What I like about openSUSE Tumbleweed

In the post GNU/Linux and open source changed my life I had promised myself I would write a post explaining why I like openSUSE Tumbleweed.

📜 An introduction to openSUSE#

To introduce what openSUSE is, I’ll quote what’s written in the project’s official wiki:

The openSUSE Project is the expression of the efforts of a worldwide community to promote the use of Linux everywhere. openSUSE creates one of the world’s leading Linux distributions, as well as a wide variety of useful tools (such as OBS, OpenQA, KIWI, YaST, OSEM, and many others), working together in an open, transparent, and friendly way as part of the global Free and Open Source Software community.

That seems fairly clear, but I’d add one more detail:

It is sponsored by SUSE and its mascot is a friendly chameleon.

🔥 Cool things about Tumbleweed#

openSUSE Tumbleweed has many great features.

Rolling release#

It follows a rolling release model, meaning continuous releases.
I’m always looking for the latest software versions. So how could I live without a rolling distribution?? I don’t think there’s much more to add. Actually, yes: I recommend reading Regular Release Distributions Are Wrong.

Rollback for humans#

Things can break, and it’s better to be prepared. openSUSE has a tool called snapper (configured out of the box) that allows you to create and manage filesystem snapshots. The tool makes it very easy to perform system rollbacks directly from the boot loader (I started sleeping better at night).

Stable and tested (with automated tests)#

openSUSE releases/updates are tested using openQA, an automated testing tool developed in-house by openSUSE. Life is too short for manual testing!!

PS: in my free time I developed osqu, a CLI tool to browse tests available on openQA.

Desktop environment agnostic#

It takes a desktop-environment-agnostic approach. Since there’s no default DE, users are free to choose their favorite one.

The installer provides official support for the following DEs: KDE, GNOME, Xfce.

More details:
Desktop FAQ | How to choose a desktop environment.

Package manager#

It uses Zypper, an rpm package manager that’s more performant than dnf (I hope nobody kills me for saying this). I’m very comfortable with it and so far I’ve had no issues.

openSUSE Build Service#

It includes the openSUSE Build Service, an automated system for building and distributing packages from source. On OBS you can find additional software provided by third-party repositories (or create your own).

More details:
Public Projects - openSUSE Build Service

Configure everything with YaST#

YaST is an installation and configuration tool for openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise. It allows you to control most system settings and comes with two interfaces: Qt and ncurses.

Obviously, for me only the ncurses interface exists. 🤓

And for automation lovers, there’s AutoYaST, a tool that allows you to automate system installations and configurations using configuration files.

✨ Beyond Tumbleweed#

Even though I prefer openSUSE Tumbleweed, there are other openSUSE variants worth mentioning:

openSUSE Leap#

openSUSE Leap is the regular-release version of openSUSE. It has the following estimated release cycle:

A minor release is expected approximately every 12 months, aligned with SUSE Linux Enterprise Service Packs
A major release is expected after about 36–48 months, aligned with SUSE Linux Enterprise releases

openSUSE MicroOS#

openSUSE MicroOS is a version mainly designed for containers and edge devices. It is based on openSUSE Tumbleweed.

openSUSE KubicOS#

openSUSE KubicOS is a Kubernetes-certified distribution focused on container-related technologies.

Conclusions#

I’ve been using openSUSE Tumbleweed for almost two years now. Besides being an excellent distribution, I’ve found it to be a good compromise: it combines some characteristics of the two distributions I like the most (Fedora and Arch Linux).

Some useful links:

Well, just like with the previous post, I couldn’t help but leave a parody video produced by SUSE.