Some time ago, I really started to enjoy the i3 Window manager, the speed at which I could open and manipulate applications on the desktop (I know it’s not a desktop, it’s a window manager). Due to the awesome flexibility of the Plasma Desktop, I decided I would implement some of those features to make me just a bit more productive with my desktop interactions.
I also created a little YouTube video on how it works. Feel free to criticize!
So @CubicleNate - If one were to look at running openSUSE, what, if anything would you suggest they do out of of the box?
From what I’ve used of openSUSE, admire the amazing wallpaper
It really depends on what you want to do with it. My guess is, you likely want to do web streaming and multimedia type activities. openSUSE does not offer this by default with the installation because they like to avoid the “gray water”. There are numerous references out there to install those particular codecs. I however, prefer my particular set of instructions… shameless self plug. I do verify these every installation and I do update these.
After that, I say, it is up to you in your activities. Some examples of things I install: Kdenlive, syncthing-gtk, audacity, simplescreenrecorder, pulseeffects, falkon, firewall-applet, vscode, lutris
There are many others but this is at the very basic level.
I also change my theme a bit too. I have a kind of unified Plasma Colors with GTK theme. It isn’t perfect but it is what I like.
That is, of course, just window dressing.
The part of openSUSE that I appreciate the most is the file system snapshot with BTRFS. I have mucked about with my system and I was able to roll it back without any consequence. I use Tumbleweed, the rolling distribution, so I get leading edge software that is well tested with the openQA system which happens to catch most of the bugs. They also score the “stability” of each snapshot as well. If the snapshot breaks too much, they do not release it until it meets the required minimum level of stability.
You can check out the snapshot reviewer and look at each of the mailing list sources for each snapshot release.
It’s pretty neat how transparent they are about these things.
If you have any questions, I am, of course, available.