Ubuntu vs opensuse for a regular user in 2017

[danboid]

I've decided its still best to avoid BTRFS. Here's the official shortlist of reasons its shit:

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Gotchas

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php ... gmentation

RAID 5 and 6 are totally fubar and people are reporting hugely slow fs ops with as few as 8 snapshots, stuff goes read only at a whim under BTRFS it seems.

I'll be installing with XFS.

[danboid]

One of the main advantages of ZFS is the scrub feature which checks your files match their checksums and so this helps fight bitrot. BTRFSs scrub is offline only so doesn't seem like much use to me.

[danboid]

I'm going to be trying (the MATE and maybe the Lxqt LEAP versions of) GeckoLinux first

https://geckolinux.github.io/

Its got a number of advantages over the official opensuse installers, including a choice of desktop without having to download them all in one 4.7GB ISO.

[Gps]

Good that you made a decision.

Just for info, I updated from leap 42.1 to 42.2.

I had some problems, all related to LMMS.

I will try to keep this short.

Because of problems with lmms I had to compile it myself.

The updater then complained because some of my libs were too new.

With help from the opensuse forum though, I managed to update from 42.1 to 42.2. ( not a fresh install )

Then I tried to compiled the latest release candidate from LMMS.

I did not have to install one lib, nor one dev file.

The update process left all the extra libs i needed for compiling lmms alone, and 42.2 is as stable as I expect from openSUSE.
The lmms version I compiled myself before the update, survived the update, and still works.

The problems with lmms, are lmms related. People who cant or dont want to compile lmms themself on Linux have a problem.
RC3 seems to work fine though, I only found one minor bug,
The version you get from openSUSE though, does not have Vestige, but that's not because of openSUSE, the latest stable lmms release has issues on about every distro. ( vestige missing )

[danboid]

I'm back, after having tested the openSUSE waters IMO:

I think its definitely worth checking out openSUSE to see if it works for you. In my specific use case, opensuse doesn't cut it because I was unable to get video thumbnail previews to work in any of the GTK filemanagers - mainly Thunar but also caja and nemo - no go. I had ffmpeg and ffmpegthumbnailer installed, from packman. In the case of Thunar, I tracked it down to tumblerd being fubar and outdated under all current suse distros. The segfaulting tumblerd has been spotted and patched, it obvs just hasn't been tested and integrated yet.

Thunar is one of my 4 primary apps. Any major flaws found in my browser (FF), text editor (Geany), terminal (terminator) or file manager is case for dismissal, red card, heads rolling and so on. Sorry openSUSE but I must move on already! Looks like I must next check out the current state of stable Ubuntuland to get a good view of what is deemed acceptable and normal in desktop Linuxland today, to contrast it to the Arch way.

If you are going to check out suse, I'd recommend you try it via GeckoLInux, which has a nicer, live, installer and plus it installs faster and with much less bloat than the official installer. The prob is the gecko install isos are currently on LEAP 42.2 instead of 42.3. Updated isos are on there way and you can easily update to 42.3 post install. However, I had severe issues with both the Gecko MATE spins - my X cursor freezes seconds after logging in. This doesn't happen if you install MATE using the official openSUSE DVD. I had no such freezing cursor probs with the Cinnamon version of Gecko.

Running MATE under Arch uses less than half the RAM a default openSUSE MATE install uses. Arch is the best if you want an streamlined system with the latest stuff - it is much more current than tumbleweed. Going forward I think I'm prob going to be dual booting (a flavour of) Ubuntu with Arch on my laptop whlist saving some space to play around with various others bare metal style.

[Gps]

Arch is one, I might try myself one day.

I solved problems with steam and games on openSUSE more then ones with Arch solutions.

I don't have a problem with openSUSE not being lean.
I always use bittorrent to download the iso, then burn a dvd or use an usb stick.
Takes me 15 min or so.

If you however want to fine tune opensuse there is also:

https://susestudio.com/

You can export your custom operating system as a Virtual machine, Live USB Disk, CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk Image and so much more.

[danboid]

Suse Studio and OBS are two of the best distro services out there. I really like the calamares installer as used by the Suse Studio builds.

I've ended up installing the Ubuntu MATE 17.10 beta and its working great so far, which is a nice surprise as the last couple of releases of UM have been junk for me - MATE worked better under Arch until now.

My thinking is to try and run a distro that I could realistically install for friends and family alongside Arch, which I love but wouldn't recommend to non-enthusiasts.

[Gps]

I would not advise Arch for most people either.

I tell people who want to try Linux (windows users)

Ubuntu, openSUSE or Mint

Arch has the best wiki as far as I know, often very use full.

Good luck with Ubuntu MATE