Picking a Linux Distro: Part 3, Gentoo and openSUSE
Welcome to the penultimate round in a series of four deep dives into the different Linux distributions supported by Linode. We’ve got some history on the menu for you today, plenty of admirable OS qualities, and a reason or two why you’d want to give one of these distros a try for yourself.
However, to really experience one flavor of Linux in comparison to another, you must install and experiment. There is simply no substitute for sampling a distribution with your own workflow and preferences to learn whether it has all the ingredients you need.
So, if variety is a spice of life, then let Linux give you the entire garden. Several weeks ago, we first we looked at Arch and CentOS; then came Debian and Fedora. Today, we’ll cover Gentoo and openSUSE.
Gentoo
Background
Gentoo is yet another Linux success story starting from one individual and evolving into a thriving community. In 1999, Daniel Robbins released Enoch Linux, the ancestor to our modern-day Gentoo. Shortly after Enoch, the distribution was renamed in honor of the Gentoo penguin, the fastest underwater penguin, and version 1.0 was released. The official founding date is given to be October 4, 1999, the date Robbins registered the domain gentoo.org.
It might come as a surprise to learn that Gentoo was once the intellectual property of the for-profit company, Gentoo Technologies Inc. Robbins owned the company but held the role of Technical Director, and he worked on the distribution with several project leaders. Gentoo Technologies operated much how you would expect a normal software company to run; the copyrights of code contributions were transferred to the company, project leads were appointed instead of voted for, and there was no community ecosystem.
However, Gentoo Technologies wasn’t as financially successful as Robbins had hoped. This led to his decision to retire from the company in 2004, but not without first creating the Gentoo Foundation Inc., which would absorb all of Gentoo Technologies Inc. and leave the project leaders free to continue onward without him.
Eventually came the decision to form an elected council which would better lead the foundation. Processes became more open, decisions became more democratic, and the Gentoo Foundation principles were formed. The corporate model was abandoned for one more reminiscent of an open source project. Sponsors and volunteers help sustain Gentoo as it is today.
What Makes Gentoo Stand Out?
Gentoo is a rolling-release distro and a self-described meta-distribution because there is no default or standard installation. One of the Gentoo Project’s closest-held values is to provide the framework for creating an operating system tailored specifically to a user’s preferences. There is a base system just large enough to run the kernel and vital drivers, but everything else — from desktop environment, to init system, to even specific compiler flags — is open to the user for choosing.
Gentoo is an operating system built by its end user entirely from source code on the local machine. Gentoo uses Portage (with its command-line tool emerge) for package management, which you could reasonably argue is based on BSD’s ports system. Gentoo again breaks the mold of traditional Linux distributions by not relying on binary software repositories.
There is, however, a repository of ebuilds, and most package sources are mirrored. Ebuilds contain metadata, things like dependencies and scripting, which are necessary to build a specific package. It’s Portage’s job to resolve those dependencies, download source code, compile and finally merge that package into the operating system.
Even some terminology is different with Gentoo. One merges or unmerges software using ebuilds as opposed to simply installing or uninstalling a binary as you would a .deb or .rpm. In addition to merging from an ebuild though, Portage is also capable of building and installing local binaries.
If the thought of choosing your own USE flags seems daunting, don’t let that turn you off to this distro. Gentoo’s profiles are Portage blueprints for software sets and make configurations. You’ll find profiles for Gnome and KDE desktops, developer tools, and inclusion of SELinux or systemd, among others.
For those seeking extraordinary security, hardened Gentoo is a base profile to compile packages using more secure GCC flags than a normal installation, and adds features like PaX, SELinux, and a Grsecurity-compiled kernel. Also available to all images and tarballs are OpenPGP-signed digest files containing each SHA checksums, with fingerprints verifiable online.
Who Would Enjoy Gentoo?
Though Gentoo is not necessarily for those new to Linux — the distribution is well documented in its wiki — the Gentoo Handbook contains the info needed to get up and running and there are discussion forums and mailing lists for asking questions if you get stuck anywhere.
From there, Gentoo has access to all the usual software you’d expect on Linux, so it could power your VPN just as easily as your desktop. Unless you perform major hardware changes, the installation is a one-time affair and updating Gentoo is a matter of updating the Gentoo repository and telling Emerge to run a sync.
Gentoo generally tends to appeal the most to those who need to accomplish something less out-of-the-box with a typical binary distribution. If bleeding-edge packages are your requirement — maybe a non-standard libc implementation, or some other exotic needs — Gentoo is the place to start.
The security-minded among us will appreciate the effort that’s gone into the hardened profile and base tarballs. Of interesting note is that Google’s Chromium Project adopted Gentoo and Portage as the framework for ChromeOS.
If you’re willing to invest the time installing Gentoo, then it can reward you with an extremely customized and streamlined experience. Along the way, Gentoo will also teach you a tremendous amount about Linux and the basics of software compilation.
openSUSE
Background
S.u.S.E. started in 1992 not as a Linux distribution, but as a German software development company. It’s the acronym of the company’s name, Software und System Entwicklung (Software and System Development), which evolved into the iconic brand of the SUSE and openSUSE (pronounced “zoo-zah”) Linux distributions we know today.
Though the SUSE ecosystem is over 20 years in the making, it has changed hands and influence more often than any other distribution mentioned so far in this series. Starting with S.u.S.E., SUSE Linux began with roots in Slackware, although Slackware for use as the distribution’s core was superseded by the now defunct Jurix in 1996. In the following years, S.u.S.E. (the company) became just SUSE and expanded from Germany to China, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Italy and the U.S. These days, you’ll find SUSE’s offices spread even farther across the world.
The infamous Novell buyout took place during the winter of 2003–2004 with heavy involvement from IBM. Novell was later bought in 2011 by The Attachmate Group and SUSE Linux was allowed to remain its own brand and business. Then in 2014, Attachmate Group was bought by Micro Focus International, and the Micro Focus Group was formed as a result. It is within the Micro Focus Group where SUSE remains an independent business.
What Makes openSUSE Stand Out?
OpenSUSE is the community-maintained development base for SUSE Linux Enterprise. Throughout most of openSUSE’s history, there was a single branch starting with SUSE Linux 10 in 2004. In 2015, the future of openSUSE was re-assessed, and it was decided impractical to chase one branch trying to focus both on stability suitable for servers and workstations, while at the same time, aiming to provide the latest upstream packages.
This resulted in openSUSE diverging into two new branches as the 13.x releases begin to be phased out. The Tumbleweed branch is a rolling release which aims to provide the latest stable versions of its package base. Leap is the free, enterprise-level offering with SUSE Linux Enterprise at its core. It focuses on stability and reliability, combined with community packages and a minimum 3-year support lifespan.
OpenSUSE has traditionally focused on the KDE desktop environment and become known as the distro to use for an exemplary KDE Plasma experience. That effort has expanded to include equal treatment for Gnome, XFCE and LXDE, while alternatives like Cinnamon and MATE (pronounced like the word maté) are available from the repositories.
The Btrfs filesystem and Snapper have become openSUSE staples and OpenQA is used to smooth out the wrinkles in image builds leading up to their release. OpenSUSE has extensive documentation, and in various formats if online HTML pages don’t fit your needs.
AppArmor is openSUSE’s mandatory access control of choice and it’s enforcing the default-supplied policies out of the box, though SELinux is, of course, available as well. SuSEfirewall2 is openSUSE’s iptables wrapper, enabled by default for easy firewall management and protection. OpenSUSE is also Secure Boot compliant.
Unique to openSUSE is the SUSE Studio, an online tool for customizing SUSE and openSUSE Leap installation images. You add the packages you want, configure services and export to an image for optical or USB media, virtualization or containerization.
SUSE Studio also contains image appliances, as they’re called, for download which other people have created and maintain. The backend to SUSE Studio is Kiwi, a CLI tool for building SUSE and openSUSE appliances from a Linux command line.
YaST2 is openSUSE’s graphical configuration manager. It’s a platform of modules for managing everything on the system from sudo users to peripheral devices to system services, and all without ever touching a configuration file. YaST is also implemented in openSUSE’s installer to set things like SSH access, firewall, and kernel and bootloader parameters.
Taking that further, there’s AutoYaST for more granular changes and easing the installation for multiple machines, similar to Fedora’s Kickstart or the Debian family’s preseed files. You don’t need a desktop environment to use YaST, either. If you’re running openSUSE on a headless server, YaST is fully functional as an ncurses menu system launched from the command line.
Who Would Enjoy openSUSE?
Between SUSE Studio and YaST, openSUSE could be an administrator’s dream come true, or alternatively, a win for someone ready for their introduction to Linux. YaST significantly lowers the bar to system configuration beyond the desktop environment’s standard Settings panel. This is one of openSUSE’s most valuable attributes.
Similar to the relationship between CentOS and RedHat, openSUSE is also ideal for those interested in SUSE Enterprise Linux or who would like to carry SLE’s workflow from the office or job site to home. The distribution is just as happy as a casual home computer as it is powering scientific workstations or database servers, and you can still find community support in the official online forums and mailing list.
With a rolling release and enterprise-stable branches to choose from, you can prioritize system stability or the latest packages without ever leaving the openSUSE ecosystem. OpenPGP fingerprints and SHA256 to verify an installer, Btrfs snapshots, support for multimedia codecs, and Adobe Flash during installation are just a few more reasons to kick openSUSE’s tires.
And, when you do (or if you have?) experience Gentoo or openSUSE, please share with us in the space below or at @Linode. We’d love to hear from you.
Next up is the fourth and final installation of this series that will look at Slackware and Ubuntu.
