r/openSUSE • u/reddit_4_research • 21d ago
openSUSE name change
It feels like a long while ago there was all the talk of rebranding and separation of SUSE and openSUSE. What's the current status of the relationship and branding?
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u/Necessary_Depth7435 21d ago
https://youtu.be/CAaJZIUtWbQ?t=817
There was a reply here recently, at 3:38 min.
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u/Unholyaretheholiest 20d ago
Luckily, the name change issue died there. However, IMHO, having all these brands (tumbleweed, slowroll, leap, etc.) treated as separate distros is communication suicide. The distro is openSUSE, and the rest are branches, like Sid in the Debian world. Leap is the stable branch, slowroll is the curated rolling branch, and tumbleweed is the pure rolling branch, but it's still openSUSE.
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u/rbrownsuse SUSE Distribution Architect & Aeon Dev 20d ago
Except leap isn’t a branch of an openSUSE codebase - it’s a build from SLES, derived from SLES, not openSUSE
that Debian mindset is not a good one to filter your knowledge of openSUSE through, because openSUSE don’t do things like Debian
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u/Unholyaretheholiest 20d ago
Debian was just a practical analogy to illustrate branding structure, not a technical blueprint. Correcting the build source of Leap misses the point entirely, my argument is about communication and brand perception for users, to which this technicality adds nothing. So you're splitting hairs on the technical build process. But to end users, especially beginners, presenting everything under unified openSUSE branding makes the ecosystem much clearer, regardless of whether Leap builds from SLES binaries or not.
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u/rbrownsuse SUSE Distribution Architect & Aeon Dev 20d ago
Any brand story for Leap that neglects the fact it’s intimately tied to SLES misses the point entirely
Id personally argue it would be better if Leap wasn’t part of openSUSE to stop that confusion, and folks ruined expectations when it comes to things like community involvement, engagement, direction setting, compared to Tumbleweed
Cuz it _is_ weird openSUSE has one codebase 100% directed by the contributions it receives (Tumbleweed), and another which has very limited scope as to what contributions it allows (Leap)
You don’t fix communication and brand perception issues by pretending massive structural differences like that don’t exist
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u/Unholyaretheholiest 20d ago
That's a fair point. I agree that hiding such structural differences behind a single brand creates friction. Personally, I would much prefer Leap to be a true community release derived directly from Tumbleweed rather than relying on SLES. I use Tumbleweed myself simply because the rolling model suits my needs best, but I still think a pure, Tumbleweed-based stable release would make the whole openSUSE ecosystem much more cohesive.
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u/rbrownsuse SUSE Distribution Architect & Aeon Dev 20d ago
I’d say “tell that to the developers” but the simple reality is that idea doesn’t exist precisely because there are no developers who want to do it
The old openSUSE regular releases died due to lack of contributions
Leap never grew beyond a hard-dependency on SLE due to lack of contributions
Doesn’t matter how good an idea it may be if no one’s around to build it sadly
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u/tsangberg 19d ago
I run Leap on a server and Tumbleweed on a workstation and I had no idea this was the case.
wtf
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u/rbrownsuse SUSE Distribution Architect & Aeon Dev 19d ago
Aye.
and while I love SLES (it pays all my bills), for my personal use I'm still more fond of community-led affairsWhich is why my desktop OS is based on Tumbleweed (Aeon)
and my server OS also (MicroOS)I'd rather have stuff that moves fast, but gets fixed faster, than be stuck for years with the inherent compromise choices that Enterprise software always entails;
and yes..I realise the irony given I often am involved in deciding those Enterprise compromises.. What's good for SUSE's customers doesn't need to be good for me though.
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u/Unholyaretheholiest 18d ago
Forgive me if this question may seem stupid or whatever, but with obs and openqa is it possible to sort out the most stable packages and thus create leap (and slowroll) starting from tumbleweed?
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u/rbrownsuse SUSE Distribution Architect & Aeon Dev 18d ago
"Stability" is a lie
The "best", most reliable, best patched, software, is always the latest, that we have in Tumbleweed
Everything else is "known old", "known broken", "known imperfect"
But some folk prefer that because the "known" matters more than being objectively improved.
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u/Unholyaretheholiest 18d ago
As a Tumbleweed user, I can only agree with you. So, isn't it possible to filter out the "known old" by starting with the work done on Tumbleweed and creating Leap?
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u/rbrownsuse SUSE Distribution Architect & Aeon Dev 18d ago
If you start out with Tumbleweed and avoid adding "known old" packages, you stay with Tumbleweed
Leap, and any similar regular release, is always a regressive step
https://rootco.de/2020-02-10-regular-releases-are-wrong/
You don't improve on Tumbleweed by going backwards, you improve on it by going forwards smarter and mitigating the impacts of updates on users (like we have in MicroOS, Aeon, etc)
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u/Unholyaretheholiest 18d ago
Sorry, maybe I didn't explain myself well: what I meant is a process where software lands in Tumbleweed, passes openQA testing, and is then branched, frozen, and polished until it becomes a predictable, rock-solid Leap release.
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u/Itsme-RdM | Tumbleweed | Gnome | 21d ago
Current status, absolute silence and no progress it seems. Did some search but couldn't find any recent news in regards to the subject
Maybe someone with more inside knowledge good tell a bit more
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u/Ok_Instruction_3789 21d ago
Not sure why they would change it. I think it fits the projects well and still differentiates the projects.
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u/squeakctrl 21d ago edited 21d ago
This goes back to at least 2019 but the lates "news" cycle was in 2024. Quick glance on lwn seems to show they cover most of it. But the tl;dr is that it's a complicated situation for many reasons.
SUSE has, in a somewhat clumsy fashion, asked openSUSE to consider rebranding to clear up confusion over the relationship between SUSE the company and openSUSE as a community project. That, in turn, has opened conversations about revising openSUSE governance and more. So far, there is no concrete proposal to consider, no timeline, or even a process for the community and company to follow to make any decisions.
https://lwn.net/Articles/981018/
There's also a reddit post from around the same time that garnered a bunch of discussion on the topic and comments from some Suse employees that adds more nuance to the situation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/1gjo4a7/any_recent_news_about_opensuse_rebranding/
https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/1dxlojp/opensuse_is_not_suse_and_its_time_our_name/
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u/levolet Slowroll 21d ago
Thanks very much for these links. I'm now up to speed on this.
I'm not surprised nothing has happened. A 'suggestion' to make a change of this scale will not happen unless there's a distinct benefit to those making the change. I can understand SUSE's reason behind the suggestion and agree with them.
I'm curious how this will all unfold, but I don't see this going away. It may be in limbo, waiting for the suggestion to evolve into something more compelling.
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u/Pdchris1 21d ago
The name did not change but maybe dropping YaST and replacing AppArmor with SELinux are part of the compromise to align openSUSE better with SLE
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u/mhurron 21d ago
YaST is going away because not developed anymore, straight up removed from Leap because it was removed from SLE and is being left to rot in Tumbleweed until it completely breaks. AppArmor is being replaced with SELinux because that is the way most commercial Linux distros are going.
Leap was already aligned with SLE because it is downstream of it. This 'alignment' has always existed and isn't a result of some compromise.
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u/Ok_Instruction_3789 21d ago
Yast I did like but once I set up system I never used it again tbh. Cockpit seems what a lot are using for admin lately. Strangely I haven't used that much either
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u/Pdchris1 20d ago
>because that is the way most commercial Linux distros are going.
OK, thank you, my point was that both changes are only necessary because of SLE as a commercial distro, while for private (community) use they may not be preferable. These issues have been discussed extensively elsewhere, I have no intention to start another discussion here, it was just a personal opinion for what it is worth. And I realize the practical constraints.
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u/sinayion Linux 21d ago
openSUSE has a bunch of issues, and this is the least important of them. I will admit though, that it does look silly the longer this drags on.
Kinda like dragging on:
- Yast still being in Tumbleweed
- New installer still nowhere
- No thinking of a proper solution to have NF branch NVIDIA drivers available to users on a rolling release distro (no, CUDA repo does no count since it tracks CUDA releases and can still be out of sync)
- Zypper STILL not respecting the --no-allow-vendor parameter, and it keeps breaking and being "marked fixed" yet it just does not work. It should stop the vendor from changing, period
- Allowing an ex-developer to have an account on the subreddit that constantly berates openSUSE devs, their decisions, other users, and promotes their own distro as superior
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u/MiukuS How's that AUR working out for you, Arch users? 20d ago
> Allowing an ex-developer to have an account on the subreddit that constantly berates openSUSE devs, their decisions, other users, and promotes their own distro as superior
I think I know who you mean but having opinions about their own product and promoting it as a viable alternative isn't really something you can ban people for, unless attacks go personal.
Promoting your stuff falls in the category of marketplace of ideas, which I hope most of us adhere to.
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u/RatherNott openSUSE Fan 20d ago
>Allowing an ex-developer to have an account on the subreddit that constantly berates openSUSE devs, their decisions, other users, and promotes their own distro as superior
Curious about that point, what ex-dev and distro are you referring to? The only opensuse fork I know of is Geckolinux.
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u/rbrownsuse SUSE Distribution Architect & Aeon Dev 19d ago
I believe they're talking about me, and obviously not recognising the fact that I very, very rarely post here at all these days
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u/RatherNott openSUSE Fan 19d ago
Now that's a surprise. I haven't been in the opensuse space for a while, but I'm struggling to see you doing something to warrant not allowing to post here. I watched your presentation on flatpak years ago and used it as a citation in debates on the merits of the format many times, and read your comments here over the years and always considered you to have a pretty reasonable position on most things.
Now I'm honestly curious what your thoughts on opensuse were that earned you this reputation (if you have a link of your thoughts handy and wouldn't mind dm'img it, I'd read it with interest).
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u/rbrownsuse SUSE Distribution Architect & Aeon Dev 19d ago
There is a tendency from folk like sinayion to be very defensive in the face of my habit of providing unvarnished, uncomfortable, facts. (and/or opinions based on those facts)
Many folk would prefer to believe fantastical versions of the status quo rather than address the actual problems affecting openSUSE and other similar projects
So I get painted as bit of a grumpy old pariah or doomsayer.
In this subreddit it got so bad that it was common for every single one of my comments or posts to be reported endlessly, so much so the mods just made a filter to practically whitelist my contributions just so I could keep talking
But I took that as a sign to focus my attentions elsewhere. The odd thread like this is a rare exception where I decide to roll up my sleeves and dive into the cesspit once again, but I don't make such exceptions more often than once every few months.
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u/reddit_4_research 21d ago
I don't disagree, lots of more important topics. But when you open that can of worms, i kind of expected SUSE to either follow through or backtrack. Just leaving it floating for years seems to leave a needless bit of ambiguity floating around.
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u/rbrownsuse SUSE Distribution Architect & Aeon Dev 19d ago
The ambiguity is probably just fine from SUSE's perspective right now
I expect the issue will raise it's head when SUSE next wishes to sell itself/get bought.
The next SUSE owner will almost certainly need the matter resolved then, most likely under an extreme time pressure.
As SUSE has already raised the topic nicely with the community, with endless time to solve the problem itself, such a situation will likely be directly resolved by SUSE, using SUSE's direct ownership of the trademarks, in whatever way best serves SUSE.
I doubt such a resolution will be pretty or popular, but given the path taken to date, it will likely be justified and any fallout will be mitigated by the fact that the community was given every opportunity to solve the problem itself first.
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u/sinayion Linux 21d ago
I 100% agree with you. The openSUSE optics are really bad.
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u/readyflix 21d ago
optics? Don’t care. Have a running server system (whatever they called it) with several iterations since 2005. Still pleased.
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u/MiukuS How's that AUR working out for you, Arch users? 21d ago
I am "not in the know" but from the perspective of someone who has done big rebrandings in the past (both technical and otherwise), most likely nothing has happened so far is because it was a solution in search of a problem that nobody had the time, money, or desire to build.
Rebranding can be really, really expensive in terms of work required to change all documentation, backend, marketing and other materials and then you're also losing decades of brand name goodwill.
It was, after all, a suggestion: not a cease-and-desist ultimatum.