openSUSE Tumbleweed Initial Thoughts

I wrote a post a couple of days ago saying that I would use openSUSE for a month on my systems. I have installed Tumbleweed on my desktop, and so far, the experience has been okay. I was able to install media codecs with ease, and all the tools and languages that I use were in the repos with fresh new versions. It recognized all my hardware, and I am rocking the default Btrfs set up with the home being Btrfs too. I have run the update to a new snapshot, and that proved to work well also. That is the one different thing because you are running a distribution update to do updates to move to the new snapshot. When I first considered checking out Tumbleweed a few years ago, the docs weren’t as good as they are now.

Two things jumped out at me immediately coming from Kubuntu 20.10. The first item is the lack of an image cropper for the user avatar. After a little bit of research, it seems to be a regression in newer versions of KDE. This regression was the same experience that I had with Fedora 33 KDE Spin. Hopefully, that gets fixed shortly. The other thing, which isn’t an issue per se, is the themes. I ended up just running Breeze Dark. What I enjoy is the Kubuntu theme. The blend of light and dark suits my preferences. I will note that the Breeze Dark theme looks way better than it did a year ago. Plasma seems to keep getting better every release with a consistent flow of improvements. There are a few projects that I am starting to admire for a slow march of progress while not breaking things for users, and this is one of those projects.

As far as performance goes, I haven’t noticed it being any slower than my Kubuntu system. Resource usage is better than Kubuntu, which keeps me wondering why Ubuntu and flavors seem so bulky. I could get Docker installed with a small hiccup related to it not being enabled to start on startup. That was an easy fix.

I am digging it just a few days in, and I am debating if I want to place Leap on my laptop or keep using Tumbleweed. I have also decided that I will set up a Kubic and MicroOS installation to check those out too.

Thanks for reading,

Jamie

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