[fffrantz]

I really like Tumbleweed. I've been running it on laptops and desktops for over 10 years without much problems. There are a couple of minor annoyances, like the way it handles patterns, or the way it sometimes updates large swaths of packages when libc is updated, but it's overall rock-solid, does not get in the way, and snapper makes it a breathe to rollback if anything wrong happens. Really an underrated distro, backed by a small but really knowledgeable and welcoming community.

[e12e]

> the way it handles patterns,

TIL:

https://tr.opensuse.org/Patterns#What_are_Patterns.3F

> Patterns include a list of software packages to install. (...) Patterns define a type of functionality the system should have. They do this by either directly naming required packages, by grouping of sub-patterns, or a combination thereof.

What do you find annoying about them in Thumbleweed?

[d_tr]

There are several threads on r/openSUSE about updates reinstalling packages people had previously uninstalled or unselected during installation, because they were part of an installed pattern. Stuff like small games for example. You can manually "taboo" packages to prevent this but it does not sound super convenient.

I only tried Tumbleweed for a couple of days a few weeks back because I needed to switch distros, and this was the only thing that seemed a bit annoying. Other than that it seemed like a solid and friendly distro.

[fffrantz]

The default way zypper (the package manager) updates installed patterns is to include every recommended package in the pattern.

For example, if you update the pattern "gnome", it will by default reinstall cheese, even if you uninstalled it before.

Thankfully, they thought about this and there is a flag you can use (--no-recommends) to avoid reinstalling all recommended packages. It really is a minor annoyance, but I understand it could be annoying for new and inexperienced users.

[lemper]

similar to portage's useflag, it seems.