I wanted to switch for several months but needed to sort out some things first. I’m a .NET dev (on Linux, crazy, I know). We migrated to .NET 8 (I want to upgrade to .NET 10 which is nowhere near the complexity level of moving everything from .NET Framework) last year and because .NET is now cross-platform, I could finally switch to Linux full time because my full tech stack is available here. It’s not a 1:1 workflow, some things are done differently (for example I don’t use IIS with self-signed certificates, I use Caddy; I don’t use MSBuild, I run dotnet commands manually; SQL Server is running in a Podman container).
I chose openSUSE Tumbleweed because I live in the EU, there’s the whole Buy European movement caused by Trump which I support. I tested Fedora Workstation first, I really really like it, it gave me less issues than openSUSE, but it’s “American”, sponsored by Red Hat who does business with Palantir, so sorry :( I should have considered Debian, too, I think it would have been easier, but openSUSE has newer packages and has that super cool Snapper integration which is a godsend to newbies such as myself who can break their system by doing something stupid. So far so good, I can’t use OpenVPN 3 here, though, because the community package doesn’t work properly (it expects DBUS to be named dbus, but for some reason openSUSE devs decided that non-standard dbus-1 is better). GSConnect doesn’t work, either, the extension hasn’t been updated enough and references some old parts which are not available in the cutting edge GNOME 49 on Tumbleweed ;) I believe both OpenVPN 3 and GSConnect would have worked on Debian out of the box. I could have also gone for LMDE, but I wasn’t aware what it was and I only knew I didn’t want Ubuntu, so Linux Mint was not something I wanted, either (I know it’s not the same, but it’s based on Ubuntu).
I read many times that your choice of DE is more important than your choice of distro. And to stick to your choice for at least three months before you hop to another one. I can’t help but get a sort of buyer’s remorse . That’s when you make a choice, but other options are still available after. Makes you (me) think that maybe it was not the best choice, you know. But hopping too soon just teaches you to install Linux :D
I set up a 3-2-1 backup scheme for which I’m very happy now. I have Btrfs + Snapper on my system disk, then I have Restic (with resticprofile) to back up my user files (plus some configuration files from /etc) on a secondary disk and another backup in the cloud. Initially I wanted an image based backup of the system disk, because I’ve been using Macrium Reflect on Windows for many years. After some research it seems that Linux users have a different mindset and because programs keep their config in /etc (or sometimes ~/.config) you can just backup those files and in case your rootfs is so damaged you cringe when thinking of fixing it, you just quickly re-install the system, pull all packages (which list you can export into a .txt file) and then restore the configs.
I learned that everything in Linux is a file. Even CPU frequencies (/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq). And that everything in Bash is a stream. And that I love fish (I actually don’t like fish, but I love the shell of that name).
I learned that systemd services are plain text files with super easy syntax. That BLEW MY MIND because in my .NET project I have a tool to create Windows Scheduler tasks and it’s like some stone age tech in comparison. I have to re-compile to create a new service. In systemd I can type a new service in a text editor and make it run on a schedule with a CLI command.
I learned that many people hate systemd. I listened to a short history of how systemd came to be and apparently somebody was collecting Bitcoin in 2014 to hire a hitman to kill one of the creators of systemd. 🤯 I don’t have a baggage, a month ago I thought you still use cron in Linux, so I don’t have any feelings about that, I understand the concerns about centralization and complexity, but currently I’d say I like systemd. I barely know anything, though.
After first few days I actually reinstalled Tumbleweed to get systemd-boot instead of GRUB because I use LUKS encryption on all disks and I read that systemd + Secure Boot is better.
I use GNOME. KDE seems to too Windows-like in its UX and too complex (too many options and switches), but I would still like to give it a fair chance. I wish it was possible to switch between GNOME and KDE on the same machine without making the system garbage (mixed window types, settings, etc.). I know it’s technically possible, but as far as I know it leaves “trash” and the OS sometimes gets confused and tries to display KDE (Qt?) windows in GNOME or something. I think it’s better to reinstall, but let me know if I’m wrong.
I did not encounter any serious issues, the system is very stable, no crashes. I am able to work on it and do personal stuff.
Thanks for the post. Sounds like you’re getting on very well. Some people say you can swap desktop as easy as uninstalling one and installing the new. I have done this with hyprland and ive seen this done with Gnome and KDE but im skeptical and worry that with these bigger desktops it will cause some really weird issues that would be super annoying to find and debug for a noobie.
Btw if you want packages from another distro you can use distrobox to create an image of that distro and then run the package there. You can make an alias for the command so you can run it easier. Might come in hand for your OpenVPN issue but since its a container it might also be annoying to setup.
From what I’ve heard, switching the Desktop Environment is easy and should be without no problems… as long as you don’t delete the old/previous one. If you want to remove the other one, you need to be a bit careful about what you delete, what to save and stuff like such.
The Tragedy of systemd: https://archive.org/details/lca2019-The_Tragedy_of_systemd
Oh, thanks!
Benno Rice always has interesting talks, good recommendation!
It sounds like you’re doing great and having fun! You’re more intentional than I am - I don’t have any kind of a plan even a year later.
On Debian, I installed a few DEs and could switch between them with a drop down on the login screen. It was trivial. You do end up with junk laying around from the other DEs, but it didn’t cause me any trouble. Some programs don’t support theming in your DE, but I believe that’s because of the widget toolkit the program developer choose rather than an issue with having multiple DEs.
KDE is definitely more Windows-like, which is nice because it’s easy and familiar. The KDE built in apps all seem good to me. I’m on Gnome now but thinking of moving to an even cleaner window manager thing.
Since I use Nixos as my distro it’s trivial to change stuff like that, but I don’t know that I would recommend it for development work.
I tried OpenSuSE for a while… and while I prefer Fedora, I will point out Debian Stable is literally so. Very stable.
My biggest problem with SuSE is its insistence on certain ways of doing things that have been out of the norm for a long time. The big one is requiring root to be an active user with a password. Most distros lock the root account, which has no password set and can’t be logged in without it, preventing root logins period, and requires you to first login as a normal user that has sudo permissions, then use sudo to do root commands.
