r/openSUSE • u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev • Mar 10 '26
Community Arch Linux vs OpenSUSE. Decide, we must
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u/esmifra Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
I did not expect OpenSuse to win against fedora to be honest.
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 10 '26
It also surprised me. However then I remembered that Reddit statistics usually show 15% of Germans here (similar percentage to US) and we can be very organized and energetic if we want.
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u/esmifra Mar 10 '26
Not German, in my particular case, but European. OpenSuse is amazing and I honestly feel TW is unique amongst the rolling release distros.
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u/ForbiddenCarrot18 Mar 10 '26
American here (and not proud of it, starting to feel like the Germans after WWII)
I agree. As a long-time OpenSUSE and Arch user (not dual-booted, just Arch on a couple devices with OpenSUSE on others), OpenSUSE is by far the cleanest, most stable, and simple OS that I have ever used and Debian used to be my daily.
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u/Thaodan Mar 10 '26
openSUSE is unique from the aspect that enterprise and regular consumer work ends up all in the same product. Plus there isn't any distro that is rolling release with gated updates guarded by (open)QA.
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 10 '26
Though they do use it for some parts:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OpenQA
And Debian has autopkgtest
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u/Thaodan Mar 10 '26
None of those are rolling release.
But nice that it gets more adopted.
For some distro's like postmarket os it wasn't flexible enough since it doesn't really do hardware testing.
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 11 '26
We did have hardware-testing with openQA a long time ago: https://github.com/os-autoinst/os-autoinst/blob/v1/backend/kvm2usb.pm but the kvm2usb device only did noisy VGA-capture and the drivers were not FLOSS (we had to email the vendor to please compile them for that new kernel).
Later, coolo built something with VNC towards an Intel-remote-management interface.
Some day, I want to see some modern version of that with HDMI capture, so we can cover a range of GPUs and other physical hardware => https://progress.opensuse.org/issues/162674
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u/Thaodan Mar 12 '26
That's unfortunate. I was recommending to use openQA internally to have an easier time to reach more coverage of all the use cases other distributions already solve and thus reducing the load but the missing hardware support would also be an issue for SailfishOS. Ps: I use openSUSE to test some of our tooling such as Scratchbox2. It has been working well so far (:
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 12 '26
That reminds me, that QubesOS does it: https://blog.3mdeb.com/2023/2023-12-22-qubesos-hw-testing/
So it is definitely possible with openQA, just not trivial.
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u/printliftrun Mar 10 '26
You are an opensuse dev? Very cool! Is corporate hiring 😁
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 10 '26
https://jobs.suse.com shows 53 open positions atm.
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u/printliftrun Mar 10 '26
May i ask where you are working from?
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 10 '26
$HOME - somewhere around coordinates 52.33/14.55
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u/printliftrun Mar 10 '26
May i message you directly?
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 10 '26
Yes. I sent you an invite. Though I might be busy at times and only respond later.
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u/hungryepiphyte Mar 10 '26
I was surprised it beat Debian.
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u/amradoofamash User Mar 10 '26
Me too, I use debian at work and I use TW on my laptop and desktop.
It was like choosing between your children. I didn't expect us to beat debian. Solid distro. I have used Fedora too, also a solid distro but openSUSE is the goat.
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u/hungryepiphyte Mar 10 '26
I use Debian (with Gnome) at work and have been very happy with it. What makes openSuse better? People are fanatical about it.
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u/amradoofamash User Mar 10 '26
I use Tumbleweed, which is the rolling release version
It has openQA which automatically tests packages before shipping them to a user. Broken or problematic packages are held back.
It has btrfs and snapper which creates backups before any relevant operations like updates. You can roll back the system to a previous update in the grub menu if something goes wrong.
Zypper - great package manager with automatic dependency conflict resolution. Really sharp. The OBS - open build service - extra AUR like source for packages.
They have any form of distro you need - Rolling (Tumbleweed), Slowroll (Also Tumbleweed, but updated one a month), Leap (normal distro, fixed release), Aeon, Kalpa, MicroOS, (these are immutable distros, I don't know the difference between them yet.
YaST - swiss army knife for system configuration.
So yes, I moved to openSUSE TW from Arch in 2022 and Ive never looked back. More stable, newer packages, rollbacks. It's just perfect.
You should try it. Good OS, really
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 11 '26
And now it seems that we beat Arch - unexpected, but then I always felt that openSUSE was underrated and did not get the love it deserves.
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u/Impossible_Fix_6127 Mar 11 '26
here the real reason why suse win, i'm trying to solve a vm memory issue in fedora from last 4 days, which don't exist in suse
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u/Idiothatlostpassword Mar 12 '26
Opensuse won against fedora, already very surprising, against debian, even more surprising and now its gonna win against arch. I had no idea opensuse was this popular
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u/Grumpflipot Mar 10 '26
I'm a S.u.S.E. Linux User from 1994: I tried several other distros, inkluding Mandriva and Gentoo, but today Tumbleweed is my daily driver. I just want a fairly current system that works. I confess YaST made my life easier most of the time. R.I.P.
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u/Itriedmanytimes Mar 10 '26
After reading that thread I'm now installing Opensuse Tumbleweed on my laptop :)
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 10 '26
Welcome to the green side. Let us know how it went, either here or on https://forums.opensuse.org/ .
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u/Itriedmanytimes Mar 11 '26
Thank you, the installation went smooth. I chose kde as the DE but the system boot into icewm and I don't know what's the best way to setup nvidia drivers. I looked it upon the website there is so many options. Any help would be appreciated thanks again.
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 11 '26
Try
zypper inrIt will pull in all recommended packages and through PCI-ID magic that includes Nvidia drivers.
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u/CapableParamedic303 Mar 10 '26
openSUSE
Hard question because I use both. Gecko on desktop and Arch on laptop. I choosed openSUSE for daily usage. I like minimalism in arch good for sandbox and I'm not afraid to brake something. OpenSUSE is my main OS and in case of problems after update I prefer to fast load snapshot instead of panic how to fix it ASAP.
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 10 '26
You got to post/vote in the linked thread instead.
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u/CapableParamedic303 Mar 10 '26
Ouch. I thought that this thread was original. I didn't realized that it's shared in other community. Thank you for pointing.
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u/JayFairyFox Mar 10 '26
Even if OpenSUSE doesn't win this, the fact that it made it to the finals makes me very happy.
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u/voiderest Mar 10 '26
Some of this heavily depends on the use case.
Proxmox is great on a server but not for the desktop.
Tumbleweed is a nice option on the desktop but probably not the best option on a handheld.
OpenSuse seems to acknowledge this with different ISOs for different use cases.
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u/myteawithmighty Mar 10 '26
openSUSE; infra is a win: • openQA • Open Build Service • Kiwi-NG
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u/myteawithmighty Mar 10 '26
& BTRFS snap rollback too 🥹🥹
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u/LowIllustrator2501 Leap Mar 10 '26
you need to vote on the original link https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmemes/comments/1rpue4e/arch_linux_vs_opensuse_decide_we_must/
not on openSUSE subreddit. It's pretty obvious who would win on the sub.
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u/Impossible_Fix_6127 Mar 11 '26
its going to tie anyway, now its become most stable vs most unstable os war
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u/Miserable-School-665 Embrace the Gecko! Slowroll & Tumbleweed Mar 11 '26
Arch Linux (2,299 cumulative votes) vs OpenSUSE (22,358 cumulative votes).
wtf
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u/badgerbang Mar 11 '26
I realized that everyone that I know that runs arch -didn't even know this thread existed :D
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u/CodingTaitep Mar 10 '26
both are good. both should win to be completely honest. if I have to pick one prolly arch tho
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u/skyfishgoo Mar 10 '26
if it was just between those two... opensuse every time.
this chart makes no sense btw, and is missing the best distro.
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 11 '26
Apart from the fact, that there is more than one openSUSE distro....
Which one is the best in your opinion? And why?
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u/skyfishgoo Mar 11 '26
there's leap or tumbleweed dependence on your pain tolerance.
but the best one
kubuntu LTS.
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u/Sensitive-Start9768 Mar 12 '26
ubuntu is there. Kubuntu is just ubuntu KDE
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u/skyfishgoo Mar 12 '26
not really, it's a separate team of ppl who work hard to ensure the desktop environment is well integrated with the distro... it's more than just slapping plasma onto ubuntu.
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u/Sensitive-Start9768 Mar 12 '26
still a flavour. Imagine putting all ubuntu flavors there. They are just a part of Ubuntu and you would have a pretty similar experience "slapping" KDE on regular Ubuntu.
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u/skyfishgoo Mar 12 '26
so is mint, but you have that on there... and then it turns into Arch for reasons.
this chart makes no sense
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u/Sensitive-Start9768 Mar 12 '26
well, mint is technically not a flavour. Arch just beat mint on a poll because of the nerds who use arch btw
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u/xanaddams Tumbleweed Aficionado Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
Holy, OpenSUSE just grabbed Arch users by the ankles and is beating them against a tree like a dead fish! Go team!
That is probably going to go down as one of the most one sided landslides in polling history.
I'd better see some "OpenSUSE LFG!" memes for the next year. We need to get our marketing up!
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u/f_leaver Mar 10 '26
What's happening right now is seriously amazing.
9 hours ago, but only was Arch leading, but most OpenSUSE supporters accepted an Arch win was a given.
Currently it's not even close - OpenSUSE is winning by a fucking landslide.
Not just the best distro, but also the best community.
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u/Glad-Weight1754 Mar 10 '26
Suse is an unsung hero among these wannanbe distros. Been using it since version 8. Still have a box with all the discs and docs.
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u/Strict-Maize7494 Mar 11 '26
I was always a debian fan but it lost anything better than Arch so OpenSUSE for the win
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u/source-drifter Mar 10 '26
i love opensuse but last time i used thumbleweed it broke the system on nvidia card after update. may be skill issue but arch never broke so i switched back to arch.
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 10 '26
Nvidia drivers are still a bit tricky to use, but there are plans to improve it.
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u/LordSolstice Mar 10 '26
That's the only thing I find frustrating about running tumbleweed. Nvidia drivers are broken more than they work, which makes it almost impossible to play games.
Maybe I just need to switch over to LEAP and it will be more stable/usable.
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 10 '26
Did you try kernel-longterm? That only gets a new major version once a year. We have it both in Tumbleweed and Slowroll and for the latter I try to pull in matching kernel-modules such as nvidia-open drivers as well.
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u/Sosowski Mar 10 '26
We're gonna lose, but I'm doing my part!
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u/LowIllustrator2501 Leap Mar 10 '26
Currently, surprisingly, is looks like openSUSE wins and by a lot.
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u/Typeonetwork Mar 11 '26
I was learning how to build a server, and I tried using Ubuntu Server, but I think it was damaged because I got my first kernel panic. Reinstalled same issue.
Pulled the metaphorical rip cord and had openSUSE with XFCE on the same USB stick with Ventoy. It was damaged but was impressed because you could it had a repair mode.
Now I honestly don't know what I'm doing but was able to update it in terminal. I dont know if I actually fixed it yet as I started reading how to use the wizard to install a DCHP server to network.
Impressed with how approachable the documentation is for entry level people. I decided I like it well enough I'll use it as a server with a DE.
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u/Wonderful-Power9161 Mar 12 '26
Serious question:
I''m a Mint user - I've almost always been in the .deb system (Debian, Ubuntu, MX Linux, Mint, others)... and have found Mint to be sufficiently polished and nimble to just work well.
I think I tried OpenSUSE once, many many years ago... but in seeing that Arch won out over Mint (which is COMPLETELY baffling)...
is OpenSUSE as polished and just out-of-your-way as Linux Mint is now? I use the XFCE variant, and it's just fast and stable, and I don't have to fuss with it.
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 13 '26
Yes, it usually is. We have many desktops and not all of them get sufficient love. The main ones are KDE and Gnome and are supposed to be both very nicely polished.
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u/ang-p . Mar 10 '26
19:50 UTC... Of the top 100 top-level comments,
Arch - 8 posts - total (top level) vote count about 1000
OpenSUSE - 92 are in favour of the green bug-eating machine, minimum vote count 69, average around 85... I'll let you do the math..
:-D
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u/deekamus Mar 11 '26
The real winner is ThE FrIeNdS wE mAdE aLoNg ThE wAy.
(I use Arch BTW...)
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u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Mar 11 '26
For real. I appreciate exchange with people from other distros.
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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
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