The pain of openSUSE
Intro
I've used SLES in the past for a job and thought trying openSUSE would be a nice change of pace. I thought this would be easy. I thought this would be quick. Oh, how very wrong I was.
Links
Too lazy to put links in my rants/documentation so here they are.
Installation
This part isn't too bad.
The only part I really don't like is the fact that you can't do a guided partitioning scheme and then change the LVM partition sizes.
The installer didn't say the default strip size of LVM partitions so I left it default and had to go back and shrink the partitions.
Because EVERYONE needs a 230+GB root partition with a 600+GB home partition.
Turns out that # cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/encrypted_dev label which places the dev in /dev/mapper/label is pretty "neat."
Oh, see the link about not having to input your disk password twice each boot. Pretty easy but should be noted.
Compiling a Custom Kernel
This is where the fun REALLY starts...
The 5.14 stock kernel worked ok, but there were some weird or wrong behavior with the integrated graphics of my AMD CPU.
Anyway, build a normal vanilla kernel like you normally would.
The problems start when you get to packaging.
$ make -j 16 binrpm-pkg will take way longer than it has any right to.
But the REAL fun is when you start installing the packages.
The header rpm wants to overwrite files and the actual kernel packages doesn't generate a initrd or update grub when you install it.
This wouldn't be that shocking but Debian based systems have been doing this for a LONG time.
Anyway, # dracut --kver kernel_version <--force> and # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub2.cfg.
Again, not the end of the world but then again Debian has been doing this for how many years now?
firejail and xpra
This is painful and it isn't. I use these two together so I've grouping them together. firejail requires the user to be in a group. That's all, not bad, but had to scratch my head before looking at the permission to figure it out.
xpra is the real fun one. openGL acceleration in xpra is just broke due to a mismatch. In openSUSE 15.4, which is suppose to be related to SLES, a key important feature that I use is broke. I tried to compile my own before realizing that it's not actually xpra but the python libraries it uses which are broken. At that point I just threw my hands up and gave up for now. Not sure if I'll be revisiting it or not.
Surfshark
This one is both bad and not so bad. It's bad for weird reasons...
First, there's no SANE alien builds for openSUSE 15.4.
I tried one or two community packages which conflicts wanted me to remove half my system.
Gave up and compiled it on my own.
Then after running that # alien -r -c -v surfshark_*_amd64.deb and I have a nice shiny rpm package.
Now getting that to work was fun.
It needs start-stop-daemon from the dpkg sources.
I just found a version of dpkg that would compile and threw that in /usr/sbin.
Then it needed gjs, so... zypper install gjs.
None of this is that HARD, just figuring it out was a pain when running late to a trip where I needed a VPN to protect me from hotel wifi.
TODO
- Get xpra openGL acceleration working
- Find a SANE way of installing kernels
- Get rid of those "No protocol specified" messages
- Mod the awesome theme and get rid of those cheesy 90s icons
- Get openSUSE firefox to read in my data from Debian firefox
- Possibly give up and reinstall Debian