I’ve been running Tumbleweed for a few years now. It’s great, but it’s not 100% autopilot, updates often require manual intervention (resolving small problems) or updates try to add 50 packages I don’t need (recommends) all the time despite them not being in a pattern. I’ve been looking for a distro on which I could set up automatic updates and forget mostly about it, while still having recent packages; reliability and peace of mind while being on the bleeding edge. Due to having an NVIDIA GPU, LTS distros are a no-go. I’ve debated on the following
- Debian: packages too old, ideal for my server though.
- Ubuntu 24.04: Plasma 6 not available until next release. Snap is still a problem.
- Fedora/Ublue: DNF is painfully slow. Immutable variants are interesting but download full GBs worth of images
- Arch: insanely fast package manager, but can require manual intervention. Automatic updates aren’t recommended for arch. It also lacks my printer driver on the repos (only available on the AUR). One of the only distros that can truly satisfy my minimalist itch.
- KDE Neon: Snaps, no nvidia graphics
- NixOS: Never tried it but apparently the unusual file structure causes many problems
So I ended up trying again OpenSUSE Kalpa. I had completely forgotten about it, and I really like the concept. It’s like the Fedora immutable variants, but instead of downloading whole GBs of images, it creates BTRFS snapshots between normal zypper updates. So you can have the benefits of offline updates without having to wait at boot or at shutdown. Just like silverblue, the concept is to try to install everything through flatpak/distrobox and avoid adding anything unnecessary to the base, so that system updates can be snappy and unproblematic.
I was really tired of opening my laptop, updating everything and then rebooting. I just want to open my pc, have all updates automatically applied in the background through systemd units so that the next time I boot, I have an updated system. No “updating” during next boot. I finally found a distro perfect for me in that regard, and for everyone else who’s tired of babysitting their linux desktops, you should give a shot to Kalpa/Aeon.
I wasnt aware of how bad this situation was actually.
It started by me asking in their forum “where do I need to place a repo to add external RPMs”?
Because on Atomic Fedora the dnf repo add command doesnt work, but the repos can be placed in the same dir and work the same. So I assumed this worked on “the OpenSUSE equivalent” the same.
Instead of getting the needed answer (assuming that their model worked just as well as Fedoras) they told me
- installing RPMs causes random changes to the system that are not reversible (yes they are, on Fedora)
- installing RPMs is not supported, only Flatpaks (which dont support user namespace creation for process isolation in browsers, so not an option here)
- the only RPMs that should be installed are drivers etc. So they advise something they dont support, lol
- they supposedly hate Fedora?
I still dont know where such a repo would be placed, and why they would support installing RPMs on the “chaotic” traditional variants, while they dont on their “more stable” “immutable” variants.
Well yes I know. Because their model is not any better in solving the mentioned problems.
I mean, by logic, a better package manager should improve stability when installing system packages. You shouldnt need to install Flatpaks or Distrobox containers only on “immutable” distros, but especially on traditional, messy ones.
Because these traditional distros dont have measurements to revert the permanent changes that sometimes occur when installing, changing or upgrading packages.
If your OS is so unreliable that you only support installing Flatpak, then the package management is crap.
