OpenSUSE has the best installation menu of any OSs ever made

No, no, this is the peak OS installation menu:

😜

Oh hey, I remember that screen. I have seen it many times. Many, many times. Oh God, so many times.
- So, just to clarify, you’ve seen it many times?
- Still more than you remember
Ironically, this one is better designed than their current one lmao.
I was genuinely about to say how the openSUSE installer looks incredibly similar to the Windows XP one
- There you go, peasants.
This one is second not OpenSUSE is still the best for me XD
Another old school, it's very similar

No, Ark Linux (not Arch) had Tetris in their installer, so we could play while we waited. It has been discontinued unfortunately.

Wow I'd never heard of anything like that before, that's pretty dang cool.
- I know some Minecraft mod packs used to have pong integrated in their loading screens.

Just because of the loading bar? You're easy to please 😁.

I mean, it is something surprisingly absent from most installers
- You apparently haven't tried Ubuntu in 20 years? Canonical has had a very clean Windows-ish experience forever, though even back in the day, Suse always had a pretty decent one as well.
- It is also a lie as the installer doesnt know any percentages.
  
  But afaik Debian installer, Calamares, Fedora Anaconda and more all have loading bars
Not just loading bar it's everything about the aesthetic in the menu, logo on the top, installation steps on the side and loading bar on the middle just enough to fill the screen while not being too crowded or overwhelming
- And then there's the installation options that look and behave exactly like a regularly themed Qt application (which it probably is). Wonderful!
  Okay, I'm coming from Gentoo and Debian, cut me some slack, I'm easy to please regarding installers :-P
- Was just kidding 😁 Keep that feeling, it's a great one ! I love to see other people enjoying such simple but powerful brain flooding dopamine ! That awwwwww moment is really enjoayble, for others and yourself !
  
  Hope you will have fun with openSUSE ! I'm also thinking to switch from Debian to OpenSUSE for my daily drive. Debian as server is fantastic, but got some quirks running it with backports and testing.
  
  Maybe a skill issue? Probably, but trying something different will give me the necessary boost to find out 😄

Help, why does this picture feel like it's ever so slightly tilted?
- I didn't see it until I read your comment
- When I look at it as a thumbnail, it looks like the installation box is popping out of my phone. When I fulllscreen it, the illusion vanishes for me.
- I bet it's something to do with the drop shadow. Seems like the center of mass is shifted, eh?
Much better

Well there was also gobo Linux, which would let you play Tetris while the installation did its thing.

This is so damn needed
Kinda like the C64 games that had load time games

If we’re being honest every release without this status bar being the tail unfolding OR the tongue extending to catch a fly is a waste.

Yeah it's alright. I've been using Tumbleweed on my Desktop PC for the last few months and I gotta say it's mid. They do hard drive unlocking in Grub instead of in the initfs which means that only LUKS 1 and with that only the not-so-secure PDKDF is supported, instead of argon2id which is the modern KDF you want to use. This is a small and annoying oversight in the distros security which is why I will not be using it in the future

Doesn't GRUB support LUKS2 nowadays? I know that wasn't the case a year ago or so, but I didn't see a notice on the Archwiki last time I checked.
- Not sure how up to date this is, but it claims LUKS2 is only partially supported by GRUB https://docs.voidlinux.org/installation/guides/fde.html
  
  LUKS2 is only partially supported by GRUB; specifically, only the PBKDF2 key derivation function is implemented, which is not the default KDF used with LUKS2, that being Argon2i (GRUB Bug 59409). LUKS encrypted partitions using Argon2i (as well as the other KDF) can not be decrypted. For that reason, this guide only recommends LUKS1 be used.
Luckily most installers support installing wherever you tell them to. So if you install from a live image you should be able to set it up the way you want. I'll definitely try that as soon as a I do my next installation.
You can fix this by manually placing the /boot partition outside of luks when you do your install. I did it and now my opensuse system boots in a reasonable time. Annoying to do but 100% worth it.

You could've shown a better screenshot I guess

There's some decent screenshots here: https://opensuse-guide.org/installation.php

With Gentoo, you can choose any live-iso, open a terminal and start installing. (:

This might just be me but I hate those bars. It better come with some sort of text output so I can see what's actually going on.

At least it tells you remaining packages

I think people here are don't know and understand how customizable is opensuse's installer.

Give me the Debian TUI anyday. Clean, simple, to the point. Has become just muscle memory thanks to all the server VMs I’ve installed it in.

I am impressed, creating btrfs sub-volumes in a debian installation with muscle memory would look like magic to me (as a linux-beginner).

The partitioning and filesystem stuff feels very unsorted and confusing for me.

But if all the standard settings are ok for you and you only have to hit enter, I guess the installer is ok.
- I mean yes, generally the standard settings are fine for my deployments so that’s what I’m talking about. I agree the partitioner leaves something to be desired though.

Debian: boring installer, bare-metal install completed in about 10 minutes

Almalinux: nice installer, bare-metal install completed in about 10 minutes

Opensuse: nice installer, bare-metal install completed in about an hour. WHYYYYYYYY?

It because zypper is incredibly slow. They’ve been slowly working on the features needed to make it faster but they haven’t come together yet. I would guess early 2025.

I still prefer archinstall‘s TUI install script (I just wish that it would offer to install yay as well)

OpenSUSE also had a TUI installer IIRC, it's YaST-adjacent.
- 😊nice little fun fact
Use paru not yay.

To each there own

I don't like that it doesn't give you a live image by default. It's kind of hard to find them on the website.

I think my ideal installer would be one that boots into a desktop and by default installs that and copies everything you've done there onto the installed system. Like "here you can start using your system right away, we'll ask you a few questions and then do the pesky installation stuff for you in the background".

I also like that it installs the apps right after first boot in microos. That's awesome. Unfortunately I like the image based system of fedora a tiny bit more.

I don't know man, Debian's TUI installer is just neat. It does the job.

Yeah, you only have to look at these once. Absolutely no point except eye-candy for a fleeting moment.
.I don't even care for graphical boots. Give me all the boot messages scrolling by.

Huh, I haven't installed SUSE in at least 10 years and seeing the Gecko is giving me a bit of nostalgia. I may have to run an install and see what's changed.

Really good! Reminds me a bit of Mandriva Linux installer's look and feel. Yes, I am as old as rocks.

Top bad it fucked my EFI so my NixOS can't boot 🥲

There is a reason for this: https://yast.opensuse.org/

https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:YaST

Yast is opensuse's configuration/setup tool, and it's used in the installer.

You can also use it from the installed distro itself, even configuring things like grub.

Arch has a better installer in my opinion

I mean, archinstall is pretty nice! it's certainly not flashy but it's a great tool that gets you up and running very quickly with no hassle

Reminds of Windows 98 installation