New to the OS and forum, have previous experience with several distro’s including Debian, Arch, and Fedora.
I have a Raspberry Pi v4B that I ran Manjaro Linux on since I purchased it almost a year ago. Recently, and I blame an update for this, the device simply would not boot into the OS after an update, so I decided to explore and see what else was out there. I’ve heard about OpenSUSE quite a bit, and was happy to see that they have a revision for aarm64 processors.
I downloaded the offline ISO installer (4Gigs) for Reach (v15.4, I think), used Etcher to write it to an SD card that I use as boot media in the Pi, and went through the lengthy install process. During the install there was an error that popped up, but seemed inconsequential since the OS continued to install after pressing ‘OK’.
Once the OS has been installed and my account created, I logged in and proceeded to do any updates that were available, of which there was over 200. I waited until that was finished and it advised that it needed to reboot the device to complete the installation. I moved the mouse pointer to initiate the reboot, but the UI would not respond.
After hard booting the device, I found that if I am idle for a small period of time, the UI will simply not respond however, apps will still visually show activity (task manager). In order to reboot the device I have to power off the Pi, and then power on ten seconds or more after. When this happens I can press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get a terminal prompt, so that leads me to believe that this is a GUI issue.
If anyone has suggestions please let me know, I’m excited to get started using the OS and learn more linux as we go forward. Thanks in advance.
I had no issues using MATE on my Pi 4B on a 32gb micro SD card - I think 16gb is too small for Linux - ok for Rasberian - it is rather harder to install MATE but looks like Vista when running.
Since you have the install media - here is a guide I use to install MATE on any version of OpenSUSE. Don’t worry about the online stuff - you can do that after it comes up. DO add the packman repository after you get it up.
1. Start the openSUSE installer as usual, it can be the DVD, USB, or NET, does not make a diff.
2. When you are prompted to add online repositories, you should accept the option... It's currently the default as of 15.3 (and TW). Not choosing to add the online repositories limits your available choices to what can fit in a DVD... and this applies to the NET install as well. When you do a NET install, you may be using online repositories, but the online image by default appears to be a DVD image and not the expanded repository if you choose "online repositories."
3. When you arrive at the following screen for the System Role, click the "Generic Desktop" radio button. This installs basic X11 components supporting at least a WM, nothing more.
http://slides.com/tonysu/opensuse#/6
4. Continue the installation until the "Installation Settings" screen which is actually a summary of all settings.
http://slides.com/tonysu/opensuse#/10
You should notice that this point you have not selected a Desktop, only support for a a graphical environment and with IceWM to be installed (a default install in all openSUSE graphical installs, regardless of any other components which may be installed).
The Headers of each category on the screen is a hyperlink which is clickable.
5. Click on "Software" and the following screen should display by default, which is the Patterns view. If you don't see the Patterns view, click at the top of the left column and find the Patterns view.
http://slides.com/tonysu/opensuse#/12
For any other DE that's not MATE, find the pattern for your Desktop, select and install it.
But, MATE is a special situation because for whatever reason its maintainers don't create a pattern for installation, it's instead installed with a "master package"
In the same place at the top of the left column which should display "Patterns" click on it and select "Search..."
Type in MATE to find the package and install that, it will pull in all the dependency packages to install the MATE Desktop.
6. Continue to end of Installation.
When your system completes the install and reboots, you'll have MATE as your only Desktop on your system!
larryr If you like being the Beta Tester use Tumbleweed - If you want stable use Leap 15.3.
Unfortunately, it’s not as cut-and-dry as you have stated. I want stable, however it is highly possible that the LTS version doesn’t fully support Raspberry Pi 4 yet. What I am seeking is confirmation, possible cli corrections, etc.
You didn’t understand that right now, Leap (why I said Reach before is beyond me, sorry) is quite literally a test OS. If the LTS aspect of it also included full Pi 4 hardware, then we could have a different discussion. Right now I can determine that it’s the UI that’s locking up, and was hoping that someone had experienced this before and could assist me with resolving the issue.
Tumbleweed has rolling updates, which quite frankly was the same with Manjaro. I don’t mind being a ‘beta tester’ if it means I can assist the community and help with this project.
So far everything I tried works in Leap 15.3 on Pi 4b. VLC, Firefox and podman with pi-hole and speedtest. Games work, libreoffice works - wifi works, ethernet works. and I can remote desktop into it.
Some of those do not work in Tumbleweed when I was running it on my 4b.