openSUSE's "Agama" Next-Gen Linux Installer Plans For A Busy 2024

[alexvoda]

Choose openSUSE Tumbleweed Installation

Issue, there is no option to boot to a live environment. It's 2024 and while the base Fedora, Debian, Windows, Mac OS, BSD and others also do not allow for booting to a lice environment, once you have used one of the Fedora spins, Ubuntu, GeckoLinux, which is based on OpenSuse, you realize how lame it is to not be able to boot to a live environment.

Not true. openSuse provides live ISOs and that is what I used to install it the previous several times. They do indeed also offer images without the live environment and just the installer. For enterprise deployments these are certainly preferable and that is why they are the default.

openSUSE Online Repositories

Completely unnecessary, the install media should have a base system that is installed, there is no need for any additional repositories during the install process.

There is good reason for this. The install media does have what is needed. But a user with internet might just want to install the latest of everything instead of updating afterwards. Conversely you might want to install on systems without connectivity.

Choose openSUSE Repositories

A continuation of the nonsense and this is something that annoys me about every distro, even after installation is complete.

There's Main, Main OSS, Main non-OSS, Main Sources, Main DEBUG, seriously WTF? This is something that needs to be decided at install?

The free software debate is very contentious. Debian had a very long debate about it. Fedora famously doesn't include certain codecs by default. Some people prefer software freedom and some people prefer some convenience. Providing this option is entirely reasonable.

Choose openSUSE System Roles

This just makes me want to slap someone. you have Desktop with KDE, Desktop with Gnome, Desktop with XFCE, Generic Desktop, Server, Transactional Server and something else.

There should be 2 options tops, Generic Desktop and Server and that's it.

I would take it even further and say that there should be separate installers for desktop and server, like nearly every other distro does it.

I would say this is one of the best parts of the openSuse installer and distribution model. I really hate keeping track of all the official and unofficial spins of Ubuntu. Ubuntu does it your way. The main iso is the desktop with choices made by Canonical. Don't like that? Go download a community spin. Want a server? There is a separate iso for that but now you have to use an ncurses installer.

With openSuse I have just one iso flashed and then click a checkbox for whatever I want. And I don't have to give up the posh install experience if I am not installing a GUI.

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openSUSE Partitioning

I hate this practitioners and it goes for Fedora's as well. The suggested partitioning is always based on God knows what but on the bright side it does give you a hint as to set up the boot partition, so I guess there is that.

openSUSE Filesystem Options

I'm not a big fan of using different file systems for different partitions.

The have cleaned up the installer a bit, the partitioning to me is poorly laid out, I would make it dummy proof, have a nice simple screen that shows all the physical disks, with any partitions currently on them and and then clearly say that in order to boot the system a boot partition of this size is required, for the amount of installed ram we recommend this much swap, we recommend separate root and Home directories if this size.

Assume that the person sitting in from of the computer has never installed anything in his life.

KISS.

I quite like how for partitioning it gives you a very clear summary of what it will do before it does it and lets you go back and make changes. I do agree with your suggestions about the partitioner recommending stuff.

KISS as an UI principle is great for something like Zorin, a distro for people who never used Linux and are not interested in computers in general, people who don't care about the OS but need it anyway to get work/leisure done in the web browser/office suite/LOB app/games, people who do not care about Qt vs GTK, free vs non-free, btrfs vs xfs, traditional vs immutable, etc., people for whom the OS is merely a requirement of the apps they use.

openSuse is not that. openSuse straddles multiple lines of being fresh vs stable, enterprise ready vs hobbyist friendly, deeply customizable vs ready to use. I think it manages rather fine. It is less opinionated than Fedora, less chaotic than Ubuntu with its spins and limited support non-LTS versions, far friendlier than Debian, nearly as fresh as Arch or a stable as old CentOS. openSuse is the distro of balance, the true jack of all trades and master of many of the Linux world and that means that there are many choices to be made when installing it. It is easy to use without taking control away. Being computer beginner friendly is simply something openSuse does not even strive for. You need to know about computing concepts because openSuse does not hide things from you. Quite the contrary, it puts everything in your face in a GUI unlike most Linux distros where you have to drop to a terminal for plenty of things. openSuse provides the easy life to Linux-knowledgeable and opinionated users.

At least to my understanding, your dissatisfaction stems from wanting it to be something it is not and is not even aiming to be. openSuse simply has a different audience.

[sophisticles]

Not true. openSuse provides live ISOs and that is what I used to install it the previous several times. They do indeed also offer images without the live environment and just the installer. For enterprise deployments these are certainly preferable and that is why they are the default.

From their website:

Please be aware of the following limitations of the live images:

• They should not be used to install or upgrade. Please use the installation media instead
• They have a limited package and driver selection, so cannot be considered an accurate reflection as to whether the distribution will work on your hardware or not
• Kernel and initrd can’t be updated, so they shouldn’t be used as a persistent installation

[alexvoda]

From their website:

I know that but for my purposes those aspects are irrelevant because I always have a net connection when installing (I'm always doing a NET install), so I prefer having a single flash drive that also has some recovery tools on it. Doing a NET install from the LiveCD is equivalent to doing a NET install from the diminutive NET image.

Since I personally care about only Tumbleweed, any flashed image will be obsolete very soon so I always do NET installs.

If I wasn't willing to do net installs, I would have indeed needed the install DVD image instead of the LiveCD image because the live image is very limited and unsuitable for non-NET installation.

[STiAT]

I still don't get why a "web based installer" would be a feature. In the end it's just another UI framework used on top of a web engine still doing the same stuff. Net-installs have been a thing since I think 2004. So nothing new there either. A hype for reinventing the wheel?