OpenSUSE Announcement On SUSE's Recent Merger

[korrode]

And then there is thumbleweed, why does almost nobody know openSUSE has two rolling releases too ?

It's not that i don't know about them, it's that i prefer other distros for rolling.

Rolling brings all kinds of complications, as such keeping everything else as simple as possible is best. These big convoluted distros like openSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. are ok when you're just going to hack at a snapshot of packages, stabilising it and applying security fixes, but if one is actually going to roll to new major releases of software, it's Arch/Manjaro or bust. :P

[Calinou]

It's openSUSE's policy not to provide the proprietary nvidia driver which requires the nvidia kernel module which some kernel developers erroneously regard as being in violation of the GPL (the actual nvidia license for the nvidia blobs has always allowed repackaging and redistribution and actually encourage it).

Erroneously? I don't think so.

[zanny]

Tumbleweed is a PITA in my book, since I tried running it a few weeks ago on my grandparents computer (based on AM1) to try to get it working without being stuck on kernel:stable which will inevitably and quickly break, but found out it does not roll up to date Mesa releases. So you change packages to it and are back at Mesa 9.2 and the gpu is not recognized anymore.

I have them back on 13.1 with the X11 and kernel:stable repos, but it is non-optimal in my book.

I really wish that Manjaro / Chakra / Netrunner would get their shit in order and collaborate to make an actually good rolling and stable KDE distro based on Arch. Manjaro has the infrastructure but no design sense and looks like some 12 year olds idea of a distro, Netrunner is just rebranded Manjaro with no meaningful improvements, and Chakra is jumping a battalion of sharks with all their insane ideas like replacing the package manager and building their own packager and installer GUIs when they still have no MAC kernel and the default image is bloated to hell at over 1.8GB of stuff (same with Manjaro, though, which is a 2GB image).

3 month delayed system upgrades from the Arch repos would solve all my problems if I could get it on top of a grsec or apparmor kernel, and that is all I'm really after for everyone I install Linux for. I guess Kubuntu is going to end up being there soon, since at least I have the choice to do the biannual upgrades to make modern hardware work, but the package infrastructure there is shit (PPAs are just fundamentally worse than either the OBS or AUR) and the LTS is still running god awful Upstart.

[tomtomme]

Does the Factory repo contain nvidia blobs or no? I remember Tumbleweed did not.

I am on radeon. So I do not even know the names of the nvidia blobs.

But take a look here: http://software.opensuse.org/search?...upported=false

If they exist you find them there

[tomtomme]

Zypper was already awesome fast in 12.2. I feel that it has already outperformed yum (and its upcoming successor DNF) and urpmi by quite a margin.

yeah. but with 13.2 zypper doubled or trippled its speed on updating its repos and computing an update. I am serious!

[DanL]

I'd like to try openSUSE again now that the package management speed is supposedly improved (I tried Tumbleweed previously).
Is Tumbleweed like Debian Testing where Factory is like Debian sid+experimental?

As for the merger, I'm glad everyone keeps their job and openSUSE continues on...

[tomtomme]

Tumbleweed is a PITA in my book, since I tried running it a few weeks ago on my grandparents computer (based on AM1) to try to get it working without being stuck on kernel:stable which will inevitably and quickly break, but found out it does not roll up to date Mesa releases. So you change packages to it and are back at Mesa 9.2 and the gpu is not recognized anymore.

I have them back on 13.1 with the X11 and kernel:stable repos, but it is non-optimal in my book.

try the pontostroy repo, that is up to date (bleeding edge git stuff) and at the same time works 99% of the time.
It did for me with 12.3, and now factory. pontostroy on tumbleweed was not so great, but maybe I just got a bad timing there.
I used tumbleweed since the beginning and besides up to date kernel and kde it is not that big or useful. Even the maintainer said it might die, and factory COULD take over its job.
I already feel that factory is now at the SAME stability level than tumbleweed and provides recent mesa (10.2.x) etc.

So if somebody would want to go tumbleweed these days I would even say: go factory cause it gets more attention. It also needs 3 repositories less and it is supported to add other factory compatible repos. With tumbleweed not even the packman repo was officially supported and many repos did not even had an explicit tumbleweed version...

I would say, drop tumbleweed completely and focus on factory, which is the only real rolling suse.

[tomtomme]

I'd like to try openSUSE again now that the package management speed is supposedly improved (I tried Tumbleweed previously).
Is Tumbleweed like Debian Testing where Factory is like Debian sid+experimental?

As for the merger, I'm glad everyone keeps their job and openSUSE continues on...

I did not try debian testing or sid, but from what I have read the new factory is more like testing. cause there is also a opensuse factory-to-test now which would be like sid. This to-test is the new place where alpha, beta, rc stuff goes and is then automagically tested before its submitted to factory, to avoid major breakage, see: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Fac...tion#Boring.3F

[tomtomme]

It's not that i don't know about them, it's that i prefer other distros for rolling.

Rolling brings all kinds of complications, as such keeping everything else as simple as possible is best. These big convoluted distros like openSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. are ok when you're just going to hack at a snapshot of packages, stabilising it and applying security fixes, but if one is actually going to roll to new major releases of software, it's Arch/Manjaro or bust. :P

did you test the new suse factory? I think you would be surprised. However, I must say, I did not test arch yet...

[tomtomme]

http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Tumbleweed

This page needs an update. What you cited from there is not true anymore for factory.

It says
"The difference between Tumbleweed and Factory is that Factory is bleeding edge, often experimental, not yet stabilized software that needs more work to become useful. Tumbleweed contains the latest stable applications and is ready for daily use. "

It is bleeding edge, yes, but there is no more betas or even rc-kernels in ther. so i would call it stabilized.