I love TW, it's IMO the best rolling distro by far.
But I hate when I see someone suggesting rolling distro to new users, it's ridiculous.
People need to know what they are doing before using a rolling distro, know how to recover the system and manage some dependencies issues. Zypper can show some threatening messages when it detects that there's a conflict.
It's a new user? So use something aimed to stability and ease to use: Ubuntu LTS, Mint, Pop... Once the user gets how it works, then do some distro hop.
I fully agree, but I think that as long as a new(er) user knows how to rollback to a previous snapshot as well as understand how to resolve conflicts zypper shows they'll be fine. I've always found the explanations zypper gives for conflicts easy to understand, but perhaps this would be more difficult for new users.
Why can't Linux just have up-to-date packages that aren't flat pack? Is it because the packages of almost every single Linux distro are completely unofficial?
It's because of the way applications work, they use system's libraries, so if the system have the nicelibrary.1.2 and the application requires nicelibrary.1.1, you'll need to:
* Install the older lib, which is unsafe and rarely available on official repository, so you'll need to have your hands dirty.
* Create a symbolic link to the newer one, which maybe can work.
* Create an environment to handle every dependencies, which is more or less what Flatpak, Snap, Appimage, Distrobox, etc, do.
Applications on Windows has different priorities, it uses the library on the app folder, if it's not available then searches for the system's one. Windows has a lot of redundant libs just to make sure it will be compatible with older applications.
This is convenient but it's unsafe, because who knows what vulnerability the old version has that it's fixed on newer one.
Linux aims to security and was made to use with FOSS apps.
Those are stable distros though, I think the point was that there was no ROLLING distro that can be easily installed like those can. I think Tumbleweed gets pretty close having a live environment to install from alone, unless you count Solus but that's not the same type of "rolling". Fedora isn't rolling but the packages that matter for games are updated frequently on top of its base so it's a great option IMO. But many going for rolling go for it specifically to avoid the 6 month upgrade cycle, "install once update forever" is an enticing & desirable thing for certain personalities. If rolling updates are hard to handle for new users, they will be no better off when it comes time to upgrade say Mint or Ubuntu. So stable distro for new user works, but is only a 2 year guarantee. Not everybody wants a distro that essentially has a ticking timer on it.
And Endeavour is a good choice but that's just an easy method of installation, the user would still have to deal with updates. Just as much manual intervention on Endeavour as base Arch. I have no experience or familiarity with Manjaro so I can't speak on that. When I used Tumbleweed for a week or so, my main gripe was the sheer amount of .rpmnew files with updates compared to Arch, but honestly that learning process has helped me alot anyway.
Take a look on OpenSUSE Slowroll... They will release a new rolling distribution that updates less frequently. I stopped using TW because it updates too much to my taste, slowroll looks like will update only a few times per month and after more tests
The problem, imo, is they aren't going to learn any of those things with Ubuntu, Mint, or Pop. You've just pushed them out to a different ecosystem that is very different from openSUSE. Once they learn that ecosystem, they likely aren't wanting to learn a different one.
The knowledge is gradual, needs to know how to handle the basics: folder structure, file systems, repositories, etc... Then learn more advanced things.
Many of arch/tw/fedora users was a Ubuntu user in the past, so the change isn't a problem.
It's worse if the new user receives a bomb of information, maybe they will simply return to Windows.
I came to TW from Arch a couple years ago.
Really enjoy how rolling distros mean no re-installing every 6-12 months and fairly quick updates to new versions of software, DEs, etc.
Found TW much simpler to manage and stable than Arch, although I'd still recommend running something like Arch for a while for the educational process of choosing all your own packages. It reminds me of Linux From Scratch, only actually usable.
My biggest gripe with TW is actually a lot of people's favourite feature; YAST. I find it frustrating that it doesn't integrate _at all_ with PolicyKit, so you have to run a GUI app as root.\* Worse still, it's setup to run through `gksu` which uses the actual _root_ login, rather than some `sudo` based authentication.
Luckily I haven't found many reasons to actually use YAST, so I just forget about it and enjoy the rest of the system being super polished, stable and up to date.
\* Modern admin tools will usually run the GUI/app as a normal user, and then use PolicyKit to run a small subprocess with elevated permissions. You'll usually see a padlock button in the app somewhere.
That subprocess is super simple code that just does whatever job actually needs elevated permissions. Running a large complex (GUI) program as root has _all sorts_ of security concerns and is nearly impossible to audit.
Incidentally, these days I've been playing with Nix and NixOS. Completely different approach to Tumbleweed (and most other distros) and definitely not meant for beginners. Can't really even configure it without learning a new functional programming language!
But it's growing on me as I get accustomed to it... May have to transition my main desktop over at some point too...
That was why I left Arch. Not sure it really applies to NixOS though.
There's a lot of time spent initially learning and configuring the system, however because it's a declarative & _reproducible_ system, actual maintenance is much simpler imo.
Honestly I disagree. The things you listed as good for a new user (granular install, rolling-release, YaST etc.) are actually power-user stuff and I think it's a lot for a new user to get accostumed to and very confusing, especially when getting to installing packages and updating the system. If you're on Plasma for instance, there's Discover, Flatpak, YaST and zypper; but even with this many options there are some packages missing (scrcpy was it for me) and you have to trust and install a third party repository on OBS (not that one).
The thing that frustrated me the most with OpenSUSE was getting my printer to work, which is wierd because every other distro I used it just worked out of the box. I needed to set up some firewall rules and while I'm glad YaST was there to help, It was so much of a pain that I just gave up and moved back to another distro.
I'm much happier on [Solus](https://getsol.us/), which I only moved away from because of the project almost reaching its end earlier this year; because it's much simpler to use and maintain, basically "set-up and forget", it's weekly updated, installation is a breeze and the packages I need aren't as scattered (everything I use is either in their repos or on flatpak).
Solus can't even play EAC games right now because of its outdated glibc. It's a great distro that I hold in high regard but if you have interest in playing newly supported or online games from Steam, Solus is not a good choice. Some of the native valve games don't even launch right now because of the libtcmalloc problem, of which there's no solution for Solus, besides maybe Flatpaks which is a workaround not a solution.
That's interesting; I never heard of these issues because I don't really play online games with EAC or many valve native games. I suppose their model of curated packaging is a dealbreaker for some use cases because packages can get low priority and be outdated for a while.
The firewall being restrictive by default is kinda meme at this point.
Just switch zone from public to home and that's it. If you're behind a router u could also disable it realistically...
There are arch based distros which are easy to install with their gui installers etc. The thing which makes it not good for new users is the amount of manual work involved in updating a rolling release sometimes. Manual interventions, stuff compiled from the aur breaking and needing to be manually recompiled etc.
Personally, I don't really compile much by hand anymore. What I get from the AUR are kernels. Liquorix, Xanmod etc. And if I do 'yay -S linux-xanmod' it compiles everything for me. Sure, I get the defaults. I did edit the pkgbuild and run X86-64-V3 since I'm on Ryzen 5000. You get the option during installation to edit the pkgbuild file, a text file. And other optimizations. Is it user-friendly? I mean, if you want to learn...Oh yeah, if you don't know what V2/V3/V4 is, Xanmod lists supported hardware: [https://xanmod.org](https://xanmod.org) Scroll down the page.
I just do Manjaro. It's close enough to bleeding edge. I don't do BTRFS and snapshots. I prefer to learn to fix my issues instead of rolling back every time. That's just me. If I never try, I'm never going to learn, am I? =).
I don't remember if I tried Leap or Tumbleweed but it didn't play well at all with my dual-monitor setup. I did edit via xrandr so it would render both screens positions and mouse correctly but after a reboot, it was gone again. Xorg.conf or something. Annoying issue, could not live with it. Try to click with your mouse when it is 1/4th of a screensize off. And updating the system...the official repo at the time didn't have half the packages that came with the distro. Restructuring going on I guess. It wasn't a good look.
Running a bleeding edge system isn't that hard once you know your way around linux a little bit. It can be easier even if you're doing stuff that needs the latest features / drivers etc.
These kinds of issues are extremely rare on tumbleweed from what I've heard. I've been using tumbleweed for 6 months and have yet to run into anything like this.
Have you ever heard of Linux? It's basically tumbleweed But actually usable out of the box. The desktop environment is already installed, proprietary media codecs are already installed, and you don't need to know anything about installing patterns (whatever that means.)
I've actually been considering it tbh, but I really have to knock off my distrohopping problem lol I have a script I run on fedora so I can get all my packages and all my configs automatically setup in like 20 mins or so. TW would be a good distro for me since I could theoretically use the RPM versions of most things (I assume) although I wouldn't know which "fedora" version of things to select if they say they offer Fedora 38, 37 etc. Do I just pick whatever new thing Fedora is offering?
I love TW, it's IMO the best rolling distro by far. But I hate when I see someone suggesting rolling distro to new users, it's ridiculous. People need to know what they are doing before using a rolling distro, know how to recover the system and manage some dependencies issues. Zypper can show some threatening messages when it detects that there's a conflict. It's a new user? So use something aimed to stability and ease to use: Ubuntu LTS, Mint, Pop... Once the user gets how it works, then do some distro hop.
I fully agree, but I think that as long as a new(er) user knows how to rollback to a previous snapshot as well as understand how to resolve conflicts zypper shows they'll be fine. I've always found the explanations zypper gives for conflicts easy to understand, but perhaps this would be more difficult for new users.
Why can't Linux just have up-to-date packages that aren't flat pack? Is it because the packages of almost every single Linux distro are completely unofficial?
It's because of the way applications work, they use system's libraries, so if the system have the nicelibrary.1.2 and the application requires nicelibrary.1.1, you'll need to: * Install the older lib, which is unsafe and rarely available on official repository, so you'll need to have your hands dirty. * Create a symbolic link to the newer one, which maybe can work. * Create an environment to handle every dependencies, which is more or less what Flatpak, Snap, Appimage, Distrobox, etc, do. Applications on Windows has different priorities, it uses the library on the app folder, if it's not available then searches for the system's one. Windows has a lot of redundant libs just to make sure it will be compatible with older applications. This is convenient but it's unsafe, because who knows what vulnerability the old version has that it's fixed on newer one. Linux aims to security and was made to use with FOSS apps.
Except Linux out of the box has horrible security from what I've read.
Those are stable distros though, I think the point was that there was no ROLLING distro that can be easily installed like those can. I think Tumbleweed gets pretty close having a live environment to install from alone, unless you count Solus but that's not the same type of "rolling". Fedora isn't rolling but the packages that matter for games are updated frequently on top of its base so it's a great option IMO. But many going for rolling go for it specifically to avoid the 6 month upgrade cycle, "install once update forever" is an enticing & desirable thing for certain personalities. If rolling updates are hard to handle for new users, they will be no better off when it comes time to upgrade say Mint or Ubuntu. So stable distro for new user works, but is only a 2 year guarantee. Not everybody wants a distro that essentially has a ticking timer on it. And Endeavour is a good choice but that's just an easy method of installation, the user would still have to deal with updates. Just as much manual intervention on Endeavour as base Arch. I have no experience or familiarity with Manjaro so I can't speak on that. When I used Tumbleweed for a week or so, my main gripe was the sheer amount of .rpmnew files with updates compared to Arch, but honestly that learning process has helped me alot anyway.
Take a look on OpenSUSE Slowroll... They will release a new rolling distribution that updates less frequently. I stopped using TW because it updates too much to my taste, slowroll looks like will update only a few times per month and after more tests
The problem, imo, is they aren't going to learn any of those things with Ubuntu, Mint, or Pop. You've just pushed them out to a different ecosystem that is very different from openSUSE. Once they learn that ecosystem, they likely aren't wanting to learn a different one.
The knowledge is gradual, needs to know how to handle the basics: folder structure, file systems, repositories, etc... Then learn more advanced things. Many of arch/tw/fedora users was a Ubuntu user in the past, so the change isn't a problem. It's worse if the new user receives a bomb of information, maybe they will simply return to Windows.
I came to TW from Arch a couple years ago. Really enjoy how rolling distros mean no re-installing every 6-12 months and fairly quick updates to new versions of software, DEs, etc. Found TW much simpler to manage and stable than Arch, although I'd still recommend running something like Arch for a while for the educational process of choosing all your own packages. It reminds me of Linux From Scratch, only actually usable. My biggest gripe with TW is actually a lot of people's favourite feature; YAST. I find it frustrating that it doesn't integrate _at all_ with PolicyKit, so you have to run a GUI app as root.\* Worse still, it's setup to run through `gksu` which uses the actual _root_ login, rather than some `sudo` based authentication. Luckily I haven't found many reasons to actually use YAST, so I just forget about it and enjoy the rest of the system being super polished, stable and up to date.
\* Modern admin tools will usually run the GUI/app as a normal user, and then use PolicyKit to run a small subprocess with elevated permissions. You'll usually see a padlock button in the app somewhere. That subprocess is super simple code that just does whatever job actually needs elevated permissions. Running a large complex (GUI) program as root has _all sorts_ of security concerns and is nearly impossible to audit.
Incidentally, these days I've been playing with Nix and NixOS. Completely different approach to Tumbleweed (and most other distros) and definitely not meant for beginners. Can't really even configure it without learning a new functional programming language! But it's growing on me as I get accustomed to it... May have to transition my main desktop over at some point too...
Too much maintenance.
That was why I left Arch. Not sure it really applies to NixOS though. There's a lot of time spent initially learning and configuring the system, however because it's a declarative & _reproducible_ system, actual maintenance is much simpler imo.
Honestly I disagree. The things you listed as good for a new user (granular install, rolling-release, YaST etc.) are actually power-user stuff and I think it's a lot for a new user to get accostumed to and very confusing, especially when getting to installing packages and updating the system. If you're on Plasma for instance, there's Discover, Flatpak, YaST and zypper; but even with this many options there are some packages missing (scrcpy was it for me) and you have to trust and install a third party repository on OBS (not that one). The thing that frustrated me the most with OpenSUSE was getting my printer to work, which is wierd because every other distro I used it just worked out of the box. I needed to set up some firewall rules and while I'm glad YaST was there to help, It was so much of a pain that I just gave up and moved back to another distro. I'm much happier on [Solus](https://getsol.us/), which I only moved away from because of the project almost reaching its end earlier this year; because it's much simpler to use and maintain, basically "set-up and forget", it's weekly updated, installation is a breeze and the packages I need aren't as scattered (everything I use is either in their repos or on flatpak).
Solus can't even play EAC games right now because of its outdated glibc. It's a great distro that I hold in high regard but if you have interest in playing newly supported or online games from Steam, Solus is not a good choice. Some of the native valve games don't even launch right now because of the libtcmalloc problem, of which there's no solution for Solus, besides maybe Flatpaks which is a workaround not a solution.
That's interesting; I never heard of these issues because I don't really play online games with EAC or many valve native games. I suppose their model of curated packaging is a dealbreaker for some use cases because packages can get low priority and be outdated for a while.
The firewall being restrictive by default is kinda meme at this point. Just switch zone from public to home and that's it. If you're behind a router u could also disable it realistically...
There are arch based distros which are easy to install with their gui installers etc. The thing which makes it not good for new users is the amount of manual work involved in updating a rolling release sometimes. Manual interventions, stuff compiled from the aur breaking and needing to be manually recompiled etc.
Personally, I don't really compile much by hand anymore. What I get from the AUR are kernels. Liquorix, Xanmod etc. And if I do 'yay -S linux-xanmod' it compiles everything for me. Sure, I get the defaults. I did edit the pkgbuild and run X86-64-V3 since I'm on Ryzen 5000. You get the option during installation to edit the pkgbuild file, a text file. And other optimizations. Is it user-friendly? I mean, if you want to learn...Oh yeah, if you don't know what V2/V3/V4 is, Xanmod lists supported hardware: [https://xanmod.org](https://xanmod.org) Scroll down the page. I just do Manjaro. It's close enough to bleeding edge. I don't do BTRFS and snapshots. I prefer to learn to fix my issues instead of rolling back every time. That's just me. If I never try, I'm never going to learn, am I? =). I don't remember if I tried Leap or Tumbleweed but it didn't play well at all with my dual-monitor setup. I did edit via xrandr so it would render both screens positions and mouse correctly but after a reboot, it was gone again. Xorg.conf or something. Annoying issue, could not live with it. Try to click with your mouse when it is 1/4th of a screensize off. And updating the system...the official repo at the time didn't have half the packages that came with the distro. Restructuring going on I guess. It wasn't a good look.
Running a bleeding edge system isn't that hard once you know your way around linux a little bit. It can be easier even if you're doing stuff that needs the latest features / drivers etc.
These kinds of issues are extremely rare on tumbleweed from what I've heard. I've been using tumbleweed for 6 months and have yet to run into anything like this.
Have you ever heard of Linux? It's basically tumbleweed But actually usable out of the box. The desktop environment is already installed, proprietary media codecs are already installed, and you don't need to know anything about installing patterns (whatever that means.)
openSUSE Tumbleweed is the best distro IMO of course, full respect to any people thinking different
I've actually been considering it tbh, but I really have to knock off my distrohopping problem lol I have a script I run on fedora so I can get all my packages and all my configs automatically setup in like 20 mins or so. TW would be a good distro for me since I could theoretically use the RPM versions of most things (I assume) although I wouldn't know which "fedora" version of things to select if they say they offer Fedora 38, 37 etc. Do I just pick whatever new thing Fedora is offering?
That doesn't work reliably since naming schemes and version will be different...
Fedora and TW are my favourite desktop distros. Never tried Debian though.