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Distros to avoid/recommend for Vivaldi?
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Hello all. Planning to try out linux on my home PC this weekend. Any linux distros I should be aware of that Vivaldi works poorly with or works exceptionally well with?
Going to try openSUSE Leap initially, off the recommendation of a friend. Excited to get away from the ever-deteriorating quality and experience of Windows.
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@alexzhu I'm in the same boat. I've been looking at several alternatives, particularly those that look and feel Windows-ish to make the transition (hopefully!) easier. I've settled on ZorinOS, as it looks slightly easier to install than Mint Cinnamon and better looking than Q4OS. As far as I can see Vivaldi should be ok on all of them. Also Zorin has abandoned Firefox as its default browser in favour of a simplified Brave (all the fancy dan BAT stuff disabled).
Good luck with your weekend!
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@alexzhu
Hi, I use Vivaldi and Opensuse since 10 Years but on Tumbleweed instead of Leap, never got any issues with it.
Tumbleweed is a rolling release, it get always the latest packages, libraries and so forth.
It updates very often so you need a good internet connection.
For example Leap use the desktop environment KDE Plasma 5.27, Tumbleweed use 6.3.
Some users think a rolling release is more unstable but I cant confirm this in any way.Cheers, mib
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@alexzhu When starting out you should opt for a distro with a large user base and good support, like Ubuntu and Fedora
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@alexzhu As long as you are using the official "native"
.debor.rpmpackages (similar to Windoze's.msione could say) from the official Vivaldi site https://vivaldi.com/download/ on supported distros (that haven't gone EOL) you won't have any problems. The only "issue" you could come across is finding out how to enable video hardware acceleration in Vivaldi, in some distros it could be easier to do in other more complex, related to different packaging and sufficient documentation. These days the two biggest corporations have decided to distant themselves from the traditional packaging way (.deb and .rpm) and all the others, and go their own way by promoting their own "sandboxed" packaging format; Canonical, the company that makes the Ubuntus calls it "snap", and Red Hat which is behind Fedora, "flatpak". Judging by many threads in this forum it seems that both formats have their own issues with Vivaldi, so I'd say better not use them and use the aforementioned version instead. Since your friend recommended you openSUSE Leap then you should probably use this as he/she has in reality silently accepted the burden of caring you through your first steps, that's how things go naturally
. Keep in mind though that openSUSE Leap is not the "easiest" distro. It's kinda targeted to a more professional environment. Otherwise I'd probably recommend Linux Mint* for a beginner. Gradually and if you are interested in learning more about your new OS (we are all using flavors of GNU/Linux basically) and the ecosystem you could consider other alternatives depending on your usecases and understanding. One is for sure, don't hesitate to ask your "n00b" questions in your distro-forums, you are a member now 
.
(*though that recent
gdebi/qaptin Mint & Lubuntu installing crap comes to mind
- don't bother for the moment, that is Vivaldi-forum insider talk-) -
@alexzhu Works great on openSUSE (Tumbleweed and Slowroll) and Fedora (Rawhide and 42). Install on either using the RPM package.
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@alexzhu I can't think of a distro where Vivaldi doesn't work or where Vivaldi behaves differently. It's not only available in .deb and .rpm formats, which makes it compatible with Debian-based OS (like Ubuntu or Linux Mint) and Fedora and OpenSUSE-based OS. If you have a less mainstream OS, Vivaldi is also available as a snap, which makes it "universal."
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@npro Thank you, this write-up is very helpful!
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Now that everything is clarified.
Does just anybody else state with me that the influences you are interested in, are those of the desktop environment and not (probably not at all) coming from a Linux Distribution. As the OP is just about to make the transition from Windows to Linux, I fear that this very thread is already misleading to him.
PSE everybody who is interested, oppose the expressions “distribution” and “Desktop Environment” for as long as it takes to get Vivaldi into the context.
Ω
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Hello @alexzhu
Some Linux distributions like Ubuntu offer a Live CD/USB option that allows you to run/test Linux without installing it. You may try Linux that way first before installing it in order to make sure all hardware components are properly recognizedI hope that helps.
Regards,
Fred. -
Works well on fedora desktop. I also tried it on Manjaro but had issues. Been meaning to try with flatpak device, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
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@fredallas True, but that can be problematical. Yesterday I set about installing ZoinOS and downloaded the file. Then went to Balena Etcher (as recommended in the installation guide) to flash that to a USB stick (brand new, opened the packaging to do it), and was unable to do so: the flash started then stopped after about a minute with a W10 error message about unrecognised system or some such (presumably relating to Balena?). Tried it a couple more times but the laptop now fails to recognise or open the (empty) USB stick as my D:/ drive.
Right now !'m not sure what to do: I've written it up and my son is goint to check it with one of his tutors and college and a couple of friends whose parents are IT developers over this Bank Holiday weekend, so we'll see what comes from that. Decidedly pissed because I've spent the past 12 months building up to this!!!!
Travellin Bob
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@TravellinBob said in Distros to avoid/recommend for Vivaldi?:
the laptop now fails to recognise or open the (empty) USB stick as my D:/ drive.
Are you sure it is empty? Maybe it wrote all the stuff and you just need to boot from it, have you tried it? There are also other tools doing the same like Rufus and Ventoy (personally I use that). But I have no idea what is best for MS Windows and what "hurdles" MS Windows itself creates.
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@TravellinBob I don't believe there is anything on it. Firstly, because it's brand new, unwrapped and plugged in for the first time as step one. Second, because it's a 16Gb drive and the file is less than 5, so no way is it full. Third, because the download process is supposed to take 20-30 minutes to run and was cut after no more than 1. Fourth, because even if there were something on it, W10 is not identifying the drive: I have 4 USD ports on the laptop and whatever one I try to use I get an "Unable to locate device" warning (even if I look at the File Manager and it shows a D:/ drive is open).
After the second attempt, I deleted both the Zorin file and the Balenan tool, re-booted the lsaptop and downloaded them again, the second Zorin file from a local distributor at the Warsaw University (the first canme via mail from the Zorin HQ in Dublin) and then repeated the process. Exactly the same thing happened. So I tried Rufus but again W10 blocked even the download of that.
It's a bank holiday weekend here so I'll leave it until Monday - other family stuff taking priority - and then have another look.
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I'm on Pop! OS and Vivaldi runs without any problems.
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@alexzhu If you are to install openSUSE Leap you need to find out how long 15.6 is going to be really supported (and look for further info as well*), because I think it will be supported until just December 2025. And this wouldn't matter normally but SUSE has decided for Leap 16 to make severe changes and to be based on its -not so comprehensible for what it is- entirely new "ALP" system. In that regard you should check that your CPU is not a very old one, for example from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Microarchitecture_levels , because according to https://news.opensuse.org/2025/04/30/leap-16-enters-beta/
Leap 16.0 will no longer run on machines that do not support x86_64-v2.
Previously the info about the transition to that new "tech" was a bit cloudy and uncertain, but now it seems there is a migration path for you to upgrade later. I'm not sure how well-tested it is though and how many people use Leap actually, your friend should know better.
*I'm also not sure how many Desktop Environments it will support.
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Hello @TravellinBob
In the Win10 search bar, you can type in "Create and format hard disk partitions", and that will show you a list of drives and their partitions. From there, you may check if the USB flash drive is being recognized plus if it has some type of partitions. From there you can delete the partitions and try to format it again.
I hope that helps.
Regards,
Fred. -
@fredallas said in Distros to avoid/recommend for Vivaldi?:
Hello @TravellinBob
In the Win10 search bar, you can type in "Create and format hard disk partitions", and that will show you a list of drives and their partitions. From there, you may check if the USB flash drive is being recognized plus if it has some type of partitions. From there you can delete the partitions and try to format it again.
I hope that helps.
Regards,
Fred.It may. Do I need to have the USB flash drive plugged in when I do this?
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Update - I've installed Tumbleweed and Vivaldi is working perfectly so far, though I haven't extensively tested all the features yet.
Even the install of Linux itself was much easier (as someone without an IT/software background) than I anticipated!
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