FWIW, I run Tumbleweed on my private desktop, and it works pretty well for the most part. The only major annoyance is that I have to reinstall the nVidia driver every time a new kernel comes around, but other than that, it is very nice.

Isn't there some kind of DKMS package to automate this?

The last time I checked, the only thing I could find were instruction on how to install the nVidia driver manually. Turns out nVidia has a repository for Tumbleweed! =D

Thank you so much for making me look it up!

Very cool, I've been wanting to try Tumbleweed as it looks like the most noob-friendly rolling-release distro. Glad to hear the positive reports.

Just to be clear, things do break a little sometimes. But on the plus-side, openSUSE uses btrfs snapshots - every time updates are installed, the system creates two snapshots, one before and one after installing the updates. So if something breaks, one can always roll back to a known good state and wait for a couple of days before giving updates another try.

I use tumbleweed of my work laptop and leap on my home server. Both are solid.

Worth noting that GNOME and Xfce are also first-class citizens in those respective versions of openSUSE. openSUSE is the reason why I don't hate GNOME3 with a burning passion, and the Xfce version is what I tend to install on desktops by default.

> Since I don't want to tinker every weekend with my distro anymore

Do many people actually do this, though? A few years ago, I used Arch as my main distro, and, besides the initial setup, almost never tinkered with it. I would imagine that more approachable distros would be more tinker-free too.

It really depends on what you qualify as tinkering. I switched to Debian stable as I found the constant upgrade cycle of rolling distros to require to much tinkering.

Exactly. Arch is less work to maintain for me, even less than Ubuntu 16.04

It's true that the most approachable distros (SUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu and its derivatives like Elementary OS) are more or less "tinker free" these days.

For those of us who still like to tinker while maintaining a stable base, there are distros like Debian, Slackware, Void, and so on. And finally, for those who consider Linux a hobby or pastime (or who are comfortable living on the bleeding edge) there are projects like Arch, Neon, and Gentoo.

I think I would group Arch with [Debian, Slackware, Void] rather than with Gentoo (if we're restricted to those two groups).

No, because Arch is a rolling release whereas you have to run Unstable and -current respectively in Debian and Slackware to be closer to the bleeding edge. But having said that, I should actually have put Void in with Arch and Gentoo.

But Gentoo is build-everything-from-source, which makes it rather different from Arch or Void.

It doesn't have to be "build everything from source", they have installs based on different stages. You can even do a binary only install if you wish. And it is rolling, so it does fit in with Arch and Void in that sense.

This is where I draw the line. If you can't tinker with any linux you might as well buy a mac.

I agree with you in regards to most RH derived releases. Systems tinkering RH/Fedora may end you up in almost as much pain as if you tried it on OSX.

But SuSE has always been approachable in that regard (20 year user).

Well, I'm not saying you can't tinker with those, just that you don't have to in order to get a working desktop out of the box. I have yet to run across a Linux based OS that outright discourages getting under the hood, except perhaps Android.

I guess what I was trying to say is that instead of dealing with the default parental guidance features of RH and Fedora (which usually ends up with impatient users disabling SElinux and then disabling the stock packet filter) and having to suffer the eccentricities of RH/Fedora systemd and 'socket' activation of an interfering frankenservice you could more profitably spend your time tinkering elsewhere.

Gotcha. Yep my goto hacking/tinkering/learning distros are Slackware, Alpine, and (on the BSD side) OpenBSD. I also consider all of those suitable as server/container OSes for varying reasons.

I run Elementary OS as my daily driver these days; no fuss, no muss, just log in and get to work. About the only thing I do on a fresh install beyond changing the background is setting up my tools. Surprisingly git isn't installed from the outset, but it's just a sudo apt install away. Likewise, I enable ppa support, add the ppas for Waterfox and Oracle Java, and install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package for better media support. Beyond that, the built in apps and programs suit my needs almost perfectly, and the OS fades into the background unlike Windows 10 or other flashy "LOOK at ME not your WORK!!" type OSes/DEs.

OpenBSD is very nice but it used to be a bit painful for a desktop. Funny, I ran linux on the desktop from 2000-2016 and then went back to windows because I'm getting old. :)

Keep fighting the good fight!

Neon stable is pretty tinkerfree as well IMO.

I lumped it in with the more bleeding edge distros because its goal is to showcase the latest and greatest that KDE Plasma has to offer. In that sense, it's a bit unstable on the user-facing front. Also, KDE itself is a pretty wild beast that takes a ton of tinkering to get it to any one person's liking. I'm not saying it's unusable out of the box, but it definitely is a tweaker's wet dream; its options have their own options in nearly every configuration panel.

I know I do this from time to time with Slackware, but only because Slackware is nice about staying out of my way when I do so.