OpenSUSE with XFCE/ GNOME3 now available

[Surehand53]

# First impression

pre-relese openSusse Tumbleweek ARM for Pinebook Pro
(06 Feb 2020)

- This review is based on the Gnome version of opneSuse Tumbleweed. A Xfce version is available, but seemed at he time of writing a bit less advanced
- The one thing everyone immediately notices when using the current Gnome release of openSuse Tumbleweed is that the startup takes ages.
This is a kernel configuration problem, should be resolved with an update.
- Once some small hurdles are taken this is really a very nice distribution for the Pinebook Pro (PBP).
- Gnome works really fluent, the graphic is fast and it feels snappy.

# Setting up

- Download the image from the wiki https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebo...MC_Boot.5D
- extract the compressed image.

```
unxz --threads=5 -6e opensuse-tumbleweed-pinebookpro-gnome-1.0.img.xz
```

- dd to sd card
    - Type: lsblk and pay attention to the listed disks. Disks will appear as /dev/mmcblk0 /dev/mmcblk1 etc.
    - Hint: the drive you currently have booted from has the / at the end of the line. This is the wrong drive. Look at the drive that matches your microSD card’s size.
    - Having located the microSD card use the following command to flash the .img of choice to the microSD card (/dev/sdb used as example): sudo unmount /dev/mmcblk0
    - Now you are ready to write the image to the microSD card using this command: (replace the pine.img file with your image and mmcblkX with the correct device for the microSD card)

```
sudo dd if=pine.img of=/dev/mmcblkX bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync
```

    - Replace `pine.img` with the name of the openSuse image and the `X` in /dev/mmcblkX with the card you want to write to.

More details can be found in the wiki https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/NOOB#S...roSD_Cards

Next Reboot and wait patiently until openSuse boots.

At last you can make openSuse use the full capacity of your sd card.

- use `lsblk` to see a find the name of your sd card (tip, the one with `/` at the end of the line is the one you have booted from, so you probably want the other one)

- Then
```
sudo cfdisk /dev/mmcblkX
```
- replace the `X` in the command above with your sd card number
- choose the last partition in the list (p6)
- select resize in the menu
- accept the suggested new size, this should be the approximately max size of the volume.
- select write in the menu
- answer the security question with `yes`

Then use

```
sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblkXp6
```

After this the last partition will use the full size of the sd card

- changing time with Yast seems not to work well.
The command `date` and the Gnome settings did work though.

- Wifi access worked out of the box, however the domane name service (DNS) to resolve server names like bbc.co.uk to IP addresses seemed to have had a hickup. it was necessary to use the command:

```
sudo netconfig -f update
```

once, after that internet worked fine.

## Update

To update the OS to te latest packages use:

```
zypper dup
```
All done, the system is set up


## Startup
Well, there is no way of saying it any differently, startup currenlty takes ages.
Stay patient. (3-5 min)

As far as I know this delay in startup is due to kernel configuration and I am confident that it will be resolved in future updates.

## GUI and usability
Gnome works surprisingly nice. I have not used Gnome for a while and from the reports I had read I expected a slightly troublesome experience, but the opposite is the case.
There are some minor glitches where buttons in some apps do not look right or the colour gradient seems to be off, however that does not change the usability.

All in all it  works really well and is snappy and responsive.

## Resources consumption
The standard GUI  ends up using ~870 MB of Memory. Checked by opening Tilix and then using `htop`. This is quite a lot, however the memory requirement is probably more related to Gnome than to openSuse Tumbleweed.

For comparison, Manjaro KDE requires approximately 430 MB at startup. So the memory consumption of Gnome seems a bit high.

This release of openSuse Tumbleweed comes with alot of software but also uses quite a lot more disc space than other PBP distros.
A 16 MB sd card is enough to start but not much space is left and 32MB are recommended.
Not quite sure why that is and what pushes the size here. This feels like it could be brought down without loosing any functionality.

## Browsing
- Firefox works great. It is fast, scrolls smoothly and feels quick.
- Chromium at startup wants some administrator authorisation. I was not so happy with that and as I don't want to use chromium I left it there.

## Power management
- With the display brightness turned to something like 50% the battery of the Pinebook Pro lasts for something like 10 hours if used for writing, browsing, small development.
50% of display brightness might sound low for some, but the display in the Pinebook Pro is a jewel and 50% is about right for almost all situations except for sitting directly in the sun, certainly enough indoors.

- Power management has been activated in the kernel just recently. It is now possible to suspend the PBP. However this worked sometimes and sometimes also not.
It's a very new feature so it definitely forgiven if there are still some hickups, but overall this is great news.


# Things I did not test so far:
- [ ] Sound - I have not heard anything, but did not try to make it work neither
- [ ] Bluetooth - not tested
- [ ] Video - seems to work ok on brief test with Firefox and Youtube, but no sound

# Conclusion

• This distro has great potential.
  
• Personally I like rolling releases
  
• I like that the software is very up to date, however there is an element of testing before new versions are published
  
• Small  early niggels but overall very usable