New to these forums. Been using SuSE/openSUSE since 5.3 – thanks for all the fish,not that I’m saying “so long”. I’m currently upgrading a collection of stale PCs from 10.2, 11.1, 12.2, etc. and trying to choose the best distro for my needs.
I’ve always wanted some kind of rolling release, depending on what that means. I don’t like live/net installs – I want a DVD/USB that can do a full install without any external resources. But given the release schedules, the static ISO images get out of date quickly. What’s the point of downloading 4.4 GB if the first update (maybe even during install if that option is chosen) is going to download almost as much as the net install would?
What I’m looking for is a periodic (weekly? monthly?) version of the stable release with all of zypper up added. I thought that was Tumbleweed (“the latest stable versions of all software”) but now am not so sure.
I’ve tried installing Tumbleweed i586 five times on various PCs without success. Major problems include:
Infinite hang during install automatically downloading release notes (networking configured but machine not connected to net).
Post-install failure to boot into graphics mode due to sddm-greeter requiring SSE/SSE2. (Known issue: ubuntu, mageia, sddm, kde)
Menus with black text on black background at KDE/Plasma login and desktop on machines with SSE/SSE2.
I realize most of the problems stem from the machines being old. I understand building Qt/KDE with SSE2 enabled for performance reasons. But 13.2 does install and run on the same boxes.
My questions are:
What is Tumbleweed based on / branched from? 13.2? Leap 42?
Do my stability expectations match the design intent of Tumbleweed? Are the above unexpected bugs that have crept in, or is Tumbleweed more bleeding-edge than I thought? Would I have these same problems if I installed from Tumbleweed’s base and added all current updates?
Is there a list of Tumbleweed hardware requirements? (Sorry, I’m having trouble finding it.)
Thanks in advance for any practical or philosophical answers.
Tumbleweed is the bleeding edge. 13.2 was based on Tumbleweed (on what was Tumbleweed a few weeks before the release of 13.2).
Roughly speaking, Tumbleweed is where everything gets tested first.
Do my stability expectations match the design intent of Tumbleweed? Are the above unexpected bugs that have crept in, or is Tumbleweed more bleeding-edge than I thought? Would I have these same problems if I installed from Tumbleweed’s base and added all current updates?
It is probably more bleeding edge than you thought. And yes, you would have the same problems if you installed from a Tumbleweed base (not sure there is such a thing), and then updated.
In all honesty, with 32-bit hardware, you might be better off installing 13.1 which is continuing to get evergreen support. Or keep using 13.2, but that will go out of support in maybe January or February next year.
Don’t overlook the possibility that you may have a better experience installing an older version of openSUSE (like 13.1 or 13.2) and then upgrading to a more current version sometime compared to a new install of the newer version.
When you upgrade, some things which were originally installed might be carried forward and be a superior setting or component on your older hardware than what is in a new install. Also, a well-planned upgrade leaves the option of either restoring from backup or rollback to a known working system. A faulty new install may be difficult to troubleshoot.
So, bottom line is that if you’ve found something that works for you, I’d recommend you install it and use it until you’re ready (or forced) to upgrade.
That makes perfect sense. I (think I) understand now. With this being the case, do find the statements “latest stable versions of all software” and “Tumbleweed is based on Factory, openSUSE’s main development codebase.” from the Tumbleweed portal to be the source of my confusion. I thought Factory or some successor thereof still existed and that was the bleeding edge development tree.
My misunderstanding. Thanks for clearing it up.
That’s sounds good, and with Evergreen will probably be so for a long time.
A large reason for my 32-bit installs was to see if the new stuff worked for me before trying it on my “mission-critical” 64-bit box. I couldn’t do that with Leap 42.1 (64-bit only), which led me to Tumbleweed. If it weren’t for Microsoft/Apple/Google shoving new stuff down the collective web’s throat and obsoleting my browsers I’d stay on old releases forever. 10.2 is still my all-time favorite.
I understand that time marches on, and the developers can’t maintain backwards compatibility releases forever. Still, it breaks my heart that the era is drawing to a close of me bragging to my Apple/Microsoft fanboy friends that with Linux I can make a perfectly usable machine for web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, and media playback from 15 year old hardware.
Is this a full and complete install on the hard drive, or could there be config files still in your /home directory causing these issues?
I know on my laptop I had installed Ubuntu (Unity) at one point, and then when I went to openSUSE and Gnome I was still stuck with the buttons being on the left (like Unity) and not on the right (like everybody else).
With Tumbleweed, I started it using Xfce which isn’t updated all that often so the updates didn’t build up too much. Then when I threw Gnome on it the updates are much larger and more things were getting updated. So I guess that’s something going for a not-updating-too-rapidly environment! rotfl!
When I was first installing Tumbleweed I had the issue of the /boot partition not getting the boot flag, so I would have to use a different LiveUSB and set the flag for the partition manually.
I installed it a second time with a newer image and it didn’t have that same problem and while I had it, I found Tumbleweed stable.
Maybe re-download and install? I know it sounds like “have you shut down and restarted your machine” type response, but who knows … ?
I’ve never upgraded any of my SuSE/openSUSE releases which is ironic given that the person who turned me on to SUSE way back at 5.3 cited its upgrade ability as its main advantage over RedHat (this was pre-Fedora) and other distros.
I always have a small system disk with one swap and two or three Linux partitions. All my user data is on one or more separate drives. When “upgrading” I format and install the new release wiping out the partition with the oldest. I figured this was the safest/cleanest way, but your comments on maintaining some of the older release make sense.
(Side note: Since 11.1 I’ve had problems with new releases not being able to boot the old ones still on the drive, which I think is a GRUB2 vs GRUB1 problem. This seriously impacts my “can safely fall back if necessary” policy, although I’ve always been able to to find a workaround.)
As per my other reply (and the long list of old releases I’m upgrading from) that’s always been my plan. Problem is: I am being forced.
Roughly speaking, factory is bleeding edge. After building with factory, it is tested in OpenQA. If it passes the tests, then it is released as Tumbleweed.
