Is OpenSuse tumbleweed worth checking out? Something fairly stable and good for gaming.
I have been using Pop-OS for the longest but recently got newer hardware and therefore waiting for the new version to get more stable. Using bazzite meanwhile. Immutable distro is interesting but not sure if I like it.
I first installed it after having an abysmal experience with Fedora (bad repos, unstable, etc.). It took me a while to really enjoy, but after figuring out how to update the system properly (it’s zypper dup not zypper up), all my issues were quickly resolved.
OpenSUSE is extremely stable, has great repos (stable, large, up-to-date, good naming and dependency schemes, etc.), has a strong focus on security, provides appealing defaults (much better than fedora’s), while remaining minimalist enough to have good performance and to be useful for someone like me who is going to extensively customize their system anyway.
I’ve tried bazzite but hated it, as it’s difficult to customize, breaks very easily, and doesn’t seem to have a notable performance improvement over something like Nobara (unfortunately fedora based, good otherwise if gaming is your main thing).
To somewhat answer your question: openSUSE Tumbleweed is the best “normal use-case” distro (in my opinion). It is, however, not super beginner friendly, has a smaller community and fewer docs, and isn’t laser-focused on performance. It’s good for someone who wants to settle down in their Linux experience, and find a daily driver for their most used device.
Other, more specialized options, you might find interesting:
Nobara Linux: by far the best gaming distro, maintained by the glorious glorious eggroll (proton-ge creator). It breaks every once-and-a-while, but everything is always fixed within one update, at most a day apart, and the breaks are never disabling.
Void Linux: uses runit instead of SystemD, meaning it’s super, super fast. Has a great installer, is stable, and has good defaults, but absolutely a horrible choice for beginners, if you consider yourself such.
Again, openSUSE is absolutely fantastic, and my own daily driver — but I have Nobara installed on my gaming PC, and Void installed on my portable laptop. In the end, it’s all a matter of use-case.
Edit: sorry for the insanely long response, my thoughts have been meandering today…
After more than 15 years of Kubuntu I installed Tumbleweed a few years (two?) ago, because it offers a rolling release, system snapshots and KDE.
Having a job and a family, I do not have the time to tinker anymore, so I expect things to work smoothly out-of-the-box nowadays.
Tumbleweed let me down in this respect.
Once I had to completely reinstall the system because the snapshots filled the system partition during an update, which made it unable to start KDE. I could roll back from the terminal to the previous snapshot, but couldn’t figure out how to remedy the problem, except for using a greater partition and reinstalling.
And just a few days ago KDE (and many applications, when used in LXDE) wouldn’t start, because of version mismatches (caused by an incomplete update?) that broke the linkage of qt libraries. To resolve it I had to make a decision between two packages (tlp vs tuned) to finish the update, even though I hadn’t installed those manually and didn’t know anything about them.
Besides those problems I find the administration suboptimal, with the divide between the Interfaces of Yast and the KDE settings. I didn’t manage to get my Brother network printer to work (except via direct USB connection), which worked out of the box with my android phone.
The installation quirks of atomic will drive you batty. Just Fedora KDE sounds like what you’re wanting, I finally got sick of fixing Arch after a decade of it and have not regretted changing a year or so ago.
It’s very up to date but has never even had a hiccup on updates, and it doesn’t have a bunch of Canonical bullshit attached. It’s just a pretty current vanilla Linux distro with no fucking around. I think I’ve hit that bellcurve downslope of a quarter century of Linux use that starts and ends in the same spot, Redhat.
And it installs by default on btrfs, so install Timeshift or BTRFS Assistant with Snapper, and sleep well at night.
Even with the automated testing, Tumbleweed will still sometimes introduce problems with updates. They mitigate the risk of that with Snapper, so you can rollback to a previous state if things get borked.
Personally, though I’ve tried it a few times, I just can’t get on with openSuse distros.
Updating is really slow since Zypper does one task at a time, compared to DNF or Apt which can download and install multiple packages at once
Updating is particularly slow in the US, since most opensuse servers are in the EU
Yast is powerful for enterprise/sysadmins, but is damn clunky to use for everyday normal stuff (IMHO).
I’d honestly just go for Fedora if you want up-to-date packages, perhaps Nobara if you want it more pre-setup for gaming and codecs. It’s much more slick overall.
Your Fedora vs. OpenSUSE comparison is amusing to me, as I’ve had exactly the opposite experience. Fedora 40 DNF was hella slow for me, fedora broke regularly, etc.
My experience with Fedora (about 2 years of daily driving) has lead me to almost hate it, while my experience with Tumbleweed (approx. 6 months daily driver) has lead me to live it dearly. And I’ve never even used YAST!
Well, I guess a lot of this really depends on what packages you use, how you configure your OS, etc. — it’s good to know both sides of the coin no matter what.
Fedora hasn’t been all roses for my particular setup either, since they fully dropped X11 in the latest version, but my hardware combo isn’t viable yet with Wayland, ultimately making me land on Linux Mint (which has been pretty dang nice).
I also tried OpenSUSE slowroll before trying Fedora, which I love the concept of, but an update on that seemed to bork my system (second monitor would remain blank upon booting), which made me a bit skeptical of its claims of extra stability over normal Tumbleweed.
Your Fedora vs. OpenSUSE comparison is amusing to me, as I’ve had exactly the opposite experience. Fedora 40 DNF was hella slow for me, fedora broke regularly, etc.
I haven’t experienced any friction from DNF, so personally I don’t see it as a con. I just think Fedora has a useful middle ground between new packages and stability.
Is OpenSuse tumbleweed worth checking out? Something fairly stable and good for gaming.
I have been using Pop-OS for the longest but recently got newer hardware and therefore waiting for the new version to get more stable. Using bazzite meanwhile. Immutable distro is interesting but not sure if I like it.
OpenSUSE is my favorite distro.
I first installed it after having an abysmal experience with Fedora (bad repos, unstable, etc.). It took me a while to really enjoy, but after figuring out how to update the system properly (it’s zypper dup not zypper up), all my issues were quickly resolved.
OpenSUSE is extremely stable, has great repos (stable, large, up-to-date, good naming and dependency schemes, etc.), has a strong focus on security, provides appealing defaults (much better than fedora’s), while remaining minimalist enough to have good performance and to be useful for someone like me who is going to extensively customize their system anyway.
I’ve tried bazzite but hated it, as it’s difficult to customize, breaks very easily, and doesn’t seem to have a notable performance improvement over something like Nobara (unfortunately fedora based, good otherwise if gaming is your main thing).
To somewhat answer your question: openSUSE Tumbleweed is the best “normal use-case” distro (in my opinion). It is, however, not super beginner friendly, has a smaller community and fewer docs, and isn’t laser-focused on performance. It’s good for someone who wants to settle down in their Linux experience, and find a daily driver for their most used device.
Other, more specialized options, you might find interesting:
Again, openSUSE is absolutely fantastic, and my own daily driver — but I have Nobara installed on my gaming PC, and Void installed on my portable laptop. In the end, it’s all a matter of use-case.
Edit: sorry for the insanely long response, my thoughts have been meandering today…
From a previous comment of mine:
After more than 15 years of Kubuntu I installed Tumbleweed a few years (two?) ago, because it offers a rolling release, system snapshots and KDE.
Having a job and a family, I do not have the time to tinker anymore, so I expect things to work smoothly out-of-the-box nowadays.
Tumbleweed let me down in this respect.
Once I had to completely reinstall the system because the snapshots filled the system partition during an update, which made it unable to start KDE. I could roll back from the terminal to the previous snapshot, but couldn’t figure out how to remedy the problem, except for using a greater partition and reinstalling.
And just a few days ago KDE (and many applications, when used in LXDE) wouldn’t start, because of version mismatches (caused by an incomplete update?) that broke the linkage of qt libraries. To resolve it I had to make a decision between two packages (tlp vs tuned) to finish the update, even though I hadn’t installed those manually and didn’t know anything about them.
Besides those problems I find the administration suboptimal, with the divide between the Interfaces of Yast and the KDE settings. I didn’t manage to get my Brother network printer to work (except via direct USB connection), which worked out of the box with my android phone.
I plan to try the fedora atomic desktop soonish.
The installation quirks of atomic will drive you batty. Just Fedora KDE sounds like what you’re wanting, I finally got sick of fixing Arch after a decade of it and have not regretted changing a year or so ago.
It’s very up to date but has never even had a hiccup on updates, and it doesn’t have a bunch of Canonical bullshit attached. It’s just a pretty current vanilla Linux distro with no fucking around. I think I’ve hit that bellcurve downslope of a quarter century of Linux use that starts and ends in the same spot, Redhat.
And it installs by default on btrfs, so install Timeshift or BTRFS Assistant with Snapper, and sleep well at night.
Thanks
Even with the automated testing, Tumbleweed will still sometimes introduce problems with updates. They mitigate the risk of that with Snapper, so you can rollback to a previous state if things get borked.
Personally, though I’ve tried it a few times, I just can’t get on with openSuse distros.
I’d honestly just go for Fedora if you want up-to-date packages, perhaps Nobara if you want it more pre-setup for gaming and codecs. It’s much more slick overall.
Your Fedora vs. OpenSUSE comparison is amusing to me, as I’ve had exactly the opposite experience. Fedora 40 DNF was hella slow for me, fedora broke regularly, etc.
My experience with Fedora (about 2 years of daily driving) has lead me to almost hate it, while my experience with Tumbleweed (approx. 6 months daily driver) has lead me to live it dearly. And I’ve never even used YAST!
Well, I guess a lot of this really depends on what packages you use, how you configure your OS, etc. — it’s good to know both sides of the coin no matter what.
Fedora hasn’t been all roses for my particular setup either, since they fully dropped X11 in the latest version, but my hardware combo isn’t viable yet with Wayland, ultimately making me land on Linux Mint (which has been pretty dang nice).
I also tried OpenSUSE slowroll before trying Fedora, which I love the concept of, but an update on that seemed to bork my system (second monitor would remain blank upon booting), which made me a bit skeptical of its claims of extra stability over normal Tumbleweed.
Fedora 41 has DNF5 now, pretty fast.
Yeah, that’s why I specified fedora 40. I guess eventually I’ll need to try fedora again
A rolling distro is not a stable distro
I don’t think so, personally.
Their YaST system is pretty heavily integrated and unique only to distros based on SUSE.
Really it’s just arch-based distros for rolling releases, and debian-based for point-released. The rest are superfluous.
Fedora is a solid middle ground between Arch and Debian.
Not really. I lump fedora in with suse. No point in having a separate package system like dnf.
I haven’t experienced any friction from DNF, so personally I don’t see it as a con. I just think Fedora has a useful middle ground between new packages and stability.