this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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Privacy
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I switched from Fedora to openSUSE recently and it has been painless. Would recommend to anyone who are looking to get away from US companies and US jurisdiction. Edit: note that it uses RPM package manager though, I don't know yet if that is problematic or not. If someone knows then please elaborate on that.
Tumbleweed or Leap or something else?
Most likely Tumbleweed. As it is the most modern of them. Because it is rolling.
Correct, Tumbleweed is the one I started using.
As a long time debian user, I have my eyes on Leap. I value stability (in the unchanging functionality sense) over latest versions.
For me Tumbleweed is rock solid even though it is rolling. But if you don't like subtle changes it might not be fore you.
No matter which OpenSuse people end up choosing, it's a super solid decision. Even though it relies on infrastructure by SUSE S.A., a company that unfortunately has ties to the US (mostly hosting with offices and employees in the US) but got its HQ in Europe, it's the most solid and user-friendly distro out there if you look for rather independent distros (the only user-friendly one that's fully independent would be Mageia, but that one really isn't where it would have to be imho). And the existence of bootable snapshots in case something happened is extremely useful. The biggest problems I've found are just 2: Problems with the Nvidia driver (especially if you use said snapshots), and Flathub not coming preconfigured (not a Problem in KDE since there's a button new users can stumble over, but for Gnome you have to know something rather important is missing to look up the command to add it since there isn't a GUI to add Flatpak repos yet).
Other than that the whole OpenSuse ecosystem is just great.
Huh, that's odd. I've been test driving different Linux distros lately for my move away from Windows, and Tumbleweed was one of the ones I tried. KDE Discover in Tumbleweed had Flatpak options for software, and I'm pretty sure it was tied to Flathub and not a different repo like Fedora does. Maybe I'm misremembering? Or did you mean that it doesn't have the Flathub application itself?
Like I said it's less of a problem with KDE, they even got a button to add Flathub specifically in Discover. It's more of a thing with Gnome and Gnome Software where no "Add Flathub" button exists (and also no GUI to add repos -> they have to look up the whole CLI command), so newer users won't necessarily be aware that something rather important is missing.
I see, I probably misunderstood what you were saying. Thanks. I'm seriously considering OpenSUSE myself, for both my workstations and home server.
Mmm interesting. I have not hat any issues with rolling back and snapshots. Even though I do use nvidia. Configuring flathub shouldn't be too difficult I think. But I don't use a DE eather
Which Nvidia driver setup do you use? The problems arise with the proprietary driver; if you roll back or use a different kernel than the current default (as specified by the repo) both my brother and I had the unfortunate situation of the driver kernel module missing. Nouveau or NVK probably don't cause such issues.
I do use the proprietary drivers with a GTX 1080TI. Just the default kernel though so that might change it a bit in your case then.
I don't mind changes, but I want to be able to decide when they happen. Maybe I'm just traumatized from the last time I used a rolling release distro and suddenly Gnome 3 landed and replaced Gnome 2. I did not like that.
Can I ask which rolling distro that was. I presume arch?
Yes, but it must have been like 15 years ago or something. It didn't help that the first versions of Gnome3 were unpolished and buggy. After that I started to appreciate version stability. I do like new and improved software, but I want it in predictable ways.
I've been wondering about a similar change, or possibly to Arch. What I'm still wondering about is security: Fedora has Selinux enabled all over the system, and Opensuse and Arch do not. Anyone know what level of risk this mitigates?
I think OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has SELinux enabled now too. I'm not sure what you mean by all over the system, as I'm not that familiar with SELinux yet. I believe that Tumbleweed used to use AppArmor but recently switched to SELinux? I also believe that Leap (the stable version of OpenSUSE) still uses AppArmor.
Based on opensuse's docs, it seems to be in permissive state, whereas on my Fedora by default:
Not sure if the warm fuzzy feelings I get from this are justified (like what are the actual applied rules on apps? I have no idea), but it is a bit warmer and fuzzier.
I see, thanks, I didn't know the details. I just had a faint recollection that they had switched from AppArmor to SELinux.
I wouldn't worry about security. Mainly because more security always means less things work as intended, and there's not really any malware targeting Linux. Just like, pick a distro, use it, and pivot based on things you like or dislike