Hey everyone!
So, as I had said before, at SCALE 21x I met the amazing people that are part of SoCalSUSE. As a result of meeting them, I first tried out openSUSE Tumbleweed in a VM, then decided to install it on my laptop. I have been using it exclusively for a little over two weeks now.
General Computer Use
Not really anything here to report. I saw some people on this forum from 2018 talking about codec issues but I have not seen that.
It was also quite nice to try out Tumbleweed, because everyone who has heard me talk about desktop environments knows I am a KDE Plasma fan, and Plasma 6 is running very well on Tumbleweed.
Installing Packages and Configuration
openSUSE uses the zypper package manager, which I have found to be a snappy and useful one. Comparable to apt in that it pretty much always works the way I want it to, and for the most part if you know apt you will feel right at home with zypper. If anything, it seems like it is a bit speedier than apt, but I have not done any testing to see why that is.
I do want to note that for openSUSE Tumbelweed, as it is rolling release (although not as up to date as Arch, which can be nice), you have a special command to update. Which is sudo zypper --dist-upgrade or sudo zypper dup. This will upgrade your system to the current release, which there is usually one every day, although you are not forced to run it that frequently. I think it is recommended you run it once a week.
Other than the general way to configure your computer, you also gain access to YaST (Yet another Setup Tool). YaST can do pretty much everything through a GUI. YaST is what you use to install openSUSE, but you can also use it to configure GRUB, install packages, configure networking, users, and many other things. I talked with one of the founders of SoCalSUSE, and he says he always uses it to modify GRUB because it gives him some extra security that GRUB will be modified in a safe and consistent way.
I don’t think anyone who is truly experienced setting up Linux at the command line will have much use for YaST, but I can see why it would be beneficial to many users. However, I think its use is even more obvious in an office setting, as it could be pretty powerful to set up a workstation (such as pre installing needed software, setting up Active Directory membership, Networking, ect).
Programming
I have done some programming on openSUSE as well. I have found that finding whatever packages I need to either build a repo from the internet or to set up programming on my computer has been simple (the same as Ubuntu). There are more programming languages and frameworks out there that can work on Linux than I know about, so I cannot test all of them, but from what I can tell the common ones (and even not so common ones) are readily available.
Community
I have interacted with the openSUSE community a bit, and I have to say they are a very friendly and helpful bunch. I have posted on their forums asking for help trying to build a theme for Plasma 6, and I have also sought out help on other channels they have. The community of openSUSE is so inviting it makes me want to stay using this distro.
Other things special about openSUSE
openSUSE does not just offer the rolling release Tumbleweed, but it also offers the LTS Leap (which is more like Ubuntu and Debian with their stable but out of date packages). They also have a new version that they call SlowRoll, which is supposed to be more up to date that Leap but not as cutting edge as Tumbleweed. SlowRoll is new, but from the openSUSE forums I have read positive chatter about it. Also, I do want to note that packages for Tumbleweed are tested before they are released, so while it is rolling release, you are less likely to encounter problems with the newer software.
When installing, you are asked to select either GNOME, Plasma, Xfce, or other. There other desktops are supported, but not fully tested. These include: LXDE, LXQt, Enlightenment, Cinnamon, MATE, and Pantheon. Unless you love these DEs, I would probably stick with GNOME, Plasma or Xfce. However, it is nice that at least some of the configuration will be done for you, if not completely done.
Final Verdict
I am really loving openSUSE Tumbleweed. I have been using Ubuntu for over a year and a half now, and I do like it. However, I have run into some issues in the past where I wanted to use some feature in some software that did not exist in the apt version, and so I had to either use a .deb file or build from source. Both of these work, but in an ideal world, I would be able get software that is both relatively up to date and stable. That might seem like an oxymoron, and sometimes it is. Sometimes, however, the newer versions of software can be more stable than the older versions. This might especially be the case if the version of the software you are trying to use is around 2 years old, which I have seem happen on Ubuntu a few times.
On my desktop, what I will probably do is install openSUSE Tumbleweed as my main distro and keep Ubuntu around for now just in case I run into any serious trouble.