OpenSUSE Tumbleweed... It's the little things!
You might hate to admit it but Lunduke was right about how good is OpenSUSE.
Hello there,
After my last post, I tried to test other OSs like elementary Os and such, but an unfortunate series of events took me away from writing about them.
While getting swallowed by life’s rhythm again, I found myself sticking to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. And the whole ride was more interesting than I thought. So let’s start from the beginning.
After the first boot, like almost every distro so far, there’s your welcome screen getting you up to a start with 2 simple categories, Basics, and Support. The first one points at documentation and software resources while the second gets you to help, build and contribute. Pretty straightforward.
The first thing I took advantage of from the Welcome screen is the Software link, which takes you to one of the different ways of getting Software, which is from a web page! This is for you, all the barbarians out there, you mad form of life!
I tried this way for getting one of my usual suspects. I found KeepassXC right there but the search result was confusing at first, then I change the category from ALL Distributions to Tumbleweed and now it’s not looking crazy.
You can get your programs in many ways on OpenSUSE:
Zypper via terminal
YaST Software
Discover, as it is running Plasma
Packman (opi) via terminal. I needed something that involved adding this method, I don’t remember which was it
Snap, I added a snap to get Authy at first, then used it for Bitwarden and others (I know I could do a better choice than Authy and I’m thinking to change it at some time).
I also got rid of Bitwarden’s snap because I finally found how to solve my issue with running AppImags. I was trying to run them from my “Data” partition, where there was no permissions to do so. I tried to change permissions with chmod and chown, nada. It only worked when I copied the folder to ~. So now, before changing my OS I need to remember to copy back this directory, or maybe add a sync option, which is annoying to need to do in the first place because I’m lazy as heck.
The error I am getting is “Unknown error code 100. execvp: Permission denied”. My search-fu got me to posts about FUSE being missing but it’s not the case.
Alright then, the software is downloaded and installed, everything I need is available. The next thing is making it comfy. So here comes the desktop tweaking.
As already mentioned, it is Plasma, which is a choice you might rarely go wrong with.
I already covered Plasma with different distros, so nothing new here. I just wanted to mention again, this DE got lots of already available themes, icons, widgets and such easily downloadable when reaching every category of them.
I went with a close color choice to tumbleweed’s, which is teal, and It is also one of my favorite colors. I won’t bore you with details of how it is done
One little detail I wanted to mention though. In order to get rid of desktop icons, you go to “Configure desktop and wallpaper settings” and change the layout from “Folder view” to “Desktop containment”.
The next thing I did to ease files and directories sorting is go to “Folder View settings” and choose Sorting by name, then tick the “Folders first” case.
The desktop experience is pleasant and some little details here and there make it even better. One of the best things about OpenSUSE is the ability to install updates from within the notifications area and it doesn’t even ask for the password. And this makes it feel that the system is more tightly together and professionally made, not a collection of multiple separate pieces to get something working. I hope to see this in more distros out there.
I think updating the system shouldn’t look like a thing that you need to explicitly get involved with it by opening the package manager and giving your consent every time by typing your password. Updating the system regularly is good security practice and making it a one-click task shows how much the devs care that you need to keep your system safe while not bothering much.
Still, OpenSUSE wasn’t historically known as an OS used much by beginners. It made its place in the business and professional realm instead. So, any piece of software you don’t find in the repos gonna very likely involve installation by command line and it is gonna probably be an RPM package.
OpenSUSE is an amazingly stable and solid distro that doesn’t get the credit it deserves. I even wanted to pay for the product, but it seems they don’t bother with such an offering. their suse.com website only includes payment for enterprise services and products.
I’m closing this article with this simple note. This system makes me not miss Archlinux.