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I had a really bad time with Fedora 32, used to Arch Linux: it always felt like RHEL unstable, with many breaking changes not documented (Fedora 32 needed some

I had a really bad time with Fedora 32, used to Arch Linux: it always felt like RHEL unstable, with many breaking changes not documented (Fedora 32 needed some kernel and firewall hacks to work with Docker [1]) and have their own set of unstandard tools, still not very much documented. I spent 3 hours trying to understand how to compile a patched mainline kernel -- need to learn about dracut, koji, fedpkg, rpmbuild -- and none of these tools are documented clearly on a central, official place, but can be found through googling, reading mailing lists, piecing stuff together from deprecated wiki pages. COPR [2] is interesting, like PPA, with the worst user experience I've ever seen. The patched kernel I was interested about was already compiled by somebody, and available through COPR, but good luck finding which repo has an up-to-date version of the package you're interested. The whole Fedora COPR site is more than useless. I mean, the default experience was pretty good, but being the unstable branch of Red Hat means there's a lot of breakage, every release changes something big and you're constantly on the bleeding edge without the safety net of a top notch wiki like Arch Linux has. 1: https://fedoramagazine.org/docker-and-fedora-32/ https://fedoramagazine.org/docker-and-fedora-32/ 2: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/

drran 6y ago
So, you figured out how to compile patched kernel in just 3 hours? Wow. (Create patch, install src.rpm, add patch to SOURCE directory, mention patch in .spec and add instruction to apply patch to %setup section, and then rpmbuild the .spec).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
circularfoyers 6y ago
The Fedora packaging guidelines is an official, pretty thorough guide to RPM packaging with lots of examples for specific languages[1]. The Fedora docs also cover creating a custom kernel too[2]. I recently moved over to Podman from Docker and found the documentation for it very good as well.[3] I do agree that the search functionality of Copr is extremely basic to the point of being useless for popular packages such as custom kernels, but I believe there is some effort to remedy this with upvoting Copr repos, but I'd argue this is still not enough. I found though as someone new to Copr that it was very easy to figure out as someone simply building my own packages. [1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/kernel/build-custom-kernel https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/kernel/build... [3] https://docs.podman.io/en/latest https://docs.podman.io/en/latest
otabdeveloper4 6y ago
I've been running Arch Linux for many, many years now on three or four machines at the same time. I've never had anything break, unlike in Ubuntu. (Constant Ubuntu breakages were the thing that drove me to Arch in the first place.) Arch Linux is basically "default upstream Linux", which means less random patches and stuff built on top of it.
- Fnoord 6y ago
  I call bullshit. You're doing something wrong on your Ubuntu installation. I run an Arch installation on my desktop. I mainly run Ubuntu on it (an artifact from a time where Ubuntu replaced Debian as my main Linux OS). Every once in a while, I boot to Arch to play around with it (to learn about the hype; there's a few things I like about Arch Linux. AUR is large, wiki documentation is ace). And, practically every time I boot into it, I got stuff to fix... unlike Ubuntu. On Ubuntu I get security and reliability fixes, and every time I upgrade to a next version I got stuff to fix; ie. every half a year, if I upgrade to next release and decide to not stick on a LTS version. With LTS it is rock stable for years to come, at the sacrifice of not being able to run the latest and the greatest version of software.
  - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
    > ...and every time I upgrade to a next version I got stuff to fix Yeah, exactly. This is everyone's experience. > And, practically every time I boot into it, I got stuff to fix... But this isn't, you're definitely doing something very wrong.
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      Every OS with a development branch (-CURRENT, -git, unstable, or rolling release) suffers from this, yet when it comes to Arch, I'm doing something very wrong.

drran 6y ago

So, you figured out how to compile patched kernel in just 3 hours? Wow. (Create patch, install src.rpm, add patch to SOURCE directory, mention patch in .spec and add instruction to apply patch to %setup section, and then rpmbuild the .spec).

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

circularfoyers 6y ago

The Fedora packaging guidelines is an official, pretty thorough guide to RPM packaging with lots of examples for specific languages[1]. The Fedora docs also cover creating a custom kernel too[2]. I recently moved over to Podman from Docker and found the documentation for it very good as well.[3] I do agree that the search functionality of Copr is extremely basic to the point of being useless for popular packages such as custom kernels, but I believe there is some effort to remedy this with upvoting Copr repos, but I'd argue this is still not enough. I found though as someone new to Copr that it was very easy to figure out as someone simply building my own packages. [1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/kernel/build-custom-kernel https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/kernel/build... [3] https://docs.podman.io/en/latest https://docs.podman.io/en/latest

otabdeveloper4 6y ago

I've been running Arch Linux for many, many years now on three or four machines at the same time. I've never had anything break, unlike in Ubuntu. (Constant Ubuntu breakages were the thing that drove me to Arch in the first place.) Arch Linux is basically "default upstream Linux", which means less random patches and stuff built on top of it.

Fnoord 6y ago
I call bullshit. You're doing something wrong on your Ubuntu installation. I run an Arch installation on my desktop. I mainly run Ubuntu on it (an artifact from a time where Ubuntu replaced Debian as my main Linux OS). Every once in a while, I boot to Arch to play around with it (to learn about the hype; there's a few things I like about Arch Linux. AUR is large, wiki documentation is ace). And, practically every time I boot into it, I got stuff to fix... unlike Ubuntu. On Ubuntu I get security and reliability fixes, and every time I upgrade to a next version I got stuff to fix; ie. every half a year, if I upgrade to next release and decide to not stick on a LTS version. With LTS it is rock stable for years to come, at the sacrifice of not being able to run the latest and the greatest version of software.
- otabdeveloper4 6y ago
  > ...and every time I upgrade to a next version I got stuff to fix Yeah, exactly. This is everyone's experience. > And, practically every time I boot into it, I got stuff to fix... But this isn't, you're definitely doing something very wrong.
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    Every OS with a development branch (-CURRENT, -git, unstable, or rolling release) suffers from this, yet when it comes to Arch, I'm doing something very wrong.