 About three weeks ago. I decided that I was going to install open Suza and Do a long-term review of it and that was off the heels of not being successful with Artix Linux and I Just wanted something that I knew I could run and that would run well And I chose open Suza as the it was like the second place winner of the poll that I'd done previously And I installed it and it and I've been using it now for about three weeks and I have some thoughts so as as usual with these long-term reviews, which is Odyscasing is I've only done one of them before what you'll be seeing mostly in the background is going to be b-roll of me doing things in open Suza and That's not the way I was originally planning on doing this video I was actually going to go through and you know take you through my setup of open Suza and talk about the stuff That I needed to talk about but for whatever reason I cannot get OBS to actually record Anything you know in open Suza. I just can't do it. There's some kind of dependency that I'm missing and I've looked it up and Maybe I'm the only one that's having the problem, but it's just weird OBS. We'll just will not work So it's the X window capture and the the video camera. We won't even capture the webcam It's very very odd, but simple screen recorder will work. So that's where I'm getting the b-roll from your you're seeing my actual Open Suza setup and I will also try to while I'm recording that b-roll show you some of the things that I'm talking about where I'm Talking about the negative things that I experienced, but I'll also show you some of the cool things that I experienced. So Unfortunately, I'm not talented enough in terms of video production to actually go through and line those things up So I apologize for the way this is shot that just let me say that so but I'm going to try to be at least a little bit Organized in terms of how I go through and talk about open Suza itself So let's go ahead and start off with Installation and I think I will go through and install open Suza again and I get a VM so that you can see some of the installation here while I'm talking So you can see what I'm talking about the installer for open Suza is fine I didn't have any problems with it. It's just different and there's nothing wrong with that. It's not as Finicky I would say it's not as finicky as like something like fedora, but it's not I don't think it's good as something that uses calamaris. So it is a little bit different. I will also say that it is Very slow like the installation process for Open Suza is very slow, especially if you choose the net install and this is going to be a theme throughout this review of Slow mirrors and we're going to I'm going to talk about this much more when we get to zipper But just know that if you choose the net install for open Suza, you're going to be there for a while It's going to take a while for you to install. I would highly recommend Choosing the local ISO Because that does exist that takes a lot less time Other than that the installation was it was just a Linux installation. It was very easy There was no Huge pains of setup setting up and it wasn't a ton of options as far as I remember So it was actually really good. It was it just installed and worked just fine So the next thing I want to talk about is stability. So like I said, I've been using this now for about three weeks and My experience now see I chose the I believe I believe it is the the rolling release version I think it's called tumbleweed for a reason. I can't remember names anymore. I think it's called tumbleweed But I chose the rolling release version and the stability has been meh. I mean, it really has been meh I've had some instances where KDE won't connect to its own servers So like I can't download like themes and stuff like that I've also for whatever reason after an update the startup time on my Opensu is a install on a separate hard drive. It's on a SSD is like Astonishingly slow like it wasn't originally like originally right after the first installation of it. It was just as quick as any other Linux distro, but after a couple updates the startup time Has gone to northwards of a minute and it's like so bad that at points Where I think that the thing is just frozen, but eventually it does come up But I don't know what's going on there now I'm hoping that after like another couple updates or something that it will go back to being quick or something But something there happened after a couple updates They caused it to really slow down in terms of startup time But once she once I got it started up The performance is fairly good. It doesn't take a lot of memory. It uses just the normal monoram I'm using the KDE version obviously and it works. It works fine and As you would expect I didn't notice any problems with things like App crashes or anything like that the only big problems they had once I was into the system was like I said a few times where KDE couldn't connect to their own back end or something like that where you Went into the settings and tried to install new themes or icon themes Something like that and I couldn't actually Connect to those systems, but I think that that might have been a KDE problem Maybe their back end was just down at the time that I was trying it It's perfectly possible that's you know something that's that happened. I will also say That the zipper problems, which I'll talk about here in a couple minutes Also affect things like KDE's discover, which is their app store That is slow on its best day even on other distros and it is Way slower on open SUSE is just I mean sometimes it takes minutes to load and it's just the dumbest thing now I don't use discover anyways. It wasn't a big deal but it is slow and Honestly, why would you use discover on? Open SUSE anyways when there's Yast and I guess Yast kind of brings me to The next point is which is app availability and I will these next couple are actually going to be kind of Cram together because they all kind of affect each other. So I'll start off with the positives Yast is amazing. It is a little bit outdated and clunky, but I love the fact that it's like a one-stop shop for everything and if you were into using a graphical a GUI that application Thing or a GUI Driver manager or something like that and it's all which is what Yast is. It's like a ton of stuff in a GUI form You can't find a better GUI Tool than Yast. I think it's great. I don't think it gets nearly enough credit There's just a ton of stuff you can do you can upgrade your kernel from there You can go through and install applications and other software from there. You can install drivers from there You can manage your repositories from there There's several other things that you can do all inside Yast and like I said, it is clunky So like it will go through as you're installing stuff and open up other windows and you got to go through and It's it's clunky, but it's actually really really good. I do enjoy it. However It is slow and I Don't want to get into the zipper stuff yet, but just keep in mind that it is Slow, I mean it is just really really slow and I'm not sure what the problem is I'm pretty sure that it's a mirror problem and that there might have been ways of fixing this But I looked it up a couple times and pretty much everybody has this problem. It's just the Software installation whether you're using Yast or using zipper is just slow and I'll talk more about it here in a minute But let's go into the positive stuff. So like if you have applications that you need to install which everybody does One of the things I was really worried about was software availability and I didn't have any problems at all Like almost every piece of software that I needed was right in the repost now That was only because I and during installation. I enabled all the repositories that I could Including non-free repositories and that allowed me to go through and pretty much install every piece of software I wanted every like the terminal the alacrity was there You know Firefox was there was like everything that I needed was right in the repose and It's good. It kind of reminds me of The arch repose I wouldn't say it's as good as they you are because it's not Nothing I will ever touch the broad software availability of availability of the a you are But it does have way more software Especially if you've enabled all the repose Then like something like Debian like Debian has a ton of software, but you're gonna find a lot of stuff in Debian At least the more esoteric stuff that is just not there. I didn't have that problem at all on open SUSE So app availability is actually really good maybe in so I'm gonna transfer now into performance now a system-wide Overall the performance was really good I like I talked about earlier the For whatever reason the startup time got way slow after a couple updates I'm not gonna count that against it because I think there's probably something going on with a weird update or something We'll move path it's past that if you're on the stable version open Susie probably won't have any problems at all in terms of performance. It was actually it was it was good the problem with performance comes in when you're trying to use Zipper or yes, and like I've talked about a couple times both of those things are really slow, and I'm gonna focus on zipper here Zipper is the the command line tool for Installing software updating your system and things like that now you can use other tools if you want but zippers the one that you're supposed to use and It's actually really easy to use it's it has basically the same syntax is something like apt-get does It's not obviously all the same, but for the most part, you know zipper install whatever Zipper update whatever is it the Zipper upgrade whatever will work, and it's good The problem is is it's like I said, it's slow and what really There's two areas where it's slow the first time is initial connection So when you do something like zipper install say Firefox or whatever You'll notice that your terminal just freezes like there's nothing like you hit enter after You've gone through and typed in whatever you're installing, and it just stays there There's no output whatsoever for seconds like multiple seconds now Usually when that happens on any other distro it means you typed your password in wrong That's usually what me what that means because you know when you go in your you're in the command line And you have to authenticate with your password, and you've entered the password wrong it takes a Quarter of a second or a little bit longer than that to actually go through and check the passwords list You know and then return the error it takes a little while It's kind of like that only longer like it's weird It's I'm hoping that somewhere along the line in this video You've sexually see me do this and you'll notice that right after I hit the the enter key and whatever I've done There's just lag there's there's this delay and It just hangs there and then once it starts installing when you're installing programs. It's not too bad It does fairly decently in terms of installing software now when you turn that into updating the system however It's just as slow as it is when you've that during that initial startup because it I didn't time it But the last time I updated the system It took probably 10 to 15 minutes to actually update and that was not a ton of Packages that need to be done maybe a little bit over a hundred Packages that needed to be updated and it like I said it took about 10 to 15 minutes and I have I mean I don't have the fastest internet in the world, but I have fairly decent internet So it shouldn't be that much of a problem. I don't have any problems like that on arch I don't have any problems like that on a boom to I've never had that problem really on any other distro they all work fairly decently in terms of speed and What I think it is and what I talked about earlier is that there's something going on with the open Susan mirrors I don't know if they have if they don't have nearly as many mirrors as like something like arch doesn't it's completely possible Maybe they just don't have any mirrors here around me and that's you know fine but it does Reflect on the speed of the system because when you go through an update and well, you can continue to use the System while it updates you do notice that this thing is slower than what you would expect on a different distro and I like I don't want to be too negative about it, but because I did notice it and Because I do use the package manager a lot It does it didn't make open Susa itself feel slower Even though the rest of the system is not actually slower. It's still led to that perceived experience of the whole system being slow just because zipper itself is Slow and it's so slow, especially on updates and on initial connections for installs That I don't think that I could use open Susa day-to-day just because I Would notice it too often like I would like Why are you still hanging there? Why are you still installing stuff? I have that kind of mentality where I kind of have to watch the update happen Even though I know I can go through and do other stuff. I usually when I got update my art system I have my main monitor doing what I'm doing and on the other monitor I have the terminal open doing the update that way I can watch it like out of the corner of my eye and The thing with arch is it just speeds right through right but with open Susa It was really really slow like I kept looking like man, you're still doing that man You're still doing that Wow, it's still going Wow, you know, it's not like I've had a gigabyte to download It was like a hundred packages. I don't know what the size was But it wasn't I mean I've left my arch distro or my arch install for much longer than I'd left the open Susa one and had way more packages like five or six hundred all over a gigabyte and it didn't take that long I mean it was longer than normal, but it wasn't that long This was just really really slow. So I think that's that my biggest takeaway from open Susa Is that the package management while I loved Yast and zipper was just fine and the app available app availability was really good The package manager itself, which is zipper is just too slow to actually be usable Day-to-day, I don't think it would be a as big a problem if you're using open Susa on a server because You're never doing anything other on a server like if you go to a server and do an update You're going there to do the update, you know, it's just it doesn't I mean sure it sucks that it takes a little bit longer But it doesn't I know it doesn't have that perceived like why is it still going and I you know, I want this to be done I need to shut down my computer or whatever Kind of thing so I think for servers Probably open Susa would be much better in terms of not noticing that package manager slowness that I experienced Just moving on to some general annoyances now. I don't actually have that many to be honest. I talked a little bit about the whole startup time not being Good after an update and I don't think that that's a huge deal. I think it has to be do with an update I also talked about how One point or another KDE stuff just wouldn't connect to their online platform Again, I think that probably has more to do with a KDE problem than an open Susa problem My other thing is that even though this is a rolling distribution Some of the software that's pre-installed at least is still Somewhat behind it's not as far behind as something like Debian But some of the KDE stuff was a little bit older at least at the time I Initially installed it was a little bit older. It did get updated. So it's not a huge deal, but I didn't notice it So in conclusion, I Actually really liked open Susa. I I'm happy that I tried it out. I hadn't tried it in quite a while The last time I tried an open Susa based distro was when I reviewed gecko Linux And I really remember enjoying it and I really liked it But I also remember having the same problems with zipper that I'm having this time and that they're it's slow and I Don't think that there's any fix for that. I think that that's just an open Susa thing and as disappointing as that is I There's not much like I said that you can say about or even do about it No, I kind of answered this question earlier. Could I use open Susa as my daily driver? I said no earlier and I think I'd probably stick with that as long as there were other distributions as long as arch exists I don't think that I would ever switch to open Susa as my daily driver not that I couldn't though because Despite how slow zipper is and how annoying some of the performance stuff was I actually did really enjoy my time on open Susa and It was just it was fun like I enjoyed sticking in KDE for a while and you know just playing around in KDE and it's something that I kind of dedicated myself to was sticking Into KDE because I did not want to just install DWM and try to get up my regular setup I wanted to use open Susa the way the open Susa guys kind of want you to use it and it was fun I also enjoyed a lot of the other stuff that you know, I love gas I think yes is great. I think zipper is great. I just wish they were faster and So if if arch disappeared, I think open Susa may be like my second favorite distro but it has flaws that I don't think that would Allow me to be completely happy with it the mostly the performance stuff that I talked about with zipper So I'm not switching to this. This is probably not going to be will probably will not remain installed on my computer but I Did enjoy my time with it I'm glad I checked it out and I will definitely check out open Susa again in the future. Hopefully the zipper thing gets fixed over time But I don't probably think it will Unfortunately, I think it this that has more to do with Infrastructure than it does with actual like software that they can roll out to fix So that those are my thoughts on open Susa I probably could have talked a lot more about this if I had actually been able to show you this stuff Directly for like I said that OPS problem is just stupid. I'm not blaming Opens the open Susa for that I think that there's just a missing dependency somewhere and I couldn't find out what it what it was So I apologize again for the way that this video was shot. I I hope that I did an okay job with the b-roll. I'm not really used to shooting b-roll. So You know, but still I'll try to do better in the in the future If you have an idea for my next long-term review leave that in the comments below You can follow me on Twitter at Linux cast before I go. I'd like to take a moment to thank my current patrons Devon Chris East Coast Web Gentoo is fun to Patrick L. Marcus make Lynn Jackson I can tool Steve a Mitchell art center Merrick camp Joshua Lee J. Doug and the BSTs rock. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time