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The only reason I have been using Ubuntu is because it was the distro with the most installable software available. I'm ok with default GNOME, I'm beyond cool

The only reason I have been using Ubuntu is because it was the distro with the most installable software available. I'm ok with default GNOME, I'm beyond cool desktop, I just want something that works. On the other hand I need to be able to install a large selection of software easily, and recent-ish versions of them (hence why not Debian). I also can't have things that upgrade themselves on their own schedule (kids in school with capped bandwidth). Having done it myself in the past, I understand how taxing creating official .deb and .rpm is for the developers, and how difficult dependencies issues are. Given how Ubuntu is digging itself into the snap hole, what's the best solution here? Why pick Flatpack vs Appimage? Reading about it they both seem to have pros and cons. I see a lots of PopOS proponents here, but found that they don't produce that many .deb packages, and the choice will dwindle as Ubuntu's moving more and more stuff to snap. It also was a lot of work to un-customize (going back to a vanilla GNOME). I'd honestly be happy with even Fedora, if I could easily install most OSS.

Delk 6y ago
Out of general interest, which kinds of OSS have you come across that aren't packaged for Fedora? I'm sure there are obviously some; anything proprietary or with patent encumbrance requires using rpmfusion or something, and that may be a step further than enabling multiverse. Some stuff just might not be packaged. Ubuntu and Debian repositories are also exceptionally broad. But I can't, right off the top of my head, think of that much of OSS that I couldn't install either from the official repos or rpmfusion. Maybe I've just forgotten about any loops I had to jump through, but I've been using Fedora for about six years now (after moving from Ubuntu), and I've found that the repos are much richer than I thought they were. But maybe I just haven't run into the holes that you have found. There are some things I preferred about Ubuntu, but generally things have been working surprisingly well for me.
- dorfsmay 6y ago
  Last time I had checked, the issue were with software with non-free codec and smaller more niche software, but checking rpm repositories there isn't a software I'm missing yet. I'm definitely going to have another look at Fedora and OpenSuse for that matter (specifically their rolling version for small single service servers). Thanks for your comment.

Delk 6y ago

Out of general interest, which kinds of OSS have you come across that aren't packaged for Fedora? I'm sure there are obviously some; anything proprietary or with patent encumbrance requires using rpmfusion or something, and that may be a step further than enabling multiverse. Some stuff just might not be packaged. Ubuntu and Debian repositories are also exceptionally broad. But I can't, right off the top of my head, think of that much of OSS that I couldn't install either from the official repos or rpmfusion. Maybe I've just forgotten about any loops I had to jump through, but I've been using Fedora for about six years now (after moving from Ubuntu), and I've found that the repos are much richer than I thought they were. But maybe I just haven't run into the holes that you have found. There are some things I preferred about Ubuntu, but generally things have been working surprisingly well for me.

dorfsmay 6y ago
Last time I had checked, the issue were with software with non-free codec and smaller more niche software, but checking rpm repositories there isn't a software I'm missing yet. I'm definitely going to have another look at Fedora and OpenSuse for that matter (specifically their rolling version for small single service servers). Thanks for your comment.