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You're probably best off asking around on relevant forums about what works best on your particular machine. Of the mainstream distros, I found Fedora was by far

You're probably best off asking around on relevant forums about what works best on your particular machine. Of the mainstream distros, I found Fedora was by far the best OOB for my current laptop (XPS 15 9570), but I don't get the impression that's universally true. (Tangent: though likeable in many ways, Fedora was still too much fart-arsing about for me & after a few months I went back to Windows. I don't like it, but then the sad state 2019 has brought us to is that all desktop OSs are rubbish, so 'not liking it' is an unusable choice criterion).

forlorn 7y ago
Fedora is absolutely amazing these days. The smoothest experience by far compared to Ubuntu which tends to break or dramatically slow down after each dist-upgrade. I'm on Fedora since v.28 gradually upgrading packages and disto versions. I've seen no problems whatsoever.
- crispinb 7y ago
  For one thing it was the only distro I tried that gave me battery life comparable to Windows without me having to mess about with powertop etc. And everything very up-to-date. Impressed.
starsinspace 7y ago
Does Fedora come with support for playing back common media formats these days? Last time I tried, it didn't even play MP3s, just showing some dialog box about how it can't play that due to patents or something. To solve that IIRC it was needed to add some 3rd-party repository (which is always a bit worrying with having to trust them) to install the codec packages. Is that still the case with Fedora?
- crispinb 7y ago
  I don't know at what point Fedora loosened up re the FOSS strictures, but the version I installed (30) did have non-free apps/codecs available by default, including for mp3s.
  - vetinari 7y ago
    MP3 patents expired in 2017, so Fedora does include them now. So did AAC and AC3.
    - crispinb 7y ago
      Yes of course. Wasn't there also some policy change at some point regarding what's available in the store by default? I had a vague memory of that but could be wrong. Anyway, the upshot is that at least based on my experience (limited as I'm not a big media consumer), media playing does just work OOB with current Fedora.

forlorn 7y ago

Fedora is absolutely amazing these days. The smoothest experience by far compared to Ubuntu which tends to break or dramatically slow down after each dist-upgrade. I'm on Fedora since v.28 gradually upgrading packages and disto versions. I've seen no problems whatsoever.

crispinb 7y ago
For one thing it was the only distro I tried that gave me battery life comparable to Windows without me having to mess about with powertop etc. And everything very up-to-date. Impressed.

starsinspace 7y ago

Does Fedora come with support for playing back common media formats these days? Last time I tried, it didn't even play MP3s, just showing some dialog box about how it can't play that due to patents or something. To solve that IIRC it was needed to add some 3rd-party repository (which is always a bit worrying with having to trust them) to install the codec packages. Is that still the case with Fedora?

crispinb 7y ago
I don't know at what point Fedora loosened up re the FOSS strictures, but the version I installed (30) did have non-free apps/codecs available by default, including for mp3s.
- vetinari 7y ago
  MP3 patents expired in 2017, so Fedora does include them now. So did AAC and AC3.
  - crispinb 7y ago
    Yes of course. Wasn't there also some policy change at some point regarding what's available in the store by default? I had a vague memory of that but could be wrong. Anyway, the upshot is that at least based on my experience (limited as I'm not a big media consumer), media playing does just work OOB with current Fedora.