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Downsides of openSUSE Tumbleweed ?
omicron-b Nov 20, 2019
Hi! Just something that crossed my mind while I was looking through some news and saw openSUSE.
I use Arch for fresh packages, but I do not need really bleeding edge packages.
Let`s say I have to reinstall, can I replace my Arch with openSUSE? What would be the downsides?
Let`s assume openSUSE has all the packages I need in repos.
I use Nvidia GTX 1060.

Last edited by omicron-b on 20 November 2019 at 3:18 pm UTC
nox Nov 20, 2019
While my information might be pretty out of date, last time I dealt with it graphics drivers was a pretty big issue, especially for nvidia.
I also had generally strange small bugs everywhere, like sounds cutting out where it wouldn't in other distros.

Personally though, I couldn't switch without knowing I could use the pkgbuilds from TkG!
chui2ch Nov 20, 2019
Quoting: noxWhile my information might be pretty out of date, last time I dealt with it graphics drivers was a pretty big issue, especially for nvidia.
I also had generally strange small bugs everywhere, like sounds cutting out where it wouldn't in other distros.

Personally though, I couldn't switch without knowing I could use the pkgbuilds from TkG!
The NVIDIA driver problem should be fixed since they have a Tumbleweed repo now. https://news.opensuse.org/2017/09/20/new-repository-caters-to-tumbleweeds-nvidia-users/.

Last edited by chui2ch on 20 November 2019 at 8:31 pm UTC
nox Nov 20, 2019
Quoting: chui2ch
Quoting: noxWhile my information might be pretty out of date, last time I dealt with it graphics drivers was a pretty big issue, especially for nvidia.
I also had generally strange small bugs everywhere, like sounds cutting out where it wouldn't in other distros.

Personally though, I couldn't switch without knowing I could use the pkgbuilds from TkG!
The NVIDIA driver problem should be fixed since they have a Tumbleweed repo now. https://news.opensuse.org/2017/09/20/new-repository-caters-to-tumbleweeds-nvidia-users/.

Sweet! I no longer use Nvidia, so it wouldn't be a huge problem for me but that's great "news".
ageres Nov 21, 2019
I've been using openSUSE Tumbleweed on my laptop for 3 or 4 months. There were (and are) some annoying problems.
1. I have to input my password to encrypt its disk drive twice.
2. Its wifi MAC address is dynamic by default, and I have a router with the IP whitelist at my work. So, some time for googling and tweaking stuff in the terminal had to be spent.
3. No hardware acceleration for video files by default, yet another session of googling and installing needed packages.
4. No hotkeys (at least in XFCE), like Ctrl+Alt+T for the terminal or WinKey to menu.
5. More RAM consumption in comparison to Xubuntu and other XFCE Linux distros. Not dramatic increase though (1.1 of 8 GB) but still more than it could have been.
6. Too frequent and big updates - 600+ MB every day. Much more if you skip few days.
7. Sometimes wifi doesn't work after booting these days, I have to reboot to get it working. At first I had this problem for the laptop's keyboard and touchpad panel, now I don't.
8. The keyboard and touchpad panel may stop working after I go back from the sleeping mode.

Some of these issues may be caused by hardware or be Linux problems in general, but nevertheless I'm disappointed in openSUSE Tumbleweed and going to replace it with Manjaro when I'll get a new SSD.
omicron-b Nov 21, 2019
Thanks everyone for input.
I just finished installing openSUSE Tumbleweed in a qemu VM, it does not boot to GDM, only boots with "nomodeset" kernel parameter into command line.
When booted with "nomodeset" NetworkManager fails to start, and can not be started via systemctl.
Also, during installation it failed to install curl due to error 404, I guess the package got updated in default mirror while installer was running.
I understand it might work fine on bare metal, but these issues are discouraging. Every other distro worked in qemu for me.
Laboratoryo_ni_Neil Nov 21, 2019
Why not Manjaro?
omicron-b Nov 21, 2019
Quoting: Laboratoryo_ni_NeilWhy not Manjaro?
It's basically Arch, but you can't look for support at Arch forums and post bugs to Arch bugtracker, it is just confusing for me. In this case, I would rather use Arch. Just thought that SUSE is also great for gaming and I would not have to backup root folder, just reinstall if it breaks. Turns out, this is not the case.
denyasis Nov 22, 2019
Hello;

I'm not an expert here, but I've used tumbleweed for the past year on my desktop and laptop (KDE and XFCE)

I have a 1070ti. I enabled a repo and it just works. It's generally pretty smooth and I haven't had to tinker much with it, unlike my previous distro (Sparky linux). The setup and YAST was very helpful setting up NFS drives and has options for quite about everything.

This was my first non apt based distro, so getting used to the package manager and how it's organized is a learning process, but it's pretty intuitive and the docs/references are helpful enough to figure most things out.

It does update frequently, but I wouldn't stay much more than Debian testing. I honestly can say I've not experienced any major breakage during the past year.

Hope that helps. I don't do anything exotic, just game one evening a week. It's pretty good for me.
ageres Nov 22, 2019
Quoting: The_Aquabatsetting a encrypted disk with the default setup is not easy, but it's not that easy in ubuntu too. Did you setup the crypttab file correctly?? Are you using LVM??
I did that during installation, the same way as I did for Ubuntu and Mint: created /boot, encrypted the rest with LUKS, used it as /.
omicron-b Nov 27, 2019
I found some spare time and a spare HDD partition and installed openSUSE Tumbleweed on my PC.
Overall everything is fine, the kernel and Nvidia driver are fresh, everything works, FPS is good (tested Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (linux_vulkan_beta)).

I had an issue with Feral`s gamemode, it is split in like 3 packages which are not each other`s dependencies (and one of them is not in YaST, it is on openSUSE website) and it looks like I borked it, so I had to run it "the old way", by calling "LD_PRELOAD".

Also I must admit, after using Arch lots of GUI tools (called YaST) are overwhelming. They work fine, their purpose is clear, it is just something I forgot exists :)

Thanks again for everyone`s opinion, this is my first forum post, glad to see such great community here!
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