Fedora is now the default Linux recommendation, and Ubuntu did this to itself

bbundie about 4 hours ago 38 commentsRead Article on xda-developers.com

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Discussion (38 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

solarkraft•15 minutes ago

> There's also the fact that Ubuntu ships with the GNOME desktop environment, and really only GNOME.

This is a feature. Standardization is what makes „Works on Ubuntu“ a stable target.

I also dislike Snap and the various other Ubuntu anti-features, which is why I recommend Pop OS - at least I did when it was a light weight Ubuntu fork, it may not be anymore.

This is just a rando‘s opinion, so it may not be based on that, but my intuition from a few years ago is that Debian/Ubuntu still has a reliable lead in the availability of software packages, especially less popular ones: You’ll almost never find something that doesn’t work on Ubuntu, for other distros this happens sometimes.

Has this changed? Maybe with the widespread adoption of Flatpak this is not much of an issue for consumer apps anymore?

eowln•16 minutes ago

I doubt Canonical cares much about the desktop segment, at least the segment that doesn't pay. They seem to be focusing on servers. Or at least that's what it seems to me.

grim_io•about 2 hours ago

If you use a Linux desktop professionally, it's only a matter of time until you hit that one GUI app that you need, that is only supported on Ubuntu.

I prefer Tumbleweed, but the sane choice remains Ubuntu.

bcjdjsndon•about 1 hour ago

> that is only supported on Ubuntu.

So much for that Linux ecosystem compatibility, Linux apps not even compatible with other linuxes!

grim_io•about 1 hour ago

It's a packaging problem.

A vendor used to the Windows ecosystem might find it natural to support only one Linux distribution.

d3Xt3r•about 1 hour ago

Distrobox exists for that very reason. No need to ruin your main OS just to run one app.

grim_io•about 1 hour ago

Distrobox is great for cli apps and stuff not touching mesa/drivers.

It's very awkward or unusable otherwise.

d3Xt3r•about 1 hour ago

Hasn't been my experience, running KDE Wayland on host with amdgpu. Just had to pass `--extra-flags "env GDK_BACKEND=wayland"` when exporting the app. Zero issues, far from being unusable.

In fact you can even run an entire DE from Distrobox if you wanted to, although I can imagine that being a bit awkward. But a single GUI app? Shouldn't be an issue unless you've got a tricky/niche setup.

999900000999•about 2 hours ago

Backed by IBM/ Red Hat a US based company.

I trust the German government to have more respect for privacy rights at this point.

So I use Open Suse Tumbleweed. It’s been pretty stable , although with nvidia you have to do a bit more.

whatevaa•about 2 hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47318830

Suse is up for sale.

999900000999•about 1 hour ago

I don’t imagine the German government will allow it to be sold to a non EU entity.

But there’s always NixOS.

aitchnyu•about 1 hour ago

For brand new hardware, Fedora gets the niggle-free experience faster than Ubuntu. 5K screens are treated as two separate devices "under the hood", many Ubuntu software didnt honor the abstraction, hence the monitor layout, notifications, taskbar etc were treating each half as a full monitor.

CodesInChaos•about 2 hours ago

How well does Fedora handle proprietary software nowadays? For example the Nvidia driver, Steam, Rider or video codecs. I negatively remember their patent paranoia regarding elliptic curve cryptography.

My favourite feature of Manjaro (and presumably Arch) is how easily I can install almost any software from a single package manager (which supports the official repos, flatpak and AUR). While on Mint I had to mess with custom package sources, or install individual vendor provided packages which lacked auto-update.

d3Xt3r•about 2 hours ago

There's still a bit of manual work involved to install the codecs (and proprietary drivers if you need em), which is why I would never recommend vanilla Fedora to a newbie - but Fedora derivatives exist to address that issue.

Ultramarine[1] is one such easy-to-use derivative, and for gamers there's Nobara[2] and Bazzite[3] (an immutable distro).

[1] https://ultramarine-linux.org/

[2] https://nobaraproject.org/

[3] https://bazzite.gg/

ChocolateGod•about 1 hour ago

Just use Flathub on Fedora for anything proprietary including codecs. Leave dnf/rpm for system software / updates.

Nvidia is pretty simple, you can either enable the driver via the UI or just follow the rpmfusion guide.

mono442•about 2 hours ago

there's a third party repo called rpmfusion for that

fduran•about 2 hours ago

Fedora may be becoming the default for desktops, not for servers (Debian possibly the default for servers).

d3Xt3r•about 1 hour ago

Actually on servers RHEL is still the default (43% server OS market share), followed by Ubuntu at 34%, Debian at 16% and SuSE at 11%.

https://commandlinux.com/statistics/linux-server-market-shar...

marysol5•about 1 hour ago

Enterprises love RHEL because of the paid support, even if they never use it, it's "there".

joe200•about 1 hour ago

Why do you think Debian for servers only ? Did you use Debian SID or Testing as a desktop ?

nineteen999•about 1 hour ago

Fedora is upstream for RHEL, which is absolutely dominant in the server space some sectors that require enterprise support.

PaulKeeble•about 3 hours ago

Ubuntu has fallen out of favour with quite a lot of Linux recommender sites and reviewers and its mainly about flatpak and Gnome, but also gaming support by default. Other Linux distributions do things better now for the influx of gamers to Linux and with SteamOS being on Arch a lot of Arch deriatives are becoming increasingly popular. I don't think its Fedora picking up users, its Cachyos and Bazzite.

ChocolateGod•about 1 hour ago

Linux distributions shouldn't ship with Steam installed and imho bundling it makes a bad precedent.

Steam should be easy to install (whether from a store like Flathub) instead.

chocochunks•39 minutes ago

Why? With Bazzite and similar that's kind of the whole point of them existing. Just installing Steam from Flathub or the repo is not going to get the same level of integration (gaming mode, etc.). Bazzite works really well on my PC handheld and I don't think a generic distro with Steam added after the fact would be the same. Id you want a distro without Steam bundled there are lots of those.

lccerina•33 minutes ago

It's a quid pro quo from Valve. They are investing profusely in Linux ecosystems, and the distro-devs are following that. Meanwhile Epic Games still lacks a first-party app on linux, and users need to pass from Lutris, Heroic etc...

esperent•about 2 hours ago

What are the specific issues with gaming that you're claiming Ubuntu has?

I've been using Ubuntu for a few months, and I have complaints - lots of them. But gaming isn't one. I just installed the apps I needed and they worked.

slau•about 2 hours ago

Isn’t Bazzite based on Fedora?

andsoitis•about 4 hours ago

Recommended by whom?

d3Xt3r•about 1 hour ago

Recommended by João Carrasqueira, a "Lead Windows Editor" at XDA[1], who "has been covering the tech world for over 7 years, with a heavy focus on laptops and the Windows ecosystem".

Clearly an expert on Linux distros, as you can see.

[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/author/joao-xda/

grim_io•about 1 hour ago

XDA is a normie consumer site, beware conflating consumer with professional recommendations.

rowanG077•about 2 hours ago

I still don't understand how people can run Debian/Ubuntu. Every single time I have tried my environment in the span of a few months turns into a wet ball of mud with various levels of breakages. It's honestly astounding how bad it is. Once in a while I install a newly released version and naively think "Surely this problem is now fixed". But no, it's terrible.

joe200•about 1 hour ago

I have used in my life many different Linux distributions: Slackware, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian (professionally or privately). My private choice is the only one not driven by marketing: Debian.

You have three main Debian releases:

  SID (if you need to be as close as possible to upstream versions)

  Testing (the same as above but a few days after SID)

  Stable (you sacrifice the latest software versions for insane stability)

Which one did you use ?

And please don't mix Debian and Ubuntu.

Canonical is commercial company driven by profit (and CEO's bonus).

Debian is driven by community and (mostly) engineers.

rowanG077•16 minutes ago

I used Stable and SID. The reason I mixed Debian and Ubuntu is because I perceive the root of shittiness to be apt and how it can, and often does, poison your system.

joe200•12 minutes ago

Be specific. Very specific.

nineteen999•about 1 hour ago

Back in the 1990's I was fond of it for the community spirit, the attention to detail, the way things "just worked" even it had a particular take on some things. Over time it felt like it became burderned with design-by-committee decisions, maintainers leaving and abandoning packages faster than they could replace them, and just a bit too political.

marysol5•about 1 hour ago

I've lived on Debian since day dot, never really had an issue. Biggest gripe with Debian is that it's /too/ stable!

bcjdjsndon•about 1 hour ago

Are they both still a nightmare to setup and/or use?