[2022-01-05] GeckoLinux ROLLING, STATIC, and NEXT editions updated

[geckolinux]

The GeckoLinux project is pleased to announce major updates to all three branches: Rolling (built from openSUSE Tumbleweed), Static (built from openSUSE Leap 15.3), and NEXT (built from openSUSE Leap 15.3 with additional OBS repositories).

New features in all GeckoLinux editions

Thanks to some important improvements from the Calamares installer project, and after lots and lots of trial and error to tweak the GeckoLinux configuration, inclusion of openSUSE's famous integration of the GRUB bootloader with Btrfs and Snapper snapshots has finally arrived in GeckoLinux. This also required a major rework of the default Btrfs subvolume layout, allowing for effective snapshot rollbacks without manual manipulation of the bootloader or default subvolumes. Important note: When performing a rollback in GeckoLinux for the first time the command is slightly different from vanilla openSUSE: sudo snapper --ambit classic rollback (please see the wiki entry). Another important improvement to all GeckoLinux editions is the addition of improved installation logic based on whether the system is running in EFI or legacy BIOS mode, leading to much better reliability during future GRUB bootloader updates. An additional workaround has been added to avoid a bug in openSUSE's GRUB routine when generating entries for other dual-boot Linux systems on Btrfs subvolumes. To make package downloads from the openSUSE mirror network much more reliable, repository URLs have been adjusted to use openSUSE's new mirrorcache.opensuse.org system. Finally, GeckoLinux welcomes the return of the ROLLING-OBS Pantheon and NEXT Pantheon editions now that the maintenance situation of the openSUSE repository for Pantheon packages has been resolved.

New features in GeckoLinux Rolling 999.220105 editions

In addition to the previously mentioned improvements, GeckoLinux ROLLING 999.220105 spins now feature the PipeWire audio framework with a customized out-of-the-box configuration suitable for casual home audio as well as professional low-latency (5.3ms) JACK applications. This PipeWire configuration allows for hassle-free workflows involving simultaneous usage of applications that are coded to work with PulseAudio and others that need JACK support, with no complicated bridging of the two systems. There is also an included systemd service to optionally put the processor governor in Performance mode on systems that need realtime low-latency audio support. To enable it, simply use the YaST Services manager to enable and start the cpupower service.

To improve long-term reliability after future GRUB updates, logic has been added to the Calamares installer configuration to use Btrfs LZO compression on legacy BIOS systems, whereas Zstd compression is retained on EFI systems.

In addition to the GeckoLinux specific customizations, Rolling editions also benefit from updates to virtually all the desktop environments and applications, including:

• Cinnamon 5.2.4
• Plasma 5.23.4 / KDE Frameworks 5.89.9 / KDE Applications 21.12.0
• Gnome 41.2
• Mate 1.26
• XFCE 4.16
• Budgie 10.5.3
• LXQt 1.0
• Pantheon (version from elementary OS 6.1)

New features in GeckoLinux Static 153.220104 editions

In addition to the previously mentioned global improvements to the GRUB and Btrfs snapshots default configuration, logic has been added to the Calamares configuration to use Btrfs LZO compression on legacy BIOS systems, whereas Zstd compression is now used on EFI installations of the Static edition.

New features in GeckoLinux NEXT 153.220105 editions

The GeckoLinux NEXT editions include all of the features mentioned for the Static editions, plus the following desktop environments from semi-official openSUSE Build Service repositories:

• Plasma 5.23.5 / KDE Frameworks 5.89.0 / KDE Applications 21.12.0
• Pantheon (version from elementary OS 5)

GeckoLinux overview

GeckoLinux spins are generated directly from unmodified openSUSE Tumbleweed and Packman packages sourced from those official upstream repositories, and the installed system can be updated directly from those same official sources. GeckoLinux is focused on eliminating pain points and polishing its unique out-of-the-box configuration on top of the stable and flexible openSUSE base. Proprietary media formats play out of the box, and additional user-installed multimedia applications work automatically with restricted media codecs thanks to the prioritized inclusion of the Packman repository. Proprietary hardware driver and firmware support has also been included as much as possible. Google and Skype repositories are also configured out-of-the-box for optional user installation of proprietary applications from those vendors. Third-party RPM packages can be easily installed using the graphical YaST package manager, and various configuration tweaks are included to modify openSUSE's default package management behavior. GeckoLinux uses the Calamares system installer, providing easy and flexible options for reliable installation of the live system. Important note: Non-English language packs are available and easily installable. Please see the wiki entry for more information.

Please download GeckoLinux from https://geckolinux.github.io and find more information about what makes GeckoLinux different from openSUSE. Thanks a lot, have fun!

[Tamnac]

Oh wow, I just found gecko linux, and a new release is published literally 5 minutes ago.

[geckolinux]

@Tamnac Nice! Let me know how it works for you.

[LittleCom]

Hello again,
I've installed the Gnome rolling edition last night and absolutely love it! Great job! Everything works as expected.
Are you planning on implementing Wayland in the next release?

[geckolinux]

@LittleCom Great to hear that! Thanks for the report.

Are you planning on implementing Wayland in the next release?

I'm definitely not in a hurry to switch to Wayland until there is feature parity with the Xorg session and the same or less amount of bugs. Meanwhile if you want to enable Wayland you can remove the /etc/gdm/custom.conf file and install the gnome-session-wayland package.

[ericjs]

Having installed Gecko Linux before these changes, what would I need to do to get openSUSE's famous integration of the GRUB bootloader with Btrfs and Snapper snapshots on my system?

[geckolinux]

Hi @ericjs did you try the YaST Bootloader tool?

[ericjs]

@geckolinux I did not. However, meanwhile I did an update (including a kernel update, which presumably does the equivalent grub2-mkconfig and such) and now I get the grub recovery console upon booting... :^( Booting to a usb stick now to try to figure out what went wrong...

[geckolinux]

@ericjs Oops, that's not good. It might have tried to install the EFI version of GRUB on your system even if it's running in BIOS mode, which is one of the fixes that I implemented for this release.

[ericjs]

@geckolinux What does running in BIOS mode mean and when / why would that happen on a UEFI laptop? There was only a /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi and there was no /boot/grub2/i386-pc directory.

[ericjs]

(I'm going to assume you thought maybe I was using a BIOS-based machine...I was worried you meant grub needed to run "in BIOS mode" even on a UEFI machine and that my lack of a /boot/grub2/i386-pc directory was a problem)
I'm going to disable that SUSE_BTRFS_SNAPSHOT_BOOTING and do a grub2-mkconfig in a chroot from a LIVE boot. For the record, the errors I get from grub (and I have to run exit once from grub rescue mode to make them appear, for some reason) are

error: ../../grub-core/fs/btrfs.c:1997:file '/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi' not found.
error: ../../grub-core/fs/btrfs.c:1997:file '/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi/normal.mod' not found.

Not sure why it wouldn't be able to see my newly subvolumed /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi...

[ericjs]

@geckolinux the grub2-mkconfig with SUSE_BTRFS_SNAPSHOT_BOOTING didn't fix anything...

[geckolinux]

Hmm, right, that's another reason in favor of re-installing. I used to use the standard Calamares Btrfs config of a Btrfs subvolume @ that got mounted at / . The problem there is that the openSUSE snapshot booting scripts for GRUB don't expect that layout, and it won't allow for booting the correct subvolume after a Snapper rollback. It's a long and arcane explanation actually that I don't fully understand, but suffice to say that I eventually had to request an improvement to the Calamares code to allow for not creating a subvolume for / , and that's what made everything work.

[ericjs]

@geckolinux Oh, I missed that difference between the openSUSE fstab you listed and what I had.... That error message makes more sense now if grub is not expecting / to be @. (Maybe.) So instead they mount the actual btrfs volume root (if that's the right term) to "/"? I wonder if I can just change my fstab "/" mount point to not specify a subvolume?"

(So much about btrfs is counter-intuitive! It took so much reading and looking at examples, and cross-reading other examples and testing things out, before I felt like I had enough of a grasp to start these set up changes.)

[ericjs]

@geckolinux Ohhhhh. And now I realize if I mount my btrfs "root" and list that, it lists two directories, "@" and "@home". So now the error message makes even more sense, and that I can't just mount my btrfs root to /. Now the thing I'm still puzzled by, is why it worked all this time set up that way. I'd expect the answer to be that SUSE_BTRFS_SNAPSHOT_BOOTING wasn't enabled, but then why didn't my grub2-mkconfig and grub2-install work when I disabled that? Maybe I should try that again.

[ericjs]

And, grub works again and I'm booting into my old system! Third time (or whatever it was) was the charm. I think perhaps I never ran grub2-install with SUSE_BTRFS_SNAPSHOT_BOOTING disabled. Thanks so much, @geckolinux, your last comment about @ and / was the clue I needed to put the missing piece in place. Now to decide if I can (and want to risk) messing further with things to make SUSE_BTRFS_SNAPSHOT_BOOTING work...I could copy the contents of @ over to the btrfs root...

[geckolinux]

Nice, glad you figured it out! Yes, this sort of thing is totally un-intuitive. In retrospect the @ and @home subvolume scheme that Calamares uses by default (and GeckoLinux too prior to this recent release) is no good. I realized that with a previous installation like yours when I attempted a manual Snapper rollback and then tried to manually edit GRUB to boot into the new default subvolume ID that Snapper set, but it didn't work because it kept booting from @. I think you'll find that it's going to cause similar problems if you still have that @ subvolume. The GRUB scripts know about @ subvolumes and they'll work up to a point to generate a bootable GRUB config, but it won't behave as you would expect once you try a rollback. I believe it has something to do with which subvolume was booted when you or the system ran grub2-install the last time, as I gathered from this post:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1615360#p1615360
Long story short, I think I'd still recommend a re-install at your convenience/leisure. It's a much more sane default config from this release forward.

[simonsaysthis]

This is my first time using Gecko Linux. I think I will settle on the Gnome rolling edition. Really like that you have removed the duplicate software centres from the DE. Also like Cinnamon but when I switch to the original Mint-Y icon theme then the icons for the Yast control center are all the same.

I have one question though. I see that there is a lot of firmware installed (eg Nivida) for hardware which I don't have. Is it ok to leave it all installed or will that clutter my system?

[geckolinux]

Hi there @simonsaysthis , thanks for the post, glad it's working well for you. You can safely remove driver and firmware packages that you don't need.