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1 • openSUSE (by Roy on 2018-06-04 00:53:54 GMT from United States)
Its been a while since I ran that OS but did like it. 3 years of support sounds good.
2 • subject (by name on 2018-06-04 01:11:55 GMT from United States)
1 - btrfs is the only excuse for openSUSE / SUSE to exist.
2 - It is 2018. Why aren't you using btrfs? Bit rot kills.
3 • OpenSuse Leap 15 (by OS2_user on 2018-06-04 03:04:22 GMT from United States)
Minor note: light gray on yucky green for "Next" buttons when installing, just CANNOT be read. HIGH CONTRAST everywhere, people.
Main point is, installed and actually works for ME with no problems! -- So far. Haven't done much testing. -- Even so, almost unprecedented success in last year. Gave up on version "42" when it just lost all display during install, never saw it work.
BUT installer does enforce two-letter user name and at least one for "password", and then come the relentless "sudo" hassles. Sheesh. Permits trivial "security" yet enforces the hassles? WHY?
Once installed, still have old ongoing KDE nuisances:
1) MUST go quickly straight across on flyout menus, else switches to another category. Apparently none of KDE's young gamer / experimenters ever notices needs extra delay...
2) Like most distros, INCAPABLE of setting to my monitor's resolution, choice not even offered. It's an off-off-brand Chinese 1600x900, but not unheard of res. Installed on a Dell, so likely plain Intel graphics. -- WINDOWS HANDLES same system and monitor just fine.
Still despise having to dodge upper left corner of icons to not mark with green "+", but can endure that for limited use.
BTW: pretty sure never even saw a choice between Xorg and Wayland.
Anyhoo, just HOPE that keeps working.
4 • openSUSE (by Charlie on 2018-06-04 03:23:15 GMT from Hong Kong)
Have used SUSE since version 9.0, before openSUSE was established.
During the old days when you still have to manually configure many things, it is the only distribution that automatically enables my DHCP network, when I still did not have the idea what DHCP is.
Regarding the codecs problem, the past versions did have a feature to install codecs in a convenient way, when you play files with proprietary codecs, the system will tell you to enable and install the needed codecs. I am not sure whether this feature still exists as I tend to install them by myself soon after fresh installation.
BUT, install codecs on openSUSE is still a swift process, I don't think the review did that in a proper way. To do so, you should go to a website called openSUSE Guide. In the website there is a button which you click on it then YaST will pop out and install all codecs you will need on daily basis. And YaST should track down all common codecs itself. I never have a problem regarding codecs in openSUSE, I think it is the second best distro to obtain codecs, other than *buntus.
5 • Time somebody thought of porting YaST to debian! (by Kavish on 2018-06-04 05:16:57 GMT from India)
"On the whole, I found YaST's administration modules to be easy to use and they cover such a wide range of functions that I never had to use the command line to adjust an operating system setting."
Time somebody thought of porting YaST to debian so all debian derivatives would benefit! Thanks to anyone who considers this idea!
6 • Linux Lite and OpenSuse (by Lexy on 2018-06-04 06:06:25 GMT from Netherlands)
Linux Lite without 32-bit support? Then it is not "lite" anymore.
OpenSuse Live KDE version boots to ... cli and expects username to login and X only works if you login as root . Is it right naming it KDELive?
7 • Favourite openSUSE feature (by Brenton Horne on 2018-06-04 06:15:22 GMT from Australia)
I nearly always use Tumbleweed, and on it Btrfs snapshots can accumulate taking up so much space the system becomes unbootable. Even had this happen when I had a 1 TB root partition. I have tried regularly manually deleting old snapper snapshots but even with that I've had systems become unbootable, even when Btrfs's own tools are telling me there's plenty of space left. Instead I use a ext4 partition and I've started using a new Tumbleweed backup feature SUSE has developed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRszp1p47BM.
My favourite feature of openSUSE is hard to pick, but it's a toss up between how many different repositories are available for it from the openSUSE Build Service, with which one can even run developmental releases of GNOME or KDE (e.g. GNOME 3.29.1 is presently sort of available (some packages are stuck at their respective stable versions) from the GNOME:Next repository) and the fact there's two different editions available, Leap and Tumbleweed.
YaST has is strengths but I favour GNOME Software as it shows icons for apps (what can I say, I like the pretty pictures :P) and has support for Snaps and Flatpaks (although Snap support isn't built into GNOME Software in openSUSE's official repo, I had to rebuild it myself with Snap support -- https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:fusion809/gnome-software).
I have little exposure to KDE Discover on openSUSE, although I do use it on KDE Neon git unstable and it works quite well on it.
8 • @ 4, by Charlie (by frisbee on 2018-06-04 06:52:44 GMT from Switzerland)
While it certainly can be done, so very easy and straightforward is the whole process not.
Please have a look here:
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/opensuse-42-3.html
Repository conflicts and what not. It's about OpenSUSE Leap 42.3 but, I don't think that much has changed since. Did't have time to check on 15 though.
9 • OpenSUSE (by Janusz on 2018-06-04 08:34:31 GMT from Poland)
I dumped OpenSUSE years back, when installing anything would almost always produce messages like: "if you install package A, you must install also package B and C, but package C would be in conflict with package D. Which solution do you prefer?" At first, I could handle these, but later on it became too messy. So now we have btrfs - even if you screew up, you can always revert to the not so much screwed up condition. But why not fix YUM in the first place?
Over the last 5 years I tried to install OpenSUSE, Leap, Tumbleweed several times - both in VBox and on multi (meaning more than 3) boot laptop - it always produced problems, that required hours of good, unnecessary and in the end not needed by anyone work.
Worldwide statistics tell that only about 3% of all people on the planet read at least one book in a year, and even less than that can use logical thinking. Well, if true, than Linux will probably never jump the 3% market share.
10 • Comment on heavy CPU usage sometimes in openSUSE (by Dxvid on 2018-06-04 08:49:11 GMT from Sweden)
The review talks about heavy CPU usage and snapperd being active in the background. I think I can explain this, after the first installation of openSUSE a HUGE snapshot is taken to have an original state to rollback to in case you later damage the system really bad by doing some custom settings in command line. This is also the explanation why an OpenSUSE installation can take several GB more space than it really needs to run. Lets say it really needs 3GB, after the initial huge snapshot is done it uses 6GB.
Rebooting the computer or virtual machine during the making of the snapshot will not solve any performance problems as the computer will continue doing the snapper backups and other BTRFS file system maintenance the next time you boot. You just need to let the computer do what it needs to do without rebooting and trying to shut down the important file system processes from BTRFS or snapshots made through snapperd.
Kwin freezing with high CPU usage is however a bug that shouldn't happen, this needs to be reported as a bug at: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/
This might be a KDE plasma 5.12 bug or a bug in the implementation of KDE plasma 5.12 in openSUSE 15.0
Because hard drive space is very cheap today, and even SSD space is getting cheaper, I usually have a root partition in BTRFS of about 80GB on my desktops so I can store many snapshots in case I mess something up or in case a buggy NVIDIA driver doesn't work like it should I then can go back to a previous version of the NVIDIA driver. But on a text based server 10GB is enough, although I find BTRFS snapshots so very useful that I often have 40-60GB on the virtual server and do many snapshots. This is such a big help that I don't care if it costs a few € extra per year in disc usage.
Even though BTRFS causes high CPU usage once a week plus after the first install, I really miss BTRFS snapshots when working with Ubuntu. It's like going back to the 80-ies using Ubuntu. Ubuntu uses less space, but a single mistake from you or the package updaters can take down a Ubuntu server for hours before you find the problems and fix them manually. In openSUSE you just do a rollback which takes a minute including reboot time, then your server just works and you get very little downtime.
11 • openSUSE (by isndw on 2018-06-04 08:58:36 GMT from Austria)
I have also used openSUSE Tumbleweed for one year because the snapshot feature. For me it worked well except that i didn't fine a solution to boot into a previous snapshot from a live environment and roll back. This is sometimes also necessary if the snapshots are not anymore accessible through grub. An alternative i tested in virtualbox is with arch linux and to make manually snapshots with btrfs. There you can access the snapshots through a live environment and roll back. If openSUSE would support this too, it would be perfect.
12 • Isotop (by DR. LONG on 2018-06-04 09:21:28 GMT from United States)
As and openbsd user Isotop is a refreshing addition to an otherwise crowded ubuntu ecosystem. It takes a lot of the hardwork and (learning)out of the equation. But none the less it is quite remarkable. It provides graphical package management as well as wifi.
Good job..Vive la France!
13 • reply to @3 about sudo (by Dxvid on 2018-06-04 09:33:11 GMT from Sweden)
@3 You wrote: "BUT installer does enforce two-letter user name and at least one for "password", and then come the relentless "sudo" hassles. Sheesh. Permits trivial "security" yet enforces the hassles? WHY?"
First of all, OpenSUSE is not like most distros, you shouldn't need to use the command line on a desktop using Gnome or KDE and therefore not use sudo at all. Unless you really need to to some advanced server stuff you don't really need to use the command line, so the sudo command shouldn't be needed unless you're customizing a server without graphics. Even if you're setting up a server without graphics you can use "sudo yast" (or as root "yast") then setup most things in an ncurses graphical environment.
Note that the very secure SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) comes with Gnome installed as the default choice, so even enterprise people can use security tested graphics on servers if they so choose.
Second, you might have misunderstood the installer. Even though openSUSE can be setup with lower security than default, it's still partially based on SLES which has very high security requirements. SLES is probably only second to gentoo when it comes to security, slightly ahead of redhat/centos. In order to lower the security to the same level as for example Ubuntu, you need to do some tricks in either yast or command line to remove some of the default security. OpenSUSE Leap is nowadays based on enterprise code to most parts that relate to security settings or to security updates, even though security settings are somewhat lower in OpenSUSE Leap than in SLES it's not made easy to lower security too much. But with only a few commands it's possible to lower the security to the same level as Ubuntu or slightly lower. (but I will not teach you how as I don't like botnets made up of hacked low security Linux installations)
Third, if you don't like typing "sudo" in command line all the time you can elevate your privileges by switching to the root account instead, type "su -" once and you use root for the rest of the session (until you type exit or reboot). This works the same in most distros using bash (all big distros).
Personally I don't like that Ubuntu and OpenSUSE Leap allows their novice users to lower some of the security during the installer, but I guess they have to do that to compete with Windows and Mint to attract more novice computer users. But this makes it easier to hack them and create botnets. Luckily the default choices aren't too bad, and most novice users probably use the default choices when installing Linux even if they can lower security even more.
14 • openSUSE Leap sluggishness (by Antony on 2018-06-04 09:33:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
After removing unwanted systemd services, and switching from Wicked to NetworkManager (Wicked really slows the boot process), systemd-analyze shows my most recent boot taking 5.151 seconds.
I don't use BtrFS either.
Overall, Leap is pretty responsive for me, and (comparatively) not CPU/resource greedy. I don't suffer any bogging-down or lag.
Leap15, KDE.
Intel G3220, 8GB RAM, SSD, Nvidia GPU/driver.
15 • VLC and codecs in OpenSUSE (by Dxvid on 2018-06-04 10:12:35 GMT from Sweden)
I do agree with Jesse's review that OpenSUSE needs to start having relevant error messages when there are missing codecs. This can be very confusing for a novice computer user and has been a constant pain in the lower back for novice users trying OpenSUSE forcing people to google for a solution. Only mp3 and a few other codecs work by default.
However I don't agree with it being difficult to setup VLC in OpenSUSE for a first time user. A google search for "opensuse vlc" gives this as the number one ranked answer:
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-suse.html
There you simply click the 1-click installer link for OpenSUSE Leap 15.0 and it get's installed with all the major codecs and everything just works for most people. A novice user who have never installed any Linux distro before will be able to do this with the help of one google search, clicking the first result from the official website of VLC. Very easy and takes only a couple of minutes. Installer link: http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/Leap_15.0/vlc.ymp
Installing VLC like in the review is kind of the expert way. Using YAST to install the "less legal" packman repository and selecting individual packages there to get a complete vlc installation is more of an expert level solution to install vlc and all needed codecs. A novice user will probably just google and find the easy solution which also happens to be the best solution for 99% of the people as almost everything just works after that. To my knowledge only a few rare codecs for handheld video recorders and similar are missing in the official VLC installation from videolan.org.
For the less common codecs you need to use packman: http://packman.links2linux.com/install/vlc
I don't recommend packman for novice users as the official VLC repository from videolan has what most people need, but the version from packman can handle less common codecs plus all the major codecs.
16 • OpenSUSE Leap 15.0: It's a great success! HOWEVER ... (by Gerhard Goetzhaber on 2018-06-04 11:31:36 GMT from Austria)
... I'd recommend it to professionals only, as well as just to longanimous guys!
Me, since version 42.3 I always hold one Leap, yet having set it up with nothing else but Xfce and XFS partitions, and updated to the latest stable kernel, too. Also I know very well I've to spend many hours within one single installation to get the system fully working with unrestricted MM capability and more recent versions of some software I individually prefer to use. On the other side, the graphic Yast software management tool is truly unique and an excellent instrument to select and evenly rank repositories as well as packages only. And besides Packman, there are so many worthful repositories of Suse itself offered to the customers. One can't deny It's a thing for Nerds.
Not to forget: The maintainers of OpenSUSE have done enormous work to get this edition compatible with hardware for the original SLE 15 Beta was completely unuseable. I'd tried it out, so trust me!
17 • SUSE Boot Times / Post # 3 / Post # 7 / Post # 9 (by Winchester on 2018-06-04 12:46:00 GMT from United States)
I have OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with LXQt installed on BTRFS / system partition - EXT2 /boot partition - and ext3 /home partition.
My last boot-up time from selecting OpenSUSE in the boot menu to log-in was 24 seconds. Shutdown time is at 7 to 9 seconds.
Anything beyond that must be caused by KDE Plasma,Leap (or the combination of the 2) I would have to assume.
Regarding post # 3 ..... It's the year 2018. Brand new 1920x1080 monitors are available for less than $90 these days. You don't want to endure KDE Plasma for more than "limited use" but,you can endure a 1600x900 off brand monitor without problem??
Anyway,if you must keep the 1600x900 monitor,try adding video=1600x900 xvideo=1600x900 to the GRUB entry linux line right next to where "quiet" and "splash" usually are. Or maybe the vga= three digit code for 1600x900.
Regarding post # 7,old snapshots can't possibly be causing your system not to boot if you are deleting them. If they are gone,they are gone. The problem has to be something else that is still there unless something critical beyond old snapshots were deleted.
Regarding post # 9 , the messages such as : "if you install package A, you must install also package B and C, but package C would be in conflict with package D. Which solution do you prefer?" ..... ARE caused by THIRD party repositories.
The 3rd party "PackMan" repository caused these conflicts for me and the conflicts STOPPED when I disabled the 3rd party repository.
This is working fine on a multi-boot system requiring not much work .... not much work with OpenSUSE anyway. Once "Packman Repo" was disabled. 10 or 12 operating system multi-boot machine.
18 • GNOME: Castrating the castrated? (by curious on 2018-06-04 13:06:02 GMT from Germany)
Mr. Klitzke claims that "a lot of the other components of GNOME are simply unwanted" and that these components turn (power) users away from Gnome.
That seems to be a very strange point of view. What has turned many people away from Gnome is the repeated removing of features from Gnome by the developers. Many things that other DEs will allow are no longer possible in Gnome, because the corresponding features were deemed "unwanted". Their file manager is an especially obvious example.
At least they are only cutting up what is already unusable...
19 • openSUSE codecs (by Jesse on 2018-06-04 13:11:08 GMT from Canada)
@4: "BUT, install codecs on openSUSE is still a swift process, I don't think the review did that in a proper way. To do so, you should go to a website called openSUSE Guide. In the website there is a button which you click on it then YaST will pop out and install all codecs you will need on daily basis."
The issue I was raising in the review isn't that installing codecs is hard, it's that the user has no way of knowing they A) need the codecs and B) that they need to visit a third-party website like openSUSE Guide to do the simple install. If you'd never used openSUSE before, how would you possibly know to visit a third-party website to get one-click install codecs?
When trying to open a media file there is no error, no indication of what is wrong. If you visit the official openSUSE wiki documentation it mentions codec issues, but the user needs to dive through several layers of documentation to find anything approaching a solution.
I've worked with openSUSE before so I knew I could add the Packman repo and install the necessary packages, but a new-to-SUSE person would be lost. Even a web search for "opensuse install codecs" only brought up the openSUSE Guide community page as the third result. And, let's face it, doing a one-click install of any third-party package from a website is something we normally would tell users _never_ to do. It's a huge security risk. It completely goes against the "only use the repositories" motto of most Linux users.
20 • CPU usage and snapshots (by Jesse on 2018-06-04 13:19:11 GMT from Canada)
@10: "The review talks about heavy CPU usage and snapperd being active in the background. I think I can explain this, after the first installation of openSUSE a HUGE snapshot is taken to have an original state to rollback to in case you later damage the system really bad by doing some custom settings in command line. This is also the explanation why an OpenSUSE installation can take several GB more space than it really needs to run."
This isn't the cause of the heavy snapperd usage and not at all how Btrfs snapshots work. First, Btrfs snapshots basically happen instantly and don't use a third-party tool like snapperd to work. That's the benefit of a COW file system, there is basically no time/resource penalty for snapshots.
Second, snapshots don't take up extra disk space until changes to files happen. So your theory about openSUSE only needing 3GB of space, but the snapshot taking up another 3GB is incorrect. More space is only used when changes happen to files, not when a snapshot is created. Taking a snapshot of 3GB of space requires virtually no disk space at all, not until updates or something else changes the files.
Third, the snapperd issue continued for days, well after many more snapshots had been taken, used, rollback, etc. It was well passed the time when the initial snapshots had been taken and explored.
21 • Timeshift etc... (by OstroL on 2018-06-04 13:54:31 GMT from Poland)
"In Linux Mint 19, the star of the show is Timeshift. Thanks to Timeshift you can go back in time and restore your computer to the last functional system snapshot."
In Linux, you don't have to worry about the OS dying on you as in Windows. If you keep your home in another partition, the distro can have the caprice to go to sleep/die at sometime. You can always install the distro back from the iso, and all other apps in a few minutes. Updating and upgrading would take just few more minutes. In Linux, you can always keep few distros (or the same distro) in different partitions, you can always access your home from all of them.
Not like in Windows, Linux distro won't stay dead. Linux users like to go forward, rather than go back in time...In my laptops, Linux never die. There are few of them in everyone of them, and all of them can access "home" and also everything in Windows partition.
In Windows the restore point is a necessity. But, in Linux...?
22 • ALL Ubuntu 18.04 derived distributions, even the Mint 19 Beta ... (by Gerhard Goetzhaber on 2018-06-04 14:02:32 GMT from Austria)
... have a severe problem with their Grub implementation: Whenever you want to install yor root partition on XFS that works during setup yet after rebooting will either end up in a Grub commandline input request at all or, at least (Linux Lite, WHEN started from a foreign Grub and then supplemented with "xfsprogs" from, once again, a foreign repo, because a lot of packages lacks distributing from Linux Lite), on "update-grub" and during startup will repeatedly show a filesystem recognition error message. Furthermore, starting those distros in compatibility (non-UEFI) mode will leave it with remarkably poor and especially slow functions. Even conservative distros based on pure Debian (Sparky and MX are the very best ones!) seem to work much better when set up on individualized credentials.
The original Linux kernels in fact do support almost all hardware currently sold. What the hell Ubuntu has done with it's new kernel? What crazy modifications and restrictions did they build in?? And for what benefit???
In the past, Linuxmint was kind of rescue niche for me whenever troubles with other distros were going to leave me in desperation. Now I am dropping Mint same-same all other Ubuntoids. From now on, I will concentrate my Linux exploration on Fedora, OpenSUSE and Debian testing derivatives only ...
23 • openSUSE 15 (by Bushpilot on 2018-06-04 14:06:17 GMT from Canada)
Have used this distro for a couple of days now in VB. I installed xfce version. Find it to be rather slow and not at all smooth as compared to other distro's. Like some other distros, it takes time to get it all working properly.
24 • Linux Lite was never lightweight (by Jason Hsu on 2018-06-04 14:46:30 GMT from United States)
@6, Linux Lite was never a lightweight distro. In my opinion, being a Ubuntu derivative is a disqualification from being lightweight due to the high overhead of a Ubuntu base. SparkyLinux and MX Linux (both based on Debian but not Ubuntu) are much more lightweight.
25 • Wanted: OpenSUSE without Systemd (by Kingneutron on 2018-06-04 14:47:16 GMT from United States)
I last used SuSE 7.3 DVD IIRC, but I'd give it a try again if someone made a non-systemd flavor. MX17 FTW!
26 • @ 24 Ubuntu overhead? (by Kazan on 2018-06-04 14:57:10 GMT from France)
"In my opinion, being a Ubuntu derivative is a disqualification from being lightweight due to the high overhead of a Ubuntu base."
Explain the high overhead of the Ubuntu base. Your opinion is not enough.
27 • GDPR and Bodhi (by David on 2018-06-04 15:48:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
I was astonished to see that Bodhi are shutting their forum for fear of the GDPR! You don't need a legal background to understand it: the UK government explains it in very simple terms.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/
Basically, if you hold data about individuals in a way that enables them to be identified, then it must be secure, they must be asked for their consent, and they must be told what you need the data for and what you are going to do with it, including the fact that it will be stored in the USA. In the event of a security breach, you must announce it within 3 days Simple!
28 • links (by George on 2018-06-04 16:07:10 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the informative article on links. Links just make things easier. At one point I went a bit crazy with them. XFE file manager has the feature where links can be created by point-and-click. This is one of the reasons to consider XFE if the default file manager is weak.
The bummer with XFE in Debian-based distros is that the "recommended" dependencies include stuff that is unnecessary (and worse). Fedora is more rational. Using Synaptic with Ubuntu, adjust Settings>Preferences>General by UNchecking "Consider recommended packages as dependencies" for the purpose of installing XFE (but remember to check the box again after installing XFE).
29 • enterprise use (by Tim Dowd on 2018-06-04 16:09:10 GMT from United States)
@ 21
I mostly agree with you for home users- this is exactly how I handle upgrades or switching between distros and it's incredibly painless as long as /home is on a different partition.
Where you could see why this would be useful is in an enterprise situation. Take the school I teach at- there's probably 1000 desktops in this building alone. You can see how being able to go back to the last known-good configuration could be essential - having to replace the OS on a thousand computers all at once is a lot more resource heavy than sending the command to roll back.
30 • Enterprise use (by eduard on 2018-06-04 16:47:48 GMT from Netherlands)
@29,
ever thought of just one server and 1000 thin clients?
Just one computer to roll back?
31 • Links (by Steve L on 2018-06-04 17:00:43 GMT from United States)
A pretty good description, but not entirely clear when you talked about hard links. You completely left out any mention of inodes (or index nodes), which you need to understand if you are going to really grok hard links, let alone symbolic links and file/directory infrastructure.
Short version:
symbolic link - a file pointing to another file or directory (can cross partitions)
hard link - a new inode pointing to the same file as another inode. (only files, same partition)
The distinction of a file pointing to a file versus an inode pointing to a file is important.
Long version:
All files have at least one inode describing that file. On a given partition you can have multiple inodes describing the same file. When you "delete a file" you are actually deleting an inode describing it. When the last inode is gone, so is any pointer to the data associated with a particular file.
Since a symbolic link is itself a file, it has it's own unique inode describing it and not the linked file.
A directory is basically a file containing a list of files associated with the directory. So a directory is a very special kind of symbolic link though I've never heard of anyone else describing it that way. The directory has it's own inode describing it, but due to "rules" you cannot have more than one inode pointing to a directory. I actually knew why at some point but I've slept since then and have forgotten the details. 8^)
This discussion requires a whole chapter to adequately and, hopefully, clearly describe all this stuff. A few simple paragraphs hardly do it justice. You did a pretty good job of it but I felt more was needed... and that's my two cents worth.
32 • connectivity (by Tim Dowd on 2018-06-04 17:05:01 GMT from United States)
@ 30
It makes sense to me, but the last time I was in a school district that implemented this it didn't go so well. I think the issue was connectivity between the building where the servers were and the 30+ schools spread around the city.
I'm a teacher, not an IT person, but every school I've ever seen has had desktops in most classrooms, and I'm guessing this is the reason. The coolest solution I know of is the Spanish region of Valencia where they have Lliurex, their own customized Ubuntu distro.
33 • Linux Mint 19 Timeshift (by Phillip on 2018-06-04 17:25:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ahhhhhh Timeshift. Yet another wonderful windows idea (system restore) being implemented in a linux distro. No doubt the linux version will be far superior than the windows version.
34 • Links (by Jesse on 2018-06-04 17:49:07 GMT from Canada)
@31: "You completely left out any mention of inodes (or index nodes)"
That was intentional. I didn't want to get into something as abstract as an inode when covering the basics on links. That's more of an second article topic, in my opinion. In fact, when I sat down to write this intro I asked myself "How do I talk about hard links without using the term inode?" Because this intro was intended for beginners.
What you're writing (in post 31) is accurate from a low-level block management point of view (ie multiple inodes describing the location of bits of one big file on a disk) but perhaps not practical in the context of the user managing links/files/inodes. (An original file and hard links to that file share a single inode. It would be very easy to confuse someone on the difference between deleting a link, deleting a file and deleting an inode.) Those are a whole textbook chapter on their own. I wanted to focus on the practical side of things without getting into the low-level details of how they work.
>> "You did a pretty good job of it but I felt more was needed"
That is fair. I may do another article in the future talking about inodes and other, low-level aspects of files and links. First though I wanted to cover "This is how you use the tool" before getting into "This is how the tool works".
35 • Opensuse (by ced55 on 2018-06-04 18:46:28 GMT from United States)
I never have any luck with thi distro. I find it unstable. Snapshots really give me no confidence. I noticed that it was in the top 5 distros but has fallen.
I can't say I would try it again.
36 • Links (by Steve L on 2018-06-04 18:54:59 GMT from United States)
@34
I understand completely... your choice of covering the how before the why is probably the most practical way to proceed for most folks.
I used to work with a fellow that insisted that no one cared about the why, just the how. And, from what I can tell, he was in the majority. But it still grated on me a bit... I pretty much always want to know why something works the way it does, especially when troubleshooting. It's pretty hard to fix (permanently) if you don't know why it's broke.
I've always been the odd duck that felt understanding why needs to come with understanding how. To me, understanding why something works helps me understand how it works and vice versa.
And I just keep hoping I'm not alone... also, having been both a college professor and a professional geek, the need to explain and have things explained (in detail) runs deep.
But I do take your point that more folks are more concerned with how to use something rather than knowing how it works. Keep doing what you do, you do it well.
37 • @ 21 • Timeshift etc (by pengxiun on 2018-06-04 20:16:47 GMT from New Zealand)
Implication is it is required by Linux Mint, as the developer is conceding, that, by outsourcing updates to Ubuntu for the majority of updates, updating will break your system.
However, in the release blog, the developer admits that " Security and stability are of paramount importance."
This is obviously a change of attitude, as now "The Update Manager no longer promotes vigilance and selective updates. It relies on Timeshift to guarantee the stability of your system and suggests to apply all available updates."
38 • BTRFS? More like Butter FS! (by CS on 2018-06-04 20:35:20 GMT from United States)
Why is SUSE still riding the BTRFS dead horse? Caveat downloadeur and don't forget to keep those backups up-to-date!
39 • openSuse (by Jodan on 2018-06-04 20:47:00 GMT from United States)
After many tries with suse since he great 9 days I've walked away each time with the same feeling: it was a nice try.
I have an affinity for it, though, but mainly because I remember those golden days of old when one could walk into a retail computer software outlet and see suse on the shelf in a nice box. I began "feeling sorry" for suse over time, seeing it pushed out by Microsoft's scorches earth marketing tactics.
Not for me. But I do test each release on one of my laptops.
40 • openSuse (by Jodan on 2018-06-04 21:52:19 GMT from United States)
After many tries with suse since he great 9 days I've walked away each time with the same feeling: it was a nice try.
I have an affinity for it, though, but mainly because I remember those golden days of old when one could walk into a retail computer software outlet and see suse on the shelf in a nice box. I began "feeling sorry" for suse over time, seeing it pushed out by Microsoft's scorches earth marketing tactics.
Not for me. But I do test each release on one of my laptops.
41 • openSuse Performance (by Kim on 2018-06-04 23:39:43 GMT from Austria)
My take for performance (KDE on Lenovo notebook with SSD):
- File system is proven EXT4 instead of Btrfs and XFS
- File indexing disabled
- Akonadi and related programs uninstalled in favor of alternatives
- Wayland not in use (more memory, less performance)
- Most desktop effects disabled
- All remaining animation set to "instant"
- The NVIDIA driver is a must on relevant hardware (nouveau is junk)
Result:
The system boots within a few seconds and memory after boot is below 500MB thanks to the elimination of akonadi. Systemd was never a problem, a few KDE glitches, that's all ....
Remark:
Due to past experience I absolutely distrust Tumbleweed. Leap 15 does the job with less things to worry about.
42 • 4MLinux (by Dude on 2018-06-05 02:09:12 GMT from Bahrain)
It's good to see somebody still supports older 32 bit processors! There are lots of older PCs out there not capable of running a 64bit OS. I'm curious to see if 4MLinux works on processors that don't support PAE, like a Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo). If so, this may be the only Linux distro available for older processors like this.
43 • YaST (by Farhad Mohammadi Majd on 2018-06-05 05:23:53 GMT from Iran, Islamic Republic of)
I believe that YaST is a necessary program for all desktop distributions, this is the best thing I have seen in the GNU/Linux.
44 • Bodhi (by edcoolio on 2018-06-05 05:58:17 GMT from United States)
@17
Well, I'm glad you are a lawyer with tons of extra time to donate to a barely break-even project, but I don't think those responsible for Bodhi are well versed in European law.
Maybe you should pay for the server space, run the forums, and take all legal responsibility?
Just sayin'.
45 • @44 European law on user datas... (by Frederic Bezies on 2018-06-05 06:53:06 GMT from France)
Well, it is a good thing in a way: I got spammed by dozens of sites I don't even remember going to which tell me they have some of my datas. Asking me to stay or resign.
It took me an hour a day since may 25th, but at least, I know my datas remains my datas. The best way? Not having a social network account on Facebook for example. What about the same in the USA? It will just kill facebook economic model.
46 • @31 hard links and inodes (by greenpossum on 2018-06-05 08:08:19 GMT from Australia)
>All files have at least one inode describing that file. On a given partition you can have multiple inodes describing the same file. When you "delete a file" you are actually deleting an inode describing it. When the last inode is gone, so is any pointer to the data associated with a particular file.
You're wrong. Try this:
touch a
ln a b
ls -li a b
Both links have the same inode. What is different is that there are two directory entries pointing to the same inode. When the last pointer to the inode is deleted, the file contents are too. How does the inode keep track? There is a link counter in the inode.
47 • OEM Install (by Jim on 2018-06-05 10:19:24 GMT from United States)
What is the advantage of an OEM install? If I understand, it gives the user a chance to create the main account after the install instead of during the install?
48 • Post #'s 42 , 41 , 35 (by Winchester on 2018-06-05 13:50:27 GMT from United States)
4M Linux works on non-PAE machines. I once installed an older version,4M Linux 12 on an ancient early 2000's non-PAE Compaq.
Pure Slackware (or Porteus Desktop) should work as well. Maybe even Gentoo or Mageia.
The 32-bit OpenSUSE Tumbleweed also works on a cheap non-PAE 32-bit ASUS netbook from four or five years ago. I have it Multi-booting with the Arch 32-bit spin ; MX-14 (needs upgrade due to end of life) ; Stella 6 ; and Shiba-Inu 32-bit on that same netbook.
Which leads me to posts 41 and 35 :
I have found OpenSUSE Tumbleweed to be the most reliable rolling distribution besides Void Linux and the semi-rolling PClinuxOS. 64-bit on my desktop and 32-bit on the netbook still going strong ...... has to be over a year and a half. Much more intervention required with Arch and its derivatives.
Only twice on the desktop did I have to boot into a maintenance mode to fix things over the span of 18 months. Not once on the netbook which has LXDE,Enlightenment,and KDE 3 as desktop session options. I had to add the Mozilla repository to the 32-bit version install.
49 • SuSE review (by R. Cain on 2018-06-05 14:29:45 GMT from United States)
Now that Mint Linux has become simply one more bloated Mebuntu with nothing to now distinguish it from the rest of the herd (17.3 was the absolute best of the best), there are any number of Linux distributions which are better--SuSE being one--except for one major, serious failing, with no way out: SYSTEMD!. (Know what Mint's recommendation is if you don't like their embracing of systemd? Use some other distro. That's in their blog.).
Make that two major, serious failings: GNOME is the other one; even offering it calls into question SuSE's long-standing, hard-earned reputation as one of the few distributions which place a premium on high quality. At least SuSE, to their credit, gives you another option.
50 • hard links and inodes (by Steve L on 2018-06-05 16:43:54 GMT from United States)
@46
While I really do hate being caught in a mistake, I do love to learn stuff.
I've been using that description of inodes and hard links for decades. It's what I remember learning way back when and now I find I've got it wrong.
Without digging through a lot of old manuals I can't say whether I've been remembering it correctly or not, though I'd like to think I have been. I'd certainly hate to find out I've had it wrong all these years. That would mean I've been passing on bad info to students and other interested parties for far too long and that's a thought I'm not very comfortable with.
In any case, I am going to update my little speech on inodes and hard links to match the reality you pointed out to me today. I do appreciate the correction -- Thank You!
51 • Hard links and inodes (by Jesse on 2018-06-05 16:55:25 GMT from Canada)
@50, @46:
Both explanations are right, just depending on the context. The original explanation is post 31 about how files can have multiple inodes and removing the inodes for a file unindexes the file and effectively deletes it is accurate. A file can have multiple nodes and when they are removed, the file is effectively deleted/lost.
The observation in 46 is also true. Hard links and the original file share the same inode. Deleting a link reduces the counter in the inode. When the inode counter reaches zero, it is removed.
These two explanations do not contradict each other, they just deal with different parts of the same process.
52 • 4MLinux (by zk1234 on 2018-06-05 19:12:50 GMT from Poland)
@ 42
PAE is enabled in 4MLinux:
https://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08934
53 • USB boot (by John on 2018-06-05 20:09:27 GMT from United States)
Hi All,
I tried to show by grandsons SD->USB2 Linux on their recent laptops. [ What I am running on this older Toshiba now. ]
No go. Ugh. Couldn't show TI CCS and other engineering stuff.
I tried several different versions including Debian 9.4. All would not boot.
And now github.com is gone....
Simple ideas please.
John
54 • Distro with Unity DE called Olu (by Kazan on 2018-06-06 05:36:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
There was a distro with the Unity DE earlier based on Ubuntu development branch, and now there is another distro based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS at sourceforge, named Olu. Unity was loved by some, hated by some, but nice to see it still there for those, who'd like to use it. It appears to have a lesser memory usage than Gnome shell.
55 • @19 - openSUSE multimedia (by Andy Prough on 2018-06-06 06:19:57 GMT from United States)
Hi Jesse - Doing a web search for "openSUSE multimedia" or "openSUSE media" brings up two websites as the top two hits, each of which give you the option of one-click installation for everything you need to run multimedia.
Personally, I think that's about as easy as it gets, and I think that's how 99% of the users are approaching the situation the moment they see that multimedia doesn't work. I know you'd prefer a bit more hand-holding of newbie users, but I'm pretty sure you also are aware that SUSE has had a very long-standing policy of staying as far away from patent infringement as possible, and so the last thing they are going to do is give suggestions on where to go online to get codecs.
Thank you for the intriguing review. I've used Tumbleweed on a laptop for years, but have never tried Leap. I think it's time to give it a spin.
56 • @ 54 Olu-Unity (by OstroL on 2018-06-06 13:05:11 GMT from Poland)
Just downloaded it. Lovely distro. Reminds me of the nice times.
57 • openSUSE media and licensing (by Jesse on 2018-06-06 23:54:23 GMT from Canada)
@55: "Hi Jesse - Doing a web search for "openSUSE multimedia" or "openSUSE media" brings up two websites as the top two hits, each of which give you the option of one-click installation for everything you need to run multimedia. Personally, I think that's about as easy as it gets"
That would be relatively easy, assuming that is what the user searches for when their media player doesn't play a file. But without an error message, I think it's more likely a user searches for "dragon player doesn't work" or "can't play media on opensuse". Neither of which bring up guides for dealing with the issue on the first page of search results. I'd also like to reiterate that encouraging users to click-to-install third-party software through a third-party website is not ideal. That's a likely path to installing malware if the user is not careful or experienced. I'm not saying openSUSE should provide codecs in their main repositories or even explicitly tell people how to get codecs. But a distinctive error message is the least they can do to keep users safe.
@57:
>> "I understand that there is some license with Linux that prevents selling distributions or something like that."
There is no license that prevents anyone from selling Linux distributions. That's how SUSE and Red Hat make their money. If you want Mint to cost $100 you could just send them $100. You can think of Mint as being "pay what you want", anywhere from $0 to as much as you think it's worth.
58 • @51 Jesse: inodes and hard links (by greenpossum on 2018-06-07 00:05:53 GMT from Australia)
Sorry Jesse, I know you are trying to be conciliatory, but a file is uniquely identified by the inode. The inode contains critical information about the file such as the blocks containing the data, the size, the permissions, etc. But not the name or the actual data. Therefore 1 file = 1 inode. The system has to update the unique inode whenever file operations are done.
However there can be multiple paths on the same filesystem to the same inode = file. That's what hard links are, a path to an inode. There are no backpointers from the inode to the paths. That's why in the worst case to find the other links to an inode, the whole filesystem has to be scanned, a consideration for filesystem consistency checkers.
Unless you redefine file to be something else.
This was all designed back in the days of Unix by very smart people: Ritchie and Thompson.
See http://www.linfo.org/inode.html
59 • hard links (by Jesse on 2018-06-07 00:42:03 GMT from Canada)
@58:
I think you may have misunderstood what I wrote before because everything you just posted is in agreement with what I was saying. We're entirely in agreement with the structure of filenames and inodes.
60 • @ 54 Olu-Unity (by akoya on 2018-06-07 11:47:38 GMT from France)
Nice to see Unity back. Snappy too. At sourceforge. net/projects/olu-unity/ Little hard at the moment to find it, but if you search Olu at Sourceforge, you can find it.
61 • @57 openSUSE media and licensing (by Andy Prough on 2018-06-07 21:10:26 GMT from United States)
>> "I'm not saying openSUSE should provide codecs in their main repositories or even explicitly tell people how to get codecs. But a distinctive error message is the least they can do to keep users safe."
Yeah, but I started using SUSE around 1999, and they've always steered completely clear of discussing proprietary codecs within the Desktop experience as long as I recall.
I guess I just find it amusing that reviewers started complaining about this when Ubuntu first took the world by storm in 2004. Fourteen years later, and here we are still talking about it, still acting as though SUSE is going to change their minds, when clearly they are quite resolute in the way they do things.
But you know all this better than most anyone, as you've probably reviewed every major SUSE or openSUSE release for more years than I can recall. I look at openSUSE as a do-everything distro that requires a good deal of familiarity, and isn't looking to convert the masses in the same way as a user-friendly distro like Ubuntu or Mint.
62 • @41 OpenSUSE on ext4 (by Janusz on 2018-06-07 21:18:54 GMT from Poland)
Could you explain how do you install OpenSUSE on ext4? I tried it several times, but the results were either unbootable or literally shaky. I would be very much obliged for your recipe for taming the cameleon :} Thanks much.
63 • OpenSuSE and VLC media player (by OpenChuSSe on 2018-06-08 01:52:42 GMT from Canada)
I never had a problem installing multi-media codecs using zypper on Leap:
OpenChuSSE:~>zypper install libdvdcss2 ffmpeg lame gstreamer-plugins-libav gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-plugins-ugly-orig-addon vlc vlc-codecs
64 • @62 - openSUSE on EXT4 (by Andy Prough on 2018-06-08 03:22:59 GMT from United States)
It should just install on EXT4, I've never had any trouble with Tumbleweed, or with openSUSE before that. If you are having that kind of trouble, I would go to the openSUSE forums and ask. They are super knowledgeable and usually quite friendly.
65 • Timeshit (by imnotrich on 2018-06-10 01:49:23 GMT from Mexico)
"In Linux Mint 19, the star of the show is Timeshift. Thanks to Timeshift you can go back in time and restore your computer to the last functional system snapshot."
This is a joke, right?
Among other things, the mandatory/forced install of Timeshift is like a virus, giving itself root permissions to run amok and take control of your entire hard drive. Not just a few files/folders. The only way to fix is uninstalling Timeshift and reformatting the hard drive. Twice. Then delete fstab entries too.
Linux Mint 19 Beta is BETA in the truest sense of the word, many many bugs which should have been easily caught during testing...but some of those bugs were fixed within 24 hours of release and I know the team is working feverishly to resolve those which remain. Not to mention packages in the repos which obviously were not tested with this release.
And I get that some of those bugs were inherited from Buster, Bionic or previous versions of Mint and had nothing to do with the introduction of Cinnamon 3.8.
I have confidence that when Mint 19's officially released, it will quickly overtake Manwhatchamacallit on the DW page hit list.
66 • openSUSE (by Peter Pointer on 2018-06-10 15:01:08 GMT from Canada)
openSUSE uses systemd ?
PASS.....
Might as well install Windows 10...which ain't Ever gonna happen !!!
: D
67 • format twice? (by tim on 2018-06-10 16:47:02 GMT from United States)
what @65 described sounds bizarre. "Timeshift is like a virus... and gotta uninstall and format the hard drive. Twice. Then delete fstab entries too."
68 • SuSE and the use of systemd (by R. Cain on 2018-06-10 17:32:33 GMT from United States)
I'm seeing a lot--and I mean a LOT--of grousing about systemd. And a lot of suspicious--i.e., totally unwarranted--defensiveness and 'pushback' on the part of Linux distribution makers regarding their use of systemd (in a totally uncharacteristic response by "Clem"...whoever pretends to be him now...a commenter on Linux Mint's Blog was told to use some other distribution if he didn't like Mint's use of systemd...in other words, "We really don't care WHAT you think any more.").
Maybe it's time for
1) a listing of all those distributions which are "systemd-free".
2) an in-depth look at Devuan.
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." --Mark Twain
69 • System d the latest bogeyman (by Linux whiners on 2018-06-10 21:42:42 GMT from )
Linux users never stop complaining about everything then wonder why desktop Linux is still a “joke”.
70 • @69 System d the latest bogeyman (by DaveT on 2018-06-10 22:33:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
Systemd is evil, so quite naturally the linux distro I use (Devuan) is completely free of it!
71 • Thanks for telling me... (by OS2_user on 2018-06-10 23:47:21 GMT from United States)
... what I need and don't need!
@ 13 -- So, I'm not allowed to touch the command line? "Sudo" problems I note because occurred right off in the little testing I did.
@ 17 -- So I'm only allowed monitors that you approve? Monitors report their size on request through the wires. It's trivial to program SVGA type adapter (circuits) to another resolution.
Number of Comments: 71
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| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
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| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
MCNLive
MCNLive was a Mandriva-based distribution designed to run from a USB Flash drive or a CD. It aims to be a user-friendly and complete mobile Linux solution for desktops and notebooks, running in live mode with dynamic hardware detection. It was developed by Mandrivaclub.nl.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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