Opensuse Leap 15.4 review

Hello! Welcome Back to another Opensuse review.

Sometime back i installed Opensuse Leap 15.3 and it provided an amazing experience.

i always prefer a stable OS so that i dont get any surprise boot error or sudden malfunction by an app.

if you want a rolling OS you can opt to Opensuse Tumbleweed but you should be ready to download ~GB of update very frequently similar to arch.

Arch Linux - it was an amazing experience using Arch i had finished setting up a Gnome Desktop but no matter what ever fix i followed the Bluetooth fails to detect any devices.

i reinstalled Arch with LTS Kernel instead the issue was resolved but not too long it was same issue after reboot.

next time i installed with KDE and it worked ike a charm, may be issue with Gnome Package in Arch linux.

things went smooth untill last week i was greeted with Boot error, something went wrong with an update and i was unable to go to terminal to reinstall Grub. i thought to boot from arch Net install ISO but started thinking if i really need  rolling Distro.

This is the time i though how stable Opensuse was and also the apps were latest and not too old versions like in Debian.

but on second thought i was really hesitant to download 4GB ISO for installation.

So i thought of trying a network image which is ~170 MB.

Download was quick and used Rufus to put it on USB.

upon booting the install ISO it ask for WiFi network ID details to connect, there was no option to scan for network available around you. So you should remember SSID and password to setup.

once its connected to network it downloads minimal files required to run the setup.

Leap 15.4 setup UI has an amazing feature added, the Widgets Theme!

its similar to Dark theme icon you get in Newer Windows App install.

if you click on the Moon like symbol it gives option to select a dark theme to setup process.

This is a very much required add on, earlier i had to sit staring at the screen with full brightness till the setup is finished as you will not be able to set the Brightness during install. this was an eye sore.

i am really happy Opensuse took this Feedback and enabled this add on.

i have no Snap of Setup screen, but it look similar as below. this feature is also available for most of Suse's system tools.

rest of the setup stages remains same and before install i gives us a in depth summary of what are the options enabled and which apps are going to be installed.

i selected the default proposed partition scheme with EXT4 for Root Partition and selected Swap the size of Ram to get advantage of Hibernate feature. 

then i selected to disable foreign OS probe as i have no other OS on my system and reduce Boot Menu timeout- i set this to 2 seconds.

and from Software selection i unchecked Games & PIM Suite patterns as i do not use them.

by default Google Noto fonts are selected but i selected some of regional fonts like kannada,tamil,telugu,malayalam,hindi so that Browser donot display garbage fonts for regional language webpages.

Next i set up a localhost name and started the installation. 

the installation time was around 1 Hour, 1.7 Gb was downloaded and install size was around 4.7 GB.

 VLC, 

Libre Office Bundle, 

Image and Document Viewer, 

scanner,

Web Browser - Firefox,

Remote Desktop Viewer,

Utilities like Kwrite editor, Screen Magnifier and screenshot tool.

Kmouse Tool is installed you can use it if you are one who hates clicking button action and we also get File compare app and archiving utility.

the Major upgrade visually is the KDE Plasma 5.24, it was more polished and looked very professional.

visual effects and themes were beautiful with opensuse themes and colors options.

Neofetch logo is also updated to Leap icon instead of Standard Gecko icon.

1st step once i booted into new install session i enabled Pakman Community repository.so that we get access to non free softwares.

VLC player installed by default does not play all Media formats, so had to enable PAKMAN repo and update packages from this repo. Yast has an option to set priorities for repos.

VLC available in Pakman can play any format without restrictions.

i used this command to upgrade and install all packages from Pakman and set this priority.

" SUDO zypper update --allow-vendor-change "

below is the repo config.

Downloading and installing packages with zypper was a breeze this time, usually zypper takes long time to connect to suse repos in earlier versions.

this time response was very fast like downloading Fedora's Delta rpm's. Suse has done some good amount of performance tweaks in package management.  

Web Cam App was missing so i installed kamoso, its a cam app for KDE like Cheese is fr Gnome.

Torrent client is not available by default so installed qbittorrent, TOR browser.

also installed Edge Browser.

Finger Print support remains the same as previous version.

it does not works OOB like Gnome, had to configure and use manually.

KDE Plasma on Wayland session felt lightweight and increase in battery backup was noticed.

with 8 GB of Ram i no more care about memory utilization unless the system performs without any freeze or hang and is crisp in responsiveness.

many compare and rate a distro on memory usage upon boot which is wrong.

if an OS takes few MB's or GB's of ram to provide a fast and responsive experience let it be.

but it should not be like an OS consumes 4 Gb of RAM and always gives you system Hangs or BSOD or freeze when you click an app or perform any action.

i really like the way Suse handles Admin prompts and you have an option to save password so that you no need to enter again and again when you are opening any administrative apps/actions.

i am really not a fan of new System monitor, its not as informative as Ksyguard.

Below is the system info details.

and as usual with every Opensuse install you will get a Bin folder created in your Home directory, purpose of which is still unknown.

we have link to Opensuse Docs on welcome screen, it has some docs on Bash and shell script, system tools and config TS/Diags manuals which is very informative and good to have knowledge.

All the apps worked like charm, suspend and hibernate features also works and not buggy anymore.

Overall Opensuse Leap 15.4 packs brilliant performance over other stable Distros with speedy package management, blistering responsiveness along with beautiful KDE Plasma Desktop.