Portal:Tumbleweed

Who should try Tumbleweed?

Any user who wishes to have newer packages than are available in the openSUSE 12.1 repositories. This includes, but is not limited to, an updated Linux kernel, SAMBA, git, desktops, office applications and many other packages.

Due to the Linux kernel being updated very frequently, users who rely on proprietary graphic drivers should not use the Tumbleweed repository unless they are familiar with updating these drivers from source on their own. See articles NVIDIA and ATI, section "The hard way", for how to do this if you are interested. Note that the additional Packman repositories are available for Tumbleweed!

When you should keep staying at stable release

At this point there is no guarantee to have all additional modules available in the stable release like for Vmware or Virtualbox. And while the Packman Tumbleweed Essential repository attempts to deliver them there is no guarantee they will always succeed due to the incompatibilities with the quickly advancing Linux Kernel. The problems with proprietary Graphics drivers are similar and there is no guarantee they will work tomorrow, even if they do today. If you don't know how to compile your own additional kernel modules and you don't wish to learn or keep a very close eye on what is being updated, please don't use Tumbleweed.

How to try Tumbleweed?

• Remove the openSUSE 11.4 (or 12.1 or later) version specific repositories

• use either the one-click-install or execute the commands below as super user in a terminal to add the Tumbleweed repositories

- Add Tumbleweed to your YaST or zypper installation repositories and enable autorefresh:

zypper ar --refresh \
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Tumbleweed/standard/ \
Tumbleweed

- Add the current openSUSE repositories with enabled autorefresh:

sudo zypper ar --refresh \
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/openSUSE-current/repo/oss/ \
'openSUSE Current OSS'

sudo zypper ar --refresh \
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/openSUSE-current/repo/non-oss/ \
'openSUSE Current non-OSS'

sudo zypper ar --refresh \
http://download.opensuse.org/update/openSUSE-current/ \
'openSUSE Current updates'

Upon a new release the openSUSE servers will automatically handle the required changes, transparent to the users. Find more information here.

• Do a repository refresh and a distro update from Tumbleweed as needed. The first time you will need to accept the GPG keys.

• Allow vendor change for Tumbleweed repository. This has to be done in order to get updates for existing packages from Tumbleweed.

The only supported method of repo use for Tumbleweed is to have only the main repos (Oss, Non-oss, and Update) and the Tumbleweed repo active. For that situation a simple

zypper dup

will update your packages, and if any packages are ever reverted from Tumbleweed zypper dup will also handle that.

Despite it being unsupported, if you do choose to have other repos enabled, this command is safer:

zypper dup --from Tumbleweed

You will need to allow vendor change from Tumbleweed. This is done by creating a file named Tumbleweed.conf in the /etc/zypp/vendors.d/ directory with the following content:

[main]

vendors = suse,opensuse,obs://build.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Tumbleweed

Special Concerns

• Virtual Machines

openSUSE 11.4 supports VirtualBox. Due to it not being in the mainline kernel and Tumbleweed routinely receiving kernel updates, it has been decided not to support VirtualBox in the main Tumbleweed repo.

Tumbleweed does support the vmware and hyper-v virtual machine architectures.

This is because they are in the main upstream kernel and require no significant extra resources to make available with each kernel update.

• Third Party Drivers

If you have 3rd party kernel modules, Greg KH (the primary Tumbleweed maintainer) STRONGLY suggests that you not use Tumbleweed. Seriously, it's not worth the pain and extra work, unless you _really_ want to do it.

And if you do do it, then again, you are on your own, sorry.

How can I contribute?

• You can test the Tumbleweed repository and give a feedback, share experience and report issues to the openSUSE Factory mailing list. If direct access to the list fails, please subscribe using this link. Don't forget to answer on confirmation email that list server will send few minutes after you initial email. This way we prevent that someone else subscribe you to the list.

• If you are a packager, you can submit new packages to the openSUSE:Tumbleweed repository. For now:
  • You can use openSUSE Factory mailing list to offer a package.
  • In general packages that are already accepted in other projects can be accepted in Tumbleweed. The rule here is as with any other repo, the maintainer's decision is final.