To my surprise, Ubuntu, Mint, and even KUbuntu do not consistently have normal right click on the desktop or drop and drag functionality to add shortcuts to programs and file folders to the desktop. So, I did an Internet search on the issue. There is a 3-4 minute video about how to add shortcuts to other parts of the file system to the desktop THAT REQUIRES THE USE OF THE COMMAND LINE on Mint. It almost played as a parody of Linux. Totally ridiculous for an operating system in 2017 that claims to be the most friendly Linux distro for non-technical types.
I also experienced other issues with those distros.
Many of the problems, including the thing with the desktop, were regressions from when I used Ubuntu in a dual boot situation in 2008. That's right, Ubuntu and two closely related distros are much worse in 2017 than in 2008. Seriously, if not for security, driver, and software compatibly issues created by the passage of time, I would run a copy of Ubuntu Hardy Heron before using the current version of Ubuntu or Mint on a regular basis.
However, by pleasant contrast, OpenSUSE works almost perfectly. It's easy to put whatever I want on the desktop, on the launcher, etc.. They have a great package management system to add programs from their repositories, which includes things like Steam that I didn't really expect to work on KDE Desktop on a KDE oriented distro, but it does. The package management thing even automatically installs dependencies for you- of course there are a lot of for Steam.
I got stuff like Dropbox working with ease as well. A whole bunch of programs. Changed my wallpaper, my profile picture, the background of the lock screen (Granted, the last one was only customizable in so far as I could get rid of the disto's default with some of a blank page type deal, but I still changed it).
Oh, and I installed Pale Moon using the installer on the Pale Moon website and it works perfectly.
So, how come OpenSUSE or a fork of it isn't the #1 Linux distro on distrowatch or whatever? Do you think it's a "people don't know it exists" type thing?
Honestly, at this point Windows could automatically electrocute me every 20 minutes and I would not use Ubuntu or Mint based on what I have tested. I would switch to OpenSUSE if Windows got real bad, though- presuming I could get an inexpensive laptop that had good driver support from the distro.
That brings up another thing, which is that part of the idea of testing Ubuntu in a VM was to see if it would be viable to, in the event that Windows gets real bad, on my next laptop replacement, just buy a laptop with Ubuntu preinstalled and supported from some place like System76 to replace so I don't have any driver issues (Which is a thing with Linux sometimes and something I don't like to deal with). No one sells OpenSUSE laptops, though. Why not? I guess that's really the same question I had re: popularity. If it were the most popular distro, someone probably would be selling laptops with it on there instead of or in addition to Ubuntu.
Maybe there is something I don't know about OPENSuse that holds people back from embracing it?
I am just saying, on a casual test in VMs, it was far and away the best of the distros I tested in terms of me being able to start to "put it together" through the GUI to resemble my Windows desktop.
I couldn't even get through the CentOS install process, as an aside.
I am not knocking it, but it just obviously wasn't for me as a fairly non-technical user.
