openSUSE Leap 16

I’ve recently made a change in the operating system running on my laptop, and I thought I’d explain what happened there in this short post.

What Happened To Endeavour OS?

When I last wrote about Linux on my laptop, a mid-2011 MacBook Air, I was using Endeavour OS, and I was relatively satisfied with it. However, a few things happened that made me change, and I’ll be honest, not necessarily for good reasons now I look back!

Initially, my poor old MacBook Air started to experience failing internal WiFi connections, where I could only access the network wirelessly in short bursts and at low speeds. I was seriously concerned this would finally be the end of the ageing laptop. As a last ditch effort, I ordered a high quality Linux compatible WiFi dongle in hopes of saving the device, and then faced a new issue: too powerful for the laptop 🤦‍♀️

It didn’t go the waste though, as I was able to use it to boost the quality of WiFi from my mini PC server, which came with a mini WiFi dongle and occasionally conked out under the load. So, I swapped these around and tried again - I knew the mini dongle would work with Linux as it was with my mini PC running Ubuntu Server (I will indeed write a future post about this, I promise, it’s like 80% written already!), but I still struggled to get a consistent network connection, and faced dropouts to the point of being unable to run system updates.

Accepting defeat, I decided the only use the laptop had left was offline use, and so could be used to test Linux distributions on, which I did immediately when trying Fedora Aurora on the laptop before installing it on (what was then known as) my gaming Windows PC. I then needed to test out KDE Neon for my audio setup plan, so installed that on the laptop and was happy with the results to pursue it on the intended device when it arrived.

I then had another bout of illness that left me in bed for an extended period of time, and became frustrated I was not able to write or code, as these were too difficult to do on my phone. I booted up the laptop again, trying to troubleshooting the issue, and found a simple solution: long cable.

To be specific, a long USB extension cable plugged into the laptop, and have the mini WiFi dongle plugged in the other end, and have the end dangle all the way to the bottom of the bed. For some reason, this works much better - not perfect as I do still get random dropouts, but I was able to download large system updates!

And… that is sort of where I left it 🤷‍♀️

Well, for a while! Initially, I was satisfied with KDE Neon just doing all it needs to do, which isn’t a lot: Librewolf as a web browser, Kate for coding, git and Hugo were installed for development, I use Typora for writing, and Syncthing is running to ensure everything is in sync, along with Tailscale to keep my laptop within the same virtual private network as my other devices. There really is not much going on - I pretty much only use three applications!

openSUSE

However, I then thought I ought to be more considerate, and I liked the idea of having a different operating system - Fedora for my main, Debian on the server and audio device, and something else for the laptop. Historically, I’ve had Arch on my laptop in some way, shape or form, but as the network connection really is quite unstable, I could not use the laptop for rolling releases anymore - the updates would become too much for it!

As such, I considered other Linux distributions, and decided to give openSUSE Leap a go. I had actually considered openSUSE Tumbleweed (the rolling release variety) on my main computer, with its snapshot capabilities and default KDE desktop environment, believing it to be a decent alternative to the Fedora Aurora I was using and switching away from. I’d never used openSUSE before, despite being aware of it, but thought the benefits of it were worth trying out, but I struggled immensely with NVIDIA driver issues and then boot manager issues, so I gave up. However, openSUSE Leap seemed fully compatible with the hardware in my MacBook Air, and being non-rolling would not need as much updating, so it seemed like a good opportunity to finally give openSUSE a good try.

The process to install wasn’t smooth though! Almost certainly due to an error I made, I actually laughed when I booted in for the first time after installation and saw just a command line interface, no desktop environment! So yeah, was a bit of a learning curve setting up networking and then downloading KDE Plasma 6 through the command line, but it worked and then I booted into a very empty desktop environment. As I had installed it after the initial installation process, it came with very little bundled, so I have had to install all sorts to bring it up to speed, but it was actually nice to know the laptop is as unbloated as can be, and only has applications and services I want - though installing various dependencies was a bit time consuming at the start! I liked using zypper to install most of the software, but still used Flatpaks in Discover (which needed installing too!) to fill in a few gaps. I also feel like the operating system is very stable, I’ve yet to experience any weirdness or crashes, and feel it’s quite fast, with the network even dropping out less.

After the basics were setup, I began on customisation, and decided to go back to Catppuccin for a comprehensive soaking of the operating system in one single theme - something very easy to do with the install script provided for KDE. I chose Catppuccin Frappé (with Flamingo as my accent colour) as the lightest of the dark modes with Yet Another Monochrome Icon Set to complete the uniformity. I’ve set the panels up in a similar way to my main computer, with a small panel at the top for the system tray, time, and global menu. On the bottom panel I have large icons Mac-style, along with some widgets including clipboard contents, sticky notes, colour picker and pinned folders for quick access.

Conclusion

Overall, I have been very satisfied with openSUSE Leap so far. I know I’m not doing anything too demanding with my setup, just a few applications running to write and code, with a web browser for occasional referencing and Syncthing running in the background, as well as my long cable dangling out the side for intermittent networking. It’s a shame the network has become so dodgy because that is its only fault. With openSUSE Leap, the laptop honestly feels very responsive and stable, despite being nearly fifteen years old. You really would not know it, not only with its usability, but with KDE and the drenching of Catppuccin Frappé, it looks incredible and significantly more modern than its hardware and age suggests. I’m happy with using Fedora KDE as my daily driver on my main computer, but it has made me curious what life would have been like if I had been able to set up openSUSE Tumbleweed on it, because, at least with my time with Leap, I think it’s a very good contender which should be considered if you’re still hopping between Linux distributions.