Laptop is working well with KDE desktop but is only 32 bit and openSUSE 13.2 is no longer supported. Please could I have suggestions for which OS I should install to keep laptop running and which has similar look and feel.
Well, it’s the desktop experience that counts IMHO, so since you’ve mentioned KDE why not consider Linux Mint KDE 32-bit?
https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
KDE is reasonably customizable, so it should be possible to tweak the desktop to look similar to what was there previously. FWIW, I helped a senior neighbour get Linux Mint up and running with an old laptop, until he was able to replace it, and he coped admirably. 
For openSUSE, there’s Tumbleweed. In spite of being a rolling release, it is pretty stable. But I’ve only tried the 64-bit version. The 32-bit version is not tested as thoroughly, but I have heard good reports.
Your choices will be increasingly limited. I am seeing more distros that are dropping 32-bit.
Mageia still seems to support 32-bit. If your are using KDE, they are at the same plasma 5 version as Leap, but with a 32-bit option.
I think Ubuntu still has a 32-bit version. I seem to recall that the announcement for 17.04 only mentioned 64-bit, but when I looked for the download there was also a 32-bit version.
I retired my last 32-bit system last year (it went to the recycling center).
On Thu, 14 Sep 2017 21:56:01 +0000, Budgie2 wrote:
> Laptop is working well with KDE desktop but is only 32 bit and openSUSE
> 13.2 is no longer supported. Please could I have suggestions for which
> OS I should install to keep laptop running and which has similar look
> and feel.
As a classic cheapskate, I still have a couple of old Toshiba lappies in
use. Both are 32-bit Intel boxes with builtin video support. One is a
single cpu, another is a dual cpu box.All have 4 GB of ram. With that in
mind, I’ve been using Tumbleweed and keeping up with updates weekly.
I’ve had no issues at all beyond being unable to find a few apps the wife
wants to use but building those have been (reasonably) painless so I
would say that it’s well worth trying TW. You’ll want to plan on at
least a weekly update that runs a few hundred items so be warned.
On 2017-09-14, Budgie2 <Budgie2@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com> wrote:
> Laptop is working well with KDE desktop but is only 32 bit and openSUSE
> 13.2 is no longer supported. Please could I have suggestions for which
> OS I should install to keep laptop running and which has similar look
> and feel.
It depends on what you use your laptop for. If it’s just for email/internet, then any KDE GNU/Linux 32-bit should do.
Actually Leap is in the minority (alongside Red Hat and Arch) among popular distributions for not supporting 32-bit
since the others do (e.g. Mint, Kubuntu, Fedora), but for how much longer we do not know; however it might buy you
another year (perhaps even two). The optimal solution depends on how much longer you want to hold onto your laptop:
- Not any more (best solution): replace laptop.
- Short-term (interim solution): install Mint/Kubuntu/Fedora.
- Long-term (poor solution): install source-based GNU/distribution (e.g. Gentoo).
Hi and many thanks to all who replied with helpful advice. It seems the writing is on the wall for 32 bit but I was hoping to replace my ancient T42 Thinkpad with an announced but AFAIK not yet available Lenovo special retro thinkpad. Meanwhile I am going to try TW and only if that fails shall I go to Mint.
Is there an easy upgrade path for TW or do I have to do a new install?
Thanks again all.
Budge
afaik you can do a live upgrade (or use a TW iso image) just change your repo’s to point to TW and run zypper dup more info here
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade#Command_line
the above link doesn’t mention TW but the same process should suffice (as TW is always new and 13.2 is old you might end up with some leftover 13.2 packages but they can)
a thing to consider is that plasma 5 on a 32 bit laptop which probobly has a low end graphic card won’t be as smooth as kde4 you might be better off with a lighter desktop like lxqt or lxde or xfce
or you can run plasma 5 under openbox which will significantly reduce the cpu/gpu/ram requirements
@whonea I’m pretty sure intel never had a dual core 32bit cpu I might be wrong but all dual core cpu’s wore x64 now intel did introduce hyperthreading in some of it’s P4’s and they do report 2 cores but in fact wore single core’s
Well it turns out there are upgrade options but sadly I have messed up. The online upgrade failed, possibly due to comms failure and after several attempts at revival I decided to try a new installation.
All went OK until the reboot from hard drive and after a pretty coloured splash screen nothing. Just a white screen with pointer.
Ctrl Alt F2 took me to terminal login screen so I tried to log in with my user name and password. This took me to a terminal with the prompt with “myname@localhost:~>”
Seems like system is running but I have lost xserver and kdm, I suspect because I stupidly had selected the use existing profile during upgrade or installation attempt instead of creating a new user identity.
As usual I am well out of my depth here. Please could somebody get me back on track.
Budge.
There are other options, as well, such as Puppy Linux, and some others that I cannot recall off the top of my head right now.
Some distros are aimed at old hardware. Do some searching.
kdm has been depreciated in favor of sddm it’s still there for LEAP not sure about TW it might not be compiled (search,opensuse.org is down I can’t check)
did you remove all 3rd party repo’s
what you are describing sounds like a graphic card issue what card do you have if nvidia/ati did you remove the 13.x driver?
tell us your repo list
zypper lr -d
you can still use the ncurses version of yast under console mode
if you have gpm installed you can even use your mouse
if not install it
zypper in gpm
Yep, there for TW:
https://opensuse.pkgs.org/tumbleweed/opensuse-oss/kdm-4.11.22-9.1.x86_64.rpm.html
Several people are using it in 42.2, 42.3, and TW for various reasons, so expect it to hang around awhile.