Hi.
I’m thinking to start using opensuse tumbleweed, because it suits me to always have the latest versions of various programs. Before I go on an adventure installing opensuse tumbleweed, I would ask that we experienced users provide some basic instructions for tumbleweed. I am particularly interested in whether the installation is the same as for the regular version of opensuse, whether tumbleweed held differently than regular versions, and how tumbleweed upgrades (whether through the same update module in YaST or upgrades must work through the terminal)?
Yes lime waiting for unpleasant surprises with tumbleweed?
Thank you for your patience and advice.
Basically yes. You download an installation CD/DVD and boot from it.
Or add the Tumbleweed repos and do an online upgrade.
See also: openSUSE:Tumbleweed installation - openSUSE Wiki
whether tumbleweed held differently than regular versions,
What exactly do you mean with that?
There is a separate folder on the servers for downloading Tumbleweed, like there is for every “regular” release.
And there are separate repos, again like for every release.
and how tumbleweed upgrades (whether through the same update module in YaST or upgrades must work through the terminal)?
The YaST->Online Update will not work, as there are no updates. The packages just get replaced with newer versions in the standard repo. That’s what “rolling” means…
There is a separate update repo for Tumbleweed too, but that’s empty most of the time.
It’s only intended for emergency cases when there is a critical security issue and Tumbleweed cannot be published momentarily because of other issues.
To keep your system up-to-date, use YaST->Software Management or “zypper up”/“zypper dup”. Or setup a cron job in YaST->Online Update Configuration, that should automatically install all updates unless you select “Security updates only”.
Yes lime waiting for unpleasant surprises with tumbleweed?
I’m not using Tumbleweed myself, but it should be rather stable.
Although unpleasant surprises might always be possible I suppose. At least some people would probably call it like that, when their KDE4 desktop got replaced by Plasma5 in the last days… 
Best you start reading over at the openSUSE Wiki, specifically here: Tumbleweed Portal
Others (particularly wolfi) have given the details you asked for.
Tumbleweed has been mostly stable.
Here are some problems that I have had:
- At one stage, I could not boot after a kernel update. Or, more precisely, I use an encrypted LVM, and the system was not talking to the keyboard so I could not provide the encryption key needed to complete the boot. However, booting to the previous kernel (vi grub advanced menu) did work so I was not completely shut out.
- After recently installing Tumbleweed with Plasma 5 and Gnome, I could not get into Gnome. I had to switch from using “sddm” to using “lightdm” before I could access Gnome.
- There was a brief period where I could not start Gnome at all, but KDE, Icewm and XFCE still all worked. This one was due to a problem with the Intel driver. This happened last summer when it was still called “factory” rather than “tumbleweed”.
Two points from this. Firstly, most of the problems did not prevent the system from being usable, though perhaps with a different desktop. And, secondly, it does help to have enough familiarity with linux to know your way around.
For somebody coming from a Windows environment, with no linux experience, it is probably wiser to stick to the stable release and avoid Tumbleweed. Somebody with limited network bandwidth should probably also avoid Tumbleweed, because updates can be frequent and large.
People requiring special drivers (such as Nvidia graphics drivers) might also want to avoid Tumbleweed. Keeping drivers up-to-date can be a hassle.
Thank you all for your quick and helpful responses.
Long I am already in Linux, usually ubuntu, mint, and past year use and opensuse.
I’m looking for a Linux distribution that would give me to offer new versions of various programs (libreoffice, gimp, kolourpaint4, KDE Partition Manager, firefox, google chrome , Linux kernel, …) while the distribution is stable and reliable.
