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by rmk2 2654 days ago
openSUSE uses the Open Build Service[0] to build, well, openSUSE. OBS also supports other distributions etc., but it makes it fairly easy to put up a package.[1]

For RPM-based distros (e.g. openSUSE), you write a .spec-file, check it in via OBS's version control alongside your sources, and off you go. OBS builds the package (and pulls in dependencies as needed etc.) and publishes the result as a repository with GPG keys and all the jazz, which you can just add to your own distro, and which is openly visible, so everybody else can use your package(s), too.

OBS also supports forking existing packages, and you can merge them back together, which means you can fix something in an existing package (whether a distro-package or something somebody else put up) and if they accept the changes, congratulations, you just fixed something in the distribution.

This means a lot of building, compilation, versioning etc. is out in the open, and you always have the sources available on top of it.

As an aside: I doubt people will "flock" to openSUSE, since many people sneer at them for no good reason (YaST, still?!), but they do a lot of good work, are good upstream contributors (like RedHat and unlike Ubuntu) and some of the tooling is absolutely amazing, except that nobody really knows about it.

[0]: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Build_Service

[1]: https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/distribution_build_de...

3 comments

OBS is so good, Fedora (my distro of choice) has a clone of it called Copr: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/
I'm a BSD guy but needed a Linux distro last year for a specific project. OpenSUSE was remarkably good, stable, easy to use and update, and apparently free of the political crap that seems to come with many other distros.

I have recommended it to others who need a stable Linux distro with lots of well-maintained packages. Some of them looked at me like I was crazy. Preconceived notions are hard to overcome sometimes. Oh well.

Do you feel any concern when the owner keeps changing? I think that's part of the reason people keeping a distance.