OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: A Powerhouse, Rock-Solid Linux Desktop Distro
Although I’ve never used openSUSE as my Linux distribution of choice, I’ve always held it in very high regard. This is a distribution geared for those who want complete control over their operating system and need more than just a traditional desktop operating system.
Based on SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE Tumbleweed is about power and is perfectly at home on both home and business desktops. Along with Tumbleweed, there’s also a new release candidate for the beta of the standard Leap release, which should be available in July, with the final release in October. If the beta is any indication, version 16 will be as rock-solid as ever.
What’s New?
Before I offer my take on the latest version, let’s talk about what’s new with the openSUSE Leap 16 beta. Keep in mind, the Beta is all about Leap and not Tumbleweed (which is a rolling release distribution and what I tested — more on that in a bit).
First off, Leap 16 will be the first version of openSUSE that only includes Wayland as the display protocol. X11 is gone, as is SysV Init, and unlike its rolling release sibling, Leap has seen the complete removal of Yet Another Setup Tool (YaST), which is a major change. YaST has been around for a very long time and serves as a powerful admin tool for openSUSE. To make up for the removal, the developers have added the web-based Cockpit tool. Note that openSUSE Tumbleweed doesn’t ship with Cockpit installed (as it still uses YaST).
The change makes sense on some levels, but (if I’m being honest) does surprise me as there are certain features in YaST that aren’t available in the default Cockpit installation. For those who’ve been used to having YaST at their disposal, Leap 16 will be a major departure. That doesn’t mean it’s lesser, it just means it’s quite different. The good news is that, unlike YaST, Cockpit is accessible over a LAN, so admins will be able to access Leap 16 desktops from anywhere on the network.
I installed openSUSE Leap as a VirtualBox VM, but immediately ran into an issue when the boot partition wasn’t recognized. This is a known issue, and I’ve yet to discover a fix for it. Because of that, I had to install Tumbleweed (the rolling edition) for my testing. It would be nice if openSUSE could resolve this issue; otherwise, using Leap as a virtual guest is kind of a nonstarter at the moment.
System Requirements
- CPU: Minimum 2GHz dual-core processor
- RAM: Minimum 2GB physical RAM
- Storage: Over 40GB of free hard drive space
- Network access is required for net installer
My Take on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
The new openSUSE installer is really nice. It’s so simple that anyone can use it, which is a refreshing change from previous iterations, where new users could easily become intimidated by the process.
Once the installation is complete, you can log into the desktop and hit the ground running with a well-designed KDE Plasma desktop environment that’s built for anyone who’s ever used a PC with a traditional interface. Click on the Office menu and you’ll find plenty of software, such as KMail, Kontact, KOrganizer, LibreOffice and more. There’s also:
- Firefox
- VLC media player
- Akregator (news feed reader)
- Kate (advanced text editor)
- Kompare (diff/patch frontend)
- Ark (archive files)
- Emoji Selector
- And much more
The software selection is complete enough that you should find everything you need to get busy with your work and personal life. If there’s something missing, fire up KDE Discover, search for the app you need and click to install. You’ll also find Flatpak support built into the graphical user interface (GUI), so you can install plenty of software without ever having to touch the command line.
One thing I really appreciated was that Samba was pre-installed. However, you do have to take care of a couple of things before you can share folders to your LAN. The first thing is to open YaST and head to the Samba Configuration section, where you must start the service (in the Start-Up tab) and then enable Allow Users to Share Their Directories (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Adding your user to the sambausers group.
Once you’ve done that, open the file manager, right-click on the folder you want to share, select Properties, and then click on the Share tab, where you’ll be prompted to click Make me a Group Member (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Adding your user to the sambausers group.
You’ll then be prompted to restart the computer. After the restart, log back in, and you should be good to go. Go back to the Share tab in the folder’s properties window, and you’ll be prompted to create a Samba password. After you’ve done that, the share is ready.
Samba has always had a lot of moving parts that require configuration, so it’s nice when a distribution allows you to handle these all within a GUI.
Performance
I’ve never been one to think that openSUSE was the best-performing desktop distribution on the market, but the beta version of 16 has come a long way. This latest release is probably the most performant version of openSUSE I’ve tested in a long time, so bravo to the team. Although this might not beat out some of the lightweight Linux distributions, for openSUSE to perform this well is a feat.
Who Is OpenSUSE Tumbleweed 16 For?
First off, you have to remember that Tumbleweed is a rolling release distribution, so you have to understand that you’d be using an OS that is constantly updated (and doesn’t require upgrading from major release to major release). If you’re okay with that, then Tumbleweed 16 is a great option because it’s not only well-designed, but it includes one of the most powerful desktop admin tools on the market (YaST).
Would I recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed to users who are new to Linux? No. But if you know what you’re doing, this distribution is a powerhouse that will serve you very well.
If I’ve piqued your interest, download an ISO for openSUSE Tumbleweed and give it a try.
