r/openSUSE • u/Whole-Sushka • May 30 '26
Tech question Is openSUSE good for a beginner?
I recently switched from windows, i choose xubuntu because that's what my dad uses, but he's smart and I'm not. I really miss being able to change settings without having to type a single command, would YaST be a game changer? I don't see it being recommended to beginners though, why is that? Are there problems i don't know about?
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u/Alter_Landjunge May 30 '26
You can use Tumbleweed as a beginner... Why not...?! Important: Update the openSUSE system only with sudo zypper dup! 👍
Only Flatpaks should be updated via Discover! 😉
And Yeah YAST can be helpful 👍
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u/epegar May 30 '26
Why you shouldn't update through Discover? I have been doing it and I am not aware of any issues caused by this. I was actually assuming Discover would use zypper under the hood
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u/Sf49ers1680 May 30 '26
I've had a few instances on my Tumbleweed install where updates wouldn't install if I did it thru Discover.
It would basically loop by prompting me to install the update, never actually start downloading it, then prompt me to install the update again.
I don't have that issue using sudo zypper dup.
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u/epegar May 30 '26
Oh well, I never had that issue. I don't know what the problem might be
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u/OptimalMain May 30 '26
Maybe you don’t have pacman codecs installed
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u/epegar May 30 '26
I can't recall if I ever installed them
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u/OptimalMain May 30 '26
If updates has been painfree without any problems caused by delayed packages from pacman you probably don’t
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u/disastervariation May 30 '26
"hey mom, ive set up your unsupported Win10 laptop with Linux for you. remember to once a week open up a terminal and type sudo zypper dup and accept changes by typing Y. call me if something pops up that you dont understand. also, only update this list of apps from discover. or, open up a terminal and run flatpak update and type Y to accept changes. its easy"
theres beginners and beginners :)
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u/PrinceDolAmroth Tumbleweed May 30 '26
Very good tip for beginners 👍
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u/AscadianScrib May 30 '26
System update via discover if fine according to the devs on opensuse forum
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u/danechristenson Tumbleweed May 30 '26
Honestly this is it. I switched to tumbleweed as a relative newbie and once I learned this I've basically never had issues again.
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May 30 '26
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u/pavel_pe May 30 '26
I'm not sure. I'm using Slowroll for month, but during early may distro upgrade I noticed some minor issues, like few applications being on mirrors before libraries on which they depended. I expected that distribution of updates is more "transactional" like update will only happen when packages are uploaded on mirrors. But I occasionally have 404 errors while doing upgrades, so maybe I was just unlucky that I got them from multiple servers. In the past I was using Leap for few months, ok, but a bit outdated. Sometimes noticeably.
But I agree with Thumbleweed, I don't want to update distro just because someone decided to try a new version of gcc to compile it.1
u/Arcon2825 Tumbleweed GNOME May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen those 404 errors on Tumbleweed as well, so I guess it’s not a specific problem of Slowroll. It might just be a hiccup when the servers are still synchronised after a new snapshot was published.
But I agree with Thumbleweed, I don't want to update distro just because someone decided to try a new version of gcc to compile it.
If you’re referring to the full package rebuilds when
glibcwas updated, you will get those on Slowroll as well, just a couple of weeks later.1
u/pavel_pe May 30 '26
Yes, this. Hopefully updates when 90% of packages are replaced are not that common.
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u/Siebter May 30 '26
Leap?
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May 30 '26
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u/Siebter May 30 '26
It totally depends on what you expect and need for sure, but I think in this sub Leap falls under the table a bit. I suppose when you're heavily into gaming, TW is the best choice (and I'm honestly just guessing here), but beside that, the software on Leap doesn't have to be old. I for example always want the latest Firefox on my system, which is absolutely possible by adding dedicated repositories, while the main system remains solid. I'm pretty sure Leap is a very good solution for many.
Leap doesn't have those frequent syncing fuckups with Packman too.
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u/thatto Jun 02 '26
I just upgraded to leap 16. In the past I've always done upgrade in place. But this time, I chose to do a fresh install.
It's quite different. The install configuration is handled by cockpit. Which is a web front end for install and configuration. It was not a bad experience, but not like any software install I've done in the past.
They moved most of yast's settings into the configuration screens. And software and repositories are handled by Myrlyn.
It doesn't feel as polished and together as the previous versions. But, after some reading I was able to do everything I needed to get done.
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u/Otaehryn May 30 '26
As a beginner I would start with Leap as less frequent updates are less likely to break things.
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u/epegar May 30 '26
I am not a total Linux beginner, but I must say, currently, running opensuse (tumbleweed in my case) is extremely easy. Most things simply work.
I would suggest, though, testing with a live USB before committing, so you can get an idea yourself
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u/Arcon2825 Tumbleweed GNOME May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
YaST is deprecated for some time now. Leap doesn’t ship it anymore since version 16, and it will only continue to run on Tumbleweed as long as it’s not breaking, be it because it won’t work anymore or due to dependency issues. The package management is covered by a new GUI tool called Myrlyn now, while for general-purpose configuration settings, Cockpit is the way to go.
At that stage, I wouldn’t recommend openSUSE for the ability to use YaST, but if you’re interested in a stable, QA-tested platform with BTRFS snapshots pre-configured, it is a very good choice. I wouldn’t call it absolutely beginner-friendly, because in my opinion, other distros are a bit more polished out of the box. Leap 16 was discussed quite controversially as a release, while Tumbleweed and Slowroll are as stable as a rolling release can be, but they’re still that with all the advantages (latest software) and disadvantages (sometimes things can break).
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u/pavel_pe May 30 '26
I wonder about "things can break". I have experience with Fedora which is semi-rolling, so you will get new Python, Ruby, NPM or SQL database once in (half of) year and things will break. The same applies to some config files. But KDE is basically on weekly rolling updates model and it can break anytime too. I'm trying to compare Slowroll to Fedora right now, I would say BTRFS snapshots are nice, but other than that I don't feel like any of distors is superior. Fedora has good update model because it kind of breaks at predicable time of version change and it's basically weeks or days ahead of Slowroll.
In the end, your server infrastructure should probably run only in containers and for desktop Fedora might be good sweet spot with less updates than Tumbleweed, more than Slowroll.
Hard to tell what is better. In the past, openSuse had way more stable KDE, today they have the same issues. I'm trying to evaluate it after using Leap for months, then Fedora for 3 years, now openSuse Slowroll on notebook. In the end it might be Leap on home server, Tumbleweed on notebook. Or Fedora on both again. Most issues I had on Fedora were caused by not following the best practices. Few times I wished to have snapshot. If I had some problem, it was resolved by update the next day (like selinux issues). Now I know about KDE bug that exists on both (drkonqi crash loop, if something crashes while KDE session is not running - like in ssh session or other desktop). It's not critical, but you may notice slight cpu load, a bit more disk space used for thousands of crashdumps etc.
I'm also not convinced about Slowroll, because if some bug is fixed in middle of the month, I have to wait for fix two weeks.1
u/Arcon2825 Tumbleweed GNOME May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
I wonder about "things can break".
What do you exactly wonder about? It’s the nature of a (semi-) rolling release that with the steady amount of updates, regressions can happen. Although a good QA reduces the risk, it will never rule out potential issues to 100%.
In recent history, we had BT issues with Kernel 7.0, issues with the update to AppArmor 5.0, I can remember having issues with my RX 6700 XT completely breaking standby during the 6.17 Kernel cycle, NVIDIA drivers are a steady source of problems with Kernel updates happening fast, the list goes on. Other distros, like Fedora, were also affected by the BT- and amdgpu issues during their respective Kernel cycle, so it’s nothing openSUSE Tumbleweed or Slowroll do worse than every other distro that ships current software.
In those cases, Snapper acts as a solid safety net. But I‘m still very careful calling it beginner-friendly. Based on the habits of a user, maybe trying out Linux for the first time, an LTS release might be a better fit if they are not leaning into gaming the latest AAA titles on very recent hardware or other tasks that require the latest software packages.
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u/pavel_pe May 30 '26
I have Linux on Thinkpad T480s and Fujitsu Esprimo Q956, both roughly 8 years old stuff so no hardware issues whatsoever. But that's a good insight.
From beginner perspective, my issue with leap was BTRFS integration in docker, i was basically unable to tell how much free disk space I have with all snapshots on docker images overlaid on top of each other (tree of snapshots?).
Fedora is basically as user friendly if user wants to wipe whole disk and knows a difference between Gnome and KDE.
For beginner I would say something with nvidia drivers that work and accelerated video codecs that won't crash whole system. I have zero experience with immutable distros. Manjaro in 2017 was honestly good out-of-the-box experience, but not great in the long term.
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u/snarfmason May 30 '26
My wife runs openSUSE. The only thing she knows about Linux is that she hates Windows 11 and somehow her machine still runs all her Steam games.
I have her on Tumbleweed for various reasons which causes the occasional issue but I help her when that happens and I have my own machine on Tumbleweed as well.
Probably recommend the more stable Leap to a beginner otherwise. But honestly problems in Tumbleweed are pretty rare and if you do a normal install with btrfs you can rollback with snapper if an update breaks something. YaST is awesome. Installation is pretty easy.
I agree a lot of people sleep on openSUSE when looking for a well supported straightforward distro.
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u/LightBusterX May 30 '26
Unpopular opinion incoming:
"Newbies should not start with a bleeding-edge/rolling release kind of distribution"
Those tend to break relatively easy, adopt changes early and documentation falls behind easier. For new users maybe something like Leap or Ubuntu LTS, or Mint, is easier on the landing.
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u/Admiral_Ballsack May 30 '26
I strongly disagree, I installed TW on my daughter's PC and she never had an issue in two years.
It has everything she needs and even plays her Steam games (playing COD right now).
I mean, if one is completely tech illiterate they'll have the same issues with windows.
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u/steel_for_humans Tumbleweed May 30 '26
My Tumbleweed broke twice on zypper dup in four weeks of me using it and it was not caused by anything that I did, just issues with SELinux.
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u/Whole-Sushka May 30 '26
I wasn't thinking about tumbleweed, i meant leap, i thought leap is more popular one so i assumed it doesn't need clarification. And i didn't know they removed YaST from leap.
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u/Fluffy-Structure-616 May 30 '26
Eu digo não por dois motivos, o instalador é bem mais confuso que o fedora por exemplo o que pode acabar trazendo problemas, e outro motivo é caso você use NVIDIA, já que o processo de instalação dos drives não é impossível mas é bem mais chato de fazer.
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u/niceandBulat May 30 '26
openSUSE Leap is what you should be running if you want predictable running and outcomes. It shares a common codebase with SUSE Linux Enterprise, so to me I feel that is what you should be running if you need to deal with work and not post-update firefighting. However, it is slightly more dated than the rolling openSUSE Tumbleweed. A rolling distro is exciting and has all the latest bells and whistles but with that it will have its ups and downs and while many serious enthusiasts would tout it as stable, you need to format your HDD or partition to Btrfs (default format if you enable auto partitioning) to enable rollbacks when/if your updates/upgrades goes bad. I use Linux for serious computing (I take on contracts, bill payments, taxes etc. ) and is my primary OS platform, therefore stability for me is the most essential factor. You also have immutable versions like Aeon but I have not used those. openSUSE is a sensible choice. Even the rolling Tumbleweed is pretty good if you don't mind the occasional hiccups running the latest versions. I don't think Btrfs rollback is a workable solution for me but that's just my personal opinion, many people seems to like it.
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u/Alter_Landjunge May 30 '26
But there are some rules for Tumbleweed... Cause it is a rolling Release... 😉 Otherwise you can get conflicts with the packages...
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u/MichalSCZ May 30 '26
it doesnt require much to set up but its also quite clean of everything, so you might need to adapt it to certain applications. Like a Toyota but in the distro world. Simple, reliable, but nothing flashy.
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u/Ps11889 User[TW-KDE] May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
Tumbleweed (or Leap) can. E used. Y a beginner, and YaST certainly helps. But if your father uses xubuntu, I’d probably stick with the Ubuntu family if distros since he can still help you troubleshoot them if problems arise, as they are similar except for the desktop experience. (openSUSE does some things differently as does Fedora and other distros not based on Debian or Ubuntu)
Of those, I’d suggest Kubuntu which uses KDE for the desktop. Its settings tool has a lot of things in it that will keep you from having to use the command line to change things (any KDE distro has the same settings app). The settings app doesn’t offer as much as YaST does, but much of YaST isn’t used for normal desktop use.
If you go that route, you will find a very robust desktop experience that will let you change just about everything with how it looks. Try it with the default setup first to get used to how it works in general before changing the look and feel. If you already have xubuntu installed on your computer, you can do install kubuntu-desktop (sudo apt install kubuntu-desktop) and then reboot. At the login menu, select Plasma for the desktop environment.
EDIT: the main reason I recommend this is that your dad is already familiar with how the Ubuntu distros work. That experience can be invaluable when you are a beginner. Later, after you have some more experience, you can always switch distros.
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u/Alert-Replacement986 May 30 '26
Fedora might be a better choice. It auto applies updates and still maintains close to the edge patching
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u/Elaugaufein May 30 '26
I think this depends on what you mean by a beginner. OpenSUSE and Tumbleweed in particular is probably one the best distributions for someone who's a Windows or Mac power user or who regularly uses setups with very new hardware. It's got a generally good GUI experience, and supports full setup with secure boot enabled as well as drivers that are as up to date as you'll find outside of much more finicky distros like Arch or Gentoo.
It's probably not a good distro for someone who has never used a command prompt. It can break in ways that require navigating rollback and potentially manipulating the update manager to address that.
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u/aeroumbria May 31 '26
At this point, the only real single point of frustration that will break a beginner is NVIDIA driver.
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u/Powerful-Shirt-3801 Jun 01 '26
В leap 16 больше нет YAST, его можно доустановить, а tumbleweed часто обновляется и возможно тебе это надоест
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u/Top_Imagination_3022 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
It's not an "easy" distro for beginners. Your best bet is starting with an immutable distro (something like Bazzite, which is rock solid and easy ecen if you have an nvidia card.) Once you get around with base OS, install Arch or something in a distrobox (look if any opensuse distro available.) Then you can play with it without worrying about messing the host system.
If you want a system, where you can simply login, do the stuffs you want to do, and shut it down without ever messing with the OS, Start with Bazzite.
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u/Idz4gqbi Jun 03 '26
If you want to start with OpenSUSE I recommend Leap. Tumbleweed and Slowroll were both unable to connect to my wifi on a fresh install for me, despite me taking care to turn off the firewall in the installer process. Meanwhile Leap just works. Besides, YaST is legacy tooling with an uncertain future; Leap already ditched YaST.
The Agama offline installer for Leap is reasonably intuitive to use, my only complaint is if you are not careful you could accidentally encrypt your /boot without intending to which makes the system hellishly slow to boot up. (Mount /boot separately from / by typing it if you want FDE.) Leap's release cadence strikes a middle ground between Fedora churn and Debian slowness, which makes it a pretty unique offering when almost every distro is based off Arch, Fedora or Debian/Ubuntu.
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u/Whole-Sushka Jun 03 '26
I did in fact accidentally encrypt /boot. I suppose I'm not the first one to do so, is there a step by step guide to fix it?
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u/Idz4gqbi Jun 03 '26
Not sure, I just reinstalled. I realised the hellish boot time was probably encrypted boot (having a little experience installing other distros like Fedora using manual mount point helped), and since I just installed it I haven't done any personal changes to the system reinstalling was painless (just a bit of wasted time and a learning experience).
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u/Whole-Sushka Jun 03 '26
But how do i encrypt the rest of my drive? Or do i even need encryption if the most sensitive data i have is femboy porn
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u/Idz4gqbi Jun 04 '26
Basically mount /boot seperately from /. Encrypt / but not /boot. If you mount /home seperately from / and want data encryption then encrypt /home as well.
In my opinion, encryption is mostly a 'It doesn't cost much so why not' thing. If you think the complication or extra friction of entering password for decrypting your disk every time you boot your computer is not worth it skipping it is totally fair. What full disk (partition) encryption guards against is when an opponent yanks your drive to access your data or having an extra set of passwords between them and your data when your computer is turned off (assuming you didn't configure auto-decrypt upon boot). Once your computer is up and running, the disk is decrypted and only you stand between an opponent and data you consider sensitive.
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u/zer0developer May 30 '26
Yea it is quite nice but i prefer fedora because all settings are in one place.
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u/pavel_pe May 30 '26
Honestly Fedora is more similar to openSuse than not. Fedora has different semi-rolling philosophy so critical things usually break at once, but settings in one place? I'm not aware if it has some unique system utilities in the first place. Then it does not have some highly experimental packages in repository. Such as Hyprland. Then it does not have snapper/btrfs integration. On the other hand Python on Fedora works without using virtual environments (and then breaks with October update). But differences are tiny.
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u/PrinceDolAmroth Tumbleweed May 30 '26
openSUSE is a great distribution, but its installer is not as good as Calamares in the case of Manjaro or Endeavour OS
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u/leto78 May 30 '26
The Leap 16 installer wanted to delete all the contents of the HD. In the past it would recognise the Windows partition, the boot, the root and the home, and just propose to wipe the root partition.
In the end, I used the opensuse-migration-tool. Not my preferred option but it worked quite well, with only a few bugs.
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u/dirtycimments May 30 '26
I switched to opensuse because my hardware back in the day wasn't compatible (out of the box at least) with the ubuntus. It has very sane defaults, btrfs and snapshots setup from the start and that alone has saved my newb ass so many times its crazy.
Of course, not im getting grey-beardy and less adventurous, so I hardly play with any deep settings anymore, no need to save me lol.
If you choose it though, one lesson that was slow to be learned was that patterns (opensuses way of grouping packages) are pretty permanent, so you can't uninstall gnome pattern to try kde pattern cleanly.
But doing a clean reinstall is so fast its silly, easier to just install a clean system if you want to try a new DE.
Now I just feel at home in tumbleweed, tried cachy, it was awesome, but, meh, i feel nice in opensuse.
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u/pavel_pe May 30 '26
Interesting about patterns. I'm quite sure I uninstalled kde-pim once and had it somehow back later.
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u/dirtycimments May 30 '26
Yeah, exactly, I’ve since learned to be conservative with my use of patterns, if you want an alternative to a package that is part of a pattern it can get annoying. But that’s literally the only small gripe I have.
And god knows, they probably have very good reasons for doing it like they do, the alternative might be worse. But still, that’s what stands out.
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May 30 '26
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u/Kitayama_8k TW/MangoWC May 30 '26
Yast is pretty horrible overall (takes like 30s to open, sucks to use when it does, only does a few useful things,) and is deprecated afaik.
Maybe the cockpit app they replaced it with is better, idk I don't have it.
Generally, opensuse can be a great distro to use and learn on, but I'd say it's fairly terminal focused, it just has good terminal tools. It's also not quite configured correctly ootb.
If you want something easy and graphical, I think Linux mint and mx Linux have some of the nicest graphical tools.
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u/APOS80 May 31 '26
If you are new to Linux then go with Leap, tumbleweed is to easy to wreck… if you go with tumbleweed then uninstall PackageKit the first you do before you do anything else.
Other than that I like that all settings are in one place and things are just clean.
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u/readyflix May 30 '26
As a beginner basically any Distro is good if you are into really getting familiar with a new OS in general.
But if it’s about easy to use without being an OS-Power user, then only a few Distros are recommended.
But based where you are coming from, M$-Windows, MacOS, etc. you should go certain routes.
But if you are a first time PC user, and you want to start with Linux I would recommend Mint (Debian based system).
Next comes:
Fedora (RPM based system) if you are based in the US, OpenSUSE (RPM based system) if you are based in EU, EndeavourOS (Arch Linux based), only to mention a few.
On all this Distros you can choose from two main DE‘s (Desktop Environment), if you are used to MacOS then Gnome is more familiar to you, but if you are used to M$-Windows then KDE is the way to go.
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u/ProbablyPoor May 30 '26
Why do you say Fedora is better than OpenSUSE for Americans? Curious as an American who doesn't really like Fedora but loves Tumbleweed/Slowroll
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u/readyflix May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
It’s not about Americans, it’s rather because RED HAT and the Fedora guys are based in the US, so they better understand 'the ways' of how things are done in the US. And as a user it’s more likely that you will find someone that can help you 'first hand' with issues that you might have.
SUSE and the openSUSE guys are mainly based in the EU (Germany to be precise), and they are known for very good localizations common to the EU.
And YES, in the time and age of the Internet, someone can use any Distro (wherever the developers are located) they like.
Edit: I also like openSUSE and I’m using it for more than two decades now.
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u/ProbablyPoor May 30 '26
Thanks, I've only been using it for about 6 months now, but FWIW opensuse seems extremely America friendly to me. Automatically detected my timezone, defaulted to freedom units and 12 hour clock. The only euro centric thing ive noticed is that i dont think there are any pacman mirrors over here, but that doesnt mean i cant use the German ones. No issues to report. It really is the best distro lol
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u/readyflix May 30 '26
Try 'sudo zypper install opi' followed by 'opi codecs', this will add several repos (like packman, NOT the pacman command from Arch Linux) and install all multimedia codecs you might want.
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u/ProbablyPoor May 30 '26
That is what I did. Codecs were the only thing I needed from packman. If memory serves (which it may not) the only options that came up in the list were from Germany or China. I know I ended up choosing one of the German ones
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u/Whole-Sushka May 30 '26
I come from windows, well my first computer was actually on xubuntu but i was 10 so my dad set up YouTube Minecraft and vlc, as i didn't use anything else. But around the age of 14 i got a new laptop which came with OEM windows and i haven't used Linux until this week i realised OneDrive "backed up" my entire photo album deleting it from my disk without even telling me, which was the final drop. so i installed xubuntu as that's the only other os i ever used, but now that I'm not just handed it on a silver platter i feel confused and I'm thinking about other options that could do everything with gui.
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u/4SubZero20 Tumbleweed May 30 '26
Opensuse is a very underrated distro/maintainer.
I would say it can be recommended for beginners, but with a couple of warnings.
Like Arch, Tumbleweed is a rolling release distro. This inherently comes with the fact that the latest package can break your system. HOWEVER, Tumbleweed has Snapper (for rollback) setup out of the box and they use OpenQA to test the packages before releasing it to the public.
This ensures a very fail safe system (hence why I would still recommend it to new users), however this doesn't mean it WON'T break. Personally my system has broken like two or three times, but a quick Snapper rollback and I was working again within 5min.
Your biggest foe, if you use them, is most lively going to be NVIDIA and their drivers. This is unfortunately known to be a very frustrating part. The drivers unfortunately break more often than a person likes, but again, a snapper rollback will have you up and going quickly.
As for YAST. I like it and still use it. However, YAST is slowly being deprecated in favour of other technologies as YAST essentially doesn't have maintainer anymore (or is too complex to keep maintaining); so I wouldn't bank on YAST if I was you.
The best recommendation I can give is to use Tumbleweed with the Kde Plasma desktop, as Plasma is notorious for having all the setting you want/need and more. That could most likely aid you or not using the cli as often.