Review: openSUSE Tumbleweed (2018)



My experiment with openSUSE's Tumbleweed was a mixed experience. On the positive side, Tumbleweed stays constantly up to date, providing the latest packages of software all the time. For people who regularly want to stay on the cutting edge, but who do not want to re-install or perform a major version-to-version upgrade every six months, Tumbleweed provides an attractive option. I also really like that file system snapshots are automated and we can revert most problems simply by restarting the computer and choosing an older snapshot from the boot menu.
On the negative side, a number of things didn't work during my time with the distribution. Media support was broken, the Discover software manager had a number of issues and some configuration modules caused me headaches. These rough edges sometimes get fixed, but may be traded out for other problems since the operating system is ever in flux.
In the long term, a bigger issue may be the amount of network bandwidth and disk space Tumbleweed consumes. Just to keep up with updates we need set aside around 1GB of downloads per month and (when Btrfs snapshots are used) even more disk space. In a few weeks Tumbleweed consumed more disk space with far fewer programs installed as my installation of MX Linux. Unless we keep on top of house cleaning and constantly remove old snapshots we need to be prepared to use significantly more storage space than most other distributions require.
Tumbleweed changes frequently and uses more resources to keep up with the latest software developments. I would not recommend it for newer Linux users or for people who want predictability in the lives. But for people who want to live on the cutting edge and don't mind a little trouble-shooting, Tumbleweed provides a way to keep up with new versions of applications while providing a safety net through Btrfs snapshots.
-

- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version- 12336 reads
PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
digiKam 7.7.0 is released
After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release.
|
Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
|
Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech
The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world.
Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility.
|
today's howtos
|








.svg_.png)
Content (where original) is available under CC-BY-SA, copyrighted by original author/s.

Recent comments
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago