OpenSuse and Tumbleweed question.

**exploder** · June 8th, 2013

I have an HP laptop that has been pretty problematic with most distros. I installed OpenSuse on the laptop a couple of days ago, I had a minor problem with getting the network to start but it did not take very much effort to get it working. OpenSuse starts faster than any other distro I have tried on the laptop and all it's hardware is working just fine. I have tried running several different distros on this laptop and always had some kind of show stopper problems.

I would really like to get the laptop to where I can just leave it alone and use it. I do not want to re-install the operating system periodically. I wanted to run PCLinuxOS KDE on the laptop but there was problems with the wifi going crazy and a screen full of text if I logged out. I am sure these issues will be resolved in future releases but for now I had I find another option if I want to use the laptop. I had Ubuntu 12.04 running on the laptop but a kernel update hosed the system beyond repair..

I tried OpenSuse just for the heck of it and was pleasantly surprised by how well it ran. My laptop boots up faster with OpenSuse than any other distro I have tried and the discrete graphics worked perfect out of the box! What I would really like is to not have to reload the operating system for a very long time. I had heard about Tumbleweed but what I would like to know is can I just update KDE and the applications and leave the underlying system alone?

Is anyone here running OpenSuse with Tumbleweed? I do not want to end up with breakage and would really like to find someone that has experience with using Tumbleweed. The length of support on OpenSuse releases seems pretty decent so if there are problems with using Tumbleweed I would be fine with leaving things as they are. I would really like to have the release roll if it is possible though. Any insight on Tumbleweed would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: I found the documentation that answers my questions.

http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Tumbleweed

**BigSilly** · June 8th, 2013

I've never tried Tumbleweed. My impression of it is a work in progress, and I don't think they recommend it right now for everyone.

But yeah we're the same with openSUSE. On both the laptop and the desktop I don't think I've ever run any better Linux. For the laptop (the wife's) I'm like you and don't really want to update the OS too often. She wouldn't really appreciate that! There's good support for it though, with 18 months for each release and also an in-place upgrade available. I wouldn't normally wish to go that route, but if a re-install is looking inevitable after 18 months I'll at least give it a go first.

**exploder** · June 8th, 2013

Thanks for the reply BigSilly. The more I use OpenSuse 12.3 the more I like it. I just tried the one click install to upgrade LibreOffice to the latest stable version, it worked perfectly! I think I will skip Tumbleweed after reading the documentation. 18 months of support seems pretty reasonable and I am real happy with how well everything is working. Thanks again for the response and your experience with OpenSuse.

Here is where I got the information on upgrading LibreOffice in case anyone else is interested.

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/g...2-3-64bit.html

**Mikeb85** · June 9th, 2013

I would leave Tumbleweed alone. They say it's stable, but it's not entirely stable. By constrast, the openSUSE numbered versions are rock solid. Just update whenever the next numbered version comes along (change repositories and use sudo zypper dup). OpenSUSE handles updates very well.