I just installed openSUSE Tumbleweed with the hope of using it as my daily driver for the foreseeable future, and when the system finally booted up I got this feeling of cleanliness from it. No extra packages that I installed and then forgot about, no remnants of packages past, no mangled config files, no logs that haven’t been deleted in months, and no files stuffed in random directories that have been lost to history. It just felt really satisfying to finally have a clean slate after having just had my old distro slowly deteriorate and eventually go kaput on me (to be fair, it was my fault, I accumulated errors while tinkering with it over a period of months).

Does anyone get this feeling?

  • k_o_t
    7·
    5 years ago

    totally! as Julius Caesar himself once said: “Only way to have no bloat distro, is to have no distro at all”…

  • nutomicA
    3·
    5 years ago

    Kind of, for me things always get messy after using a linux install for a few years. So I have to install from scratch at some point, it doesnt really feel like a choice. I dont understand people who actually take their old install with them on a new computer.

  • pickleprick
    2·
    5 years ago

    I sure do. It even seems to smell like car showrooms. If you have a machine that can run it you should try out Qubes. If you can keep the hypervisor clean, you can enjoy continuous freshness without ever reinstalling. Technically, you could switch from Linux to Windows and back without installing.

    • AgreeableLandscapeOP
      2·
      5 years ago

      you should try out Qubes

      I wish I could, but my computer is too weak that even visualizing one OS on top of Linux yields poor performance in the guest OS, and IIRC Qubes needs multiple worker VMs and the main app VMs.

      • pickleprick
        2·
        5 years ago

        It’s picky. Also induces paranoia by constantly asking your attention to computer security. Normal tasks require us to not be constantly reminded we are living under surveillance, for example when you copy-paste something. Qubes is designed well, but it can’t hide this reality from you at the same time. For me it was definitely worth trying for some months, if only because of what I learned from it. I think it’s the future of computing to have a trusted hypervisor and expand it with subdued emulations. For my skill level it was not practical. It’s not a sinecure to configure well.

        • AgreeableLandscapeOP
          2·
          5 years ago

          When I can afford a better computer, I’ll try it out!

          I’ve actually tried it in VirtualBox, but only a bit.

  • DessalinesA
    2·
    5 years ago

    I used to, but then I got arch :winking face: . I agree it is kinda nice to have a fresh start occasionally tho.

  • muddygeek
    1·
    4 years ago

    I installed TW today too. Then I tried enabling Nvidia Optimus. It’s still fast and smooth but somehow I feel like I just went off roading. It runs but I know there’s wear and tear now.