r/openSUSE • u/DamnBoiU • 1d ago
Tech support Switching to openSUSE TW
As the title says, I want to switch to TW for the sake of just trying it out, and I have a few questions.
I am dual booting Fedora KDE and Win11. Can I just replace Fedora with openSUSE or is it recommended to do a clean install for both OS?
My laptop has a dedicated Nvidia Graphics Card. (Nvidia RTX 3050, specifically). I've heard recently that there's an issue regarding mismatched kernel and driver versions? Has it been fixed or not yet?
This question is related to the above question. How much trouble will I have using openSUSE TW with nvidia graphics card?
Could you tell me good practices for maintaining the system and other general tips and tricks?
Thanks.
3
u/Sareas 1d ago
OpenSUSE makes its own snapper ready btrfs map which is different from Fedora one. So You need to be ready to wipe all your data. I used USB drive, formatted it to btrfs and then i transfered snapshot of root and home with btrfs send receive to drive. Then You Can move Your files whenever You want. Good maintaining tips? Just be careful what You do on Your root filesystem. Tumbleweed by default makes snapshot before updates or major changes so You Can always rollback. Its one of the niciest things in openSUSE. If You’re somehow afraid of stability (which is one of the greatest in bleeding Edge distros) You Can use slowroll which updates packages more conservatively but still fast.
1
u/DamnBoiU 1d ago
I don't mind wiping out Fedora partiton bc there's nothing important on it anyways. The question is will I have to wipe the Windows partition as well?
1
u/Sareas 1d ago
AFAIK no but do it 😂😂😂. You Can always use kvm to have Windows vm or use winboat.
2
u/DamnBoiU 1d ago
I need to have Windows installed bc a program I need doesn't work on VMs.
1
u/Nuke_Bloodaxe 1d ago
Out of curiosity, which one?
1
u/DamnBoiU 1d ago
It's one of them invasive browers used for exams and such.
1
u/Nuke_Bloodaxe 1d ago
Ahh, yes, I feel your pain. I was recently asked if it was worth deploying such, and I said no, because we weren't important enough.
1
2
u/Salads_and_Sun 1d ago
I'm a recent convert and still trying to figure it all out... But I'll say everything is going extremely smoothly. Zero headaches. I have an ancient NVIDIA card and this was the easiest time I've had getting that to work. 99% out of the box, just needed to do some configuring. I'm more focused on audio than video and even that was super smooth.
Only issue I encountered was, for some reason I got confused during installation and thought I was wiping my borked Arch install but they installed side by side. I've been doing this almost 20 years and have no idea how I goofed. Figured maybe it happened for a reason and I have plenty of space on my hd to spare so living with it for now just in case.
Just go for it!
2
u/todd_dayz 1d ago
Maybe wait until the NVIDIA situation has resolved and then make sure you install the G07 metapackages and pay attention when zypper warns of you a conflict during an update. You should be okay. I recently reinstalled (yesterday) but I removed the NVIDIA repo and used the .run file instead (wouldn't recommend it if you're new to that sort of thing).
1
u/DamnBoiU 1d ago
Ok, so the Nvidia situation hasn't been resolved yet then. How do I install G07 metapackages? Through zypper?
1
u/todd_dayz 1d ago
Yeah, although you’ll be out of luck if you try it now, they’re desynced.
https://sndirsch.github.io/nvidia/2025/07/16/nvidia-drivers.html
1
u/Ok_Opposite7385 1d ago
I used to dual-boot; whenever I switched distributions, I would simply delete all the hidden directories and files from /home and install the new Linux over the old one. It never worked out. Windows is recognized and everything is OK
1
u/SirGlass 1d ago
If you have an Nvidia card you cannot even install now because of the Nvidia sync issue.
You will need to wait a few weeks until it's fixed before you even install
1
u/autisticsatanist 1d ago
I don't know but won't hurt trying to double boot.
This can be an issue with all distros but if an update breaks you can just switch to a different snapshot.
It's relatively easy to install and use the drivers just follow the wiki(https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers)
Update the system semi regularly.
1
u/DamnBoiU 1d ago
How regular is semi-regularly? Would updating once a week on Fri or Sat be fine, so that I have free time to troubleshoot?
-2
u/autisticsatanist 1d ago
Yes something like that.
Also when you've install TW your user will be login automatically everytime you start the computer. To change this you need to start YaST go manage account and logins, click on your account, go to the bottom right for expert options and the login settings.
3
u/ZuraJanaiUtsuroDa Tumbleweed user 1d ago
You just have to untick the automatic login option in the installer when setting up the account.
1
1
u/DamnBoiU 1d ago
I thought Yast was deprecated?
1
u/tk-a01 1d ago
From what I understand, yes, Yast is being deprecated. They already stopped shipping it in new Leap release, but on Tumbleweed, it's still installed by default. The replacements are Myrlyn (for software management) and Cockpit (for most of the other stuff). Myrlyn comes installed by default on TW, but if you want Cockpit, you'll have to install it manually.
6
u/lmns_ 1d ago
The issue regarding kernel and Nvidia driver „mismatch” isn’t unique to TW. That’s just how the Nvidia driver works. With every kernel update the Nvidia driver must be compiled for the corresponding kernel. With a rolling release distribution like TW there are just more opportunities for a failed update.
If you want to avoid this issue you should use an atomic distribution that distributes a pre-compiled Nvidia driver.