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Choosing a distro
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Thank you for being appreciative!
Though, I couldn't help but wonder the motivation behind your inquiry. Are you just exploring the waters beyond Ubuntu? Are you interested in rolling release and got curious when you learned what openSUSE Tumbleweed had to offer in that space? Were you perhaps looking for a distro well-suited for gaming and did you perhaps come across someone mentioning openSUSE Tumbleweed which subsequently peaked your interest? Are you perhaps unhappy for some reason with Ubuntu and looking for something to replace it with?
Lots of questions, of which I don't expect you to answer more than a couple (if at all). I would already be more than happy if you could provide us a bit more insight regarding the motivation behind your inquiry.
Oh no worries. I'll try to answer what I can.
I'm currently daily driving Windows due to uni but once that's done I want to fully switch to Linux. I'm just starting to spread my wings outside of Ubuntu right and see what's out there. Heard of openSUSE Tumbleweed from websites and youtube and thought "Hey why not give it a shot". The UI looks real neat as well. I'm not really looking for a gaming focused distro right now. Just something that I can daily drive and occasionally play games with.
One more point that you shouldn't let scare you away, but just something nice to know going into OpenSUSE: by default, the distro is FOSS only, the official software repositories don't have things like proprietary multimedia codecs or other non-free (as in free speech) software included. You have to enable these yourself if you want them (to, say, watch MP4 files perhaps).
This has gotten so dead simple recently that it can be done in a couple of terminal commands, it's just important to mention. If you know it going in, it saves the step of "what the heck, why aren't my media files playing??"
sudo zypper install opi
opi codecs
OPI is a package manager for installing software from a few sources, namely the openSUSE Build Service (which is where OPI gets its name, OBS Package Iinstaller), Microsoft, the Packman repositories, and a few others. Installing codecs is the only thing I have ever used it for, though.
EDIT: zipper to zypper
Just a nitpick; its zypper not zipper.
You know, I was talking about actual zippers in another thread at around the same time I was writing this, and my brain just went with it. Doesn't help that I have aliases for all my regular zypper commands and haven't actually typed it out in awhile. 😅
😂