openSUSE leaps to 15.3 – now built with 'same binary packages' as SUSE Enterprise Version 15.3 of openSUSE Leap is out - this being the community version of SUSE Linux Enterprise and the first to be built with the same binary packages as its commercial cousin. There are two community builds of openSUSE: Tumbleweed is a rolling release which is used for early code that eventually makes its way into SUSE …
...and I'll put it to use later today on my home servers. I hope the "package parity" with SLE pays dividends for them.
Many years ago I had installed OpenSUSE in a VM and played around with it. I never really gave it serious consideration for home use because I didn't want to leave Debian and Ubuntu. However Debian because a chore and Ubuntu has left users with no choice but the Snap Store. So earlier this year I switched my servers to OpenSuse and I have to say I am more pleased with it than I thought I would be. Coming from a guy like me, that is high praise.
> ... Ubuntu has left users with no choice but the Snap Store.
Agreed. That has to be one of the stupidest moves I've yet seen for a server distribution.
There's no ability to delay upgrades of Snap packages more than 60 days, so if you have a tonne of other work to do in the meantime, that's too bad.
You have to ensure everything running on your systems can deal with whatever random snap package updates come out, in that time window rather than picking a suitable change schedule. That isn't security updates mind you, that's for everything.
A few moths? Is that a Freudian slip? Is anyone still using it?
I tried openSUSE a few years ago but found it a bit awkward and inconsistent. Ended up with a Mint installation, much better.
Just clicked on the picture above labelled "openSUSE Leap 15.3 with KDE Plasma (click to enlarge)". Sorry to say, not only is Mint Cinnamon and MATE much better than that, but to be honest, Windows 7, even XP. Very rough around the edges.
You are judging KDE Plasma by a screenshot? You clearly have not actually used KDE Plasma then as it is superior to every other Desktop Environment out there. On OpenSUSE Leap you can also easily update to the newest KDE Plasma 5.22 beta which has a better application launcher.
While you are right, I use Tumbleweed. The people that rely on me use Tumbleweed (no choice...) After I swapped out the nVidia card for Radeon they haven't had a problem since about 2011.
Having said that if you are using Tumbleweed I think the assumption is surely that you or someone nearby has half a clue?
I run Tumbleweed on one machine at home and Leap on another. Updates to TW are certainly less hassle-free than Leap, mainly because package updates are released as soon as they are available and I find it is very common for a package to be updated before all its dependencies have been updated which can lead you into dependency hell. There also seems to be an issue with the installer seeing version 1.2.3-24 as being older than version 1.2.3-3; it isn't clear which is correct.
My usual work-around is to wait a couple of days, after which things are usually straight again for a while.
Of course, if it all goes belly-up, because the thing does automatic pre- and post-update snapshots, it's possible (if frustrating) to do a BTRFS rollback.
Oh, and living on the end of a 7Mbps ADSL link, and having some large packages installed (such as cross-toolchain-avr for Arduino work), the several-GB-per-week updates can be a little tedious.
M.
My first Linux dabblings involved Red Hat when that was the default choice not just on servers, and there was no separate version for curious desktop users who didn't want to pay for commercial server support.
It was OK but I hated Gnome, which looked like it had been crayoned by small children. So I tried SuSE, which also at that time had no separate versions for desktop enthusiasts and support-contract server users. It used KDE, which was *much* better. And YaST, which was great. I soon tired of the RPM package system, however, which all too often required you to resolve version conflicts on your own and *never* managed a version upgrade without, at least, killing X.
Ubuntu, then. Debian's package management just works, mostly. In place upgrades, ditto. UI not to my liking.
So now I'm on Mint. And it's OK. The default UI is a bit grey, but I can live with that. Still prefer, KDE, though. Tried TrueOS, with KDE, which was fine until it came time for a version upgrade. Same with Neon. Kubuntu? Yes, probably.
I get that software sometimes has to be patched. I would really, really like it to be totally unobtrusive. Please?
-A.
Maybe I have missed something. Maybe I was in a coma and it came and went. Was there really ever a time when Red Hat was the default Linux distro? Haven't there always been at least two very viable alternatives to Red Hat?
Debian, Slackware, Mandrake, Gentoo, SuSE all have long histories and have spawned enough forks to keep forking going.
My point here is that in FLOSS ecosystems the "defaults" are just variables defined by the perceptions of users and developers, and the occasional journalist.
After all, before Linux was my "default" if I wanted FLOSS Unix I went with *BSD. Anybody else have a different default?
Depends fairly much where you are: if you're in some universities / many big enterprises it's "Red Hat or nothing at all" and all sorts of reasons will be put forward for that including support and security.
Using both fairly regularly: there's nothing** you can do on a Red Hat based system that you can't do on a Debian based system: if you go the other way round, you quickly discover that Red Hat has very fewsupported programs and relies on lots of third party sites like EPEL to provide a smaller subset of what's "there but without full Ubuntu support because it's universe/multiverse" / "just works" for Debian.
**FIPS certification / US Govt. security certification / credit card payment data/authorisation may be harder
Some very large sites dropped Red Hat for Debain and/or Ubuntu many years ago eg Wellcome Sanger Institute.
[Full disclosure: Long term Debian user / sysadmin for other Linux at various times: biases are my own]
Of course it is indeed just perception. I'm talking about a time before the RHEL/Fedora split (and CentOS), and certainly to my perception it seemed like "Linux" and Red Hat were pretty much synonymous. As it happens, the first distribution I ever tried was Slackware. Gnome notwithstanding, Red Hat felt like less hassle.
-A.
"Haven't there always been at least two very viable alternatives to Red Hat?"
Could be, I remember I first installed Red Hat to transition away from Mandrake. I did it because Red Hat was supposed to be able to be upgrade-able instead of having to completely re-install when the next version came out.
At least SuSE and Novell arent likely to try bait and switch like Redhat and Centos. I too thought Redhat was the only default ServerOS for corpos and I am pleasantly surprised to say the latest opensuse 15.3 is one of the most reliable and stable installs on my 3 intel NUCs. I used Ventoy to boot the iso and installed in couple of clicks. Wicked seems sensible as a network configurator tool and networkmanager seems okay. I am a diehard KDE fan so no complaints there. Packages of esoteric apps are plenty in opensuse and seem to be reasoably well maintained. Puts Redhat to shame actually.
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