New OpenSUSE distribution: Slowroll

[ColonelPanic232]

Slowroll is a new distribution from 2023 based on Tumbleweed, but rolling slower, with updates every one or two months and bug fixes and CVE fixes as they come in;

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Slowroll

[P1tape]

I installed gecko August 2022 ISO on an external SSD. I changed repos with the slowroll ones and updated the system. Disabled secure boot in Yast Boot utility. Over 1700 packages to replace. Rebooted and added Nvidia drivers. Everything is fine, Gecko now on slow roll path! Very smooth.

[Ticklezz]

I would love to see a Gecko slowroll distro.

[ColonelPanic232]

So would I. There are instructions for updating a Tumbleweed installation to Slowroll, but I don't know if the snapshot that Gecko (Tumbleweed) is based on is recent enough for that to work.

[ColonelPanic232]

In other news, I've just seen a writeup of Slowroll on Bobby Borisov's Linuxiac website and it's exciting news for those of us who want to see OpenSUSE's future as a viable desktop operating system secured. Slowroll has been approved as Leap's replacement, write up here;

https://linuxiac.com/what-is-opensuse-slowroll-alp/

Leap 15.6 will go ahead in June 2024 as planned, but beyond that Slowroll is intended to take over.

[geckolinux]

Hi there @ColonelPanic232 , @P1tape , and @Ticklezz ,

I agree that Slowroll is a positive development for openSUSE. However there are a few other things to take into consideration:

First of all, they're still working on Slowroll and it's not fully ready for public use. They don't have openQA testing working yet (or at least they didn't the last time I asked), and even the Slowroll repositories are still in a temporary location that will be changed:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/16fqnoa/opensuse_slowroll_just_started_based_on_tumbleweed/k0awlkj/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/16skran/slowroll_distribution_keeps_name_official/k2d5rb7/

So there definitely can't be any downstream spins (like GeckoLinux) based on Slowroll quite yet, because users would eventually have to change the repository URLs on their installed systems, which is a major ordeal for less technical users.

Secondly, it looks like the openSUSE maintainers of the Cinnamon desktop packages have lost interest, because it's going on 2 years that Cinnamon hasn't been updated even for Tumbleweed, and they didn't act on my attempts to push two updated packages to get the process moving again. Now Cinnamon packages are throwing dependency errors when updating Tumbleweed systems. Cinnamon is always my go-to recommendation for users that I personally help to migrate to Linux and it's what I personally use on almost all of my systems, so it makes no sense for me to invest time into updating GeckoLinux until/unless the openSUSE packagers start maintaining Cinnamon again. I assume that if they ever do fix Cinnamon for Tumbleweed then it will eventually find its way into Slowroll too, but there's a lot of uncertainty.

Finally, regarding Slowroll being a replacement for Leap, I strongly disagree with that statement. Although I've been personally wanting something like Slowroll for years and I support the idea, for scenarios where Leap was needed Slowroll is not even close to Leap in terms of its rate of change. Leap minor releases were supported for 18 months, during which time there were virtually zero changes to major package versions that would introduce unexpected functional changes, and even in new Leap point releases there were usually no major version updates to core server components and web server stacks. Slowroll on the other hand is supposed to follow just a few months behind Tumbleweed, which is still way too fast for less experienced Linux users (and also for many server use cases). The term "stability" is extremely ambiguous, which is why I called the GeckoLinux branch "Static" instead of "Stable". If "stablility" is defined as "not crashing" then Tumbleweed is every bit as stable as Debian Stable in my experience. But usually when devs and administrators talk about "stability" they're referring to updates not introducing unexpected changes or breaking other components of the system, which means that in that sense Tumbleweed by design is absolutely not stable, and Slowroll won't change that. So it's looking like after Leap 15.6 there will no longer be a SUSE / openSUSE offering for users that personally need and/or need to support other users with a slow-changing conventional Linux system that has no surprises.

[blind-confused]

If "stablility" is defined as "not crashing" then Tumbleweed is every bit as stable as Debian Stable in my experience. But usually when devs and administrators talk about "stability" they're referring to updates not introducing unexpected changes or breaking other components of the system, which means that in that sense Tumbleweed by design is absolutely not stable, and Slowroll won't change that.

regular user here (not very tech experienced), this part confuses me a bit... you say that, in terms of "not crashing", TW is just like Debian. But at the same time, you say that, in terms of "not breaking other parts of the system", TW is not stable at all. But "not crashing" and "not breaking other parts of the system" are kind of... almost the same thing?.. I mean, the first one includes the second.
so my question is... TW and Slowroll are still stable (reliable, not-crashing), even for inexperienced users, right? haha

also, just a side note, you most likely know of this, but openSUSE team seemed to have recognized that there is still a lot of users that want a traditional Leap experience, so Leap 16 is now in official development. I'm not sure how exactly different it will be from previous Leap releases though, I haven't read too much on it.

[geckolinux]

Hi there @blind-confused . When I think of "crashing" I'm referring to the system being up and running normally when something suddenly freezes or throws an error that kicks you out of the session and makes you lose work. The same goes for the filesystem suddenly eating your data and other runtime errors. That sort of thing is as likely to happen on Debian Stable as it is on Tumbleweed or Slowroll.

As for "breakage", I'm referring to programs that used to work failing to start after an update, or the system even failing to boot after an update and/or the graphical session failing to start, or dependency errors when trying to install or update packages, or new bugs appearing in new versions of programs. This is all fairly common with Tumbleweed and to a lesser extent in Slowroll, and very rare in Debian Stable. This is not to say that Debian Stable is free of bugs, as part of the Debian Stable definition of "stability" is avoiding unexpected changes for better or for worse, so most non-critical issues are never fixed during X.y point releases and many are never fixed during the entire major version Stable release lifecycle. But they are the same bugs, so that also counts as "stability".

The openSUSE Leap 16 announcements you referred to are here:

• https://news.opensuse.org/2024/10/07/leap-16-0-prealpha/
• https://get.opensuse.org/leap/16.0

For now I'll reserve my opinion until we have a clearer idea of what the new Leap actually develops into. The recent announcements to me are still very ambiguous and leave a lot of questions in my mind about what sort of packages will be available for a desktop use case and how long the support lifecycle will be.

[blind-confused]

so what you mean by "crashing" is when something launched and ran fine for some time, but then suddenly crashed in the middle of work? And what you mean by "breakage" is more like when something doesn't even launch properly in the first place (even though it did before), right?
I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding, for me as a non-programmer it's kind of unusual to think this way haha. I usually picture all of the said things together in one category, which I interchangeably call "crashes/bugs/breakages/glitches/issues/etc."

it's sad to hear that breakages are common even on some of the most reliable rolling releases. I wonder how would, for example, Leap compare to TW or Slowroll in terms of that.
but well, at least it's nice that, whenever a breakage happens, it's usually patched relatively quickly and fixed with another system update. Just recently got a fix for an issue that made my system not launch (Slowroll user here).

[geckolinux]

so what you mean by "crashing" is when something launched and ran fine for some time, but then suddenly crashed in the middle of work? And what you mean by "breakage" is more like when something doesn't even launch properly in the first place (even though it did before), right?

That's more or less the idea.

it's sad to hear that breakages are common even on some of the most reliable rolling releases. I wonder how would, for example, Leap compare to TW or Slowroll in terms of that.

It was uncommon during the Leap 15.x release cycle.

[ColonelPanic232]

"It was uncommon during the Leap 15.x release cycle."

I agree. I've got Leap 15.5 running on my computer, amongst other distros including Spiral, and pretty much nothing goes wrong with it (in fact nothing has gone wrong with it for literally months); it is both stable and reliable and gets the job done. I suppose I should update to the new version (15.6), but from what I've seen from reviews 15.6 doesn't add much to 15.5 apart from containerisation, which I don't really use.

I find it sad that the company is apparently thinking of discontinuing Leap when it clearly ticks so many boxes concerning what many people really want from a distro. Let's hope they can be persuaded to change their minds on this.

[ColonelPanic232]

Thanks to @geckolinux and to the others who have replied too.

It seems that Slowroll isn't the Leap replacement I was hoping for. I'm in no hurry to replace Gecko Static; it both works and updates well and this computer's hard drive is getting old anyway, so l don't expect it to last more than a year or so more (if that) and I'm quite happy to carry on with it for the time being (and may reinstall Leap 15.5 soon).

You raise a good question about window managers and desktop environments, so I'd quite like to talk about them. This computer came with Mint 21 (Cinnamon version) so I've gotten used to Cinnamon, and mostly it's fine but as far as I can see there's no way to do something I like to do in XFce; bring up a list of all the windows open in all my workspaces by middle clicking on the desktop (I know it can be done with Rofi, but it looks worse IMO).

Mate also lacks that ability although it's mostly a pretty good desktop environment, and Plasma does have it but is much heavier on system resources. So for me there isn't really a perfect desktop manager.

[geckolinux]

For something very low maintenance with no unexpected changes I would recommend Debian Stable, and my SpiralLinux spins on Debian might be what you're looking for if/when you hard drive dies and you need to install something new. Meanwhile it makes sense to keep using GeckoLinux Static as you're doing.

[ColonelPanic232]

Thanks for replying. I've got the old version of Spiral Linux XFce (based on Debian 11) and it's very good.

[ColonelPanic232]

I've also got Leap 15.5 (the vanilla version) installed but I find Gecko easier to get on with; it's clear that you've smoothed out the rough edges in Leap when you worked on Gecko (for example, I don't get the "Cannot open display:" fault when I open something like GParted in Gecko).

[geckolinux]

You could try installing the last GeckoLinux Static release built from Leap 15.4 and then switch the repositories to Leap 15.5 and upgrade it, it should retain most of GeckoLinux refinements that way.

[ColonelPanic232]

Thanks for replying. Yes, that sounds like a good idea although Gecko 15.4 is still updating without a problem without my having to do that.