4 ms·

I keep being tempted to move to something other than Ubuntu. Got my start on Linux way back when it was still called "Fedora Core" so I think I'm going to wind

by twymer 16y ago

I keep being tempted to move to something other than Ubuntu. Got my start on Linux way back when it was still called "Fedora Core" so I think I'm going to wind up installing this to see how it looks these days. Anyone use Fedora regularly?

rwmj 16y ago
Yup, I'm a developer. Red Hat (where I work) has a large team of people dedicated entirely to virtualization, so for that use, particularly higher-end server virt, it's getting very good.
- danieldk 16y ago
  If you are Richard Jones, thank you for showing the world that functional programming can also be used for systems programming! :)
  - dman 16y ago
    Could you elaborate on this a bit - examples of functional languages in systems programming would be nice.
    - dman 16y ago
      On digging up a bit I found the following - [a] http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/ http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/ [b] http://www.cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_and_fedora http://www.cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_a...
    - rwmj 16y ago
      It's not really systems programming, but we've done a lot of real world business programming in OCaml. Examples: http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top/ http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top/ http://libguestfs.org/ http://libguestfs.org/ has a lot of OCaml for internal stuff. The tools are written in Perl, but I wish they were written in OCaml :-) http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/guestfs-browser/ http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/guestfs-browser/ Another forthcoming tool which I can't mention yet. More projects here from the company I used to work for: http://merjis.com/developers http://merjis.com/developers
TallGuyShort 16y ago
I use Fedora's LXDE spin on my netbook, and the KDE spin on my workstation. Once I felt comfortable using Linux, I wasn't liking some of the directions Ubuntu was headed in (not that it's bad - it just wasn't targeted at someone like me), so I switched. Almost everything has always worked out-of-the-box for me, which has always been one of Ubuntu's strongest points. I used to do a lot of work with a custom kernel, and Fedora has some great tools for that kind of development. It's not as polished or user-friendly as Ubuntu, but if you like the Unix-ness of Ubuntu as opposed to the glitter, you'd probably feel more at home with Fedora, which is more traditional and generally has a more advanced community. edit: Plus, I've always had good experiences with Red Hat's products, so I like to be loyal :)
- twymer 16y ago
  That's actually the big reason I was looking to change. I feel like every Ubuntu release is pulling more away from what I like to have.
  - bilban 16y ago
    What would you like to have?
    - TallGuyShort 16y ago
      Speaking for myself, this is why I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora. Let me clarify that I completely understand why most users would prefer's Ubuntu's approach, and I'm sure there are ways to make Ubuntu work this way, but basically I just feel more comfortable on Fedora for these reasons: - There's a huge amount of Ubuntu branding and renaming. I initially paid attention to this after the pretty silent updates that added "Ubuntu branding" to Firefox. I saw a lot of packages and applications that were renamed (or at least represented differently) to make them more generic. Personally, I would rather use the raw software and see the real names for the software packages. Fedora does this a bit too, but to a lesser extent. - The interface is very polished, but I like having a very raw, stripped-down interface. I generally work quickly, and I can't stand it when the OS can't keep up. I like KDE, and this can be a memory hog, but Ubuntu's additions are even worse, IMO. It was getting harder and harder with each version of Ubuntu to get the interface where I wanted, and now that they're branching away from standard GNOME, I only see this getting worse. - On that note, I was very unimpressed by Kubuntu, as it had obviously not received the same quality of attention as Ubuntu. As I prefer to use KDE and LXDE, I appreciate the very consistent quality between all the "spins" of Fedora. - SELinux and hard-drive encryption work out of the box. Again, I'm sure I could get this running just fine on Ubuntu, but it's so much easier with Fedora, so this contributed to me just feeling more at home. - The kernel had been modified a ton before it got shipped in a release. When I recompiled a kernel it wreaked havoc on some of the software that had previously relied on the added functionality. On Fedora I rebooted into a vanilla kernel and had no problems. I realize some of these are pretty abstract reasons, but these seem to be directions they're heading more and more, so as I said, I just feel more at home on Fedora, now that I'm comfortable using Linux.
skbohra123 16y ago
Yes, I do. And it's a prefect operating system for a developer. Latest versions are tested enough to be bug free, all developer tools are available in repository. Out of the box wifi, graphics card support. Works very well on my 2 year old Compaq AMD laptop so should work with almost everything out there. Community support is excellent. No mumbo jumbo fancy type stuffs as compared to other major main stream linux distro.
vlisivka 16y ago
Yep. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics#Who_uses_Fedora.3F http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics#Who_uses_Fedora.3F TOTAL UNIQUE IPs: 25,719,833
DrJokepu 16y ago
I've been using Fedora since the early days, when it was still called Red Hat (Red Hat 6 was my first one) and it's a really great distro. Perhaps not as friendly as Ubuntu but maybe a bit more cutting edge. You will find that Fedora and Ubuntu are largely equal. However, coming from a .deb based distro you will probably find all the minor differences in RPM based distros really annoying; I feel the same frustration whenever I use Debian or Ubuntu.
mziulu 16y ago
My work pc is powered by Fedora (my boss is a huge fan). It is not what I would choose for my laptop/home desktop (I love to tinker and I find myself perfectly at home with Arch right now), but it's a pleasure to have this distro in a pc where you need the utmost stability and the distro choice must be as transparent as possible.
demallien 16y ago
Yup, I use it as my main development PC - I have a runtime for my project that runs on Fedora, but the main target is a Gentoo distribution. As others have noted, it's a bit more cutting edge than Ubuntu, which is fine, but some times cutting edges leaves you bleeding. I prefer to stay one step behind, ie now that Fedora 14 is out, it must be about time for me to move to Fedora 13 :) I find that the first 3 months or so of a distribution's life cycle tend to be a bit unstable, but you could probably safely upgrade after that time, no need to stay an entire cycle behind like I do, it's just that I tend to be rather cautious!
olalonde 16y ago
Out of curiosity, what are the pros/cons of moving from Ubuntu to Fedora? I'd like to try a new distribution as well.
- mdaniel 16y ago
  I don't mean this sarcastically, but in the age of VirtualBox (which is not only a great product, but is also FOSS, so it appeals to a large market), why not just install F14 and give it a whirl? That way, you won't be dissuaded by someone else's opinion, and you won't have to explain your metrics to them. Having said that, I mostly agree with the other posters on this thread: Ubuntu is for your "I just want it to work" types, and Fedora is for sysadmin-hackery-types.
aaronkaplan 16y ago
Got my start on Linux way back when it was still called "Fedora Core" Wow, way back in 2007? Did you have to enter your programs on punch cards back then? :-) I use Fedora, and for the past few years it seems like every couple of months an update breaks something, like sound or wifi. Upgrades from one release to another are practically guaranteed to break something. So a while ago when I got a new laptop I installed ubuntu on it instead, hoping that things would be better. But after living with ubuntu for a while I didn't feel like it was any more stable, so I went back to Fedora just because that's what I know best. The vast majority of the bugs I run into are introduced upstream and both distros just pass them along for me to find. Apt is still faster than yum, and Ubuntu still seems to have somewhat more packages available than Fedora, but Fedora has closed the gap in both areas in recent years. All in all, I don't see a strong argument for either one over the other.

by twymer 16y ago

rwmj 16y ago

Yup, I'm a developer. Red Hat (where I work) has a large team of people dedicated entirely to virtualization, so for that use, particularly higher-end server virt, it's getting very good.

danieldk 16y ago
If you are Richard Jones, thank you for showing the world that functional programming can also be used for systems programming! :)
- dman 16y ago
  Could you elaborate on this a bit - examples of functional languages in systems programming would be nice.
  - dman 16y ago
    On digging up a bit I found the following - [a] http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/ http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/ [b] http://www.cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_and_fedora http://www.cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_a...
  - rwmj 16y ago
    It's not really systems programming, but we've done a lot of real world business programming in OCaml. Examples: http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top/ http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top/ http://libguestfs.org/ http://libguestfs.org/ has a lot of OCaml for internal stuff. The tools are written in Perl, but I wish they were written in OCaml :-) http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/guestfs-browser/ http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/guestfs-browser/ Another forthcoming tool which I can't mention yet. More projects here from the company I used to work for: http://merjis.com/developers http://merjis.com/developers

TallGuyShort 16y ago

I use Fedora's LXDE spin on my netbook, and the KDE spin on my workstation. Once I felt comfortable using Linux, I wasn't liking some of the directions Ubuntu was headed in (not that it's bad - it just wasn't targeted at someone like me), so I switched. Almost everything has always worked out-of-the-box for me, which has always been one of Ubuntu's strongest points. I used to do a lot of work with a custom kernel, and Fedora has some great tools for that kind of development. It's not as polished or user-friendly as Ubuntu, but if you like the Unix-ness of Ubuntu as opposed to the glitter, you'd probably feel more at home with Fedora, which is more traditional and generally has a more advanced community. edit: Plus, I've always had good experiences with Red Hat's products, so I like to be loyal :)

twymer 16y ago
That's actually the big reason I was looking to change. I feel like every Ubuntu release is pulling more away from what I like to have.
- bilban 16y ago
  What would you like to have?
  - TallGuyShort 16y ago
    Speaking for myself, this is why I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora. Let me clarify that I completely understand why most users would prefer's Ubuntu's approach, and I'm sure there are ways to make Ubuntu work this way, but basically I just feel more comfortable on Fedora for these reasons: - There's a huge amount of Ubuntu branding and renaming. I initially paid attention to this after the pretty silent updates that added "Ubuntu branding" to Firefox. I saw a lot of packages and applications that were renamed (or at least represented differently) to make them more generic. Personally, I would rather use the raw software and see the real names for the software packages. Fedora does this a bit too, but to a lesser extent. - The interface is very polished, but I like having a very raw, stripped-down interface. I generally work quickly, and I can't stand it when the OS can't keep up. I like KDE, and this can be a memory hog, but Ubuntu's additions are even worse, IMO. It was getting harder and harder with each version of Ubuntu to get the interface where I wanted, and now that they're branching away from standard GNOME, I only see this getting worse. - On that note, I was very unimpressed by Kubuntu, as it had obviously not received the same quality of attention as Ubuntu. As I prefer to use KDE and LXDE, I appreciate the very consistent quality between all the "spins" of Fedora. - SELinux and hard-drive encryption work out of the box. Again, I'm sure I could get this running just fine on Ubuntu, but it's so much easier with Fedora, so this contributed to me just feeling more at home. - The kernel had been modified a ton before it got shipped in a release. When I recompiled a kernel it wreaked havoc on some of the software that had previously relied on the added functionality. On Fedora I rebooted into a vanilla kernel and had no problems. I realize some of these are pretty abstract reasons, but these seem to be directions they're heading more and more, so as I said, I just feel more at home on Fedora, now that I'm comfortable using Linux.

skbohra123 16y ago

Yes, I do. And it's a prefect operating system for a developer. Latest versions are tested enough to be bug free, all developer tools are available in repository. Out of the box wifi, graphics card support. Works very well on my 2 year old Compaq AMD laptop so should work with almost everything out there. Community support is excellent. No mumbo jumbo fancy type stuffs as compared to other major main stream linux distro.

vlisivka 16y ago

Yep. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics#Who_uses_Fedora.3F http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics#Who_uses_Fedora.3F TOTAL UNIQUE IPs: 25,719,833

DrJokepu 16y ago

I've been using Fedora since the early days, when it was still called Red Hat (Red Hat 6 was my first one) and it's a really great distro. Perhaps not as friendly as Ubuntu but maybe a bit more cutting edge. You will find that Fedora and Ubuntu are largely equal. However, coming from a .deb based distro you will probably find all the minor differences in RPM based distros really annoying; I feel the same frustration whenever I use Debian or Ubuntu.

mziulu 16y ago

My work pc is powered by Fedora (my boss is a huge fan). It is not what I would choose for my laptop/home desktop (I love to tinker and I find myself perfectly at home with Arch right now), but it's a pleasure to have this distro in a pc where you need the utmost stability and the distro choice must be as transparent as possible.

demallien 16y ago

Yup, I use it as my main development PC - I have a runtime for my project that runs on Fedora, but the main target is a Gentoo distribution. As others have noted, it's a bit more cutting edge than Ubuntu, which is fine, but some times cutting edges leaves you bleeding. I prefer to stay one step behind, ie now that Fedora 14 is out, it must be about time for me to move to Fedora 13 :) I find that the first 3 months or so of a distribution's life cycle tend to be a bit unstable, but you could probably safely upgrade after that time, no need to stay an entire cycle behind like I do, it's just that I tend to be rather cautious!

olalonde 16y ago

Out of curiosity, what are the pros/cons of moving from Ubuntu to Fedora? I'd like to try a new distribution as well.

mdaniel 16y ago
I don't mean this sarcastically, but in the age of VirtualBox (which is not only a great product, but is also FOSS, so it appeals to a large market), why not just install F14 and give it a whirl? That way, you won't be dissuaded by someone else's opinion, and you won't have to explain your metrics to them. Having said that, I mostly agree with the other posters on this thread: Ubuntu is for your "I just want it to work" types, and Fedora is for sysadmin-hackery-types.

aaronkaplan 16y ago

Got my start on Linux way back when it was still called "Fedora Core" Wow, way back in 2007? Did you have to enter your programs on punch cards back then? :-) I use Fedora, and for the past few years it seems like every couple of months an update breaks something, like sound or wifi. Upgrades from one release to another are practically guaranteed to break something. So a while ago when I got a new laptop I installed ubuntu on it instead, hoping that things would be better. But after living with ubuntu for a while I didn't feel like it was any more stable, so I went back to Fedora just because that's what I know best. The vast majority of the bugs I run into are introduced upstream and both distros just pass them along for me to find. Apt is still faster than yum, and Ubuntu still seems to have somewhat more packages available than Fedora, but Fedora has closed the gap in both areas in recent years. All in all, I don't see a strong argument for either one over the other.