Ubuntu vs opensuse for a regular user in 2017

[danboid]

I moved house almost a month ago so I've been without broadband recently - I should regain it next week with any luck but this lack of connectivity has meant I've not been able to answer the following myself:

A friend has recently contacted me who I installed Debian for about 7 years ago. She wants to upgrade her computer so I'll be installing a more recent Linux distro for her too, dual-boot with shitty Windows 10. She prefers Linux on the whole but wants Windows to run PS natively. Yes I know older versions of PS work in wine, it could be run in a VM etc but this is what she wants and I think its the best config too but I'm unsure about which distro to give her because I've not seriously tried the suse distros in some time. Should they be considered instead of a Ubuntu variant?

I'm an Arch user myself but I'm not so keen on installing Arch or Antergos for anyone who doesn't know Linux well themselves. I'm only really considering suse vs Ubuntu as I think the size of the binary repos is a critical choice in choosing a distro and as far as that is concerned it is basically a two-horse race - suse vs ubuntu. Ubuntu seems to make more sense than Debian for normal users as its more friendly to non-free media codecs, it has more usability tweaks etc.

I've not tried 17.04 so I have no idea how it compares to the latest leap for things like boot time, stability, hardware compat and general usability / user friendliness which is what we're concerned with here. She's not a gamer and won't be recording any music - just browsing, Skype and some basic graphics/productivity apps. I'd likely install Leap with MATE or Cinnamon for a desktop. I'm also not so keen on installing 17.04 as it will be obsolete next month and my experiences with Ubuntu (esp Ubuntu MATE) haven't been great the last few years.

I'd like to hear from anyone who has given both 17.04 and the current opensuse Leap a good go. Which did you prefer and why?

[danboid]

I really need to try Fedora again too, but I'm put off by its vastly smaller repos compared to Ubuntu and suse.

Ubuntu has the most commercial support and online docs but my impression has been QA has been slipping in the last few years whilst suse users seem to talk of how stable it is. Stable is good, so long as the packages aren't too crusty. Leap seems like a good balance.

<Awaiting RNCBC's pro-suse comment>

[danboid]

Without having downloaded any suse release, I wish the official images were more like 1GB in size rather than 4.7GB. WTF is on there?

I don't want to do the netinstall but I don't want 4.7GB of stuff either. There are unofficial installers that are just under 1GB with KDE or GNOME - I wish the official installer was more like that size but using MATE instead

I'm keen to try using OBS to create a custom suse install iso - I've wanted to try that for ages.

[glowrak guy]

What apps and kernels does the official version offer, that can't
be addded to any unofficial release? Probably close to none.

If only there were unnoficial windows releases, they'd be measured
in megs rather than gigs, once run through some cyber-sewage treatment plants

[Gps]

For what it is worth.

I am on openSUSE leap 42.2.

The one thing I love about opensuse, and why its very user-friendly is yast.

No other distro has this one place to do about everything.

Install programs change setting even kernel settings.

No experience with the rolling release.

Most software is available.

[danboid]

Hi GPS

Yes, I totally forgot to mention YAST. It covers stuff that the KDE/GNOME/MATE etc control centre things don't so that it a definite +1 for less experienced Linux users.

I'd also be interested to hear peoples experiences with updating between versions of Leap.

Anyone got any comments on BTRFS (the suse default FS), esp. if you have tried using snapshots? Does using snapshots still greatly impact disk IO or performance in general? You may be better sticking with XFS or ext4 if you aren't going to use snapshots but suse seem to insist BTRFS is the future...

[danboid]

I think the suse updater lets you roll back from failed system upgrades if you're using BTRFS so it may be worth sticking with it just for that, if it works? Anyone tried it? That would be another advantage of suse over buntu.

If your upgrade succeeds you should be able to remove the old snapshot and hence avoid any performance issues there.

[rncbc]

if in doubt,
https://itsfoss.com/why-use-opensuse/
ps. #6 parody videos are a must!

[Gps]

I think the suse updater lets you roll back from failed system upgrades if you're using BTRFS so it may be worth sticking with it just for that, if it works? Anyone tried it? That would be another advantage of suse over buntu.

If your upgrade succeeds you should be able to remove the old snapshot and hence avoid any performance issues there.

I don't use BTRFS.

But it should be able to even roll back a failed install.

Why I went for ext4 is because some people had issues with brtfs, running out of disk space.
I think they fixed that though.

[mclstr]

Hi GPS
Anyone got any comments on BTRFS (the suse default FS), esp. if you have tried using snapshots? Does using snapshots still greatly impact disk IO or performance in general? You may be better sticking with XFS or ext4 if you aren't going to use snapshots but suse seem to insist BTRFS is the future...

I have been using BTRFS as my filesystem for at least three years. Both SSD drives and the spinning kind.
I haven't been doing much comparison and can't give a full endorsement, but I find BTRS is more able to deal with the modern and cheap hard drives that are so popular lately.

I had EXT4 and BTRFS running on various drives and found that BTRFS did a better job of correcting for bad sectors on crap drives.

Most of my partitions were rsync mirrored for backup. Many times an EXT4 drive would be mirrored with a BTRFS drive.

I'd eventually convert almost all of my partitions to BTRFS when I started getting file corruption on my EXT4 partitions. There has been a huge reduction in file corruption on these BTRFS drives since the move.

I do notice some weird I/O slowdowns on the BTRFS partitions, but I think it is BTRFS doing housecleaning from time to time.

Be aware that my opinions are based on limited experience and could be based on luck.

[chaocrator]

about btrfs: i don't recommend it.
i've been using it for quite a long time and migrated back to ext4.

1) in case of filesystem inconsistency, it behaves MUCH worse than xfs or ext4. you often even ca't mount your root filesystem, even read only.

2) RT kernels don't work with btrfs properly. (that's why rt kernels of AVlinux don't have btrfs module at all, as for 4.4.30)

3) COW is definitely NOT what you want if you do much of multitrack recording.

[danboid]

Thanks to everyone who has given feedback on suse and BTRFS so far.

I've never really tried BTRFS as I don't trust it and I've not been using suse for about 7/8 years now, which is the only place most are exposed to it. I like the idea of a legally Linux-compat alternative to ZFS but the only people who seem to use BTRFS are suse and FB and thats because they employ its main dev. It wasn't long ago their RAID (or at least one specific mode 5 or 6 I think) was proven to be plain broke. As far as Linux filesystems are concerned, I trust XFS the most due to its SGI history, fast fscks and continued development. I hear it should support snapshots without using LVM soon.

I would really like some of the BTRFS features, but if its not reliable I'll stick with XFS or work out how to do a ZFS install. AFAIK the (open) suse installer doesn't support ZFS and its update/packaging tools certainly don't which is a shame as opensuse with full, easy ZFS support sounds like the ideal OS to me.

chaocrator:

I hear what you're saying about COW FSs for DAWs but I'm talking about use for a friend who wouldn't be doing any DAW work - maybe some light video editing and graphics stuff. I did not know there was a conflict between BTRFS and RT kernels though - I really wasn't expecting that.

[danboid]

I'd like to hear from any Leap users who have tried upgrading in-place from at least one Leap release to another. How did it go?

Rui:

Do you use an RT kernel? Do you use BTRFS too?

[CrocoDuck]

I did not know there was a conflict between BTRFS and RT kernels though - I really wasn't expecting that.

There was a note on the Arch Linux wiki about btrfs not working with kernel 3.14.12_rt9. The note was on this page and seems it disappeared. I remember it was marked as "needing updating" or similar, so perhaps later rt kernels were tested against btrfs or updated information gathered otherwise. I would assume that the latest rt patches can work with btrfs at the most current kernel versions, but perhaps someone else can confirm.

[rncbc]

Do you use an RT kernel? Do you use BTRFS too?

yes, every other turn I boot a custom built PREEMPT_RT kernel, being the latest 4.11.12-rt13.

however i have never tried with btrfs, sticking with ext4, be that on SSDs or spinners.
byee