Hello friends. I have used openSUSE 12.3 GNOME recently and I found it to be a very well rounded distro. I admittedly found a few weird things about it that were a little strange (automatic login by default - lol?, no wireless on first boot, had to reboot, seriously?) but overall things were pretty solid. I have two partitions on my laptop reserved for OS’s, one for the main distro I use, and another for testing and tinkering. My Fedora 19 honeymoon came to a quick end after my wireless was continually breaking under kernel updates. I decided to take a fresh look at openSUSE, but this time I was eyeing up Tumbleweed instead of 12.3. I got to wondering though if proprietary drivers are something that play nice with the rolling release setup, though. I have a Broadcom chip in this laptop which requires the STA driver. Is it typical for your wireless to break with updates? Or does Tumbleweed/Packman do a good job of keeping things rolling for the most part?
It’s easy to change that during install (just uncheck the box on the page where you set up the user).
That was due to the changeover from SySVinit to systemd. It was a glitch. I am not seeing it in pre-release testing of 13.1.
Right now, I have a Tumbleweed system where the nvidia drivers are not available for the latest kernel.
It is always a potential problem with proprietary drivers. If you are having that problem with Fedora, then I suggest you avoid Tumbleweed and stick to the stable 12.3. With a slower rate of kernel updates, there’s a better chance that the folk who maintain proprietary drivers have time to keep up.
That’s my personal advice.
The Tumbleweed system where I am having nvidia problems is only a test system. I am not running Tumbleweed on my main desktop, where I prefer stability.
Typically packman should keep the packman-tumbleweed repo in sync with the kernel progression. But ATM packman has sever trouble and isn’t updating at all in any version.
I’d stick with 12.3 too - unless you are considerably experienced.
Broadcom does now have much better support by the b43 driver than in the past, which fortunately I can use myself now.
I don’t believe that driver supports the 43228, which is what I am cursed with. Thanks for the info! Also would 12.3 get kernel updates along the way? As an example, is there any hope of seeing kernel 3.10 ever land in 12.3? Or does that have 13.1 written all over it?
On 2013-07-13 14:46, JaSauders wrote:
>
> caf4926;2571488 Wrote:
>>
>>
>> Broadcom does now have much better support by the b43 driver than in
>> the past, which fortunately I can use myself now.
>
> I don’t believe that driver supports the 43228, which is what I am
> cursed with. Thanks for the info! Also would 12.3 get kernel updates
> along the way? As an example, is there any hope of seeing kernel 3.10
> ever land in 12.3? Or does that have 13.1 written all over it?
The policy for released versions is not to update versions, only
backport patches for security bugs, and some important bugs. This
applies to all packages, not only the kernel.
However, there are lots of extra repositories where you can get upgrades
for many things. Most popular are probably those for KDE or Gnome
desktops. There are some for the kernel, but IMHO, not very much used
(must people leave the kernel alone, do not seek a kernel upgrade unless
they have some problem to solve).
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
If it were me, I’d probably pull it and replace, but that’s me…
If you want progressive kernel updates, then tumbleweed would be the route.
You would just need to watch that both the kernel and the ‘wl’ driver are going to update together or allow multi version booting so as to fall back if ‘wl’ isn’t ready for the newest kernel
I wish in could, but because Lenovo is so awesome they whitelist their wireless cards. If I want wireless, its a USB dongle or this Broadcom. Since I don’t care for the dongle idea in the slightest, I’ll tolerate the poor decision Lenovo made and stick to the internal card. Let that be a lesson to anybody buying a Lenovo… Get one with the exact wireless card you want from day 1 or don’t buy it at all. Come to think of it, imagine upgrading from N to AC? Lost cause I guess, unless Lenovo has an undoubtedly overpriced chip that works. Regardless of my distro of choice, whatever it may be, next laptop purchase will undoubtedly be System76.
So unlike Ubuntu, which gets kernel updates, openSUSE won’t see anything new from what it ships with, correct? Reason I bring up the concern with kernel updates is the fact that I ran into a major bug with 3.8. My laptop would go into a hard lockup entirely randomly with no warning. My only choice was to force it off by holding the power button and turn it back on. Happened when it was idle, encoding a movie, loading a browser, checking weather, happens with no warning and no error. A bug report suggests its a 3.8 issue with Sandy Bridge Intel gpu’s. It seems fixed in 3.10, so far at least. I’m running Ubuntu GNOME 13.10 alpha with no issues yet and it has 3.10 by default.
My point is, I’m all about stability, and I get the risks associated with super new software. But what do you do when the absolute newest kernel fixes a major show stopping bug? What’s “stable” about 3.8 vs 3.10 if 3.8 is a train wreck? (I know openSUSE comes with 3.7, I’m just using this as a vague example to highlight my point of view). I hope that issue doesn’t exist in 3.7. I seem to remember having a lockup when I ran 12.3 last, but that may be due to my lack of updating the system before upgrading to gnome 3.8 (I believe, anyway… can’t remember). DimStar highlighted in his blog the importance of only upgrading when fully updated, specifically due to an Intel bug, so that alone may have been it even though I’m not sure what the nature of that bug was. Guess we’ll find out.
On 07/13/2013 05:36 PM, JaSauders wrote:
> So unlike Ubuntu, which gets kernel updates, openSUSE won’t see
> anything new from what it ships with, correct?
i have no idea where you are getting your information from, but it
seems to be an unreliable source…i say because my openSUSE 11.4
has had a new kernel update (flowing automatically through the update
repo–to fix security and stability problems) on these dates (notice
one is today…as usual, it works just fine
I believe the policy is similar for both distros, though I have not used Ubuntu. They ship security updates or fixes to the kernel for each release, but not upgrades to a new kernel release.
My point is, I’m all about stability, and I get the risks associated with super new software. But what do you do when the absolute newest kernel fixes a major show stopping bug?
On 07/13/2013 06:36 PM, caf4926 wrote:
> openSUSE does ship kernel updates, but in 12.3 it will not move away
> from 3.7
i think that depends…on (for example) if 12.3 is selected to be
the next Evergreen (that has not been decided but looks like either
13.1 or 12.3 will be)…and, my 11.4 went through:
and, as you noted i could easily decide to install 3.0 to 3.10 or
whatever…there is certainly no limitation when compared to Ubuntu
or any other flavor…
On 2013-07-13 18:51, dd wrote:
> On 07/13/2013 06:36 PM, caf4926 wrote:
>> openSUSE does ship kernel updates, but in 12.3 it will not move away
>> from 3.7
>
> i think that depends…on (for example) if 12.3 is selected to be the
> next Evergreen (that has not been decided but looks like either 13.1 or
> 12.3 will be)…and, my 11.4 went through:
But that is an exception and was forced by circumstances; also it
happened in the “afterlife” of 11.4, so it does not apply
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
On 2013-07-13 20:06, JaSauders wrote:
>
> nightwishfan;2571638 Wrote:
>>
>> :sarcastic: Stable does not mean ‘does not have bugs’, it means
>> unchanging. All software has bugs.
> I understand. That bug in particular just seemed like one of the more
> monumental bugs that I’ve seen in recent times.
If there is a monumental bug, and there is a fix, and a patch can be
made, then the kernel (or whatever) is patched to solve that problem.
They are doing that all the time, just have a look at the descriptions
of the update repo.
IIRC, devs are reluctant to change the kernel version, because it might
have unknown effects on other pieces of software. Other packages with
fewer dependencies have a greater chance of being updated.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)