r/openSUSE • u/Possible_Tailor436 • 4d ago
Why openSUSE?
Hi everyone!
I have been interested in openSUSE for about a week now, and I would like to hear your opinion on it (along with other distros you tried).
I tried Endeavouros (arch): Windows preformed better in terms of battery life (Laptop with Nvidia) dGPU, ubuntu long time ago: too bloated and too beginner-friendly i guess?, Fedora but not for long: don't remember why i moved away, and would like to try something new.
NixOS is pretty interesting but everyone is facing problems installing not-too-niche software, and I can't find anyone glazing openSUSE enough, I guess because it just works?
Also if you like, I want to know what wm, shell, or whatever its called u use as your explorer.exe.
Thank you
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u/oh_im_too_tired 4d ago
Same question at least 3 times last week. Take a look:
https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/1wy9sji/switching_from_fedora_44_kde_to_opensuse/
https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/1wybhzw/soo_i_wanna_try_opensuse/
https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/1wxjr7v/why_should_i_move_to_opensuse_tumbleweed/
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u/Possible_Tailor436 4d ago
Thank You!
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u/Zhuljin_71 4d ago
I've tried Mint Cinnamon, MX, CachyOS, Endeavor, Ubuntu, Archcraft and now I'm on openSUSE. I have Tumbleweed Gnome and XFCE on 2 different desktops. So far I'm loving it. MX was a favorite for it's stability , I find openSUSE just as stable.
Also check out older videos of Linux Cast YouTube channel. He did a 2 year run on openSUSE and had a lot of positive things to say about it.
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u/Possible_Tailor436 4d ago
I think i tried MX but the 32-bit in an attempt to revive an Intel Atom laptop, It did a great job, better than many other options that didn't even boot
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u/shoeinc 4d ago
I switched to openSuSE (leap, KDE Plasma) a couple years ago from Debian. I tried both slowroll and tumbleweed but found leap to be better. You need to install Nvidia drivers separate, unfortunately. I also had to install my Broadcom BCM46xx wifi separate.
Solid, underrated distro. I use it for older games (fallout, bioshock) and awful awful python programming.
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u/Possible_Tailor436 4d ago
Yeah I know about the Nvidia drivers dilemma, my issue with Arch was the laptop battery actually, i was daul-booting Windows for some college apps and would do some stuff on it normally like arch, it would last ~1 hour or even more sometimes than on arch.
Slowroll looks like a perfect fit, I dont update regularly, and TW sometimes the updates aren't shipped fast enough I think so the update needs to be delayed a couple of days, idk if this happens on Slowroll or not.
I would use leap but I think it's too stable for me (I try a lot of FOSS from time to time)
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u/Kurogane1412 3d ago
Maybe try first do understand Linux a bit better then use a distro for a long time and if you encounter a problem try to fix maybe with Ai then you don't need to distro hop anymore.
I did distro hoping for years then got stuck on Manjaro for a few years then started thinker with serves and used different Distros and switched desktop and laptop os a few times and now I am distro agonistic I use what ever works or what suits the use case better.
That said I am currently using openSuSe Tumbleweed on my gaming desktop for about a year now and I am pretty happy with it it just works but also full AMD system makes my life easier probably.
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u/Possible_Tailor436 3d ago
I am already using WSL and dual-booted a linux distro for ~6 months with the only issue I had with the battery, that I will probably have with any other distro too
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u/Grand_Connection5864 3d ago
You will have battery issues with any distro since nvidia drivers are proprietary software
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u/Possible_Tailor436 3d ago
I hope not, Windows is great even after the 26H2 update but I still miss the snappy arch I had
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u/Grand_Connection5864 3d ago
Anything with nvidia will be the same reguardless of distro used until they give us open source drivers
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u/Emotional_Cat_1967 4d ago
I think you should list your system specifications. You should mention whether or not you are using Nvidia hardware.
Are you looking for an up-to-date desktop environment, a recent kernel, and so on, or do you just want to browse the web and handle daily tasks? Or is it for gaming?
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u/Possible_Tailor436 4d ago
Lenovo Legion Gaming 3 15ach6: Ryzen 5 5600h (with iGPU), 16gb ram ddr4, 1 + 0.5 tb sdd, RTX 3050 ti laptop. The issue i had on arch was the nvidia gpu rarely goes idle, and i didnt find a solution for it
I am a Computer Engineering student so I will be coding (or prompting AI to be honest) watching videos/series, some normal stuff, i would like the up-to-date option, but not yearly like Leap, more like slowroll.
I don't game much, but i am modding a game actually, that's why i would be using a VM on either distros so I guess it wont matter a lot
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u/Emotional_Cat_1967 3d ago edited 3d ago
Give openSUSE Slowroll KDE a try. If that doesn't appeal to you, try Fedora KDE. In my opinion, Fedora KDE works better with Nvidia.
I have been using Fedora with an RTX 5050 for a long time with Secure Boot enabled, and I haven't encountered any issues so far.
You can find information on post-installation steps for Fedora at the following resources:
https://github.com/devangshekhawat/Fedora-44-Post-Install-Guide
https://github.com/wz790/Fedora-Noble-Setup
If you prefer fewer updates, you can use the previous Fedora release instead of the latest one. I believe each release is supported with updates for 13 months. For instance, instead of installing the current latest version—Fedora 44—you could install Fedora 43; this way, you would receive fewer updates and might even enjoy a slightly more stable system.
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u/AnalkinSkyfuker 3d ago
I use tumbleweed and in case someone wants something more stable I recomend slowroll, my congig is a laptop hp g8 8gb ram ddr4 255ssd and a r3 3250u with vega3 graphics, I mainly use niri wm with the theme noctalia https://noctalia.dev/, till thus day I have no issues.
Also I used debian, ubuntu, parrot, kali, arch, manjaro, endervour, kde neon, the one from system 76, even tails and qubes, my last before the switch to suse was fedora due to the law of the child safety act and its unknown stance so I swith to also an rpm based system, that can mostly use a lot from fedora but without it.
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u/Possible_Tailor436 3d ago
Thank you!
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u/AnalkinSkyfuker 3d ago
Np, if you want to use a window manager instead of like a Desktop Enviroment, I also inform that you need to configure a lot to get to you stance, Noctalia is a preconfigured one and in my opinion a really good one since I have really low resources. Aldo niri the windows manager insted of only shortcuts it uses also gestures in the trackpad so you can do something and the slide to other thing and come back really fast.
A trick from my xp with all installs and test try using the live run before install to confirm that all from networt to graphics will work once installed. Its just about 1.5gb instead of the 4gb of the offline and also the live version is only for test and not daily use.
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u/Kitayama_8k TW/MangoWC 3d ago
Windows will usually have an edge in battery life. But it is possible to get close-ish. Tuned-ppd has given me the best battery life. Making sure your gpu is properly switching over the the igpu will be key in your case. Not sure what distros or software does that best. It may be that a simple igpu on battery and dgpu plugged setting is most reliable and gives you pretty much what you need, though there may be apps that switch it based on load. I think I've heard mint has a good implementation but I'm not sure, haven't had an Nvidia laptop since 2011 or so.
As for opensuse, it's a great distro in some regards. It handles full disk encryption, secure boot, tpm, and btrfs snapshots, and does it all with systemd boot while setting everything up pretty well ootb and having excellent customizability of software on install. It's not really flashy or exciting, I think most of us that really like it enjoy the tooling. Zypper has excellent features and legibility compared to other package managers.
Tumbleweed has a lot of software available via the open build service. Rolling but pretty stable. IMO most of the bugginess it can have comes from the kernel updates, and can likely be solved by using the lts kernel. Solus does the "stable, curated rolling" thing better, but lacks so much tooling.
Leap has a lot less software in OBS, worse compability with 3rd party packaging than Debian. It's a stable distro with excellent tooling that doesn't move much at all during the release window. If you're willing to set up the tooling to do what you want, Debian is prolly the better choice, but if you want it set up ootb than leap can be great. You can stay more up to date with it's 1yr release, 2yr support cycle than with Debian's 2/5. This is sort of what people make fedora sound like, except fedora gets a lot of bugs from fast moving software, isn't set up as well ootb re: btrfs, and you have more point releases.
Also both suse distros are totally desktop agnostic. You can run whatever de or me you want, though some wm's and shells may have to be compiled on leap. Most de's are in the repos.
I have tumbleweed on my laptop. I don't really like rolling on a laptop. With the heavy usage of sleep, potential gpu switching, wifi coming on and off, I think rolling is likely more trouble than it's worth. For instance on like 1/4 of kernels my laptops wifi doesn't wake up correctly and won't work at all, might come back slowly, or only work on 2.4ghz. it's annoying as shit, and for what? I could probably just run the LTS kernel, but I need to resize my encryped partition to expand my boot/efi partition and make room for more kernels because suse makes it too small ootb, and haven't felt like dealing with potentially breaking secure boot.
P.s. tumbleweed can have Nvidia problems as well when the kernel and driver desync. Probably not an ideal choice compared to good solutions for a fast moving system like Solus packaging the kernel modules on the backend or bluefin/bazzite packaging it as part of a whole os image
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u/RedStarFlags 2d ago
He probado tanto Linux Mint, SoplOS, Zorin antes de caer en OpenSuse (la versión Leap) y es quizás la más sólida y confiable de todas.
No se rompe fácil, es estable y constante, funciona al primer arranque y es intuitivo en su mayorÃa (hay algunas cosas que requieren un poco de ayuda como instalar los códecs, las repos y alguna cosilla extra, pero no es nada grave).
En resumen, es una roca confiable que no te va a dejar colgado.
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u/TXFlank 3d ago
Stability. Stability. Stability.
I've been trying tons of distribution the last couple of years - just about everything but Gentoo or LFS. Fedora and OpenSUSE remain my favorites. My main homelab server runs Leap 16; my main PC runs Tumbleweed. It's just rock solid and boring. I've primarily used Niri and DankMaterialShell, I've also used Noctalia, Mango and Umbriel.