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So my favorite Linux distro is OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. IMO it's one of the best, if not THE best, rolling release distros ever (I'd say on par with Arch and Gentoo, and you'd use each one for different reasons. I don't think they compete directly with each other [I do think a lot of people who are using Arch aren't using it for the right reasons]). The reason it's so great is that there are so many systems in place to help keep your OS stable even when your packages are always being updated to the latest version. One of the main reasons is that the repositories function in a very specific way: there's one massive repository where everything is constantly being updated and run through automated testing, and a stable snapshot is pulled from that repository once per day. So you don't actually update individual packages on Tumbleweed, you just jump straight from one stable snapshot to another. It's a very practical system.
...The problem with this is that because OpenSUSE is a very prominent organization, with direct ties to a major company, it has to be very careful with legal rules. Which means that it can't package a lot of proprietary software such as drivers or media codecs.
Fortunately, the community has its own independent repositories which can be used to fill in the gaps. They even have a program (opi) to automate the entire installation process for you, for everything from media codecs to proprietary browsers.
However, the community repository occasionally falls out-of-sync with the main repository. Or a package will be downgraded in one or the other, or become obsolete, or get moved out of the community repository because it was brought into the main one... etc.
Fortunately, Zypper (OpenSUSE's package manager) comes with a really neat feature that lets it auto-detect package version conflicts, and offer you a handful of options to resolve the conflict. As long as you choose the option that switches the package to the main repositories, you'll usually be fine.
So. Right when I was about to pack up my desktop for college, I performed a system update. And there was a massive tangled knot of package conflicts right in the graphics drivers. I just picked the most reasonable-sounding option at each... I think it was around 10 package conflicts and hoped for the best, fully expecting that my computer would have a completely broken graphics display when I next booted it up. (Another great feature about OpenSUSE: it sets up and maintains BTRFS snapshots for you, so if you mess up an update it's super easy to restore a snapshot from before you did that).
To my relieved surprise, everything seemed to be working fine once I booted the computer at college! Well, except for one thing.
Steam was gone.
All my Steam games were still there, but the Steam app had mysteriously uninstalled itself.
...Then, when I performed another update, the Steam app just reinstalled itself with no fanfare.
I am... confusion.
I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but I'd really like to know what happened there.
...The problem with this is that because OpenSUSE is a very prominent organization, with direct ties to a major company, it has to be very careful with legal rules. Which means that it can't package a lot of proprietary software such as drivers or media codecs.
Fortunately, the community has its own independent repositories which can be used to fill in the gaps. They even have a program (opi) to automate the entire installation process for you, for everything from media codecs to proprietary browsers.
However, the community repository occasionally falls out-of-sync with the main repository. Or a package will be downgraded in one or the other, or become obsolete, or get moved out of the community repository because it was brought into the main one... etc.
Fortunately, Zypper (OpenSUSE's package manager) comes with a really neat feature that lets it auto-detect package version conflicts, and offer you a handful of options to resolve the conflict. As long as you choose the option that switches the package to the main repositories, you'll usually be fine.
So. Right when I was about to pack up my desktop for college, I performed a system update. And there was a massive tangled knot of package conflicts right in the graphics drivers. I just picked the most reasonable-sounding option at each... I think it was around 10 package conflicts and hoped for the best, fully expecting that my computer would have a completely broken graphics display when I next booted it up. (Another great feature about OpenSUSE: it sets up and maintains BTRFS snapshots for you, so if you mess up an update it's super easy to restore a snapshot from before you did that).
To my relieved surprise, everything seemed to be working fine once I booted the computer at college! Well, except for one thing.
Steam was gone.
All my Steam games were still there, but the Steam app had mysteriously uninstalled itself.
...Then, when I performed another update, the Steam app just reinstalled itself with no fanfare.
I am... confusion.
I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but I'd really like to know what happened there.
