Have you ever wanted to have the Ultimate Linux setup for your own power hungry Nvidia powered laptop? Well I have the ultimate guide on how to configure your OpenSUSE Tumbleweed system to the best it can be. I myself have been tinkering around with my own setup for the past few months so I have a great system that you can replicate at home!
- It is a stable rolling release distro which gives you the latest software with each update being rigorously tested to ensure your system won't break
- It is configured out of the box to automatically backup your system into read-only system snapshots which you can rollback to when your system wasen't broken
- The package Manager Zypper is my favorate one out there because it displays everything in a clear and understandable way (It is also faster than DNF!)
- OS installation
- Setting up essential repositories such as packman and Flathub
- Power profile swiching for ultimate battery life when needed and ultimate performance for those gaming sessions
- Gpu switching for when you need battery life or performance
- Disabling zypper's automatic bloat install to have your SSD/HDD nice and empty for more of your files!
- Disclaimer: I HAVE TRIED TO DEBLOAT MY SYSTEM BUT IT JUST HAS AROUND THE SAME AMOUT OF PACKAGES AS NORMAL INSTALL BUT AUDIO ISSUES COME UP!!!!!!
To get started we must of course head over to https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/ and download the iso file from the downloads tab, I am assuming that your semi-modern pc is x86-64 so get the offline image for that.
What about flashing? Use a program called Balena Etcher found here: https://etcher.balena.io and you can just plug in at least and 8GB flash drive and flash it (All data on the drive will be erased during flashing)
Get out the device you want to install it to and boot into your device's boot menu, pick the flash drive and let's move onto the next step!
Go down to Installation and hit enter
It is recommended for you to connect to WIFI so that we can grab all the latest software
Setup your language and on the next page hit yes to enabling online repositories
Select the Kde plasma option (last part before we write to disk will have package selection)
Partitioning: go through the guided setup doing these: check LVM and drive encryption after that keep the fs BtrFS
Setup your locale correctly (If not correct then you might not get the closest mirrors to you)
Setup your user but make sure that automatic login is unchecked because of security reasons
It will have an install button but don't click that yet
Turn Secure Boot off because we will need Nvidia drivers later
Click on Software and disable the Kde pim suite and Kde games as well as office from installing and leave the rest as default (my system is kinda broken because of manual selections missing something important)
Click on Details and select any more packages you want to install
Click on Install and watch your system install!
Open Konsole and edit this file: sudo nano /etc/zypp/zypper.conf Find this line: # installRecomends = yes and remove the # while also changing the yes to a no
This will help with zypper not reinstalling unneeded packages every time you update
Before updating we remove any packages that we don't want (this may be different for you so do your own research into each package)
Here is a list of packages that I don't want and are safe to remove without breaking the system as a whole:
- discover (plus dependencies) (We have YaST Software)
- plasma5-desktop-emojier (Emoji Selector)
- khelpcenter5 (Help)
- kcharselect
- kmag
- kmousetool
- kompare
- konversation
- skanlite
- spectacle (I prefer flameshot)
- tigervnc
- xorg-x11-Xvnc (Plus dependency)
- xterm
As a reminder do your own research into what packages you need and ones you don't but these ones I don't need
It is recommended to use YaST Software for this step since dependencies might not show themselves in terminal
What about the remaining packages in the start menu?
The remaining packages cannot be removed without the underlying system also being removed so we will have to do a different method...
Right click on the start menu button and hit Edit Applications...
We can then use the menu editor to remove the shortcuts by hitting Delete&Save (we can pretend the bloat is gone!)
Again we will remove what we don't need:
ArkCrashed Proccess ViewerFile Manager - Super User ModeGwenviewInfo CenterKateKWalletManagerMenu EditorOkularTerminal - Super User ModeWacome Tablet FinderXScreenSaverXScreenSaver Settings
After all that debloating you are now good to update your system with sudo zypper dup and reboot if it tells you to with sudo reboot
We now need to get a communtiy maintained repo such as Packman to get access to additional software such as codecs and other unoffical software that you might want
sudo zypper in opi && opi codecs && sudo zypper dup --from packman --allow-vendor-change
If your laptop has a Nvidia GPU like mine you will need drivers, if your laptop does not then skip this step
YaST Software>Configuration>Repositories>Add>Community Repositories>NVIDIA Graphics Drivers click yes to gpg key import and it should auto select all the packages you need
Rather than using the default Bash shell there is one called Fish that auto suggests commands when based on command history
sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/shells:fish:release:3/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/shells:fish:release:3.repo && sudo zypper ref && sudo zypper in fish
For gaming I use flatpak because certain applications aren't avalible for this Distro otherwise
sudo zypper in flatpak && flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
Reboot after all those installs and now the gaming software!
flatpak install yuzu atlauncher && sudo zypper in steam steam devices
With all that installed it is time to optimize the system for togglable battery/performance!
There are two packages that we will install that can make your laptop either have the best performance or the best battery life denpending on which mode you prefer
The first one is called Envycontrol and it enables you to disable your Nvidia GPU for better battery life when you don't need it and you can make it force your system to use it when you are gaming for better performance, again if you don't have a Nvidia GPU please skip this step
sudo zypper in git && cd Downloads/ && git clone https://github.com/bayasdev/envycontrol && cd envycontrol/ && sudo pip install . --break-system-packages
After that reboot and we will install the widget to go along with it (skip if you don't have Nvidia GPU)
Right click start menu button > Add Widgets > Get New Widgets > Download New Plasma Widgets and search for optimus gpu switcher and install the one from enlroma
We will reboot and install the 2nd package which (for now) is power-profiles-daemon which controls the rest of the system for battery life/performance (this application does not do anything with your GPU so Nvidia and non-Nvidia laptops will benefit from this step)
sudo zypper in power-profiles-daemon && sudo systemctl enable power-profiles-daemon
If you have the problem of a 4k screen on your laptop we can also gain battery life by going into the system settings and lowering the resolution to 2560x1600 in my case but yours could very, the important thing here is making sure to select one that is the same aspect ratio and not go down to low because your image won't be as sharp as you want it
Reboot and when you click on the battery icon you will notice a new slider full of different power profiles as well as the other widget where you can control which gpu to use
Go into Appearance>Global Theme>Get New Global Theme and pick one that is right for you
I love this one made by the CachyOS team and I have written a guide on it: https://github.com/enderpirate98/Cachyos-look-and-feel/
As for Grub themeing go to https://store.kde.org/browse?cat=109 Instructions for theme install should hopefully be provided by creator of said theme
I like the Tela theme by vinceliuice
cd Downloads/ && git clone https://github.com/vinceliuice/grub2-themes && cd grub2-themes && sudo ./install.sh -t tela -s 2k
Those are the options but your device and preferences will be different so please check
Also go into YaST and change grub to be the same resolution that you picked
During your reboot you should see a good looking theme and hopefully HIDPI scaling is corect, if not run the script again but tinker around and see what works
Which Web Browser do I use?
I prefer Vivaldi due to it's privacy and Customization but feel free to go with any other options.
Vivaldi
sudo zypper ar https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/vivaldi-suse.repo && sudo zypper in vivaldi-stable
Chrome
flatpak install com.google.Chrome
Firefox is already preinstalled but if you want to switch it out for the flatpak version here you go
sudo zypper rm mozillafirefox mozillafirefox-branding-opensuse && flatpak install org.mozilla.firefox
Any other Web Browser you could want should also be avalible in flatpak format but if not then feel free to look up how to install those on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
There are 4 extensions that I use myself that you can get through the Chrome web store or Firefox addons but feel free to use what you like
Plasma Browser Integration: It gives you media control options in one of the taskbar widgets
Bitwarden Password Manager: Rather than using the same password for everything you now can have randomly generated ones stored in a secure database only you have access to for better personal security
Ublock Origin: A content blocker that protects you from harmful websites and annoying ads
Dark Reader: This forces every website you visit to be in dark mode so that your eyes won't burn at certain times of the day (or night)
Congrats! You have the Ultimate Linux system that will hopefully satisfy your every need!
Special thanks to everyone on reddit for giving valuble feedback! https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/15y61z6/i_created_the_ultimate_tumbleweed_install_guide/
This guide was created by me and if you want to modify this guide a distribute elsewhere feel free to do it but please credit enderpirate98 as a contributor. I am no means a software programmer nor am I an "Expert" but hopfully I am good enough as a Linux user to be helpful!
For screenshots I use Flameshot which works pretty well
flatpak install org.flameshot.Flameshot
I have not tried it out myself but someone on reddit suggested additional sudo configuration
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Administer_with_sudo
If you want a good MS Office clone there is OnlyOffice
flatpak install org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors
Why is my Nvidia Gpu not recodnized after a kernel update?
That can be fixed by going into YaST Software, searching up Nvidia and making it "update" every package already installed which will reinstall the packages so that your system will work it's best again!