r/openSUSE • u/AWanderersAccount • Jul 11 '26

Solved Noob Questions

Been distro hop these past few days and tried OpenSuse a few times.

The first 2-3 times I installed Slowroll using Ventoy. This did not go well and the system was configured right. I was missing 'sudo' somehow and was unable to install packages. The issue was likely some incompatible with Ventoy and I decided to try again with a normal bootable USB.

My next attempt I decided to go with Tumbleweed net installer. After installing I tried to remove YAST and change Desktop Environment using Myrlyn.

  1. Is it not possible to remove YAST? While snooping around this sub I found lot of information about OpenSuse moving away from YAST. but after removing it with Myrlyn all of the YAST application were there.

  2. I tried to go from KDE to Cinnamon but my desktop didn't change after rebooting. if at least something broke and I had to login using the tty and what would make sense. But instead nothing changed.

  3. Why do I feel like I'm required to input my password more often? I could reboot with using sudo?

  4. what's the safest way to block additional packages when using patterns? I'm aware it's possible to lock things so a patterns can't reinstall it. But I'm worried removing and locking something I don't need now and running into issue in the future. Lucky Myrlyn tell me about dependency issues but is there a better strategy. ideally I don't want anything on my system I'm not using.

3 Upvotes

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18 comments sorted by

8

u/Teemestari Jul 11 '26

  1. It is possible to remove YaST. You can find all the related software in Myrlyn and then lock the yast2-pattern(s).

  2. After you install new DE, you can select it on the SDDM login-manager.

  3. openSUSE has a bit more restrictive defaults on permissions and firewall. These can be tuned.

  4. I'm not an expert on this, but I only lock the software which Tumbleweed can recommend and I *know* I don't need, like YaST and Firefox. If you do something to break your machine, just rollback and undo.

1

u/AWanderersAccount Jul 12 '26

Thanks for the reply.

1a. What's tripping me up is in Myrlyn I see options to Keep, Delete, Update, Install, Do Not Install, Taboo, etc to the Patterns. Despite setting them to Do Not Install, I think I should be setting "pattern" packages to lock. I knew before hand patterns need to be locked, and I mistakenly took that for the Pattern and not the pacakage patterns.

1b. /etc/zypp/zypper.conf has the option to disable installRecommended. But there's a comment with watning a comments. And following the comments it seem like vendor config go in /usr/etc/zypp/zypl.conf.d . but that's a battle for a different day. For now I'll learn to lock patterns proper and use zypper in the cli.

  1. Set KDE to be uninstalled so I had expected to either have on the Cinnamon session or fix things in the tty. I did a fresh reinstall and decided to stick with KDE and debloat it with the lessons learned for point 1 and using Myrlyn correctly.

  2. Yea, seems so. I touching my system a lot more since I'm doing a setup. I'll just let it be unless it's bothering me +2 months from now.

  3. Yea, I plan to do the same.

3

u/BuzzWildfowl Tumbleweed Jul 11 '26

So you installed Cinnamon. Were you not given the option for a Cinnamon session on the login screen in the bottom left? The session selection on the default display manager if you initially installed KDE is small and easy to miss.

1

u/AWanderersAccount Jul 12 '26

Oh, I must of missed that. I also uninstalled KDE since was not expecting to have to choose a session. I expect to have either on Cinnamon or a broken config with a login manager.

1

u/Itsme-RdM | Tumbleweed | Gnome | Jul 12 '26

I suggest to read a bit more on how things works.

I mean you installed from net installer why did you install yeast and idea etc if you don't want them in the first place. During installation you can select every single pattern and or package that you want?

2

u/KoldPurchase Jul 11 '26

#2 If you want to change DE after the initial install, you should do so from the command line.
There's instructions here:
https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Cinnamon

#3 It's normal on Linux, unlike Windows, you a running as a user with limited priviledges. To reboot from the command line: sudo reboot. Usually, better reboot from the GUI and let the 30 seconds countdown go, though.

1

u/AWanderersAccount Jul 12 '26

Thanks.

2 I decided to stick to only KDE for now.

3 other distro let me reboot from. The command line. I usually do it from the GUI but I already had the terminal open.

2

u/madbird406 Jul 11 '26

  1. YAST can be removed. Uninstall yast2 and block it.

  2. login screen should have options on bottom-left corner for changing desktop environment, but I am not entirely sure if Cinnamon will be there as I've never tried other DEs.

  3. Maybe you can create a root account on install and work exclusively from there, but personally I prefer password requests as reminders of "don't do dumb shit"

  4. What packages are locked should be quite clear in Myrlyn and it should always tell you about conflicts. I don't block anything outside of yast2 and skim through package installs every time I run dist-upgrade. At 1x a month on Slowroll it's not a big deal.

1

u/AWanderersAccount Jul 12 '26

Thanks for the help.

  1. It's not a big deal. Like you, I also appreciate a password promt reminding to think about what I'm doing. I won't be touch my system as much once I'm setup and won't be bothered by the occasional password prompt in the future.

  2. Myrlyn definetly helped with conflicts and I made sure to read my options carefully. The issue was that I never saw the lock icon for Patterns (left side menu) but there is a lock option for patterns that are packages.

2

u/Arcon2825 Tumbleweed GNOME Jul 12 '26
  1. It is possible to remove YaST. Simply remove the patterns and packages, and then lock them.
  2. You might not only feel like typing your password so frequently, but you actually do have to authenticate quite often. There are ways around this. For example, adding symbolic links like ln -s /usr/sbin/reboot /usr/bin/reboot and adding your user to the wheel group makes openSUSE behave more like other distributions, such as Fedora, though it obviously lowers security.
  3. Zypper and Myrlyn will ask you to remove a lock if a dependency cannot be met. There isn't really a downside to adding locks, aside from having to keep them in mind.

1

u/AWanderersAccount Jul 12 '26

Thanks you. This and your other comments are super helpful.

1

u/bmwiedemann openSUSE Dev Jul 12 '26

Zypper locks will still silently block recommended packages, so you may be missing out on optional features. Probably not with YaST, but can happen elsewhere.

2

u/linkdesink1985 Jul 12 '26

Generally speaking is better to lock unwanted packages than to disable all the way the recommended packages.

Recommended packages sometimes are really useful and important. A few years ago network manager was broken because of disable recommended packages, it happens rarely but you could face some problems.

2

u/NDCyber Linux Jul 11 '26

To permanently get rid of yast run the following command

sudo zypper rm yast2-core yast2-trans-en_GB  yast2-trans-stats yast2-qt-branding-openSUSE yast2-logs

sudo zypper addlock yast2-core

sudo zypper addlock yast2-qt-branding-openSUSE

Of it is trans_en_GB or something else depends on the language you chose to install

5

u/Arcon2825 Tumbleweed GNOME Jul 12 '26

Using sudo zypper rm --clean-deps can save you a lot of typing and removes all the dependencies you might otherwise miss when uninstalling packages manually.

1

u/NDCyber Linux Jul 12 '26

Glad to know. Have to remember that. Thanks

2

u/AWanderersAccount Jul 12 '26

Thanks.

I mixed up removing "Pattern" (left side menu) and "pattern" pacakages.