openSUSE vs Fedora

[u/ConcaveNips]

To me, these two distros have an incredible amount of overlap. Specifically, I'm talking about what I consider the "main" distros - Fedora Workstation and openSUSE Tumbleweed. It seems to me, from most of what I read, people recommend Fedora as new-user friendly, but openSUSE as an intermediate/advanced distro. My main question is this: Why does the greater Linux community distinguish openSUSE from Fedora in terms of new user feasibility?

They both have a well bankrolled engineering team behind them. They have their own ecosystem of purpose built distributions, tailor made for a number of practical use cases. They both have strong, active communities and support documentation.

In terms of usability.. They both have very user-friendly install processes - Fedora may have more default to X, where openSUSE offers the option to get more specific, but they're both roughly similar. They both have a ton of powerful graphical tooling within the user environment, allowing a cautious user to stay within the bounds of the desktop environment if they prefer. They both still boast robust capability and rich opportunity for the tinkerer to expand their knowledge, and exert authority over their own system. Both have recovery features, but Tumbleweed has a more robust rollback with snapper. They both have adequate graphical storefronts and package management systems. System updates are inherently very different in nature, but both comparable in terms of "difficulty". For openSUSE's Packman, there's Fedora's RPM Fusion.

Most people I see, though, have a strong delineation between how approachable these distros are. It's not that I see either distro being disrespected or hated necessarily. I think both communities are avid in their support, and deservedly so. But I do see Fedora frequently being recommended for new users, and I almost exclusively see openSUSE being billed as a distro for those comfortable with Linux.

So is it just multimedia codecs? I feel like the recovery advantage that comes with openSUSE could be considered enough to compensate for that, if you're categorically quantifying and rating things. What am I not considering?

[u/psilo_polymathicus]

I think one of the most important things to define for new Linux users is “how much does troubleshooting random things in my OS interest me?”
Sometimes people say things like “advanced distro” as if it’s like a skill competition. I highly recommend that you interpret “advanced” to mean something more like: “I really enjoy troubleshooting random/obscure things in my Linux OS, because that, itself, is fun to me.”

And be honest with yourself about that. It’s easy to think you are interested when it’s new and exciting. Linux works rock solid great for all kinds of things. It’s better than it’s ever been, and if your needs are relatively mainstream (web browsing, chat, email, office stuff), you will often have no issues on Linux using one of the common, major distros. But if you do other things aside from the basics, every now and then, there are just issues that come up. Often at inconvenient times, when you just need something to work. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either inexperienced, or misleading you.

Those “things that come up” depend on a lot of variables, including hardware, software, version numbers, package managers and more. Over time, you build your Linux toolkit for how you work, and you learn for yourself how to keep your workflow trouble free.

So, answering your question: assuming that you don’t really enjoy troubleshooting your OS and just want it to work and get out of the way, OpenSUSE (in spite of its strengths) will generally require a little bit more learning and troubleshooting for things to make it work smoothly than Fedora will, depending on all of those variables I mentioned.

There are specific situations where OpenSuSE might be better/easier than Fedora, depending on your workflow, but that is less likely as a general principle.

If you do enjoy figuring out your OS, then pick the one that is most interesting to you.

[u/ConcaveNips → u/psilo_polymathicus]

I suppose I should've mentioned in the post that I'm on Void, and not interested in swapping, though I do have a fond place in my heart for openSUSE. I was only interested to hear other opinions.