openSUSE vs Ubuntu and derivatives.

English Open Chat
1

Hello OpenSUSE community.

I am a fairly new linux user. I’ve been full time with the OS since January.
My experience with it though, has been mainly centered around Debian derivatives.
I have a laptop that’s running ubuntu 13.04 and my desktop is running mint 14.
I also have a netbook that’s running Crunchbang, which is basically Debian.
As far as other distros go, my laptop originally came with SLE (it’s kept as dual boot)
and I’ve had some interaction with centos due to web-related stuff, although I’ve generally
opted for ubuntu servers as it’s the distro I know better.

Now that we got my limited experience out of the way, I think I can proceed with my question.

I recently came upon an article that mentions a couple pros that OpenSUSE has against Ubuntu.
Such as a better PulseAudio implementation and the YaST system.
That’s all nice and neat but it still doesn’t seem enough to make me change my distro.
Not that I’m attached to Ubuntu or anything. I can adapt when I have to, just like I adapted from windows.
To cut to the point: Why would I want to switch to openSUSE? What do you, the opensuse users find
in this distro that you don’t find in others? What would I find in it? What is the allure of it?
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to start a debate. I’m only trying to understand.
Besides, if I don’t ask, I’ll never learn. For all I know, I’m missing out!

A couple more things:
In the article mentioned above, the author mentions a certain hatred of his for RPM packages.
In the past while looking into other distros, I also read similar rpm-hating posts.
What’s the deal with that? Are the deb packages (or whatever else, I really don’t know, forgive me I’m new)
somehow better? Is there something wrong with rpm packages? What is it that makes people dislike them?

I would also like to mention, I’m not a unity fan. I find the design and the limits of it to be quite annoying.
On a daily basis, I use cinnamon shell and gnome 3.8, although I think I’ll soon be dropping cinnamon for
gnome 3.8 all together.

Thank you all for any replies and for your time.

2

On 2013-06-19 11:46, NinoDraven wrote:

> To cut to the point: Why would I want to switch to openSUSE? What do
> you, the opensuse users find
> in this distro that you don’t find in others? What would I find in it?
> What is the allure of it?

As I have answered that question here several times, I’m not going to do
it again :slight_smile:

Jut you try it out, and find for yourself whether you like it or not. It
is you who has to decide, after all…

> In the article mentioned above, the author mentions a certain hatred of his for RPM packages.
> In the past while looking into other distros, I also read similar rpm-hating posts.
> What’s the deal with that? Are the deb packages (or whatever else, I
> really don’t know, forgive me I’m new) somehow better? Is there something wrong with rpm packages? What is it
> that makes people dislike them?

Rpms works for me just fine, I don’t have any problem with them. No deal.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

3

NinoDraven wrote:
> Hello OpenSUSE community.
> I recently came upon an article that mentions a couple pros that
> OpenSUSE has against Ubuntu.
> Such as a better PulseAudio implementation and the YaST system.
> That’s all nice and neat but it still doesn’t seem enough to make me
> change my distro.
> Not that I’m attached to Ubuntu or anything. I can adapt when I have
> to, just like I adapted from windows.
> To cut to the point: Why would I want to switch to openSUSE? What do
> you, the opensuse users find
> in this distro that you don’t find in others? What would I find in it?
> What is the allure of it?

I guess most people here stay because of the community. You may or may
not find this community better or worse than for example the ubuntu
community, but if you find it better you may want to stay.

I don’t know much about the audio side. To the extent I use it
(youtube), it works. YaST I like. It does package and system management
better than other programs I’ve used. Having said that, it’s going
through a somewhat turbulent time at the moment, so you might want to
wait a year or so before trying a switchover.

I use openSUSE, Ubuntu & Scientific Linux (i.e. RedHat). They all have
strengths and weaknesses.

4

Thank you both for your replies.
I guess I’ll try it out and see for myself.

5

On 2013-06-19 12:36, NinoDraven wrote:
>
> Thank you both for your replies.
> I guess I’ll try it out and see for myself.

You just have to search. A few samples:


View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=459805
Opensuse/Ubuntu/Windows 7 know how?

View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=470486
Former "Ubuntu - 11.10" user now "OpenSUSE -12.1" user...

View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=480557
My love/hate relationship with ubuntu and its relatives (and other linuxes)

View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=486338
To Ubuntu again... sigh.

View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=487238
Stay with Ubuntu or change to other distro?

View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=457181
Switched from Ubuntu to OpenSUSE

View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=482480
Installed Kubuntu

View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=473526
Trying Ubuntu 12.04 makes me appreciate openSUSE even more

View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=465162
OMG Ubuntu for OpenSuse

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

6

On 06/19/2013 03:03 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> You just have to search.

it seems to me that while most pure Debian users prefer otherwise,
many (most?) Debian-derivative users seem to like to ask and prefer
that personal attention and social contact, rather than suffer
through due diligence and self directed searching and decision making.

–
dd

7

It’s not a matter of not wanting to make my own decisions.
Nor do I care much for personal attention.
To be 100% honest, when I posted that it was around 12pm for me
and I hadn’t (and still haven’t actually) slept for the “night”.
Didn’t even cross my mind to search through the forum.

Thank you for the samples, I will make sure to read through them.
Much appreciated.

8

As a long-term distro hopper I can sum up why I have chosen to be using openSUSE, but not much else.

I started off on Ubuntu around Gibbon. Then moved on to Debian as I felt it was more “pure” than the derivatives. After doing a minimal netinstall, I wanted to gain even more control over my system and went with Gentoo. I grew to hate compile times, so eventually went Arch. Up until recently, I was pretty die-hard about Arch. Then one day, I realized that I didn’t want the OS to be a goal so much as a tool for my personal needs. When I couldn’t accomplish a merge in my repo from someone else because a recent system update deprecated a lib that was needed…I took a route to try to make sure that if I actually needed to get things accomplished, that I could. That’s why I am here.

To each their own, because they’re all GNU / Linux at heart. It’s all about the user.

9

On 06/19/2013 09:06 AM, NinoDraven wrote:
>
> DenverD;2565920 Wrote:
>>
>> it seems to me that while most pure Debian users prefer otherwise,
>> many (most?) Debian-derivative users seem to like to ask and prefer
>> that personal attention and social contact, rather than suffer
>> through due diligence and self directed searching and decision making.
>>
>
> It’s not a matter of not wanting to make my own decisions.
> Nor do I care much for personal attention.
> To be 100% honest, when I posted that it was around 12pm for me
> and I hadn’t (and still haven’t actually) slept for the “night”.
> Didn’t even cross my mind to search through the forum.
>
>
> robin_listas;2565913 Wrote:
>>
>> You just have to search. A few samples:
>>
>
> Thank you for the samples, I will make sure to read through them.
> Much appreciated.

As a kernel developer, I find the Debian way of creating a new kernel and
installing it to be extremely wasteful of computer and user time. If you are not
packaging the kernel for distribution, what is the sense of having to create a
…deb and then install it? Adding to the frustration, the only machine that has
to use this method is a PowerBook G4 running Mint, which has only a single,
relatively slow processor.

On openSUSE, all one needs to do to build and install a new kernel is


make && sudo make modules_install install

Much cleaner and quicker. I even have an alias for the second part of that command.

10

I am not a kernel developer but I do install a new kernel from time to time… and yes it is very easy.
I am a new linux user, having only tried Ubuntu and Mint (one year using GNU/Linux)
I am now using openSUSE on Tumbleweed for the past 4 months and enjoying it a lot, once I got over the hump with reinstalling NVIDIA drivers everything worked smoothly.
I am also an audio professional.
I have not noticed any advantage at all using audio with openSUSE compared to other distros, nor have I experienced any negatives.
Audio with any Linux distro is tricky especially if you need to record using professional systems in real time. I use the KDE desktop, but would not recommend it above any other.
There is a lot of help for audio with Linux available over the Internet.
openSUSE is neither better nor worse than any other distro in my opinion. It is workable. It is really a matter of personal preference.
YAST is a very good set of tools which gets right under the skin of the system, providing manageable and intuitive utilities for updates, packages, hardware and software configurations. I don’t think Ubuntu has anything that comes close. Nonetheless, with community and PPAs it’s easy to get things done on Ubuntu as well.
The bottom line is: try something out, give it a fair chance and if the appeals sticks, go for it! :wink:

The thing I like about GNU/Linux is the choice and the freedom to build your own system the way you like it. All these distros, like openSUSE, are put together by teams of dedicated people who have put in untold amounts of work and effort (often in their own time), often with professional backing and support, and it is helpful to you and others to avail of that effort and knowledge as well as eventually contributing when you have gained your own insights and experience.
I have been using both MAC and Windows for 20 years in working business and technical environments. I wish I had started using Linux a lot earlier. it was an irrational fear of command line interfaces that kept me away (based on the years with MS DOS and BASIC). :shame:

11

I can chime in a few opinions of my own. I originally left Ubuntu after using for almost 4 years. What I wanted was to use and be a part of a project that was moral, open, and well engineered. I started to dislike all the slapped on solutions and random interface changes. It felt a lot less ‘finished’ than gnome/kde when they moved to Unity. Later on I was turned off at all the secret projects and added on terms such as the contributor agreement. I felt that giving people Ubuntu and helping them with it was helping Canonical, and not me or the people. I switched to Debian full time, but still was a part of the Ubuntu community. It has a lot of great people but eventually I left it. I became heavily involved only in the Debian forums/irc.

I used Debian full time for another 2-3 years, I still love it, and am a global moderator at their forums. Why am I using openSUSE if I am so heavily involved in Debian?

Well, I had used openSUSE long ago the past for about half of a year when I didn’t have internet. I loved the dvd installer and a nice unofficial addon called the multimedia pack. When I had internet again and it was easy to install software I moved back to Ubuntu, mainly to see how having it with the net would work. So I opted to try openSUSE again every release. I was rarely disappointed but not enough to leave Debian yet.

Now though my needs have changed. I use the enterprise SUSE at work and am no longer just a hobbyist. I am studying for SUSE certifications. I package software, not just look for an easy way to have it installed. I can say that I clearly prefer rpm/zypper over deb. Rpm verifies the checksums more reliably, are simpler to create, have delta, and the zypper solver is fantastic.

I love having access to the open build service, where anyone can have software built and checked with lintian to make sure it has no obvious flaws etc. It is a very unique and powerful utility. As for openSUSE itself, it has a great, flexible installer. A lot of well supported software, which is configure out of the box to work and not just be a mess of ‘do it yourself’. Just because I can sort something out myself doesn’t mean I want to have to struggle with it.

Yast is useful because it brings more advanced features in the hands of beginners. I don’t have to worry my mom won’t be able to configure her printer because the yast gui is easy enough for her to understand. Not only that but it also lets me do everything manually and won’t override my changes. :slight_smile:

So, overall I think it is the best distro for hobbyists, developers, and small businesses. If the Evergreen project stays strong, it might even be useful for larger businesses as well, with longer support and installation availability.