Hi, I’ve been using Linux for around 4 years and I’ve gone through many different distros. The latest and current one is Linux Mint, but I’ve decided to make a change and I’ve chosen openSUSE with XFCE.

Is there anything I should know beforehand, or anything you would recommend? I’m really excited to try this distro, it has caught my attention a lot and I think it could end up being one of my favorites.

Thanks!

Anyways, XFCE, installed, cleaned up unnecessary packages. Flows Out of the box.

• fast bootup

• sane defaults

• simple and predictable

• minimalistic

• lightdm login manager is healthy with Nvidia and doesn't randomly flicker with it

• Doesn't get on the way with YaST

• Pretty default themes

• auto-mounts devices normally in Thunar, including my PTP camera

• ALT+SHIFT+TAB actually moves to the to the left!!! (for god sake kde)

• Reasonable non weird bluetooth app

• Backwards compatible Tray-Icons

• Battery detector for bluetooth devices visible out of the box

• Thankfully no conflicting Software Store with YaST software that battle for Zypper's attention

• Shortcuts are reasonable

• Scanner and Printer apps that summarize YaST detected devices

• Thin title bars with a collapsible option

• No notifications telling you that "You connected to Wifi!!" or "Spotify is Ready!" and no frequently broken extensions (cof cof).

Seriously, did anyone else appreciated the simplicity and focus of XFCE?

== Highly opinionated post - Freedom of choice, Linux is beautiful. :) ==

Introduction and disclaimer:

The following are the steps I took to achieve a working rolling distribution under WSL. Due to the nature of this configuration, some packages are broken and I am sure that there are plenty of bugs that I have not encountered yet. However, from my limited testing, I have not noticed any system-breaking errors. Any errors that I encountered were resolvable through research and modifications. As a disclaimer, I do not support this configuration and I am just posting this for those who wish to experiment with it. It is almost certainly a bad idea to run this in any environment where system integrity and stability are paramount. Feel free to post any issues you may encounter, but do not expect that I will provide any guidance on how to resolve them. From this point forward, you are on your own.

What I know will most likely not function:

• Anything that utilizes kernel namespaces (namely sandboxed applications)

• Certain graphical programs (the default web browser in XFCE will fail to launch for example)

• Most other desktop environments (these can be installed, but will probably be extremely unstable)

• Certain programs that deal directly with file systems

• Anything that expects an init system to boot the operating system (systemd is present, but interaction with it will produce errors saying that the system was not booted with it)

• Anything else that requires a full Linux Kernel (see end of post for details)

Process:

• Enable WSL:

  • Enable developer mode in Windows by going to “Settings” -> “Updates & Security” -> “For developers” and check the radio box next to developer mode (No longer required as of Windows 10 1709 and above)

  • Go to “Settings” -> “Programs & Features” -> “Manage optional features” and enable the “Windows Subsystem for Linux” and reboot the system

• Go to the Windows Store and install openSUSE Leap 42

• Run the app, wait for it to initialize, and put in your username and password that you wish to use for Linux and choose a different root password if you wish

• Convert Leap to Tumbleweed following the instructions from here:

  • Open a terminal and type sudo -i to get an interactive root session

  • Create a backup directory for the old Leap repositories mkdir /etc/zypp/repos.d/old*

  • Move the old Leap repositories to the backup directory using mv /etc/zypp/repos.d/*.repo /etc/zypp/repos.d/old

  • Install the Tumbleweed repositories using the following commands:

    • zypper ar -f -c http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss repo-oss

    • zypper ar -f -c http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss repo-non-oss

    • zypper ar -f -c http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/debug repo-debug

    • zypper ar -f -c http://download.opensuse.org/update/tumbleweed/ repo-update

  • Run zypper dup to do a distribution upgrade, accept the changes, and wait for around ten to twenty minutes (many errors will be produced)

  • Restart your computer as a precaution and you should now have a working openSUSE Tumbleweed distribution (can be checked by running a program like neofetch)

• Installing XFCE:

  • First, acquire an X server for Windows:

    • X410 is available from the Windows Store for a fee, but is easy to set up and anecdotally works better

    • VcXsrv is an open source alternative that is free and I have not noticed any major issues with it

    • Xming is another open source alternative, but it is not updated frequently

    • There are probably more options available, so free to look around

  • Make sure the display server is running on Windows

    • It must be running any time the user wishes to use a graphical program

    • One could set it to start with Windows by setting a task up in the Windows Task Scheduler

  • Next, install the XFCE pattern under openSUSE Tumbleweed by running zypper install -t pattern xfce with root privileges

  • Then, decide if you want openSUSE to connect to the display server at startup, or if you want to manually connect it yourself by running export DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0.0

    • If this should be done automatically at login, add the above to either the .bashrc or .profile files in the user’s home directory

    • For the first time, run the command directly, as changes to either of the above files will not reload until a logout is performed

  • Then, run xfce4-session and a graphical session should appear in the X server window on Windows

    • There will most likely be many errors in the terminal, some of which can be fixed by installing missing dependencies

    • Other errors will be present, as this is not a supported configuration

Conclusion:

From this point on, you should be able to utilize this configuration to run certain graphical programs and have constant updates to the software running on your system. It is important to run zypper dup with root privileges for updates, as running the generic zypper update command can lead to version mismatches. The final thing that should be noted is that any program, or library, that expects a full Linux Kernel to be present will probably not function as intended. This is because any kernel shipped with a WSL distribution is not actually a kernel. The kernel is provided by Microsoft when the subsystem is installed and it contains mostly proprietary code to translate Linux system calls to Windows system calls (akin to what WINE does on Linux). Thus, many functions taken for granted by programs running under Linux may not be present. While the Windows Subsystem for Linux is amazing, and will most likely improve over time, it is far from a full Linux replacement. I hope this was helpful and that you have a great day.