[HN Gopher] OpenSUSE Leap 15.3
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       OpenSUSE Leap 15.3
        
       Author : nix23
       Score  : 73 points
       Date   : 2021-06-02 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (news.opensuse.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (news.opensuse.org)
        
       | ognarb wrote:
       | I'm an happy user of openSUSE tumbleweed. It's a very solid
       | distro and if zypper is too slow for you, you can switch to dnf
       | and it's work fine.
        
       | newdude116 wrote:
       | Great system but I got tired of RPM and switched to an Ubuntu
       | based system
        
         | rubyist5eva wrote:
         | What makes one "tired" of a package format?
        
           | gopaz wrote:
           | If you package software you for sure can get tired of it :)
           | 
           | But I would never switch to Deb, that's just a pain.
        
           | newdude116 wrote:
           | I do IT but I am not really a CS guy.
           | 
           | Too many programs that I was not able to install due to
           | dependency problems. This is rarely a problem under Ubuntu.
           | But I admit that it has been ages that I moved away from
           | SuSE.
           | 
           | I will likely leave Ubuntu if snap becomes too common or the
           | rule.
           | 
           | By the way, SuSE does an IPO soon but the IPO price looks
           | steep.
        
           | ragingrobot wrote:
           | Not PP, but the only thing I can figure as an end user is rpm
           | does have a reputation for dependency hell, which is pretty
           | much moot with front ends such as yum, dnf and zypper.
           | 
           | I can see if I were a package maintainer I might have a
           | different opinion, and get "tired" (more like "fed up", no
           | pun intended) of a format.
           | 
           | I only had to make my own packages once or twice when I was a
           | Debian user, Debian packages seemed a chore, and I always
           | resorted to using things like checkinstall and debhelper.
           | 
           | With RPM, I don't hesitate to write a spec when I need a
           | package of a piece of software not provided in the repos, and
           | spec files are pretty easy to work with. (I tend to favor
           | using packages over 'make install').
        
         | shodan757 wrote:
         | As a counterpoint, I experienced the exact opposite. I got
         | tired of deb-based distros leaving me in package limbo if
         | something went wrong. I'm sure there's an easy fix, or maybe
         | the entire problem is fixed now, but I've been a very happy
         | user of opensuse (and just suse before that) for a long time -
         | well over 15 years now. I _love_ their huge range of optional
         | software repos. I can have a nice stable base system with only
         | certain software bleeding edge.
        
       | unixhero wrote:
       | Any hope for a PPC Big Endian build for my Apple Mac G5s?
        
         | nix23 wrote:
         | No, since Leap 15.3 uses SLES binary's....
         | 
         | But NetBSD would be the best match for your G5
        
         | jayp1418 wrote:
         | Check this out https://washbear.neocities.org/netbsd-macppc-
         | install.html
        
       | gopaz wrote:
       | For anyone into packaging and building software I can really
       | recommend SUSEs open build service, https://openbuildservice.org
       | 
       | It's really powerful.
       | 
       | Checkout what opensuse is currently building here;
       | https://build.opensuse.org/monitor
        
         | usr1106 wrote:
         | > Checkout what opensuse is currently building here
         | 
         | Actually the service is completely open and cross-distro.
         | Everybody can build anything for all major distros. In practice
         | the majority is probably related to OpenSUSE.
         | 
         | I have built packages for OpenSUSE, Ubuntu and Arch. Just for
         | myself if I needed to patch or try out something or I needed
         | something not available in the standard distro repos.
        
       | COGlory wrote:
       | In the past year I've deployed Leap on 5 different workstations
       | and servers. Three of them with more complicated active directory
       | logins, and pam_mount setups. I've also compiled and installed a
       | variety of academic software that was otherwise challenging to
       | get working on CentOS.
       | 
       | Overall I'm very happy with Leap, and Yast makes some of the more
       | complicated things a lot more straightforward.
        
       | stryan wrote:
       | Release notes available at https://doc.opensuse.org/release-
       | notes/x86_64/openSUSE/Leap/... .
       | 
       | The big thing with this release is Leap now uses the same
       | binaries as SUSE Enterprise, giving better support options. A
       | good CentOS replacement for those still looking.
        
         | beermonster wrote:
         | Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't 15.3 based on SUSE Linux
         | Enterprise 15 SP3 and supported until December 2022? (I may be
         | mis-understanding SUSE releases..).
         | 
         | One of the things I liked about CentOS was not having to
         | upgrade every x months/years.
        
           | stryan wrote:
           | Major Releases are supported for at least 3 years, but are
           | officially supported until a successor is released. Minor
           | releases are supported for 18 months. So that is a downside,
           | it is not quite the support level of CentOS, albeit having a
           | dedicated minor release support schedule is nice (For RHEL at
           | least you are expected to update to the newest minor release
           | unless you pay extra).
        
           | rubyist5eva wrote:
           | You still have to upgrade your CentOS machines to the interim
           | point releases to maintain support don't you? With CentOS
           | version X.y becomes unsupported as soon as version X.y+1 is
           | released, that's why it got turned into Stream, so it was
           | always getting updates instead of having dead periods where
           | sometimes systems would go weeks or months without support
           | from packages released in RHEL.
        
         | cesarb wrote:
         | > A good CentOS replacement for those still looking.
         | 
         | Unless your company requires you to use Microsoft Defender for
         | Endpoint on Linux (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
         | us/microsoft-365/security/defe...), which is supported on RHEL,
         | CentOS, SLES, and a few others, but _not_ openSUSE (
         | "distributions [...] that are not explicitly listed are
         | unsupported, even if they are derived from the officially
         | supported distributions").
        
           | nix23 wrote:
           | Leap 15.3 is build on SLES, and if you need support from
           | Microsoft, you have lost already...not to mention a IT-
           | Department who installs a Antivirus on a Linux endpoint...and
           | probably forgot about the HID.
        
             | reddit_clone wrote:
             | I have always wondered how Microsoft and McAfee convinced
             | people to install their stuff on _linux_ servers !
             | 
             | What do they actually do, other than actually increasing
             | attack vectors?
        
           | Arnavion wrote:
           | Yes, as a 10-year user of Tumbleweed, generally OpenSUSE is
           | left behind when it comes to downloading binary packages from
           | first-party sources.
           | 
           | Even for the Microsoft software that "supports" OpenSUSE,
           | historically that support was by expecting OpenSUSE users to
           | use their RHEL packages which didn't always work well. [1]
           | [2] (I don't know if the problems are still there, because I
           | switched to the Docker image for `az` and stopped using
           | `powershell`)
           | 
           | [1]: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/6184
           | 
           | [2]: https://github.com/Azure/azure-cli/issues/7523
        
         | rubyist5eva wrote:
         | I can vouch for Leap being a great CentOS replacement. I
         | switched to Suse around when Fedora 34 came out and I have
         | turned into a huge fan. Converted my homelab to be completely
         | Suse based and I have zero regrets.
        
       | schmorptron wrote:
       | You never hear much about OpenSuse or Suse, but whenever you do,
       | users seem very happy with it. Is it just a perspective thing, or
       | is there another reason why it isn't huge like Ubuntu or Fedora?
        
         | rubyist5eva wrote:
         | I am a Suse convert and I advocate loudly for it mostly because
         | you don't hear much about it, so passion compensates for
         | mindshare. Yast, Zypper, microos (a transactional update
         | rolling spin) are all fantastic products and I'm a huge fan of
         | Tumbleweed gaming systems because you get all of the newest
         | updates for Mesa, Vulcan, etc....and because of the openQA
         | system things are generally better tested than they are in
         | Arch.
         | 
         | Tumbleweed got Gnome 40 stable before Fedora 34 was released
         | and it's been rock solid for me since day 1. And updates are
         | generally extremely safe because if an update breaks your
         | system you can just rollback to a previous Btrfs snapshot with
         | one command and a reboot, wait a bit and issues are fixed very
         | quickly.
        
           | ragingrobot wrote:
           | > microos (a transactional update rolling spin)
           | 
           | While it was intended for servers, if you set it up right it
           | can be an openSuSE equivalent of Fedora Silverblue, even
           | better if you prefer Plasma as I do. It takes a little work
           | to get to an exact equivalent (IIRC toolbox had to be
           | installed and some extra set up after install).
           | 
           | Also to note, if you don't want a rolling version, Leap does
           | offer a transactional server option in the installer.
        
             | rubyist5eva wrote:
             | Yes, I've tested out the Gnome version of their
             | transactional-update based Desktop. It was a generally good
             | experience but I remember having issues with certain
             | packages and ended up going back to regular Tumbleweed, but
             | I'm hopeful for the future as it's very close to what I
             | want out of the box - will definitely give it another try
             | the future.
             | 
             | I'm using a transactional-update based leap server for a
             | container host right now and it's been awesome - I just
             | upgraded it to 15.3 and seems to be working just fine as
             | well.
        
         | nix23 wrote:
         | Well it is huge, but more in Europe, i seen many Big Corp's
         | using SLES, an nearly everyone who uses SAP.
        
         | Popegaf wrote:
         | It's a nice OS, but my biggest pet peeve is that it doesn't
         | come with h264 repos installed [0]. One has to first add them
         | otherwise one won't be able to play most videos or music in
         | your browser. Some configuration is therefore necessary and I
         | can't just install it in 15 minutes then hand it over to the
         | owner.
         | 
         | It's a pity because the fastest way to scare the average user
         | away from Linux is to force them to open a shell in order to
         | have a working setup. Hopefully that's something that'll
         | change.
         | 
         | As a technical user, I enjoy it though. YaST is great for
         | configuring many parts of the system, the documentation is
         | great and it's stable. If Nix ever gets usable, I might give it
         | a shot, but it's OpenSuse all the way for now [1]
         | 
         | [0]: https://en.opensuse.org/Additional_package_repositories
         | 
         | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYRlTISvjww
        
           | COGlory wrote:
           | You can technically add the repos through Yast, but I agree,
           | it's a pain.
        
           | usr1106 wrote:
           | Yes, you need a repo from Packman. Less than 15 minutes to
           | set that up if you know what you are doing. Yeah, if you
           | don't install a new machine frequently you will have
           | forgotten the details until the next time. And some guides on
           | the net are not as good as others. Haven't done it myself for
           | many months, so once again I don't remember it in detail.
           | 
           | I guess the reason is that their corporate lawyers tell them
           | that they must not do it. There might be patent issues buried
           | in that code.
        
           | rubyist5eva wrote:
           | Doesn't Ubuntu require you to manually install restricted
           | extras, and fedora needs rpm fusion. I don't see how this is
           | more advantageous than just enabling packman in yast and
           | switching the packages over with a single click.
        
             | usr1106 wrote:
             | I think no longer. I installed a new Xubuntu a bit more
             | than a year ago and so far all videos from the Web and they
             | few DVDs I have watched did just work. I was a bit
             | surprised by that.
        
         | TheCondor wrote:
         | Could be because it's European.
         | 
         | openSUSE has a nice pacing, it's new enough to be a great
         | platform but it's not changing so quickly you need a fresh
         | installation every handful of months or you're constantly
         | fixing things. The tooling is good as well, there are some
         | aesthetic things I kind of dislike (like some of the config
         | files in /etc should be a layer deeper, ATMO) but it works well
         | and it's well made. Major upgrades tend to work and aren't that
         | scary.
         | 
         | The transactional system versions (MicroOS and then TW can be
         | installed as "transactional") are potentially game changers.
         | The snapper integration with btrfs and grub makes a really
         | compelling case if you've ever needed it; btrfs seems like it's
         | getting closer and closer.
         | 
         | This is my interpretation: If you go back to when RHEL was
         | spawned, there were sort of two distinct styles of Linux
         | systems, they were very much and east coast and west coast sort
         | of style. UNIX dorks may disagree with this, but SuSe has
         | provided something more like a European style. They have tools
         | for updating configuration files and they provide some opinions
         | on how things should be run. Once you get used to it and in to
         | it, it's nice.
        
       | didibus wrote:
       | Leap and what I use Tumbleweed are great. I highly recommend it.
       | I use them over Ubuntu as my desktop and laptops OS, it's been
       | great all around.
        
         | nix23 wrote:
         | Tumbleweed is great for User-devices and Leap for Servers and
         | "Enterprise"-Devices. It's a great combination.
        
         | Arnavion wrote:
         | It also exists for the PinePhone. [1] [2] I'm looking forward
         | to trying it when I receive it.
         | 
         | [1]: https://en.opensuse.org/HCL:PinePhone
         | 
         | [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCrGi8hsGhY
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-02 23:02 UTC)