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Surprised not to see Fedora at the top of the list. Fedora 23 is remarkably stable, great UI, easy to maintain, and can be upgraded in-place to the next version

Surprised not to see Fedora at the top of the list. Fedora 23 is remarkably stable, great UI, easy to maintain, and can be upgraded in-place to the next version using the new upgrade tool, no more reinstalls.

AdmiralAsshat 11y ago
Was also surprised at the lack of love for Fedora. I just became a convert after trying to get half a dozen other distros running on my laptop and dealing with various hardware or driver problems. Fedora was the only one where I loaded it up and the touchscreen, trackpad, and Hi-DPI monitor "just worked". The "bleeding edge" thing might be a turn-off for some, though. I've only had Korora (a Fedora spin with some pre-loaded apps and themes) for less than a month and I've already downloaded two kernel updates.
jandrese 11y ago
Fedora is too uncool for a list like this. I agree with you though. I got fed up with Ubuntu and switched over to Fedora a few months ago and have been pleasantly surprised at how well it works now. The Fedora team is even willing to fix stupid obvious bugs so I actually have my zsh manpages now and gmplayer works.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  I consider myself a fairly technical user and I gave up on Fedora after it broke down in two releases after another. IIRC Distrowatch had the same experience around that time. I like the idea, I just haven't taken time to go back and try again since then, and other distros have stepped up so I didn't have to either. Maybe the author has had similar experiences that might have affected the choices?
SwellJoe 11y ago
I always come back to Fedora. I started using Linux in 1995ish, after not quite a year using Windows 95 (which I'd switched to from an Amiga 3000). Soon found my way to Red Hat Linux (which became Fedora). It's mostly been my desktop and laptop OS of choice for that entire time. I'm tried others, I'm familiar with others, due to supporting many other distros over the years. But, Fedora always seems to hit the sweet spot for stability, Open Source fidelity and contribution to moving the state of the art forward, ease of use, package selection and modernity, and the Just Works factor is historically very high (even without adding binary blob repositories, but some drivers have needed to come from third party repos over the years). yum (now dnf, which is a name I hate) is also my favorite of the mainstream package managers. It nearly perfectly balances ease of use with advanced capabilities, and maintaining private repos is an absolute dream (stick signed packages in a directory on a web server, run createrepo; repository is done!), compared to anything else. apt is a great, but managing repos for it is just awful (though I haven't had a chance to try aptly, which appears to potentially resolve this issue, though it still seems to be vastly more complex than createrepo). So, yeah, Fedora remains my favorite, through many years and many attempts using other distros. I've flirted with Ubuntu a few times, going so far as having it as my primary laptop OS for a while. Partly it was because of the popularity of it; it's sometimes easier to install stuff on Ubuntu because the developers are more likely to be using Ubuntu. But, it's not worth the other trade offs, to me. Also, I like that Fedora ships a close to stock, very clean, version of the most recent Gnome desktop. It feels very nicely integrated, while some of the alternative desktop variants feel bolted together from different pieces. Lots of folks seem to want to revert to the old 2.0 style Gnome, but I don't dislike modern Gnome (except that it has some awful quirks for multiple displays, where both displays do the shrink-and-dim thing, which is terrible for use with projections, presentations, watching movies, etc.).
TimPrice 11y ago
Agree, specially if you add some Cinnamon. (sorry :>) I didn't use Linux for any desktop/laptop for years until it got easily bundled last summer with Fedora. Thanks to Mint for that, though.
mindcrime 11y ago
Fedora hasn't been completely painless, but it's what I've been running on my developer machine(s) for years now and it mostly just works. I run KDE though, not Gnome, so my experience may be a bit different than the typical Fedora user. Still, if anyone hasn't tried Fedora in a while (or ever) I definitely suggest giving it a go.

AdmiralAsshat 11y ago

Was also surprised at the lack of love for Fedora. I just became a convert after trying to get half a dozen other distros running on my laptop and dealing with various hardware or driver problems. Fedora was the only one where I loaded it up and the touchscreen, trackpad, and Hi-DPI monitor "just worked". The "bleeding edge" thing might be a turn-off for some, though. I've only had Korora (a Fedora spin with some pre-loaded apps and themes) for less than a month and I've already downloaded two kernel updates.

jandrese 11y ago

Fedora is too uncool for a list like this. I agree with you though. I got fed up with Ubuntu and switched over to Fedora a few months ago and have been pleasantly surprised at how well it works now. The Fedora team is even willing to fix stupid obvious bugs so I actually have my zsh manpages now and gmplayer works.

reitanqild 11y ago
I consider myself a fairly technical user and I gave up on Fedora after it broke down in two releases after another. IIRC Distrowatch had the same experience around that time. I like the idea, I just haven't taken time to go back and try again since then, and other distros have stepped up so I didn't have to either. Maybe the author has had similar experiences that might have affected the choices?

SwellJoe 11y ago

I always come back to Fedora. I started using Linux in 1995ish, after not quite a year using Windows 95 (which I'd switched to from an Amiga 3000). Soon found my way to Red Hat Linux (which became Fedora). It's mostly been my desktop and laptop OS of choice for that entire time. I'm tried others, I'm familiar with others, due to supporting many other distros over the years. But, Fedora always seems to hit the sweet spot for stability, Open Source fidelity and contribution to moving the state of the art forward, ease of use, package selection and modernity, and the Just Works factor is historically very high (even without adding binary blob repositories, but some drivers have needed to come from third party repos over the years). yum (now dnf, which is a name I hate) is also my favorite of the mainstream package managers. It nearly perfectly balances ease of use with advanced capabilities, and maintaining private repos is an absolute dream (stick signed packages in a directory on a web server, run createrepo; repository is done!), compared to anything else. apt is a great, but managing repos for it is just awful (though I haven't had a chance to try aptly, which appears to potentially resolve this issue, though it still seems to be vastly more complex than createrepo). So, yeah, Fedora remains my favorite, through many years and many attempts using other distros. I've flirted with Ubuntu a few times, going so far as having it as my primary laptop OS for a while. Partly it was because of the popularity of it; it's sometimes easier to install stuff on Ubuntu because the developers are more likely to be using Ubuntu. But, it's not worth the other trade offs, to me. Also, I like that Fedora ships a close to stock, very clean, version of the most recent Gnome desktop. It feels very nicely integrated, while some of the alternative desktop variants feel bolted together from different pieces. Lots of folks seem to want to revert to the old 2.0 style Gnome, but I don't dislike modern Gnome (except that it has some awful quirks for multiple displays, where both displays do the shrink-and-dim thing, which is terrible for use with projections, presentations, watching movies, etc.).

TimPrice 11y ago

Agree, specially if you add some Cinnamon. (sorry :>) I didn't use Linux for any desktop/laptop for years until it got easily bundled last summer with Fedora. Thanks to Mint for that, though.

mindcrime 11y ago

Fedora hasn't been completely painless, but it's what I've been running on my developer machine(s) for years now and it mostly just works. I run KDE though, not Gnome, so my experience may be a bit different than the typical Fedora user. Still, if anyone hasn't tried Fedora in a while (or ever) I definitely suggest giving it a go.