openSUSE Tumbleweed update... Yay.

 I've been whining about how the kernel updates no longer worked with the NVidia driver I had been using.  Well YAY!  Finally the driver was updated and when I installed it and restarted, my system came up with the latest kernel and a nice Nvidia-driven UI.  :)  Very happy about that.  Now I need to release that old kernel and stick with the later 6.5 kernels.

Heidi Dog of the Desert

 My little runt of a standard Schnauzer is now over a year old.  She is the love of my life but... lately she is bored out of her gourde and she has been going after my shoes.  It has been a YEAR and now all of a sudden she is messing with my shoes.  I've caught her and scolded her 3 times in the past couple of days.  Doesn't seem to be sinking into her thick little skull that she shouldn't be touching them.

Outside of this little issue she has been behaving very well so... I am not sure where to go with this.  I hate scolding her.  Anyway, she is my little monster but she is such an incredible little dog.  I say little.  She is a standard schnauzer whose father was a 50 pounder, and the mother not far behind.  But she is not even 30 pounds and about an inch shorter than the "standard" says she should be.

In some ways that is nice, she is a little easier to handle.  :)  In other ways it is touch because she has the heart of a much larger dog and at the dog park she wants to play with all the big boys.  And they enjoy playing with her but she gets trounced pretty regularly (I don't mean aggression, I mean in a chase, and they trip on her, they send her flying).  But I just caught her dragging one of my shoes off and gave her a good start... but I can bet real money that she will do it again.

I will have to find a better, higher place to put my shoes so she cannot easily get to them.  Little booger.

openSUSE Tumbleweed Part 6

 Still using OST 6.  Even though a lot of people recommend AGAINST it, and I do understand why, I have frozen the last kernel that works well with my NVidia drivers that are currently installed (470.x.x).  Each successive upgrade with a new kernel BREAKS my NVidia drivers and it kind of drives me a little nuts that it happens.  So I froze the kernel so even with the latest updates to the OS in general, I am sticking to an older kernel.

So long as I do that, I can continue to enjoy openSUSE.  I know that if I want to move on I will have to uninstall my drivers and update to a more recent driver, but the most recent driver(s) cause all kinds of artifacts to dump across my screen at random and that is super irritating.  Also, when I update the driver it cascades through my gaming set up and I have to rejigger everything.

If it comes to a point where I simply cannot keep the older kernel (and to be sure, it isn't an OLD kernel, it is a 6-series kernel) I will do what I will probably end up doing anyway, which is to switch to Linux Mint DE 6.

But I have honestly come to love KDE 5.27.  I think I had said in another post that for the longest time I could not stand KDE, for a variety of reasons (like font rendering, glitchy behavior, TOO configurable - right, I know that is silly), etc.  But with openSUSE KDE has been a dream.  I am absolutely loving it.

Anyway, STILL on openSUSE and will likely stay here until I simply can't any longer.  It has been (except for the drivers/kernel issue) rock solid.

I TRIED the latest version of MX with KDE, because I do have a lot of faith in Debian 12, but MX was actually not as solid, nor was it as easy to get configured for gaming, which seemed odd to me.  There is also another KDE gaming distro out there that I downloaded and might try if openSUSE tanks for me, but honestly I also do like Mint, so I will likely go there.

Well, enough rambling.  I still think if you are NOT using NVidia, openSUSE KDE is probably an excellent choice for you.  Try it out.  Just remember that Tumbleweed updates frequently, and not little updates, updates with a capital "U".  You can be confident you are getting cutting edge versions of software (and pretty recent kernels) if you don't mind your graphics driver getting hosed constantly.

openSUSE Tumbleweed part 5

 

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Part 4

So a MASSIVE update was waiting for me today.

Unfortunately the massive update included a new kernel and that new kernel broke my UI because I use an NVidia driver.  I ended up allowing the update but booted into the old kernel which was still there, then I applied a zypper lock to it so it would not go away in the future.

The old kernel works perfectly fine.  The whole "Oh it's NVidia's fault - they suck!" argument is becoming quite tiresome since the NVidia drivers worked fine until a new kernel was introduced by OpenSUSE.  So... whatever.  NVidia released their sources too if I am not mistaken, over a year ago now.  How is that progressing, kernel devs?  Wayland devs?  Bueller?  Anyone?

So, be prepared if you have an NVidia card, OpenSUSE will most likely break it.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed part 3

 So I am having trouble putting my finger on WHY I like OpenSUSE.  I want to start with potential problems first:

1) dependency hell
    There have been issues when installing software (previous install)
    where I had to try to repair the dependencies
2) Printer support is a flipping mystery.  Only one of my printers is even SEEN...

Aside from that I don't have many complaints.

Why do I like it then?

1) I have never met a version of KDE that I liked prior to this.
    It is smooth, flawless, no issues.  The KDE app suite is also good.
2) While I prefer to use zypper, YaST seems to be competent.
3) Performance is good!

I know, no hard numbers to back things up regarding performance.

With Mint and other linux distros I tend to install kernels like xanmod or liquorice.  But I haven't had the urge to do that with OpenSUSE, perhaps partly because I am afraid to, or perhaps because the KDE UI is actually quite snappy and responsive, and when I game there doesn't seem to be any reason to NEED a performance kernel.

Anyway, I am enjoying OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, let's see how long that lasts.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Part 2

 So I had been using Tumbleweed for a week or so and ran into some issues because when I first configured it I made a couple of mistakes.

So I went to MX Linux KDE and quickly learned that MX Linux is not as super-duper-awesome as everyone makes it out to be.  From there I jumped (after a day) to Linux Mint again.  But I found myself longing for the KDE interface (I cannot even BELIEVE I am writing this, I really disliked KDE for a minimum of a 14 years) that OpenSUSE delivered.

So guess what.  Lessons learned, I reinstalled OpenSUSE KDE and started configuring and installing software in small steps.  First thing was to make sure I installed the NVidia drivers the right way, first time around, installed codecs, got the base system the way I wanted it.  Then I moved onto installing Wine, Steam and other components useful for gaming.

So far so good, knock on wood.  I've been through my first update with no issues.  The one thing I did install that, while it makes me nervous I still love it, is Kvantum and the Irixium theme.  So love that.

So anyway, I have the most important things to me installed:

1) Nvidia drivers

2) Video and music codecs

3) Google Chrome

4) Thunderbird

5) KDE Irixium theme

6) Wine (so I can run VTMB without issue)

7) Steam (so I can play at least SOME of my steam games, and GE Proton)

8) Some fonts I like for programming

9) MS VS Code

10) compilers...

With these things I am pretty satisfied.  I can do the things I like to do on my personal computer, watch videos, game, program...