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Comment by Temasik | Hacker News Reader

Why should I use fedora on my laptop over Ubuntu? Even on servers?

Does fedora increases my productivity?

I grew up using Debian and later Ubuntu, longer than 10 years on those distros as a kid and into my career as a sysadmin/operations person. Ubuntu LTS was my main workhorse form about 10.04 through to ~14.04.3.

Late 2015 I decided I wanted a "Chromebook" style user experience where I could have a repeatable build of the base OS that could be thrown away plus a backup system based around duplicity to restore my homedir. I had used preseed to deploy large fleets of Ubuntu boxes at work so it was a natural option. But I decided a few things: Firstly, I was sick of LTS 3.x kernel. Secondly, if 16.04 and all other distros were adopting systemd I may as well go to the source and use a RH based distro. Finally, that preseed wasn't as good as Kickstart used in RH based distros.

So I came up with https://github.com/sinner-/kickstart-fedora-workstation to provide repeatable builds of Fedora the way that I like it. I've been happily using it since then (across 2 versions of Fedora and a hard drive failure)! The .ks file will be updated for F26 this weekend as it just went GA today.

Have you looked into the FAI (https://fai-project.org) project? It's like preseed on steroids and very similar to the Kickstart project.

I have been using Fedora on the desktop for the last 7 years. There are lots of pros like large selection of mostly up-to-date packages, good community, security, sane defaults etc. The cons for me are the below par wiki (so I use the Arch wiki) and the version upgrades. The truth is the last few version upgrades were much easier that the previous ones.

Why would you use it over Ubuntu? Ubuntu has an important advantage over all other distros. When you try to install some not-so-common program that is not in the official repositories, usually the linux instructions assume that you are using Ubuntu. For an experienced user it's not really that important but for a novice it certainly is. Now, Ubuntu had some negative publicity with regards to the [amazon unity search](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_%28user_interface%29#Pri...) and Shuttleworth's response ["we have root"](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/44512/what-does...). On the other hand Fedora, although sponsored by Red Hat, respects the community, so fortunately there were no incidents like that. Ubuntu also had Unity which users either loved or hated, while other distros focused on either Gnome or KDE.

On servers the options are more or less grouped. So, you should first chose between the group of Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora/Centos/RHEL, etc. Once you chose the group then you can chose the distro itself. The fact that I used Fedora on the desktop for so long made the choice of Fedora on the server much easier.

Finally, will Fedora increase your productivity? No, not really. Your setup will increase your productivity. Choices like using KDE or Gnome, or the setup of (keyboard) shortcuts to meet your needs matter. I hope this helps, have fun!

Ubuntu has a history of doing things that don't go anywhere: upstart, unity, their phone thing. Fedora has concentrated on being a solid, traditional Linux desktop. If that's what you want, Fedora could be it.

Ubuntu also has a history of things that go pretty well: Easy setup for average users including nonfree drivers, reaching a point of popularity where developers target Ubuntu first, PPAs as lightweight repositories for own packages, huge offspring of distros based on it.

Not everything is black and white, and while Ubuntu has failed in some aspects, it succeeded in others. Also, they are not hesitant to admit a failure, upstart is a thing of the past with Ubuntu using systemd, unity and "their phone thing" are being discontinued with focus shifting to the Gnome desktop and the traditional PC/Laptop/server market.

> Fedora has concentrated on being a solid, traditional Linux desktop.

If you consider pulseaudio, systemd and not being able to play mp3 traditional. Also, they used to fuck with encryption in some way, not sure if they still do it.

In the end, do you trust more Poettering or Debian or Ubuntu developers?

Red Hat took $2.4 billion in revenue last year.[0] I trust them more.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat

Revenue generates trust? How do you feel about Oracle?

Only a little sarcastic; RHEL and Red Hat's historic treatment of CentOS had a lot of echos of Oracle's treatment of similar projects. They've gotten a little better in some regards (now own CentOS and seem to care about it) and worse in others (the of marketing and politics instead of merit).

> "RHEL and Red Hat's historic treatment of CentOS"

What? Red Hat didn't treat CentOS badly: they happily let people make trademark-less respins of their OS per the license and didn't try and stop anyone from doing so.

(Disclaimer: worked for RH around 2003-6)

In Bryan Cantrill, Jerry Jelinek, Adam Leventhal, Eric Schrock, Matt Ahrens, Bill Moore, Jeff Bonwick, Robert Mustacci and Dan Price we trust; all others pay cash.

False dichotomy. When last measured, the ninth most prolific systemd developer, out of just under 600, was Martin Pitt, of Canonical.

Got a reference to RHEL 'fucking with encryption'? Export controls on crypto ended in Clinton era.

As long as "[doesn't] go anywhere" means in RHEL for upstart (before being replaced by systemd) and on more desktops than Fedora for Unity.

Fedora is bleeding edge for RHEL. This is the test distro for enterprise. If you want consistent behavior maybe fedora isn't for you. In general, RHEL has made some controversial decisions for userspace and fedora is the first place you will find these.

That argument would have worked better if it hadn't been the case that Fedora used upstart for a few years.

Main thing is that Ubuntu used it in their LTS distro in 14.04 when everyone else had already shifted to .service files.

And that argument would have worked better if Ubuntu 14.04 had not been released in April 2014, before Debian made its decision. It was only Debian, by the way, not everyone else. Indeed, everyone has has not shifted to .service files even now.

When I say everyone, I mean all the major Linux distros - Debian, RHEL, SuSE, Arch.

Obviously Yggdrasil isn't using systemd and that doesn't change anything.

Which is wrong since, as mentioned, Debian had not shifted at the time.

Two years ago I was looking for a distro that I'd love, after testing a few I decided on Arch, I liked it's approach for learning how the system works. But one year ago I got tired of it, I wanted a distro that was easy to set up and was between Ubuntu and Fedora.

In the end I stuck with Fedora because I preferred GNOME over Unity, and because it would let me try Wayland before any other distro... I like the "consumer focused bleeding edge" that Fedora offers.

I distro-hopped a lot before somewhat reluctantly giving Fedora a shot. Turns out it's a fantastic distribution for developers because:

  - You don't have to configure everything from scratch
  - Packages are kept relatively up to date

It's not rolling release (unless you use Rawhide) but software is recent enough for it to be a non-issue.

It's also an extremely well-established project with a huge software repository.

I tried Ubuntu back when they were tossing Amazon search ads onto the system. There was also, idk, a million and one things, like games and other junk, that I didn't want. Coming from Arch, this put a sour taste in my mouth.

It would take me 30 minutes to build an Arch the way I wanted it. The install on Ubuntu already took 2 hours, then I would have to spend countless hours uninstalling trash I didn't want.

Maybe this isn't true anymore, but "apt-get [package]" was a game of whack-a-mole. If I ran apt-get, I wanted the latest version, not have to guess, hunt, uninstall wrong versions, etc.

Fedora is a minimal system, very much like I would have on Arch. dnf defaults to the most recent stable version of whatever I want to use, and the entire system is built with that in mind.

It sort of depends on what kind of programs you prefer to use. I personally like to have the most recent "x," though I understand the arguments for not having that preference. However, knowing the default is going to be the most recent, I have no need to think beyond that simple fact if I need to use an older version of a program.

You should have just installed a minimal Debian system and start from that.

And probably went with Debian testing or even unstable. I was on Debian unstable for a long while. It's probably more stable than several stable distros :)

Ubuntu is a checkpoint distro, Fedora is a rolling distro. There are benefits to both styles. Ultimately I don't think either will particularly affect your productivity, unless they interfere with the software you use.

Fedora, as a rolling distro, is not particularly suitable for (production) servers. You'd use CentOS for that, to keep familiar RedHat-family tooling.

Of course, Debian gives you both checkpoint ('stable') and rolling ('unstable'), so you can use the same thing on both server and workstation. :) Debian's not as warty as it used to be (I came to linux via ubuntu, and have been switching to debian on workstations + servers over the past couple of years)

EDIT: correction, Fedora is a checkpoint distro, but it doesn't support for long. IIRC it has 6-monthly releases with 12 months of support, whereas Ubuntu has 6-monthly with 18 months of support, and every 24 months you get a 5-year version. Basically Fedora needs to be upgraded twice a year, which isn't suitable for (production) servers.

There've been a bunch of good answers already but I'd like to add another: the package manager (DNF) is _significantly_ better than APT. Parallel downloads, delta updates, automatic cache refreshes, all in one command, fast and with good feedback during updates.

In my experience most Fedora users are from corporations that want a support contract from RedHat. That's really the only reason. I've yet to meet anyone who uses Fedora willingly otherwise.

To counter that I have found Fedora's bleeding edge approach quite usable on my home machine for doing my personal programming. It was also.the first Linux distribution with true (and great imo) High DPI support that to me was very good. Almost as good as macOS in implementation.

I use it willingly. I don't work in any place remotely related to RH.

Don't knock it until you try it.

Are you sure you are not confusing Fedora with RHEL (an excellent server OS for the corporate environment btw)?

Anyway, after years of using different distros (mainly the Debian and Ubuntu family of things and Arch) on different boxes I tried the Fedora KDE spin on my main desktop - mainly because the out of the box KDE 4 experience had been a bit underwhelming on various distros and I got tired of accidentally breaking stuff on Arch due to applying some careless updates. For me Fedora offers the optimum when it comes to the balance between stability and bleeding edge and the availability of packages. Rarely when things break they also get fixed promptly, third party rpms and repos are pretty decent and it's popular enough that even some proprietary stuff (mainly Steam and Sublime Text in my case) are easy to run and well supported. Really excited also to try out Wayland with Plasma soon. For a development box it has been a good choice, lot of the experience applies well also to RHEL and CentOS servers and doesn't suffer from weird decisions by the project maintenance.

If you want support contracts you don't use Fedora, you use RHEL

Well you buy one RHEL and use centos everywhere then pretend whatever broke was on your RHEL licensed box. That's usually how corporates seem to run it.

I haven't seen a single Fedora install in all my years on a desktop or server.

You would be surprised.

For one, Fedora is the open, no contract, version. And yes, tons of people use it, including on the desktop.

Second, even for the "enterprise" version, tons of businesses use Centos, which is kind of like RHEL with no contract. It's immensely popular.

That's a silly assertion and needlessly hostile to Fedora.

I have tons of experience with all the major distros and Fedora is my pick for desktop use. I don't work somewhere with an RH contract, I just like it. There are other good desktop distros but Fedora suits me. It's a good blend of cutting edge and stability, it has very good docs, has a large community, and it is 100% open source (I can still choose to install proprietary stuff if I need a driver or something, and there are usually already rpms in a repo for it if I do).

So, "hi", you've now met someone who uses Fedora willingly (enthusiastically, even).

Fedora has "just-worked" for awhile and I don't have a particularly good reason to move to Ubuntu. It's nice that Fedora doesn't patch upstream much, and I learned how to build custom RPMs about 20 years ago.

Fedora (and other rpm-based distros, OpenSUSE in particular) are easier to build/modify packages for than deb-based distros and have easier to use build services with better automation, IMO.

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