throwawayish

I prefer Flatpaks by a wide margin. This presentation by openSUSE’s Richard Brown is a great watch for those looking for a thorough comparison.

Not sure if one would call this support, but technically Davinci Resolve can be installed as a flatpak.

Hard-reboots are no longer required on Silverblue when installing or upgrading packages (besides kernel) through rpm-ostree. Arguably one should only sparingly rely on rpm-ostree for installing packages. But it’s great to have access to soft-reboot when setting up a new system.

The author of the blog post likes X, that’s why distro A is might be the perfect distro for them. While I like Y, which is why distro B is the perfect distro for me etc. What makes Linux -in a sense as a platform- perfect great is that it allows one to either find/install/build/configure the perfect system for them^[1]. Some prefer to be in full control from start to finish, while others just like sane defaults. The fact that Linux allows for such diversity is almost mind-blowing.

The degree of that diversity will only increase as time goes on and very likely at some point (purely as a side-effect of further diversification) very ‘dumped down’ versions of Linux might -and perhaps already have- arise. This is inevitable and -perhaps to a degree- essential. And no matter how ‘dumped down’ some Linux distros would have become by then, you can still bet your money that distros like Gentoo and Slackware will continue to do what they always have. So that everybody and their mom, but also the tinker-loving you, will be able to have their perfect distro.

Therefore I don’t see any merit/benefit in contributing to gatekeeping, elitism or whatever this is supposed to be. Instead, we should contribute in more meaningful ways; e.g. like by maintaining some packages you need in your perfect distro. And perhaps those changes will actually contribute to it becoming the perfect distro for others…

1. I’d argue Linux isn’t quite there yet, unfortunately. As some highly specialized systems just don’t exist yet… Regardless, l would reckon it allows one to get the closest to such systems.

I would like to ask if openSuse Tumbleweed is a good option for daily driving ang gaming.

Definitely! Depending on your hardware configuration and the games you play, it might even give you a significant performance boost. For completeness’ sake, it’s important to note that most of the (potential) gains in performance are related to having a more recently released kernel. So similar gains would have been had simply by using something like Arch or Fedora. Furthermore, other factors -like scheduler, custom kernel patches for additional performance and how the packages have been compiled etc- are perhaps also avenues worth exploring in that regard. However that’s a potential can of worms I would rather keep closed in this discussion.

Furthermore, openSUSE Tumbleweed comes with great defaults, which is in clear contrast to Arch that comes with (little to) no defaults. This makes it significantly easier to just install and get on with business, something which you might be already familiar with if you’ve used Linux Mint and Ubuntu. However, compared to those, openSUSE Tumbleweed might require you to perform some additional steps related to codecs and whatnot. This is nothing out of the ordinary as Fedora would have required it as well. Out of ‘the big bois’, only Ubuntu has been able to solve this through a single-click during installation. Note; this is not a technical matter but a legal one. Thankfully, openSUSE offers great documentation to solve this as smoothly as possible.

Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that openSUSE Tumbleweed, contrary to all the other distros that have been mentioned, is configured with Snapper+Btrfs out of the box. This is IMO a must-have on any reliable system as it allows one to rollback to a working system whenever your system seems to have been borked somehow. The other distros allow you to set this (or similar solutions) up yourself, however openSUSE is the only one that does this for you. Furthermore, if security is of any concern to you, but you’re not that knowledgeable on the subject, thus requiring your distro to do the heavy-lifting, then once again openSUSE Tumbleweed (together with Fedora) performs best out of ‘the big bois’.

After mentioning such praise one might ask “What’s the catch?”, because -somehow- openSUSE Tumbleweed isn’t as represented in the online discourse compared to Arch, Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora. And honestly, I don’t know why it is so criminally underrated. So in that regard, it’s quite unfortunate that it can’t quite reap the benefits of having a huge involved community like the others have. And perhaps that’s where the catch is…; it doesn’t have as big of a user base -> limited user base isn’t able to contribute to it so that it becomes as ‘competitive’ as the more popular distros -> potential new users don’t pick or stick to openSUSE because package/function X (or whatever) is absent -> it doesn’t have as big of a user base… To give an example; I really like to have a secure system. And while openSUSE is one of the best to offer that out of the box, it unfortunately doesn’t allow me to further harden it by installing a hardened kernel without myself becoming the maintainer of said package. This is in clear contrast to Arch, Debian and Fedora that offer access to repos that contain a hardened kernel; be it through the AUR, COPR or the repo maintained by the folks over at Kicksecure.

The graphics card I have is Nvidia if its any relevant.

Perhaps openSUSE Tumbleweed will require you to put in more effort -compared to Ubuntu- to make sure this works as intended. However, thankfully, the documentation has got you covered.

Thanks for the detailed reply!

Thank you for being appreciative!

Though, I couldn’t help but wonder the motivation behind your inquiry. Are you just exploring the waters beyond Ubuntu? Are you interested in rolling release and got curious when you learned what openSUSE Tumbleweed had to offer in that space? Were you perhaps looking for a distro well-suited for gaming and did you perhaps come across someone mentioning openSUSE Tumbleweed which subsequently peaked your interest? Are you perhaps unhappy for some reason with Ubuntu and looking for something to replace it with?

Lots of questions, of which I don’t expect you to answer more than a couple (if at all). I would already be more than happy if you could provide us a bit more insight regarding the motivation behind your inquiry.

Thank you!

I’m just starting to spread my wings outside of Ubuntu right and see what’s out there.

As you must have been aware of by now; there are hundreds of distros out there. Which obviously makes it a daunting task to find your distro with that overwhelming amount of distros to potentially choose from. However, quite fortunately, the vast majority is actually not even worth considering as a daily driver. Arguably only the popular independent distros (Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, Slackware and Ubuntu^[1] etc^[2]) are noteworthy, unless you’ve got very specific wants and/or needs that are only easily accessible through a derivative of theirs. Out of these, Gentoo is perhaps too much of a deep dive at this point in your Linux journey. Slackware ain’t bad, but as you’ve already had some experience with modern Linux distros, I find it rather unlikely that you would enjoy using it; though, perhaps, you might one day (read: decades down the line). So…, only five distros remain… On that note, for whatever it’s worth, openSUSE Tumbleweed definitely stands out positively among these IMO (though perhaps another one might be shining even brighter (obviously biased 😜)).

The UI looks real neat as well.

Interesting. Are you referring to the desktop environment? Which -actually- should be reproducible on most other distros*. Or perhaps you’re actually referring to YaST? Which is openSUSE’s excellent configuration tool; perhaps closest thing that Linux has to Windows’ Control Panel. Some even regard it as openSUSE’s killer-feature, especially because most other distros (aside from MX Linux) only come with relatively basic configuration tools by comparison. In retrospect, I probably should have mentioned it in my earlier comment 😅.

I’m not really looking for a gaming focused distro right now.

I’m actually glad you aren’t; they generally tend to miss out on polish. If you do end up looking into one, then I’d argue it’s better to run a dedicated distro as such -perhaps as a dual boot- for all your gaming needs instead of trying to game heavily on your daily driver, unless you find that too cumbersome and/or fear for issues related to storage. I’m aware that this is probably an unpopular take*.

Just something that I can daily drive and occasionally play games with.

Aight, got ya. Well, in that case, openSUSE Tumbleweed is definitely worth considering.

1. I am very aware that Ubuntu is technically not quite as independent as the others are.
2. I felt the likes of Alpine, Guix, NixOS, Puppy, Solus and Void are at least worth mentioning as independent distros.

First of all, I think it’s important to state that the ‘default’ settings that distros ship with and thus you’re met with right after a fresh installation try to target a sweet spot in which a lot more besides performance is considered; reliability, security, stability etc. However, depending on your workload and your hardware configuration, it’s possible to have it more optimized towards performance through ‘tinkering-means’.

However workload, metrics, system and hardware configuration provide so much variability that an exhaustive comparison between distros is just hard to do right. It’s possible to find some on Phoronix (and Reddit), but testing it yourself on your own hardware is a lot more valuable.

Still, it’s possible to draw some basic conclusions based on the available data and common sense:

• Newer versions of the kernel generally have optimizations related to performance, especially for newer hardware. So -for performance sake- it makes sense to pick a distro that always tries to stay as close as possible to the latest kernel release.

• Overhead is in almost all cases detrimental to performance, so more minimal systems seem to score better. A lot of distros offer an ISO that’s meant for minimal installations, so those are perhaps worth checking out.

• Compiling yourself (with performance optimizations) or using packages that have been compiled with performance optimizations in mind provide significant improvements that might be worth your time.

Beyond these three it becomes very murky, real quick. I guess (custom) kernel patches/optimizations are worth a mention, but you would have to benchmark it yourself on your own hardware to see if they’re even worth the hassle (spoiler alert: some of them should, but it’s best to stay objective and without any expectations regarding them).

I’d like to end this with naming some distros that might be worth mentioning in this discussion: Arch, CachyOS, Clear Linux, Garuda, Gentoo, Nobara and PikaOS.

(Manjaro keeps breaking itself for a laugth)

Are you perhaps using the AUR more than you should on a Manjaro installation? Just for your information; because Manjaro holds back packages for a couple of weeks, any package from the AUR might conflict with those ‘outdated’ packages and thus cause some breakage. If you really need those packages, then you should consider container solutions like Distrobox to resolve this. Note that trying things like installing a custom kernel won’t work through Distrobox.

So the main options probably consist of:

• Just plain Arch; archinstall has made it a lot easier to install. Furthermore, after everything is set and done, it can literally be Manjaro without outdated packages and less bugs etc, or actually whatever you would like your Linux installation to be. Setting up is the most daunting part though. Fortunately, the Arch Wiki does an excellent job in providing a resource at every set of the journey. Recommended if you’re not scared of setting up your system from a blank slate.

• Any other Arch-based distro, really. There are a ton of recommendations found in the other comments and there’s even more if you check out Distrowatch for Arch-based distros. If you kinda know what you’d want from a future system, but can’t be bothered with setting it up directly from Arch, then this might be recommended based on the specifics of your demands and to what degree existing distros align to that. For whatever it’s worth, I think Garuda Linux is an interesting option for those that want to move on from Manjaro. Similary to Manjaro, it’s opinionated on how your system is/should be configured. That’s why it’s also one of the few Arch-based distros (like Manjaro) that offers -out of the box- the means to rollback to a working system whenever anything unfortunate befalls your system, Garuda achieves this through coming pre-configured with Btrfs+Snapper. It should be noted, though, that Garuda is considered bloated by some. However only you can decide for yourself if their offering is bloated to you or not. So check out its Xfce edition -or any that sound interesting to you- for yourself, if you’re interested. If you think it’s interesting, but are still too much bothered by the bloat, then perhaps their Lite versions are more to your liking.

There are a lot of options beyond Arch-based distros. However, as I don’t know what made you gravitate towards Manjaro in the first place and what you’ve come to (dis)like since, it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly you’d like. If the AUR has been your main reason for using Manjaro in the first place, then it’s important to note that Distrobox also grants access to the AUR from any of the other popular distros out there. So you’re not confined to just using Arch(-based distros) unless you really need some custom kernel that is somehow only available in the AUR.

• If you checked out Manjaro for its unsuccessful attempt at providing a stable rolling release, then you should check out the most successful attempt with openSUSE Tumbleweed. It has a respectable amount of packages and enables users through OBS (OpenSUSE Build Service) to extend this significantly. Its installer offers the option to go for a minimal installation.
• If rolling release has scarred you, but you still want up-to-date packages, then consider Fedora. Huge community, AUR-like repo in COPR and once again a very respectable amount of packages make it definitely worth a mention. It offers the so-called Fedora Everything ISO (Network Installer) that acts as the installer for minimal systems.

Get your priorities straight. Picking a distro to stick with becomes a lot easier that way.

To give an example of how I dealt with this myself in the past.

Number 1 priority for me was and still is security. I’m willing to give up performance and convenience for the sake of security. A shortlist of distros that in some capacity suffice: Fedora, openSUSE, Gentoo, Arch(/Artix), Alpine, Void, Spectrum OS, Qubes OS, Kicksecure, Whonix, Tails.

However…:

• Whonix and Tails fall off for not being a daily driver.
• My laptop can’t handle Qubes OS.
• Spectrum OS is still WIP.
• Gentoo, Void and Arch(/Artix) require the user to set it all up themselves, but as a newbie I needed a distro that would do the heavy-lifting for me.
• Alpine seemed cool, but I wasn’t able to deal with issues related to musl.

So Fedora, Kicksecure and openSUSE remain. While Kicksecure (arguably) has superior defaults (when it comes to security), it is still a relatively small project compared to juggernauts like Fedora and openSUSE, so I was inclined to dismiss it unless Fedora and openSUSE weren’t able to keep up. Then I learned about how both Fedora and openSUSE had so-called immutable variants, so I got interested in those and what they had to offer. And even though they were still a bit crude, unpolished and kinda finicky to work with; the promise and potential was clearly there. I was especially amused by how Fedora’s rpm-ostree enabled one to forego unknown states, bitrot, configuration drift etc and was a very serious step-up compared to all the other options. Soon after I realized that I had found the distro and the rest is history… Since, I’ve obviously found other distros that had some interesting things going on, however none of them (besides the promise of Vanilla OS’ 2.0) has been able to deliver in terms of security and reproducibility. So for me it’s still rather clear cut.

In your case, to me at least, it seems you’re inherently attracted towards stable distros (like Debian) but lust after rolling release due to the newer packages they offer. So in your case I’d actually recommend the following:

• Main system: Debian(/Devuan)
• Install Nix and access Nix packages through there.
• Finally, install packages you still need but can’t find elsewhere through the AUR but within a container. I would recommend Distrobox as it makes this go rather easy and painless.