OpenSUSE 13.2 Released

MasterPatricko writes The latest version of the openSUSE distribution, 13.2, has been officially released. Key features include integrated support for filesystem snapshots, enabled by a switch to btrfs as the default file system, a new network manager (Wicked), as well as the usual version updates. This release includes seven supported desktop environments (KDE 4.14, GNOME 3.14, Xfce, LXDE, Enlightenment 19, Mate and Awesome) and even preview packages of Plasma 5.1, all presented with a unified openSUSE theme. Download LiveUSB and DVD images now from software.opensuse.org/132.

Comments

Question for btrfs users...

[Noryungi]

I am using OpenSUSE 13.1 right now with ext4 partitions and I am pondering migrating to OpenSUSE 13.2 with btrfs or simply updating the distro with ''zypper dup'' and keeping my ext4 fs.

If you are using btrfs, what has been your experience? Better performance? As stable as ext4?

Re:Question for btrfs users...

[houghi]

If you think about changing: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Unless you have serious issues with ETX4, I would not change it. Even if everybody would have problems and you don't, using something else might be the other way around and you being the only one with problems.

Re:Question for btrfs users...

[recharged95]

So far so good. I've been running 13.2RC1 since its release. no issues with btrfs. Main issues I have is wireless connection issues (doesn't connect sometimes) and gnome3 with my touchscreen keyboard.... keeps disposing once I start using it. There's 1-2 things about gnome, if they were fixed, would be excellent on a touchscreen.

Re:Question for btrfs users...

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

I installed it in this machine a couple of hours ago - after testing on a spare machine yesterday.
I have used SuSE and then Opensuse for years, and have had problems with pretty much every single upgrade. The only problem I had with this one was that my DVD writer ejected the dvd while there was still some data in the buffer. I used the mount/loop command to extract the .iso to a partition, booted from the dvd (that part was ok) and used the partition as the source instead of the dvd. There is now a separate "Update" option now and for the first time for years, the install went through without any problems at all. Even the multimedia stuff was fine, once I added the two repositories.

Surprising was the number of updates (around 60) to a release which came out 3 days ago.

Tomorrow I'll start testing the network options, but so far so good.

btw, if you have ext4 partitions, 13.2 is not going to start mounting them as btrfs or converting them or something. Existing partitions will keep their existing filesystems, although the content will be updated if appropriate. The default for *new* partitions is apparently btrfs but I'll be using that sparingly for a while now.

Re:Question for btrfs users...

[Maow]

I am using OpenSUSE 13.1 right now with ext4 partitions and I am pondering migrating to OpenSUSE 13.2 with btrfs or simply updating the distro with ''zypper dup'' and keeping my ext4 fs.

If you are using btrfs, what has been your experience? Better performance? As stable as ext4?

I set up OpenSUSE 13.1 in a VM and chose BTRFS on the root (and home?) file system(s).

Since it was a VM for testing, I didn't assign it a huge image space, maybe 8 GB.

Well, after installation and then updating all the packages, I'd run out of disk space before the updates finished.

What a PITA. "snapper" can be used to delete some of the snapshots, but I disagree with the snapshot taking after every package update. I understand it can be useful in some scenarios, but it's something I'd rather have on my /home partition.

That's the sum of my experience with poking at it a bit, other than the KDE version of OpenSUSE is probably the finest looking and most-polished OS I've every had the pleasure of using.

Re:Question for btrfs users...

[LaissezFaire]

And, if you dual-boot with Windows, the release notes say to use ext4, not BtrFS. https://www.suse.com/releaseno....

Re:This supports the Gnome2 Fork MATE as well.

[sconeu]

And those of us who RTFS already knew that.

Don't bother trying Btrfs.

[d33tah]

I am using OpenSUSE 13.1 right now with ext4 partitions and I am pondering migrating to OpenSUSE 13.2 with btrfs or simply updating the distro with ''zypper dup'' and keeping my ext4 fs.

If you are using btrfs, what has been your experience? Better performance? As stable as ext4?

You can't really say how much disk space you have (especially if you use compression and snapshots), overfilling the hard drive might leave you in a situation when you can't basically do anything other than reformatting the filesystem, and from my personal experience support for directories with loads of files is much worse than in ext4. My advice - don't bother.

Re:Don't bother trying Btrfs.

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is to use the BTRFS for the system partition (mostly for being able to do OS snapshots), and have /home and whatever other work folders as XFS or ext4. I saw some phoronix article (can't remember where, so I cannot provide the link here), they ran some tests and concluded that BTRFS and XFS are generally slightly faster than ext4, but the difference was not significant, so you would probably not notice it unless for some special scenarios. Myself I had no issue with either of the 3 (on opensuse and xubuntu) and neither did I notice any visible performance differences

Re:Don't bother trying Btrfs.

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

I used xfs for years, most of the time it was fine. The problems I had came from one assumption: xfs was written for high quality SGI hardware with UPS, not consumer PCs. It is not as hardware-failure tolerant as - for example - ext3 or ext4.

Re:Don't bother trying Btrfs.

[iggymanz]

I've had opposite experience, have lost ext3 partitions with power outage at exactly wrong time, but never lost XFS partition filesystem

Re:Don't bother trying Btrfs.

[tjb6]

Tried btrfs on two machines at work (Ubuntu 14.04), one new partition, one migration of an existing ext3 filesystem.
Can't say the performance is noticeably different, and it has been reliable. My initial observation was 'ok, works, but not real difference'. I have found 3 things that have changed my mind.
  1) Snapshots, particularly read only snapshots
  2) Use of send / receive operations to backup snapshots remotely, including incrementally.
  3) Ability to defrag as needed.

This is still quite bleeding edge... Using it I don't get the feeling that it as rock solid as the ext2/3/4 filesystems, for instance. OTOH, it has not failed in my fairly lightweight testing so far. Converting a root filesystem to btrfs was more complicated than I hoped, and took me a while to make work. Having re-organised my partitions so the boot partition started on the correct boundary, and performed the correct 'rituals' it came up OK, and has been solid ever since.

Other features of btrfs are still works in progress - notably RAID support.

Re:Don't bother trying Btrfs.

[AaronW]

I have had things fail and XFS performed like a champ and all data was recovered. I also love the xfsdump/xfsrestore tools and xfs_fsr which will defragment a mounted filesystem (though XFS is excellent at not fragmenting in the first place).

If you want to do a very large filesystem then XFS is the obvious choice since EXT4 can't scale beyond about 16TB. My only complaint, and this is not with XFS itself, is that the tools like gparted do not play nice with growing XFS partitions. They balk that the partition is mounted then complain because they don't know how to deal with XFS. The thing is that XFS has its own tools for growing the filesystem.

One of my friends was actually one of the original authors of XFS at SGI and it was interesting talking to him. A lot of work went into the real-time part for handling live video streams when hardware was much slower.

Re:Don't bother trying Btrfs.

[ninjaz]

I set up a lab VM with SLES 12 with / on btrfs last week and enabled snapper. After several hours of downloading and installing various projects from github to try out (including lots of dependencies), it was a quick and easy cleanup to restore to the snapshot it had taken an hour before I started.

Having worked with Solaris and LiveUpgrade for a number of years, I really like the prospect of having similar functionality in Linux to enable backing out a distro upgrade.

It's got to be asked.

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Systemd?

Re:It's got to be asked.

[snikulin]

Yes :(

Re:It's got to be asked.

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Since 13.1. At least the worst of the transition is now in the past.

Supported desktop list is missing one

[__aaclcg7560]

seven supported desktop environments (KDE 4.14, GNOME 3.14, Xfce, LXDE, Enlightenment 19, Mate and Awesome)

No support for Blackbox?! SuSE has fallen to new lows since version 6 when I last used it back in the day.

Re:User management

[fnj]

A pleasant surprise for me was to discover that useradd now allows to create a group for the user at the same time (I am not 100% sure whether is really new to 13.2). It has always been a nuisance having to manually perform the group creation.

Useradd has a pretty hostile interface, but it has "always" AFAIK had the required capability.

If you use "useradd -g joe joe", then group "joe" must already exist. Crap.

But if you use "useradd -U joe", or you just use "useradd joe" AND if USERGROUPS_ENAB=yes in /etc/login.defs, then a group will be created with the same name as the user, and that group will be set as the user's primary group.

"Of course" it's more complicated than that; a number of config files and switches are involved in the exact behavior, but if the distro sets up the default config "correctly", then the group-per-user "just works".

nVidia driver not working properly?

[Kleokat]

In 13.1 I saw for the first time, that the nvidia graphics driver could lock up the system - power-cycle to continue. Never happened before 13.1 It still happens in 13.2.
I have done no investigation in this issue, as I mostly use my laptop (with i7ish graphics). I just used the graphics driver delivered by the installation program. I know, there are other drivers.

Anybody else having the same problem and fixed it?

Re:nVidia driver not working properly?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Nouveau was flaky as hell with my Nvidia card in 13.1. Switched to the Nvidia driver, smooth sailing ever since.

Re:Ob

[DiamondGeezer]

Not only systemd, but a whole /bin directory of the purest evil. It also supports #Gamergate and goes down quicker than a $10 hooker.

Apart from that, it's a Linux distro.

Just installed it on a VM

[croftj]

Of course it looks sweet, just like all SuSE's of the past. YaST is getting better and better, one stop shopping for system administration. Either by gui or console. Sweet!!!

-joe

Re:User management

[CronoCloud]

As far as I know, useradd has had that ability since what? I know RH6 had it.

openSUSE 13.2 Screenshots

[linuxscreenshot]

http://www.linuxscreenshots.or...