I have been an openSUSE Tumbleweed user now for many, many years. And, for the most part, incredibly happy with it too. In fact, I still use Leap for pretty much anything else at home (and one or two in the workplace, too).
However, a few months ago, Snapper finally snapped me one too many times. I'm not blaming the tool here, just to be clear, I'm blaming myself for making a stupid mistake. Snapper has this incredible ability to devour disk space with its snapshots, and if you don't keep an eye on it, it will leave you with nothing to play with. And I mean nothing!
Before doing a zypper dup, I usually remember to check on the snapshots and make sure I'm clear. On this occasion, I had forgotten (again). As it came to the end of the upgrade, errors started flying out in all directions, complaining about no available disk space. I hit the trusty Ctrl+Alt+F{x} key to slip in to something a little more slinky to clear up the snapshots. Being late in the evening, I must have deleted the wrong snapshot, as after resuming the updates and restarting, things were not happy. So unhappy, in fact, that it was saying the pre-upgrade snapshot wasn't even there. Remember, Linux will hand you the shotgun and let you shoot your own leg off at any opportunity, no matter how long you've been using it.
At this point, I decided it was about time I tried something different. Before my openSUSE days, I was a bit of a distro hopper but had a liking for Antergos, where I stayed for almost a year before moving to openSUSE. Anyway, with Antergos long dead, I decided to take a ride on the EndeavourOS rocket ship.
My EndeavourOS Launch Date: 2021-04-09
Not only did I board Endeavour, but I also opted to visit the land of GNOME once more. It's not something I ever found entirely pleasant to use in the past, but with the release of GNOME 40, I thought I'd give it a go.
The installation was an absolute pleasure as it glided through. Then, to top it off, they have this awesome little welcome screen to greet you after log in.
There's even a tab to help you configure and learn about the package manager, the AUR and yay, as well as guiding you over to their community.
While I don't need this information, tips, or shortcuts to config files - I'm certainly not going to bash it. Why not make your life easier?
Wherefore Art Thou GNOMIO
For the most part, GNOME certainly isn't as bad as I remember, but it's also nowhere near as good as Plasma. In particular, the file manager drives me crazy. Dolphin is awesome!
For me, GNOME Files is just meh. It misses the mark in almost every way. The view seems overly clunky and wastes space, settings are lacking, and in general, not very configurable. I guess I've just been spoiled with Plasma and everything it offers.
Maybe there are some places I can tweak it a little further. I'd love to hear about yours!
Stellar Points
That truly minor issue aside, I've been enjoying having the AUR back. While openSUSE has build.opensuse.org, there is no denying that it is lacking compared to the AUR.
The community around EndeavourOS is so incredibly friendly, welcoming, and helpful, especially over at forum.endeavouros.com. From this community came a recommendation of topgrade
Honestly, I am in love. And, to top it off, the damn thing is available for macOS too - you can believe that this thing is already on my work machine!
Upper Atmosphere
The last two months with EndeavourOS has been nothing but a pleasure so far (apart from Files). Not having to worry about whether an application is going to be available or not, system upgrades actually freeing up disk space ...
I've not given up on openSUSE, not even close. I love that lizard. But, on my ageing laptop with a tiny 120 GB SSD, I think EndeavourOS could be here to stay.
If you're looking for your next hop, take a look!