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...

[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:This supports the Gnome2 Fork MATE as well.

[sconeu]

And those of us who RTFS already knew that.

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

It's got to be asked.

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Systemd?

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.

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: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".

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.