# openSUSE 43 Hacker News commenters recommended openSUSE and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 0.17 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Free Linux distribution people call stable, reliable and easy to recover, with btrfs snapshots to roll back updates. Critics say rolling updates sometimes break things and setup can be fiddly. ## Why people recommend it - Stable and reliable day to day (6 comments): "it is a really solid Linux distribution and I rarely had any problems" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47333641)) "have had a bug free desktop experience for years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46931162)) "the system works incredibly well and stable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50103998)) - Recommended as a solid modern distro (5 comments): "Just install a solid modern distro (OpenSUSE, Fedora, Mint, etc.)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545940)) "something boring and reliable like Debian or openSUSE" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906139)) "if not OpenSUSE I would be using Debian now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47621521)) - Personal favourite that people stick with (7 comments): "I really really do like Open Suse though, and I think an open source future is possible." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47150760)) "I flashed the coreboot package and installed openSUSE, and now it's my primary machine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067302)) "I moved to OpenSuse and have the same experience/opinion." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48910293)) - Btrfs snapshots allow rollback (2 comments): "Opensuse already supports booting into a known working snapshot with btrfs and snapper." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47422236)) "openSUSE, which uses btrfs snapshots on updates" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47006622)) ## What people warn about - Wifi, VPN and driver setup trouble (3 comments): "Setup wifi with some drama, but nice, it worked." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48566111)) "When I ran an OpenSUSE Desktop (circa 2019) I picked Noveau instead of the proprietary drivers, and the picture was all corrupt." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48593368)) "it still took me an hour this morning to figure out how to get a VPN to work on Open Suse." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47994686)) - Installer or boot failures (2 comments): "as often as i've wanted to try it and opensuse, they have never booted post-install for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47365697)) "This is a openSUSE bug, not a Ventoy bug." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47427806)) - Release upgrades need migrating (2 comments): "One issue I had with OpenSuSE was that once a new release drops you have around 6mo to migrate all your machines over to it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46093585)) "Could no longer stay current on my flavor of Linux (OpenSUSE)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796496)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Ubuntu](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ubuntu.md): 560 recommend - [Debian](https://hackerapproved.com/p/debian.md): 552 recommend - [Fedora Linux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fedora.md): 437 recommend - [Arch Linux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/arch-linux.md): 362 recommend - [Linux Mint](https://hackerapproved.com/p/linux-mint.md): 277 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "openSUSE", https://hackerapproved.com/p/opensuse/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).