The Random Thoughts of GeniusMusing

Just another random blog

09-52-2022-7 Months With Opensuse Tumbleweed

- Posted in 52Posts-2022 by

About seven months ago I switched to OpenSuse Tumbleweed as my main OS, not just for me but for everything except my servers, they are still Debian.

While not everything has been smooth sailing it has been good enough that I am not looking for something else to run.

The biggest issues for me:

1) Updating Errors - Not so much now but almost from the start I was getting errors that required me to update via command line, choose an update from a different repo that that file was installed from, mostly pipewire and other audio related codecs that were installed. Much of this seems to have been corrected as of late.

2) The re-installation of "default" programs that I had uninstalled. While I do understand the "Unix philosophy" of DOTADIW, or "Do One Thing And Do It Well." I have issues when it comes to email. I am running KDE which breaks everything I have been doing for the past several decades. I typically use Thunderbird for email/calendar/contacts as opposed to Kmail/Korganizer/Kontact as three separate programs. I did try them and I can only say the results left me wanting Thunderbird. Maybe it has been using programs that actually combine all three things in one for many decades, even going back to the AOL days when that was as close as you got to something like the internet. At some point I uninstalled them but they keep coming back with updates.

3) Other programs being installed that I didn't ask for. Jupyter Notebook is one I have lost count of how many times it has been installed. I might have done the first install at some point, I actually don't remember but it would have been limited to my desktop but it is appearing on both my desktop and my notebook under development. I have also lost count on how many times I have uninstalled it.

4) Not everything plays nice even though it is one of the major Linux OS's in the world. Most things do work but I have had a few that required me to find an alternative from what I typically use.

5) I have one issue with mounting shares off the server, I am getting closer to figuring it out but it is frustrating.

Biggest Pluses for me:

1) It has been very stable for me with very few audio issues. The few I have has usually only require a restart of the program, which happen to be a Flatpak, not sure if that is the issue or not.

All in all I am happy and have four computers running Tumbleweed at the moment and the only lingering issue is the server share mounting on one of the computers. How long will I keep using it? Who knows, I was using Fedora for many years until several major upgrades borked and required a fresh install, that was enough for me to move on. That should not be an issue with Tumbleweed as it is a rolling release and it is possible that the next update is the next version and will keep on that way.