I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are “mainstream” “beginner friendly” distros, right? I don’t want anything too advanced, right?

Well, ubuntu recently updated and it broke my second monitor (Ubuntu detected it but the monitor had “no signal”). After trying to fix it for a week, I decided to wipe it and reinstall. No luck. I tried a few other distros that had the same issue and I started to wonder if it was a hardware issue but I tried a Windows PC and the monitor worked no problem.

Finally, just to see what would happen I tried a distro very very different than what I’m used to: Fedora (Kinoite). And not only did everything “just work” flawlessly, but it’s so much faster and more polished than I ever knew Linux to be!

Credit where it’s due, a lot of the polish is due to KDE plasma. I’d never strayed from Gnome because I’m not an expert and people recommend GNOME to Linux newbies because it’s “simple” and “customizable” but WOW is KDE SO MUCH SIMPLER AND STILL CUSTOMIZEABLE. Gnome is only “simple” in that it doesn’t allow you to do much via the GUI. With Fedora Kinode I think I needed to use the terminal maybe once during setup? With other distros I was constantly needed to use the terminal (yes its helped me learn Linux but that curve is STEEP).

The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.

I am FULLY prepared for the responses demanding to know what I did to make it crash and telling me how I was using it wrong blah blah blah but let me tell you, if you are experienced with Windows but want to learn Linux and getting frustrated by all the “beginner” distros that get recommended, do yourself a favor and try Fedora Kinoite!

edit: i am DYING at the number of “you’re using it wrong” comments here. never change people.

  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    People generally recommend Debian-based distributions because they tend to be more popular, have more applications designed first and foremost to work on them, and tend to have the most community support because they are more popular.

    • Wolf314159@startrek.website
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      I’ve also found that the documentation online is much better, or at least easier to search, with Ubuntu in particular than any other distro. This is probably mostly due to popularity at this point as you said, but I think they got that popularity because of the straight forward and easy to digest documentation. And I’m not just talking about self-help support forums, I mean published and polished wikis and guides hosted by the distro itself.

  • erwan@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    Unfortunately boring distributions don’t get recommended because users of boring distributions don’t bother commenting on distribution discussions.

    And it’s really unfortunate that obscure distributions have more vocal fans, because boring distributions are much better for beginners.

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      Ironically this is how I feel about Arch, for me it’s worked flawlessly for years.

      I don’t bother getting in ‘discussions’ about using it, because if other people have problems I’m not going to convince them that I don’t.

  • aleph@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago
    • requires a fair bit of post-installation configuration (suboptimal OOTB experience for newbies)
    • Uses btrfs by default but comes with no snapshots or GUI manager pre-configured for system restore
    • Less software availability compared to Ubuntu or Mint
    • More likely to break than Ubuntu or Mint
    • Jediwan@lemy.lolOP
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      requires a fair bit of post-installation configuration

      This is crazy to me because of all the distros I’ve tested over the years Fedora Kinote is by FAR the one I’ve had to do the least amount of tweaking with. It’s almost boring how “just works” it is. It’s honestly changed my perspective of what a distro can be.

      • jonno@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        Wait until you try out bazzite for gaming or just the regular kinoite ublue images. Both are basically kinoite with more tweaks and added software on top.

    • poki@discuss.online
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      Uses btrfs by default but comes with no snapshots or GUI manager pre-configured for system restore

      False on Fedora Atomic.

      Less software availability compared to Ubuntu or Mint

      Distrobox and Nix exists.

      More likely to break than Ubuntu or Mint

      Mint, perhaps. For Ubuntu, this was only true in the past. And only if PPAs were used sparingly. But Snaps have been a disaster for them in this case. So much so, that even Valve told Ubuntu users to use the Flatpak for Steam instead of the Snap.

      • lightnegative@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        even Valve told Ubuntu users to use the Flatpak for Steam instead of the Snap

        Hahaha really? That’s awesome. I wonder if Canonical will ever take the hint that nobody wants Snap when better, more open alternatives exist

        • poki@discuss.online
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          Yup. Here’s the post as found on Mastodon by the developer that works on Steam on Linux on behalf of Valve.

  • mr_MADAFAKA@lemmy.ml
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    Because on Fedora sometimes you are required to use terminal for some stuff like installing nvidia drivers and you dont really want to send a total beginner to Fedora

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    When the time came to pick which boring old man distro to use, the people who picked and would recommend fedora all got jobs supporting rhel. They don’t have time or energy to devote to computer touching when they get home from their serious business jobs making sure the computer keeps increasing shareholder value.

    Fedora is very good.

  • Domi@lemmy.secnd.me
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    Long-time Fedora user here. I do not think Fedora is noob friendly at all.

    • Their installer is awful
    • Their spins are really well hidden for people who don’t know they exist
    • The Nvidia drivers can’t be installed via the GUI
    • There’s no “third party drivers” tool at all
    • The regular Flathub repo is not the default and their own repo is absolutely useless
    • AMD/Intel GPUs lack hardware acceleration for H264 and H265 out of the box, adding them requires the console
    • Their packages are consistently named differently than their Ubuntu/Debian counterpart

    I really like Fedora for their newish packages without breaking constantly. I still would not recommend it for beginners.

    • Elven_Mithril@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      What do you mean the installer is awful? I have found it quite straightforward. Select the disc, your keyboard setup, timezone and then it install itself…

      • Domi@lemmy.secnd.me
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        It caters to a middle ground that barely exists, meaning it doesn’t have enough options for a power user and too many for a newcomer.

        For example, a newcomer doesn’t know what a root account is and doesn’t have to care, yet they have to choose if they want to enable or disable the account. They can also remove their administrator privileges without knowing what it means for them. I get asked what a root account is every time somebody around me tries to install Fedora.

        I recommend spinning up a Ubuntu 24.04 VM and taking a look at their installer.

        They have a clear structure on how to install Ubuntu step by step while Fedora presents you everything at once. They properly hide the advanced stuff and only show it when asked for it. They have clear toggles for third party software right at the installer and explain what they do. Fedora doesn’t even give you the option to install H264 codecs or Nvidia drivers.

        It also looks a lot cleaner and doesn’t overload people with too much info on a single screen. And yet it can still do stuff like automated installing and has active directory integration out of the box, where the Fedora installer miserably fails for a “Workstation” distro.

        The Fedora installer works, but it doesn’t do much more than that and the others do it better in many areas.

        • verdigris@lemmy.ml
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          If you’re installing an OS you should absolutely understand what the root account is. That’s like buying a car without understanding the concept of keys.

          • Domi@lemmy.secnd.me
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            No, it’s like buying a car without understanding how the engine works, which a lot of people do.

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              That’s absurd. You don’t need to understand the inner workings of the kernel to know what a root account is. If you’re regularly encouraging people to install a new OS when you aren’t even confident in their ability to understand what a root account is, you’re not doing them any favors.

  • MXX53@programming.dev
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    I love Fedora. But, part of my day job is also managing linux servers. I tend to recommend things that I think are the easiest to get running. Although Fedora is super easy to get running (at least to me), I find the installation process of mint or pop os to be much easier overall. Between those two OSes, I have moved several people from windows to fulltime linux and I’m not entirely sure that the conversion would have been as successful with fedora and without more help from me during the install process.

  • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.ml
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    I would not encourage anyone to join the EL universe as I don’t consider it as stable as others.

    TLDR; Redhat’s being absorbed into IBM and they don’t care about RHEL. RHEL (in my view) is dying a slow death. Without RHEL, there is no Fedora or Centos Stream. There’d also be no Rocky or Alma, as things currently stand.

    (Although if that happened, I’d not be surprised if the users of Fedora merged with Rocky and Alma in some form of new and fully independent distro - we’ve already seen how well such disasters can be worked around)

    Longer reasoning: Redhat, in my view, have made some unpredictable and frankly terrible decisions over the past few years with RHEL which have caused a great deal of concern in the business sector about its stability as a product. (Prematurely ending Centos 8 six years early, paywalling the source code, and more recent anti-rebuilder steps. They also treated the community team working for Centos appallingly throughout these leading to many resignations.) Further more, these were communicated without warning or consultation and have sometimes come across as petty and spiteful, rather than as professional business decisions.

    IBM bought Redhat shortly before this happened, mostly for its cloud services. It seems from the outside that RHEL is being squeezed. There have been two major rounds of layoffs. In all, this paints a picture of a company that is in decline and we’ve seen a reduction in contributions to the excellent work done by Redhat in the foss world. IBM have a long history of buying and absorbing companies - I don’t see why Redhat would be any different and RHEL doesn’t make enough money.

    Our company is moving away from EL and I know of several others who are doing so. We’re all choosing Debian.

    • LeFantome@programming.dev
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      For anybody that does not know, Fedora was founded by Red Hat to be their “community” dostro. Before Fedora, there was only Red Hat Linux and it was trying to be both commercial and community. Red Hat founded Fedora to be an explicitly community distribution and then released the first version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL ). This resolved their commercial / community conflict.

      Fedora is explicitly NOT an enterprise distribution. They are annoyingly committed to only free software. They release often and have short release cycles. Fedora is certainly not aimed at enterprises.

      Rocky and Alma are RHEL alternatives and are absolutely aimed at the enterprise. Fedora merging with either of these projects would be super surprising indeed. It would make no sense whatsoever.

      The “community” enterprise option from Red Hat is not Fedora, it is CentOS Stream. Alma has rebased onto CemtOS Stream ( which is what RHEL is also derived from ). That makes sense.

      I have fewer comments on the health or future of RHEL or Red Hat itself or how much IBM. Ares about it. I guess I will say that I have never seen so many ads for it. I think revenues are at record levels. It does not feel like it is dying.

      I don’t use Fedora or RHEL but Red Hat is one of the biggest contributors to Open Source. So, I hope this cynical poster is wrong. GCC, Glibc, Systemd, Xorg, Wayland, Mesa,SELinux, Podman, and the kernel would all be massively impacted by less Red Hat funding.

      • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        Rocky and Alma are RHEL alternatives and are absolutely aimed at the enterprise. Fedora merging with either of these projects would be super surprising indeed. It would make no sense whatsoever.

        It would make a lot of sense to Rocky and Alma though - as if RHEL went there would be a huge vacuum and their models would be impossible. I know there was a lot of talk in both companies when the source was paywalled about building directly from Fedora’s sources (Alma may actually be doing that, I’m not sure). Both R & A have significant user bases, both Enterprise and Community, and there would be considerable desire to keep the wheels turning. Some sort of collaboration (or just downstreaming directly from Fedora) feels inevitable as a choice if that were to happen.

        The “community” enterprise option from Red Hat is not Fedora, it is CentOS Stream.

        Centos Stream is not community by the way - it’s entirely owned and run by Redhat (AIUI, They took over the name from its community origins and replaced the board with its own employees. The vote to end traditional Centos (which was community run) was given as an ultimatum with a great deal of bad feeling) Stream’s purpose is as an upstream staging area for new releases of RHEL. Redhat state it’s not suitable for production use, so it’s of no real benefit to anyone that isn’t part of that test cycle. (In some defence of Redhat here, Centos was struggling with low resources for a long time before this and point releases often took weeks or even months to appear behind RHEL)

        RHEL don’t publish sales figures afaik, so they’re the only ones who could say whether they’re up or down. I’m just one guy who’s worked in a mostly EL based world which has been negatively affected by these decisions, so I’m keeping half an eye. I could be completely wrong, but the facts we do know aren’t healthy for someone wanting to enter into a business relationship with them, which is what a corporate company does when choosing a supported distro like RHEL.

        And yes, I am quite cynical - you’re right to point that out. I also hope I’m wrong. If I’m not, I have a lot of confidence that the world will continue with or without RHEL, but yes, it would be a big loss to the FOSS contributions they have made and continue to make - as well as a lot of good people losing their jobs.

          • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            You’re mixing up Redhat with RHEL.

            Redhat is a publicly traded company, so yes, their financials are strong. But my question was about RHEL, which is an internal project and not publically known.

            • LeFantome@programming.dev
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              5 months ago

              Um. No.

              Red Hat is not a publicly traded company and has not been for 5 years. They are a division of IBM. What you can know about Red Hat financials comes from IBM’s financial statements.

              Red Hat has three primary product lines of which RHEL is one.

              Did you read the article?

              • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.ml
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                4 months ago

                I stand corrected that Redhat are no longer publically traded - I was misled by stock prices showing prices in months, and not including the year.

                But that muddies your point even further, doesn’t it? We can’t see RHEL’s value, nor even Redhat’s. (And you did mix them up!)

  • nyan@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Because distros from the Debian family are more popular, any random help article aimed at beginners is likely to assume one of those distros. (If you know how to map from apt to rpm, you’re probably not a beginner.) Plus, I don’t trust Red Hat, who have a strong influence on Fedora.

    (Note that I don’t generally recommend my own distro—Gentoo—to newcomers either, unless they have specific needs best served by it.)

    • Telorand@reddthat.com
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      Not implying anything, but why don’t you trust Red Hat? Because they’re a big company, or because of some other reason?

      • nyan@sh.itjust.works
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        Red Hat’s interests often don’t seem to be aligned with those of the average user. The result is that they push for the adoption of software and conventions that make things better for businesses running RHEL, but worse for almost everyone else. This goes back a long way, and makes me question the long-term suitability of any distro Red Hat is involved in for any user who is not paying them for support. It’s the pattern that bothers me, not any single event (and yes, part of that pattern does arise from the fact that they’re a for-profit corporation).

        It’s the sort of thing that many people won’t really care about, and if the alternative was Microsoft or even Canonical (which is prone to weird fits of NIH and bad monatization ideas), then fine, I would go with Red Hat. Still, I would recommend a community distro above anything that a corporation has its fingers in.

        • Telorand@reddthat.com
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          TBH, Red Hat focusing their attention on business isn’t that problematic for me. RHEL is specifically for businesses, and Red Hat needs to make money to keep operating. Kind of a necessary evil, if you could consider that evil. However, I completely understand why the capitalist realm makes average people squirm.

          But that said, I usually prefer community projects myself (Fedora spins included), since they tend to have modified setups that are more in line with what regular users would want or need.

  • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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    5 months ago

    A crash 1-2 times a week sounds very strange no matter what Linux distro you’re using. I would suggest testing your RAM right away, it could be a hardware problem.

    • Jediwan@lemy.lolOP
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      It’s not a RAM problem lmao it rarely crashed on Windows and it’s not crashed with Fedora either.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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        If you did a full memtest and it came out good then OK.

        I’m just saying don’t discount hardware issues. Bad RAM blocks are notoriously hard to diagnose by use alone because there’s not just one symptom you can point at, and they can manifest themselves wildly differently on different apps and different OS depending how large the blocks are and how they are spread.

        Luckily there’s a very simple and straightforward test you can make to put it out of your mind.

      • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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        Curiously that’s not as accurate as you might think. Different systems use memory differently, even just between different Ubuntu flavors or customizations. 1-2 crashes a week is not normal, unless it was consistently happening when you did something specific. Also, what exactly do you mean by crashing? Did you get a black screen with some error or the computer would just freeze or reboot?

        That being said I don’t think this is likely to be a hardware issue. One thing that comes to mind is maybe swap, did you had swap on Ubuntu and do you have swap on Fedora now? If Linux runs out of memory it freezes, having swap prevents it from doing so, so if you have low enough memory it’s possible that it would get filled up and freeze your system without swap (Windows has the equivalent by default)

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      5 months ago

      How about

      • SELinux that’s pre-configured and on enforcing mode OOTB
      • Its whole Atomic branch
      • Being the first distro on which new technologies are introduced

      All of which are unique.

      To be frank, Fedora’s unique selling points are very compelling. I wonder if you could name a distro with even more impressive USPs.

      • dino@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        lol? are you trolling?

        Being the first distro on which new technologies are introduced

        Also atomic branch? SELinux might be a fair point, but I doubt that ss unique to Fedora tbh.

        • poki@discuss.online
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          You seem to be ignorant; the use of this word is not meant derogatory. In all fairness, it’s perfectly fine; we all gotta start out somewhere. So, please allow me to elaborate.

          Being the first distro on which new technologies are introduced

          Consider checking up on where Wayland, systemd, PipeWire, PulseAudio etc first appeared; so on which particular distro.

          Also atomic branch?

          Fedora Atomic, i.e. the first attempt to Nix’ify an established distro. Most commonly known through Fedora Silverblue or Fedora Kinoite. Peeps formerly referred to these as immutable. However, atomic (i.e. updates either happen or don’t; so no in-between state even with power outage) is more descriptive. It’s also the most mature attempt. Derivatives like Bazzite are the product of this endeavour. From the OG distros, only openSUSE (with its Aeon) has released an attempt. However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision. I wish it the best, but I find it hard to justify it over Fedora Atomic.

          SELinux might be a fair point, but I doubt that ss unique to Fedora tbh.

          OOTB, apart from Fedora (Atomic), it’s only found on (some) Fedora derivatives and openSUSE Aeon (which forces you to use GNOME and Aeon’s specific container-focused workflow). Arch, Gentoo and openSUSE (perhaps even Debian) do ‘support’ SELinux, but it can be a real hassle do deal with. And it’s not OOTB.

          If you make claims, you better substantiate it. I just did your homework 😂. Regardless, I’m still interested to hear a distro with more impressive USPs. Let me know 😉.

          • dino@discuss.tchncs.de
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            5 months ago

            I am not sure I understand what you mean by:

            Consider checking up on where Wayland, systemd, PipeWire, PulseAudio etc first appeared; so on which particular distro. Are you referring to use those packages as default? Afaik Fedora OS is not even rolling release, so I cannot fathom how it has packages earlier than the typical bleeding-edge candidates. Fedora Atomic Why are you mixing Fedora Atomic with the regular Fedora Distro? It’s also the most mature attempt. Derivatives like Bazzite are the product of this endeavour. From the OG distros, only openSUSE (with its Aeon) has released an attempt. However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision. …how is something like this objectively valid? I understand you like Fedora, but you make claims without any proof or just pure opinion based.

            • poki@discuss.online
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              Thank you for the reply!

              Are you referring to use those packages as default?

              I don’t understand why this is relevant. But, to answer your question, a modern system should already be on systemd, Wayland and PipeWire unless one has (for some reason) ideological qualms with systemd or if the maturity of Wayland isn’t quite ready for their specific needs.

              The “should” used earlier isn’t used as my personal bias or whatsoever. It’s simply the default found on the upstreams projects. GNOME and KDE (the most popular DEs) default to Wayland. PipeWire has become default for at least GNOME (even on Debian). And systemd is the default on almost all Linux systems.

              Furthermore, this set of software is not a random set for which Fedora happens to be the first to adopt. In fact, these are crucial parts of how we interact with Linux; these constitute the backbone if you will.

              Afaik Fedora OS is not even rolling release

              Firstly, no one refers to Fedora as Fedora OS. Secondly, Fedora’s release cycle is often referred to as semi-rolling release. With that, it’s meant that some packages arrive as they come (very close to how rolling release operates). However, other packages only arrive with the next point release. Though, Fedora has its Fedora Rawhide branch that operates as its rolling release branch.

              However, the fact that you mention this, means that we have misunderstood eachother. I don’t claim that new versions/updates arrive first on Fedora. I don’t even claim this for any of the earlier mentioned packages. However, what I do mean is that Fedora is the first to adopt these technologies in the first place. So, the first release/version of systemd, PipeWire, Wayland etc was released on Fedora. Then, within months or years, it was adopted by other distros as well.

              so I cannot fathom how it has packages earlier than the typical bleeding-edge candidates.

              See previous paragraph. And, you don’t need to fathom it; I’m just stating the facts. If you do seek a reason, it’s related to Fedora’s relation to Red Hat and how most of these technologies originate from efforts coming from either Red Hat employees or made possible through their funding. Then, when it comes to testing those things, Fedora acts as their guinea pig. That’s why Fedora is sometimes referred to as Red Hat’s testing bed distro. This doesn’t only come with its positive side, because it may also come with a negative impact to its stability. However, if one is interested in what’s next for Linux, then there’s no alternative to Fedora.

              Why are you mixing Fedora Atomic with the regular Fedora Distro?

              Because OP actually was in praise of Fedora after using Fedora Kinoite (i.e. Fedora Atomic KDE). And then, you critiqued it (i.e. Fedora) for having no selling points. So, it was rather ambiguous.

              Furthermore, Fedora has actually mentioned (for at least two and a half years now) that they intend for Fedora Atomic to be the future of Fedora. So, in a few years of time, what we’ll refer to as Fedora will simply be Fedora Atomic of today. Take note that this doesn’t mean that traditional Fedora will cease to exist. Rather, it will be referred by a different name (perhaps Fedora Classic (but I actually don’t know)).

              …how is something like this objectively valid?

              Alright, I made a couple of claims:

              “It’s also the most mature attempt.”;

              First of all, we’d have to properly define what “Nix’ify” even means or what I used it for. So, in the simplest of terms, I meant it as “Taking design elements of NixOS and applying them to an existing product. And then publishing/releasing it as a new product.”

              So, basically every distro that’s commonly referred to as ‘immutable’ and that’s originated from or has loose relations to an existing distro applies. Therefore, something like Guix System does not apply; because it’s an entirely new project with nothing that pre-existed it without its NixOS influences. On the other hand; Fedora Atomic, openSUSE MicroOS Desktop and the upcoming Ubuntu Core Desktop definitely do apply. (If the upcoming Serpent OS is “Solus v2” then we can also mention that one here). The addition/admission of distros like Arkane Linux, AstOS, blendOS, MocaccinoOS, Nitrux and Vanilla OS (to name a few) is murky, but (for the sake of argument) we’ll not exclude these.

              So, a proper study of their relative maturity would require a lot more effort than either of us is willing to put into. But, I made the claim based on the following (in alphabetical order):

              • Adoption; Popularity of a distro is very hard to quantify on Linux. However, based on the discourse, it’s hard to deny how much more popular Fedora Atomic seems compared to its immutable peers. However, if BoilingSteam’s reports do qualify as representative, then (I think) we’ll see a very significant growth for Fedora in the next report (as the most recent one already has informed us about). And that growth can almost completely be attributed to Bazzite switching to RPM Fusion’s Steam. Hence, Bazzite and thus Fedora Atomic’s adoption would be very significant.
              • Age; By itself, this is not very telling. However, when you consider that work on Fedora Atomic started (at least) over ten years ago with Project Atomic. And that it even released a version that same year (in 2014). Which eventually culminated to the release of Fedora Atomic Workstation (i.e. Silverblue) in February 2018. It’s a joke to compare this to the others that have only erupted in the last 2/3 years; so not within the same ballpark. The only exception to this would be openSUSE that launched its Project Kubic in 2017. But MicroOS Desktop only had a release in 2021.
              • Development Cycle; Other projects are in beta/RC, while Fedora Silverblue has had its general availability release (at least) over two and a half years ago. To name a couple of the more interesting ones:
                • blendOS; Had their v4 Alpha last year and have just (within a month ago) gone out of it. AFAIK they didn’t have any beta or RC releases. Which makes me suspect that their ‘release’ may just be the beta/RC for other more serious projects. Furthermore, blendOS is known for rigorous changes in between their versions. Not quite what I’d refer to as mature.
                • openSUSE Aeon; released a month ago (or so) its RC2. openSUSE Kalpa (i.e. KDE) is still in alpha.
                • Vanilla OS; still in beta.
              • Funding/Man-hours; A project backed by Red Hat (i.e. Fedora Atomic) vs anything else. Adding in the fact that development also started significantly earlier, this is pretty much a given in favor of Fedora Atomic.

              (And finally) Rate of ‘Nix’ification’; Atomic -> Reproducible -> Declarative. These stages are passed through by aspiring ‘immutable’ distros when Nix’ifying.

              For example, from almost its inception, Fedora Atomic was atomic and had a healthy portion of reproducibility. With the relatively recent transition to OCI (for updating etc), it also became (somewhat) declarative and further improved its reproducibility.

              Likewise, we see similar developments in other projects:

              • blendOS; Started out as only atomic and has attained reproducibility and declarative since.
              • openSUSE Aeon; Started out as atomic. Wishes to be reproducible (and more robust) through transition to image-based. Not much more info on this.
              • Vanilla OS; Went from only atomic to a similar OCI model like Fedora for reproducibility and becoming declarative.

              Fedora Atomic has (almost) completed/finished its “Nix’ification”. While the same can be said about other projects, this does not apply to all of them. Hence, even if Fedora is not necessarily the best at this, it definitely finds itself amongst the frontrunners.

              “Derivatives like Bazzite are the product of this endeavour.”

              This is simply a fact. Bazzite is only possible because of Fedora Atomic.

              “From the OG distros, only openSUSE (with its Aeon) has released an attempt.”

              I define OG distros as the big, independent distros that will probably never lose their relevancy. Think of Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, NixOS, openSUSE, Slackware, Solus OS, Void etc. For the sake of argument, we could include all independent distros. Out of these; Fedora, openSUSE, Solus and Ubuntu are the only ones for which we know their team/organization are actively working to erupt an ‘immutable’ distro while (originally) their distro followed a traditional model. Ubuntu Core Desktop has yet to release and the same applies to whatever Solus is cooking. From openSUSE, we have openSUSE Aeon (and Kalpa) and for Fedora we got its own 4 atomic spins. Furthermore, we got dozens of derivatives based on Fedora Atomic. So once more, this is just factual.

              “However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision.”

              This is definitely a loaded claim. I’ll answer this in my next comment.

              I understand you like Fedora

              Exactly. But it’s on merits. On the other hand, it seems as if you dislike Fedora for some reason. However, it’s unclear to me as to why that is.

              but you make claims without any proof or just pure opinion based.

              I can back up (almost) every claim I’m making (as you should have noticed by now). Not citing sources or whatsoever is due to laziness and because I don’t think you’ll check those sources anyway (like how you seemingly didn’t check if the earlier mentioned software indeed were first adopted on Fedora and if so; why). However, if you want me to cite sources on statements I make, then please mention the exact statements I’m making and I will back those up with sources.

              It’s also peculiar that you make uninformed guesses or claims without backing them up yourself. Nor do you feel compelled to look up if the unsure statement/claim is even correct or not in the first place. Though, I should at least compliment you for being honest/transparent when making unsure claims/statements!

              Yet, I’m still waiting for you to name a distro with more impressive unique selling points 😜.

              • dino@discuss.tchncs.de
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                4 months ago

                Thanks for the detailed reply. I see where you are coming from but I for example never head about Fedora Atomic whilst I am familiar with OpenSUSE MicroOS, GUIX, NixOS. I noticed that MicroOS is the server oriented immutable whilst Aeon is the new orientation for Desktop… ANYWAY, all this immutable talk is anyway pointless, because I was talking about general distributions and not a discussion about immutable distros.

                On the topic which distro adopted what first, my confusion did stem from by what context. As I tried to make clear with my confusion about fedora not being rolling release. To cut all this talk short here my answer to your question:

                The default value of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty strong because

                • rolling release
                • zypper having sane args for regular tasks (install, search etc.)
                • btrfs as default filesystem
                • optimal snapper integration which leads into
                • making a rolling release distro suitable for non-technical people/daily usage without fear of regular updates

                But this is just a general recommendation for “distros”. If the requirements get more specific it makes much more sense to make proper recommendations.

                • poki@discuss.online
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                  4 months ago

                  Thank you for reading through that info dump and thank you for your reply!

                  I see where you are coming from but I for example never head about Fedora Atomic whilst I am familiar with OpenSUSE MicroOS, GUIX, NixOS.

                  Interesting. So, you never heard of Fedora CoreOS, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, uBlue, Aurora, Bazzite and Bluefin?

                  ANYWAY, all this immutable talk is anyway pointless, because I was talking about general distributions and not a discussion about immutable distros.

                  On the topic which distro adopted what first, my confusion did stem from by what context. As I tried to make clear with my confusion about fedora not being rolling release.

                  Thank you for clearing that up!

                  To cut all this talk short here my answer to your question:

                  Finally 😜.

                  The default value of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty strong because

                  Thank you for your answer! First of all, regardless of which distro you would have chosen, I would have respected your answer. Though, depending on your answer, I could have definitely judged you for it 😂. Thankfully, however, you’ve shown to have great taste; openSUSE Tumbleweed is indeed a formidable distro. Unfortunately, I’d argue it’s (somehow) underrated and underappreciated; which is really a pity for how excellent of a distro it is. I hope it will garner a bigger audience, because it simply deserves better. Regardless, openSUSE Tumbleweed is definitely a top contender for best traditional distro IMO and I might have been daily driving it were it not for ‘immutable’ distros.

                  Secondly, while I agree with you generally, I can’t deny that the total package deal specifically is what makes openSUSE Tumbleweed special. So, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

                  • rolling release

                  Rolling release distros aren’t that rare by themselves. And, as even Arch is an independent distro with a rolling release cycle, it becomes very hard to regard this selling point as unique.

                  • zypper having sane args for regular tasks (install, search etc.)

                  zypper’s args/syntax don’t seem very different from dnf and apt in terms of saneness. But, if this is a selling point for you, what prevents dnf (which is found on Fedora) from being a selling point for you?

                  • btrfs as default filesystem

                  Fedora also ships Btrfs by default, though TIL that Btrfs was first adopted by openSUSE. But, once again, this begs the question why this isn’t a selling point (according to you) when it’s found on Fedora?

                  • optimal snapper integration which leads into

                  Snapper also seems to be properly integrated on the derivatives of other distros; e.g. Garuda, Siduction and SpiralLinux to name a couple. So, again, this selling point doesn’t seem unique.

                  • making a rolling release distro suitable for non-technical people/daily usage without fear of regular updates

                  Excellent. This is openSUSE Tumbleweed’s USP (if it’s combined with the fact that it’s a well-funded independent distro, great security standards et cetera et cetera). And if this is precisely what you seek from your distro, then openSUSE Tumbleweed is what you rightfully should stick to.

                  But this is just a general recommendation for “distros”.

                  Fair. I’m not necessarily opposed to it.

                  If the requirements get more specific it makes much more sense to make proper recommendations.

                  Interesting. Like, in which cases would you recommend something else for example?

              • dino@discuss.tchncs.de
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                4 months ago

                I don’t understand why this is relevant. But, to answer your question, a modern system should already be on systemd

                Dear lord…I will try to read the rest but you are not off to a good start. What has modern to do with systemd?