Unsure what path to take for the future

English Open Chat
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I’ve been a long time user of openSUSE, started back in the 90:ies with Slackware and continued from there.
I’m a big Linux enthusiast and I run several different distros both at work and at home.
My main distro during the last years has been mainly Leap, for both my home server and some laptops. I have run TumbleWeed on my work lap top as well as my personal laptop from time to time, but I keep going back to Leap for stability reasons.

What I mainly like in openSUSE/Leap compared to other distros is:

  • Stability (Very stable, even TW is very stable)
  • Structure (Like log files, configuration etc)
  • Yast/ Zypper
  • Red Hat “Clone” (perferred over debian based, even though I run debian and ubuntu on other devices)

I’m about to change hardware on my server where I tend to run services in Docker (Like Vaultwarden, Nextcloud, Plex etc) so migration will be somewhat easy even if I switch to another distro. Going for LEAP 15.6 feels wrong given the discontinue of that distro.

What should I run on that server? TW is not suitable IMO, I have tried and over a couple of years had it on my server. Had a few (not many, but still) issues doing upgrades. I want stability, I don’t want to spend time doing rollback and debugging incompatibility issues after an update. It’s not that I’m lazy or don’t have the knowledge, it’s more that I don’t have time to do it, therefor stability is the number one prio. Even with stability in mind I do want to upgrade, I want a fairly recent kernel and updated core-libs (python, java, you name it).

What are my alternatives?

  • MicroOS (Does not seem like a fit for my use case, or am I wrong?)
  • Slowroll (Yes, but still very experimental right?)
  • TW (Maybe I can be convinced but had some few negative experiences with it)
  • Leap 15.6 until support is ended and then decide after that

Rolling updates is appealing if it is stable, so possibly slowroll will be the best option…

On my personal laptop I’m also running Leap. I ran TW (for years) but ran into issues when upgrading when my thunderbolt docking station stopped working and I had to rollback. Plus some other faults.

What are my options here? Same as above leap until end of life and then wait for something else?

Could possibly try TW again but like I said previously I really value time, so I don’t want to spend time installing a new OS or rollback snapshots for failed TW upgrades.

Overall I’m huge openSUSE fan, and I don’t think TW is bad, it’s not just for me and I get a bit worried what I’m going to install going forward.

Best Regards Z

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I might not be the most qualified person to answer that, but maybe my opinion helps to sort your thoughts.

Leap 15.6 is still in Beta and according to this (Lifetime - openSUSE Wiki) expected to be supported until end of 2025.

So for the next 1,75 years you should be good with Leap. If that’s what you like and what you want to use, why not?

That’s plenty of time for Slowroll to get ready or maybe there will be another Leap, who knows…

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One option is to stay with Leap.

There will be a Leap 16. I’m not sure what will be there, but it won’t be an immutable system. My tentative plans are to give it a try.

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Your skills are far above mine so I will not even try to give you any recommendations, but I often read about that Leap 15.6 is the last, I do not understand that…maybe some could explain.

Leap 16
Leap course

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I don’t know why you think MicroOS isn’t a fit for what you’re looking to do (run services as containers) - that’s more or less exactly what it was designed to do.

You’ve indicated you had stability issues with TW, but not what those issues were - hard to address if those issues are likely to continue to be a problem for you.

I migrated to using TW on my desktop about a year and a half ago, and it’s my daily driver. No stability issues here to speak of, and with btrfs snapshot rollback, if an update does go wrong, recovery is extremely easy - boot from RO snapshot, and then follow the instructions to make that snapshot the current bootable snapshot, and reboot (I see that you’re aware of that - but really, it is almost trivially easy in the event of an issue during an update, and it’s a great safety net).

When using TW, it’s also useful to keep an eye on the mailing lists as well as for issues reported here - so from a time investment perspective, that may not be your “best” option, but that is generally regarded as the way to keep on top of what potential issues you might run into with an update.

But as others have said as well, Leap isn’t going away. It’s changing, to be sure, but Leap 16 is on the roadmap, so check that out as well. That might also give you what you’re looking for.

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I’m new to running a home server and using containers but gave MicroOS a shot and it turned out great. I’ve no reason to move away from it. It’s well worth a try. There’s a Leap version too but if I remember right that doesn’t have docker-compose.

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Rolling release distros are not for servers. The openSuse team have comitted to a future Leap 16, possible with a 15.7 to bridge any gap.

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I have a couple of servers running leap 15.5 and microOS with transactional-update.timer enabled.
Means the servers are updating and rebooting automatically and start the containers and services automatically. Works amazingly great so far.

But I have to admit that I have recently installed a rockylinux instance.
Just to have an alternative path, if Leap 16 is not working for my usecase.

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Somewhat later reply, but I decided to stay with Leap. Install Leap 15.5 on my brand new server and plan on updating to 15.6 shortly.
Thanks for your replies and thoughts, made me think again and take the decision to stay with Leap. I do put more effort in running most services in docker, so a migration will hopefully not be that difficult.

/Z

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@zeldaside:

Nobody bothered to welcome you to the openSUSE Forums community – now done –

  • Welcome!

May I point out, the the 2024 openSUSE Conference will be taking place on the 26th through to the 29th of June in Nuremberg in Germany – <openSUSE Conference 2024>

It’s quite a good place to learn about what’s happening with openSUSE and, to meet the SUSE employees who are assigned to helping out with the maintenance of openSUSE and, of course the openSUSE Geekos.

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Further news regarding the 2024 openSUSE Conference – <openSUSE Conference Schedule Set>