /root
│                                                                                  /opt
│                                                                                  /home
│                                                                                  /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi
│                                                                                  /boot/grub2/i386-pc
│                                                                                  /.snapshots
│                                                                                  /
erlangen:~ #

Erlangen: 26°C now, 37°C expected for the weekend.

#9

Hi
As I indicated, keep an eye on the Mailing list the reason is there… not insane… you installed on the day of a complete rebuild release.

#10

[QUOTE=microlinux;3134957]<rant>As far as I can tell as a long-time Linux user who started out on Slackware more than 20 years ago, OpenSUSE Leap is the best thing that ever happened to Linux on desktops and workstations.</QUOTE>
I also started out on Slackware, but have been on openSUSE for a long time now.

I am not as alarmed as you are.

Yes, Tumbleweed updates can be large. That’s because Tumbleweed is the test bed for trying out new stuff.

I still run Leap on my desktop. I have Tumbleweed installed, and periodically update it. But I prefer the stability of Leap.

I’m reasonably confident that the openSUSE team understands why we want stable desktop systems.

#11

I use opensuse from version 7, I tried tumbleweed about three years ago but for me it is not enough reliable, I prefere to use argon https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Argon_and_Krypton
adding the repositories I have the latest kde software but I decide what and when update