After a failed attempt to get Fedora Rawhide working I decided to take another step and find something that will work, but have also the latest software in mind. And here it comes: openSUSE 13.2 Tumbleweed. It says: newest and stable software. Seems like a good deal. Let's get the work done.

Installation

You have few flavors to choose from:
1. Get a DVD and relax. Almost everything you need for installation is packed in there. Takes a lot of time to download.
2. Get a live image and try before you buy... wait it is free. It takes more than half less of the time you need for DVD. And you have a choice to try it. Don't try this on an aging, legacy hardware, because you'll need bunch of RAM to load it. Although it is not recommended way to install, you have this as an alternative. Good for discovering.
3. Get a Network installer image. It takes few seconds to download. After that take a long nap and when you wake up take some coffee and it will still not finish. The worse choice if you have slow connection and a little time.

Let's do the installation.



I am choosing here manual partitioning. I don't want it to happen magically and wipe my valuable data by accident. Here I created just root partition for system and mounted EFI partition for booting. Also it is recommended to create a separate /home partition and swap partition. Around 20 GB will do fine for root partition.






Setting up region, time and date


In this step you can either choose between default GNOME and KDE desktops, or something else (XFCE,LXDE, window manager...)
 

Overview. Read carefully before you proceed.



 Setting up user and password.



Installation is going.


Downloading packages (locally via DVD or over network)



A little housekeeping...



And after a minute of configuring things we're ready to finish the installation and boot into our newly installed system.

Booting into our new system

After installation I expected Yast to do its thing and run post installation tasks, but on my surprise I got straight into clean greenish Gnome desktop.


Multimedia codecs are not coming inside a package. Not if you forget to customize your installation. You will also not have an option to fetch them if you install a Live version on you disk. But never mind, you can always set it up later.


This application is now default music player on Gnome 3.16. I don't find it very useful because it is somehow intended for touch devices. There's still good old Rhythmbox.


If we hoover mouse over top left corner, we will get left dock. Clicking the last item on the dock will bring the menu.


Usage when busy and idle. Everything working great.





Gnome 3.16 brings new icons, which in my opinion are huge.




We also get a new calendar, which looks nice and clean.


Also notification reveals a new redesigned menu.



Conclusion

OpenSUSE 13.2 feels and looks great. Unlike Fedora Rawhide which was an unsuccessful attempt, it doesn't have everything latest, untested, which is a good thing, because we shouldn't expect sudden crashes. And at least I didn't have any for now. Installation went fine, installer is the same as on 13.2, and very easy to follow. All of hardware is recognized just out of box. Brightness changing works, bluetooth works. I really haven't found anything to complain to. So here it is. Deserved 9/10.
Have a nice day.