OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

 I tried openSUSE before, not sure if I blogged about it at the time.  The first time I tried SUSE I was sorely disappointed and struggled with a number of configuration issues.

But, it had been awhile and distros generally continue to get better and better with time so I thought what the hey, I'll give it another shot.  Not only that, but I decided to install the KDE version.  Normally I am all about GTK/GNOME but, I always read people's posts raving wildly about KDE so I thought, again, what the hey, I will give it a shot.

So here I am rocking KDE on openSUSE Tumbleweed linux.  So far it has been pretty rock solid.  No major issues.  Well, one issue:  do not install the 535 version of the NVIDIA driver... it is imperfect to say the least.  I actually installed it first and had to contend with frequent artifacts flashing across the top of my monitor.  So I backed it out and installed the 470 series and it has been fine, no artifacts.  Beware, backing out NVIDIA drivers, while not super difficult, does take a little time, at least in my case, because not all of the old components were removed correctly and I had to boot into terminal mode and continue the process there.  Again, not a huge deal but, just beware... if you are installing NVIDIA drivers, avoid 535 (recommended for G06 GPUS) driver...

I was able to get steam and wine installed and able to play my usual games.  Although minor complaint, that has NOTHING TO DO WITH OPENSUSE:  Flipping world of warships has broken my ability to play the game on linux AGAIN.  They do this with updates that break your ability to log in or do other things with a fair amount of frequency... you can find the people who complain about on reddit.  :)  But aside from that the system has been solid.

The Chrome and Thunderbird both seem sharper and nicer on OpenSUSE/KDE... I don't know if it is the distro or KDE, but they seem more slick than usual.

Font rendering has been very nice; in older versions (awhile back) of KDE the font rendering always annoyed me (one of the reasons I stayed with GTK UIs).

Oh, if you think my screenshot is ugly, that's just because I am old and have a "thing" for 80s-like UIs and installed UI components that are supposed to resemble IRIX.  I love it!

I would love to get the dock looking more like CDE... but... unlikely.

So I am actually quite enjoying this so far.  I will probably shift back to a GTK-based system (most likely Mint but...) like Pop OS once their new interface is released in January, or when the next Linux Mint DE version arrives, based on Debian 12!

But for now let's see how long I can stick with a much lauded distro like OpenSUSE.