[GTALUG] Anyone here using Manjaro or OpenSUSE?

[o1bigtenor]

On Sun, Sep 9, 2018 at 11:32 AM, Jamon Camisso via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
> On 09/09/18 00:14, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'm looking to install a new distro, after using Mint and Kubuntu for a
>> long time.
>> I'm trying to choose whether to try Manjaro or OpenSUSE.
>>
>> Sure, I can install both and can look around. But I'm wondering is there is
>> anyone here who uses either of these distros who might be aware of issues
>> not readily apparent. Intended desktop is KDE.
>>
>> Note: I want to be able to use Dupeguru, Spotify, Skype and Signal, apps
>> that under *buntu require auxilliary PPA repositories. Some of these are
>> dealbreakers if I can't use them.
>
> There are snaps for all those except Dupeguru (I don't see RPMs for it
> anywhere either, so it looks like .deb from PPA or .spec RPM build are it).
>
> Manjaro and OpenSUSE run snapd with no issues, so you ought to be able
> to tick 3 of the 4 boxes (snap search <software name>) returns:
>
I'm not at all knowledgeable on the running of either of Manjaro or OpenSUSE
but I tried running LXD, which requires the use of snapd, on Debian.
Would not recommend using such. IMO any software which takes control from
the user and gives the developer control instead really should not be included
in anything called 'open source'. In my odyssey with the combination I
was using
I was able to find out that snapd MUST be udpated, the dev team likes to do it
EVERY DAY but will accept doing it only once a month. There was offered a
solution where an iptables rule would block that request, to
update/upgrade, from
happening. After installing such it was very interesting to see that
somewhat after
the time for the scheduled upgrade/update passed my server would be killed
internally. In the process of working with the lxd system (which has
the possibility
of a lot of good things except for this now total dependency upon
snapd) I set up
an experimental system to not have any problems created on systems that I need
to 'function'. It was on this experimental system that I found that if
you use the
command sequence # snapd remove lxd followed by # apt remove snapd (I also
used  # apt purge snapd) only to find that there were still a large number of
directories still on the system. The actual removal process is quite
tedious taking
about 7 or 8 steps to clean up lxd and then, and only then is it
possible to remove
snapd. Given my 'joys' with this set of systems I would therefore NOT recommend
anything to do with snapd. IMO snapd was set up in its fashion to
assist Canonical
in developing a greater impetus towards its IPO (initial stock
offering). While it
appears that snapd is supported on other systems that ubuntu a read of
the forums
will show that there seem to be lots of hiccups on most everything but ubuntu
- - - - ymmv!

Regards

Dee