After running leap 15.6 for sometime I saw the release of leap 16 last year. installed 16 and regretted it immediately! Back to 15.6 where everything ran smoothly, Installed 16 again this year, so many problems with laptop hardware and boot error messages! even went looking for a replacement laptop! eventually I wiped and re-installed leap 16, what a difference, no more boot error messages, PC stopped crashing all the time, no more overheating, fantastic.
I use KDE, always have. However there are so many problems arising. KVM, plasmashell, K3B, now that I’m about to try wiping and re-install 16 using Gnome or one of the lightweight desktop environments.
Not having much experience with these DE’s, I’m not a power user, mostly used these days to keep in contact with the world on a bigger screen than a mob! I’d like to be able to run a vm (virtualbox) burn a MS Win iso to a DVD, and generally do all those things that KDE are stopping me from doing! Any suggestions on a Lightweight DE that meets my needs would be appreciated
As long as you do not at least describe these problems, or better start a thread to ask help to solve them, I doubt people can advise you any KDE replacement. Because they do not know if those problems will show there again.
In answer to your question about a lightweight desktop environment, Xfce is I believe generally seen as the lightest of the 3 default desktops offered by openSuse. It is apparently a more traditional layout like older Windows versions & is Ideal for users with older hardware or those who prefer a simple interface.
Sounds like it might be worth a try for you if your lap top is a bit old perhaps? Personally I use Gnome & would recommend that, but that is, I believe, said to be the most resource intensive versus KDE & Xfce so Gnome maybe the opposite of what you are looking for.
Finally have you thought about trying this via Tumbleweed so that once you have it working to your liking you don’t have to worry about major upgrades to new version every couple of years, although with the trade off that if might be a bit more high maintenance along the way.
Hope this helps.
Install Xfce and be happy.
Notice that this doesn’t mean that you have to get rid of KDE Plasma; you can keep both and switch between them for each session with your login manager’s session menu. Once you are sure what you prefer, you can free up some disk space by deinstalling the one you don’t want.
And of course you can still run some KDE programs from Xfce if there is no counterpart; I recommend to be pragmatic.
Did you like KDE3? It’s still available on opensuse.org. Little about it has changed over the years since Plasma 4 appeared. There’s also a 16 year old fork of KDE3 called TDE (Trinity Desktop) that gets version increments in Octobers and Aprils resulting from active development. Either, but not both together, can be installed aside Plasma, Gnome or XFCE.
So, when openSUSE dumps X11, what will happen to these?
- I assume they need X11, or do they run with wayland?
- Or some other workaround?
There will always be workarounds, it’s linux 
However, the question is support for these configs and environments. Likewise, hopefully the maintainers act on security issues etc…
This is a peer to peer user Forum, so it becomes harder if only one or two folks have setup XYZ that frequent this location.
@Rocinante I would suggest looking at the likes of Hyprland, Sway, Labwc etc and get ahead of the eight ball.
Just to throw in my 2 cents, I have been a MATE user for probably 10 years. Not big memory hog. The MATE apps suite provides performance and functionality sufficient for what I do. I do mostly scientific programming and apps running. There is more than enough ricing customization of look and feel for me. I do use kde konsole terminal to get split windows and other functionality beyond the MATE terminal. Konsole works fine with all the other MATE apps. Unfortunality Konsole brings in alot of kde stuff during install.
Note: MATE is x11 only as wayland conversion is not completed.
Worth a try. Works well just from base install.
tom kosvic
Assuming TDE won’t be made to run without X11 before then, though it seems to be planned, I dump openSUSE, if I’m still alive, which I doubt. In the mean time, they are both as good as ever, and much less annoying than Plasma 6. If KDE3 disappears from the repos, I have no qualms about shifting to TDE as primary DE. I have more TDE installations than I can count, at least 3X as many as my 30+ TWs. It’s solid.
When the automatic bug reporting crashes, I spent much too long at a terminal typing in commands that I’ve spent too much time looking for in man pages and using --help to end up with reams of information on my screen that I have no idea what is useful and what isn’t. KDE is far too buggy for my liking, as in the old days with Matchless MCs “Never buy mark1 of anything”
Thank you for the advice, but I don’t have time nor inclination to debug KDE, I’m not a power user, just like to support alternatives to all the oppressive global dominating money making scams?
Thank you for this suggestion, now, there’s a thought. I use a 22yo laptop, is tumbleweed suitable for this old a machine?
After my experience of updating Leap 15.6 to 16.0 when it was first released, I felt it was either too early as the loss of so many admin tools really didn’t help me personally at all.
i’m going down the Lightweight route, Memory and space is not a problem to me (I’m an over-engineering aficionado!) I’ll install them all, use and compare, remove what I don’t like
Thank you all for your time, help, support and suggestions on my rather small dilemma.
I appreciate all that you do on this forum, and hope to learn a little more about the correct format/syntax to use when posting, to make posts more easier on the eye and not confuse or obfuscate. Have a good day all! R
I have tumbleweed with MATE installed on a lenovo thinkpad r500 from about 2008. Runs fine for what i do with it.
tom kosvic
22 means ~2004 vintage. If it has Intel graphics, support may be limited or absent, depending on the age of the actual technology. If ATI/AMD (R420+ arch) or NVidia (Rankine arch) graphics, it should be OK, for some definition of “OK”. I have multiple PCs with CPUs that age running TW, but no laptops.
On doing a quick search on Leap vs. Tumbleweed, apparently, somewhat surprisingly, Tumbleweed is more suited to older machines as suggested in this article: https://computingforgeeks.com/opensuse-leap-vs-tumbleweed-vs-sles/
Maybe admin types can confirm.
Thank you for this info jjis!
I’m trying this route when i get Tumbleweed
Sorry, poor maths at 3am! 
12 yo!
So the correct math points to 2014? You should have no problem with either TW or Leap, you don’t need a “lightweight” solution either, unless you have unusual hardware that might have specific problems.
Writing this from a 2015 laptop with Intel + Nvidia Optimus, Gnome with all the bell and whistles (Yes, the notorious memory hog…).
I upgraded from my 2011 desktop PC to a new one just before Christmas 2025, and the reason was not lack of performance or anything not working, but me wanting a more powerful (because… reasons) and a quieter one.
That old one had served me well with Leap 15.6 and Tumbleweed, and even 3D gaming on Linux. It could have soldiered on for a couple more years, I guess.
So no, your 12 years old laptop should not be a problem. Just make sure that it’s not another 32 bit only leftover from the bargain bin even back then. If arch says x86_64 and free -g reports 8 GB or more, you should be good.
@Rocinante If it’s a fresh install of Tumbleweed and using UEFI boot with systemd, ensure you have a 1GB-2GB /boot/efi partition…