📝 My Ubuntu experience ended, welcome OpenSUSE
In the second half of October, I replaced Ubuntu 24.04 with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. This marked the end of my Ubuntu experience. Well, for the moment, at least, because you never know how tomorrow's going to be.
This decision was not made lightly. After several months using Ubuntu 24.04, I was happy with the system. I was even using GNOME after using KDE Plasma for most of the last few years, because I liked Ubuntu's default experience on that desktop environment and found it better than the default one.
What happened
What I didn't like, though, was that it started to log me out of GNOME randomly.
When it first happened, I thought it could be an issue with an extension, but I checked the system logs nonetheless. They were useful for confirming that this was an issue somewhere in GNOME, but not for pointing to an extension as the culprit.
Then, it happened again. And again. Always at random times. Even on a clean account.
Trying to mitigate it
After a few days of searching the web for similar reports, I found a bug report for Ubuntu about an issue in, I believe, GNOME Shell. This issue had been fixed in more recent versions of the desktop environment than the one shipped in Ubuntu 24.04, but it appeared that there were no plans to backport it to the existing LTS. Luckily, the bug report included a mitigation I could apply to my system.
I tried the mitigation (adding something in /etc/profile). For a few days, it felt like the issue was gone, and I could use my computer without getting on my nerves.
Task failed successfully
Then, it happened again. And again. Always at random times.
This started to get me a bit angry. Then, it happened while I was working. I was using a web platform with autosave, so the work wasn't lost, but I lost my train of thought and had to start almost from scratch.
This made me mad! I couldn't afford to have this happen again while working. If it happens when I'm gaming or browsing the web, it's annoying, but I can live with it if it happens seldomly. However, during the few paid work chances I get, it can't happen.
But it did happen one more time.
root@computer:~# whereis replacement
I decided I had to find a replacement.
Returning to Arch was one of my options. Installing Void, a distro I quite enjoyed a few years back, was another alternative. I also considered Debian, Fedora, Alpine, and a couple more.
One of those “couple more” was OpenSUSE, specifically the Tumbleweed branch/edition or whatever the correct naming convention is. I had used OpenSUSE for a bit several years ago (somewhere between 15 to 20 years ago, if my memory isn't failing me again), and it offered a bleeding-edge approach like Arch. It is also a distribution developed and maintained in Europe, at least for the most part, which helped, given the current state of the US with nutjobs in power.
All in on green
So, on the day after my 42nd birthday, I backed up all the data I needed, and I replaced Ubuntu 24.04 with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
I admit I did little reading about the tools the distribution offers, like the package manager and YaST. Or that a pattern you install and then uninstall with zypper will be installed again when you update your system. If it was removed, it has no business being installed again, and I shouldn't have to create a lock on that pattern to prevent that behavior. This makes no sense to me as a user.
I did take a look at their docs, but they pale in comparison to the Arch Wiki. OpenSUSE could actually learn a few things from Arch in this regard to improve their documentation, in my opinion.
A mostly smooth sail (so far)
Of course, this hasn't been a perfect experience.
The day after installing the distro, I installed profile-sync-daemon, a tool that copies your browser profile into RAM while you're using it and lets you set up a sync interval with the filesystem, so it doesn't batter the SSD or NVMe so much. I believe I also installed some updates after that, and then rebooted.
The system booted fine, and I was able to log in to Plasma. Then, no matter what application I tried to launch, it would show an error and wouldn't open. It took me a bit to remember that this tool fills the user's tmpfs if you have the default 20% for the RuntimeDirectorySize in systemd's logind.conf.
Even with 12 GB of RAM and 12 GB of SWAP, this happens.
I bumped the value to 30%, just to be super safe, rebooted, and voilà, I could open applications again.
I think this was the only major issue.
I also had an issue with a kernel update that wouldn't boot, but I had the previous kernel version still installed, so it didn't matter all that much.
Additionally, some tools I use aren't available in the repos, but it's just a few, and that's easily fixable by compiling them. Given that most of these tools are written in Go, it's easier to deal with dependencies.
Let's see if I'll revisit my decision of using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed in a few months.