To switch or not to switch, that is the question

Hello fellow lemmings! Fedora KDE user here, and quite happy about it, it didn’t break a single time and packages are up to date. The only thing that bother me is DNF’s speed… a single search may take up to 5 seconds, and if I’m dependency-hunting I may need several searches, summing up the delays. I’m asking if switching to openSUSE Tumbleweed could be a good idea or not. The idea of the rolling release is really intriguing, whole system upgrades always makes me nervous, and zypper, being written in C++, should be faster than DNF.

I would stick to Wayland KDE, as my current fedora setup.

Other than this, I don’t see any other obvious pros or cons, so I’m asking you: why should I switch and why shouldn’t I? any tips from someone who used both?

thanks in advance!

DAC_Protogen, (edited )
@DAC_Protogen@lemmy.ml avatar

I love the branding and general concept of openSUSE, and YAST is amazing, but I absolutely hate the dependency hell they have going on with their “patterns”. Patterns are metapackages, so a pattern basically just refers to other packages and installs a whole bunch of them. It just gets really messy once a pattern may refer to another pattern to make sure that everything it needs is installed. I’m not sure if that still is the case these days, but I found it really confusing and difficult to get the distro install only the stuff I want and need and trim down on anything else. You can already do this in the mighty installer or try it after installation, but both ways, patterns really got in my way. You may see the same pattern be suggested in multiple categories if I remember right, and if you overlook it only once, updates will pull all that stuff again. I would love to use openSUSE, it has a lot going for it, but that package management is a nightmare and one of the worst I have encountered during distro hopping, thanks to those patterns.

tubbadu,

thanks for the answer!

DAC_Protogen,
@DAC_Protogen@lemmy.ml avatar

You’re welcome :)

Felix,
@Felix@feddit.de avatar

Sadly Zypper isn’t really faster. From my experience, pacman is really the best package manager. But if you still want to try Opensuse. There’s also Leap. It’s a stable release distro, though it mostly uses LTS ⁄ stable software as it’s a clone of SUSE enterprise, while Fedora mostly gets cutting edge software when a new release hits.

tubbadu,

I was thinking about tumbleweed intead of leap because of its rolling nature

shreddy_scientist,
@shreddy_scientist@lemmy.ml avatar

Would installing doas instead of sudo on Fedora fix this or would both still utilize dnf?

tubbadu,

I never heard of it, what are the pros/cons?

shreddy_scientist,
@shreddy_scientist@lemmy.ml avatar

Open doas handles admin activity through the command line. It is only ~3,000 lines of code, while sudo has ~170,000 lines. doas does 90% of sudo commands and is more secure as well. Mental Outlaw has a great video on the topic.

ForbiddenRoot,

The only thing that bother me is DNF’s speed

If you are on Fedora 38, have you tried dnf5 yet. You can install it with sudo dnf install dn5 dnf5-plugins. I used it only briefly before moving away from Fedora for other reasons, but it was much better than standard dnf. However, I am not sure it speeds up searches as well, though downloads were certainly much faster for me.

FarLine99,

Wait for Fedora 39. It will introduce dnf5 with much better speeds. Changing is not worth it in my opinion.

Kerb, (edited )
@Kerb@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

there are ways to speed up dnf.

id try adding:
max_parallel_downloads=10
and
fastestmirror=true
to your
/etc/dnf/dnf.conf

before you distro hop.

kinda goofy that its not the default tho.

EDIT: since its more about search, maybe try adding
metadata_expire=2d
aswell

Mane25,

Fastestmirror isn’t generally recommended, there’s a reason it’s not default. it bases it on ping time which isn’t necessarily the best download speed, and it doesn’t take into account bandwidth.

Increasing maximum parallel downloads can result in faster download speeds, but this isn’t the problem with DNF slowness that OP is reporting.

BioMando,
@BioMando@lemmy.ml avatar

If you’re changing for the sake of package manager speed, don’t. The few seconds here and there don’t really amount to much.

However, tumbleweed, being a rolling release, to me, means that it kind of killed the distro hopping adiction. Everything is stable and updated frequently (albeit not bleeding edge, as to have time to test the packages)

tubbadu,

If you’re changing for the sake of package manager speed, don’t.

It’s not the only motivation, but the one that convinced me to look around after more than 2 years on fedora. The rolling release is another motivation

BioMando,
@BioMando@lemmy.ml avatar

Then give tumbleweed a try! I think you’ll like what it offers.

fruitywelsh,

Fedora also has a rolling release version called rawhide

Mane25,

I couldn’t get on with TW when I tried it because because of very large updates, time-consuming updates appearing at random. Is that something you find? I prefer the predictability of Fedora.

MyNameIsRichard,
@MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml avatar

The beauty of Tumbleweed is that you don’t have to update straight away. I typically update weekly but on my play-puter I have gone 18 months between updates without a problem. The updates do tend to be quite large though so a slow Internet connection can take a long time to download them.

Mane25,

Isn’t that a security risk, or can you easily choose to just apply security-important patches? That was the problem I had, I’d see a massive load of new packages and wonder “can I leave this for now or is one of those a critical patch?” On Fedora it’s a no-brainer, I just do the upgrade every night and the big version update when I’m ready.

MyNameIsRichard,
@MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s update all or nothing. Whether it’s a security risk or not to leave it for a few days depends on your threat model and as much as I’d like to believe I’m important, mine’s minimal.

Vilian,

try this bash-prompt.net/guides/bash-dnf-speed/

Mane25,

Fastestmirror isn’t generally recommended, there’s a reason it’s not default. it bases it on ping time which isn’t necessarily the best download speed, and it doesn’t take into account bandwidth.

Increasing maximum parallel downloads can result in faster download speeds, but this isn’t the problem with DNF slowness that OP is reporting.

coralof,
@coralof@lemmy.world avatar

I definitely do recommend setting the max_parallel_downloads to between 10 and 20. I had the same issue as OP with DNC being super slow, and this fixed it perfectly. I don’t know why that’s not set by default.

TwinTurbo,

I can’t comment on zypper, but I suggest you use dnf -C when searching for packages. This will use the local index cache and will skip some of the overhead or checking—and possibly updating—the cache, thus making searches much quicker.

rodbiren,

I have been a chronic distro hopper and I have to say Zypper did not appear appreciably faster than dnf for most operations. Fastest package managemer I have ever found is pacman on arch, which is not an advertisement for arch.

I have a love hate relationship with OpenSUSE. Everything they do feels like the uncanny valley of Linux. Just a little different than the others. Sometimes in a good way where everything is autosnspped into backups and the OS is nearly indestructible. Sometimes in confusing ways where their is a bin folder included in you Home folder by default and I haven’t found a good way to get rid of it. Or that installing packsge suggestions is on by default. Or that the included Firefox includes branding for OpenSUSE and getting the correct repo of Firefox without branding takes additional effort. It keeps going with the strangeness. It will look and feel like Linux but with just enough quirks to confuse you.

All that being said I highly doubt the package manager will be the time suck you will face with a given distro. Your milage may vary but I have found OpenSUSE to be a great server distro but s lackluster desktop experience especially with drivers and any gaming. So it depends on what you are looking for. The best non answer their is.

Petter1,

ObenSUSE is the only distro, I have tried on my intel iMac, that was able to install the correct driver for bt and WiFi automatically… so pros to that, lol

rodbiren,

Could be the newer kernel or the prolific enterprise support. Hard for me to say. My main gripes with OpenSUSE usually occur with Nvidia so it is probably safe to say my real issue is with Nvidia which regrettably controls AI stacks and Laptop GPUs with a vice. Yes yes I know you can run ML using AMD but it is a second class citizen with the poorly maintained docs.

tubbadu,

thanks for the answer!

lackluster desktop experience especially with drivers and any gaming

why this? is it needed manual work to install the correct drivers?

MyNameIsRichard,
@MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml avatar

I find it to be a perfectly good desktop experience using KDE but I don’t play games so can’t comment on that. The only driver you typically need to install is the Nvidia one. Talking of that, Nividia drivers can cause the occasional problem when updating because they don’t always keep up with the pace of kernel changes. At least you can rollback to a working state easily. On my Intel only machine tumbleweed has been utterly reliable and I haven’t needed the rollback facility of snapper and btrfs. It’s definitely nice to have though!

On Reddit, I used to see complaints about zypper being a slow package manager and to be fair, when updating it does feel slow. However, I’ve been using it long enough that I can’t compare it to other package managers.

tubbadu,

I don’t need NVIDIA driver so I guess I’m okay then!

used to see complaints about zypper being a slow package manager

oh lol this may be a problem XD

rodbiren,

Most recently I got a 2022 Lenovo Legion 5i and tried tumbleweed on it. Installed drivers according to documentation and I get a blank screen on boot now. I alt F2 my way to a terminal and startx to get in but now my background is mysteriously a black screen. I fart around with kernel arguments to try and fix the issue but give up after awhile. Install arch as distributed by endeavouros with KDE de and install using their installer. Works without issue and usb-c display port works great.

To be fair stock mint with xanmod and 5.15 both failed to work properly with the driver. Could not dim the screen. Apparently an issue with cinnamon.

I assume GNOME would work fine but GNOME working fine is an issue for me because I am a child of the 80s and like computers provide me nostalgic feelings of a start menu and desktop regardless of the fact I could use some keyboard shortcut powered DE and be significantly cooler. Coolness has given way to comfort and I prefer Cinnamon or KDE in that order.

KSPAtlas,
@KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz avatar

Clearly you haven’t used void Linux if pacman is the fastest package manager you’ve seen, xbps is crazy fast

rodbiren,

I have not. My fear with void is that I may run into plentiful issues where when I follow documentation tailored to the popular package managers that I am obligated to think and make decisions which I use all available effort to avoid. My battery supplying power to make choices on things is critically low due to having two kids under 5 so I have pigeon holed myself into using something I can reasonably expect people to have already done the work for me. Ignore that I am on arch and a walking contradiction. I have built my own cage forged of the irons of rolling distribution preference.

pglpm,
@pglpm@lemmy.ca avatar

Sorry for the somewhat unrelated question: how’s been your OpenSUSE experience with drivers, especially for Nvidia cards, touchpads, thunderbolt, trackpoints (if any), and with hi-res screen (if it applies)?

I’ve been thinking of giving it a try and was going to ask some of these questions in some forum. But maybe this is a good place to start as any.

Thank you for the informative post in any case!

Ricaz,

It’s kinda unfair to compare with pacman as it by nature does way less than the rest, given that Arch is bleeding edge and doesn’t have the same kind of dependency hell that other package managers have to struggle with.

rodbiren,

Sure could be. I calls them like I sees them. Appears fast as a user and I wish myself to never learn about how dependencies are managed. Just wanna slam my keyboard with pacman -Syu and watch that pacman cross the screen fast so I can feel something in my life is under control by watching progress bars go places. Hence my chronic distro hopping. So many loading bars.

Anyways, I am sure I am wrong in creative ways. Just my experience for what it is worth.

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