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Canonical gets a lot of rants nowadays (some with good reason, e.g. snap), but there’s an upside to the product as well: it’s managed as a desktop distro produc

Canonical gets a lot of rants nowadays (some with good reason, e.g. snap), but there’s an upside to the product as well: it’s managed as a desktop distro product from a user’s perspective. I’ve been running a couple of Fedora versions as desktops on fully supported hardware and, oh my, they were quite bad in terms of stability (bluetooth not working, video calls breaking), speed, and general UX when compared with Ubuntu. Sure, distro X, _when properly tuned_, will be better than Ubuntu. But a lot of users, even power users, are in Linux to do their job, which is NOT tuning linux distros. Ubuntu OOB experience right now is still the best for a Linux imho (pop os actually, but it’s an ubuntu spinoff). I tried Debian about 1y ago and its desktop defaults were very cheap, requiring a lot of work as a user. Open to changing my mind. But please, let’a discuss a default experience, not a ton-of-tuning-patches-installs experience .

ungamedplayer 4y ago
I hear this often, but it confuses me, reasons listed below: > Fedora versions as desktops on fully supported hardware Is there a list somewhere, as I have not seen this. (Seriously). > oh my, they were quite bad in terms of stability (bluetooth not working, Fedora has a practiced behavior of fixes getting upstream first before shipping, (rising tide lifts all boats). If bluetooth was broken for fedora, it likely would be broken across multiple distribution, and the ubuntus would have had to do something that wasn't upstream. If ubuntu ship patches different than upstream, then it just come down to a timing issue of when your specific hardware has been fixed. I can talk more about the other points you mentioned, They seem more anecdotal than provable (Which is fine, perception is 9/10ths of the law).
- alanfranz 4y ago
  About Fedora: the company where I work has about 150-200 engineers, and the default suggested Linux is Fedora. A lot of rants and similar issues are shared in support channels. These don’t happen with Ubuntu, at least not with the same rate. hardware is usually some Lenovo Thinkpad (X and P series) that work with RH. Now that you tell me, it seems that Fedora has no official compatibility list. But Ubuntu has it. Isn’t that a Fedora problem? > Fedora has a practiced behavior of fixes getting upstream first before shipping, (rising tide lifts all boats). If bluetooth was broken for fedora, it likely would be broken across multiple distribution, and the ubuntus would have had to do something that wasn't upstream. That's exactly what I mean about Ubuntu being a desktop-oriented _product_. In that instance, it was a kernel problem. Ubuntu clearly has this idea of testing for desktop features, and probably not releasing (or patching) something if it's a problem for desktop users. Fedora just pushed the new kernel through, and probably helped fixing the issue within the kernel. But it's not a great end-user experience. Btw, of course this is an opinion. I don’t have hard long-term, wide-population data on the subject.
  - gtirloni 4y ago
    > These don’t happen with Ubuntu, at least not with the same rate. Switch to Ubuntu and you will start hating it just as much.
    - alanfranz 4y ago
      No. I’m using Ubuntu lts (pop os actually) and it works far better on the very same hardware, and other people that made the same jump can confirm.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
    I have ubuntu on my personal laptop (freelance work) and fedora on my work laptop. Work laptop had a problem with a broken kernel delivered. I also always lag one major fedora version behind for safety, which goes against the philosophy, but this is mostly because gnome api for plugins is highly unstable and I really depend on some of those to do my work. I wish I went with KDE. On the personal laptop I use Kubuntu (ubuntu with KDE). The UI has been consistent and stable, for mostly 6 years. I love that aspect. Yesterday I upgraded it and I got a broken kernel (panic on boot). Overall I faced the same issues across the two in 6 years (ubuntu) and 2 years (fedora). With Fedora I have the latest software usually, which is a blessing or a curse. With ubuntu i have slightly outdated software, which is a blessing or a curse. I like both distro, I'm also used at the rough edges of desktop linux. Thinkpads seems to work out of the box with Fedora. The Ubuntu laptop is a system76 laptop, before popos was a thing.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      >before popos was a thing Has system76 never realized how unfortunate their OS name is?
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
        Lol! They do have a weird casing to it, so maybe day did
  - 4y ago
bubblethink 4y ago
>I’ve been running a couple of Fedora versions as desktops on fully supported hardware and, oh my, they were quite bad in terms of stability (bluetooth not working, video calls breaking), speed, and general UX when compared with Ubuntu. These things have little to do with the distro. They should be identical, barring version differences. Maybe you had breakage with Fedora because of bleeding edge stuff, but the other way round is equally likely, where Ubuntu LTS will be too old for new hardware. Once your hardware is 1-2 years old, all distros become largely identical. And if your hardware is already old, RHEL/Rocky/Alma will work too.
- sitzkrieg 4y ago
  i have compared several distros on a 4yr old workstation with all supported hardware and had catastrophic differences
  - bubblethink 4y ago
    Did you have an nvidia GPU perchance ? Hardware issues are a function of the kernel and all distros do an adequate job of maintaining/backporting to their branch. What's an example of a catastrophic difference ?
    - sitzkrieg 4y ago
      no, intel integrated. usually the DE randomly stopping working (crashing/looping login screen etc) not even after updating is what id call catastrophic. , or things that are usual suspects like bluetooth, wifi, integrated audio, etc working flakey vs other distros
- simion314 4y ago
  - Maybe that is the reason, Fedora probably ships bleeding edge stuff that is not well tested, you get the latest features but a the same time you get the latest bugs. - There are also configuration differences, ubuntu can blacklist some hardware for certain features. - Ubuntu also gets bug reports from users and customers, the developers will apply the fix in Ubuntu but it might take time until the upstream project applies the fix, or even if upstream applies the fix it will only appear in the other distros in the new release unless the distro has the energy to backport non security stuff.
Yizahi 4y ago
Exactly this, I had the same experience. Outside of the embedded boxes with predefined distro, I usually use some Virtualbox VM on my PC. And in practice only Ubuntu (I'm running Xubunty variation) is mostly stable, non-glitchy, predictable, and no issues or weird settings with package manager (and snap also works fine). Debian Stable, Fedora, Manjaro all had a lot of different and highly annoying to breaking issues in my environment. And I'm not a Linux admin, my Linux knowledge about debugging drivers, package managers, 2D and 3D acceleration, release upgrades etc. is about zero, despite working daily on Linux boxes. That's my failing, sure, but I do want some distro which I can use right now, and that's often Ubuntu family.
- hef19898 4y ago
  A couple of years ago, two or so, I made my private daily a dual boot Win 10 and Ubuntu machine. And how do I love Ubuntu! It is what I expect an OS to be. Boots with out issues, doesn't crash, runs all the software I really need and care about, is owned by me, no cloud accounts needed or asked for, updates are painless and as far as I know no telemetry being sent anywhere (please correct me if I'm wrong on that). Windows is there for the odd games Steam didn't port to Linux, and to compartamentalize my son's use from mine. Heck, I hacked around less in Ubuntu than I did back the day installing Windows 2000, or to figure out how to make a Win 10 Pro instance run with local user accounts only. And battery life on my X1 Extreme Gen 2 is bad under either OS, I deactivated hybrid graphics and only use the GeForce card. Otherwise, I just never got dual / external monitors to work through Thunderbolt. Plus, it is used as a gaming device, so I don't care about on-board Intel graphics at all.
pxc 4y ago
> Sure, distro X, _when properly tuned_, will be better than Ubuntu. But a lot of users, even power users, are in Linux to do their job, which is NOT tuning linux distros. So let people whose job does include 'tuning' operating systems handle that. Does your company not have an IT department or something? > Open to changing my mind. But please, let’a discuss a default experience, not a ton-of-tuning-patches-installs experience. Again, where is this double-standard coming from? Since when do fleets of Windows laptops run without any 'tuning'? The work it takes to get a decent UX on Linux given known hardware, selected for the purpose, is extremely trivial for anyone who knows Linux at all. It's not hard to master your own install media for most distros either. Buy your shit from a decent Linux hardware vendor and they'll even install whatever custom OS you want before they send you the machines. This idea that a whole-ass company should be somehow helplessly captive to distro defaults is pitiful. Hire someone with decent Linux competency and prepare a suitable OS image! It's what you should be doing regardless of the Ubuntu question.
- esperent 4y ago
  > Does your company not have an IT department or something? Yes. It's me. And I'd rather spend my time doing my actual job rather than tuning linux distros.
  - gtirloni 4y ago
    Isn't that your job too?
- alanfranz 4y ago
  > Since when do fleets of Windows laptops run without any 'tuning' My Ubuntu systems runs fine without tuning. My MacOS laptop runs fine without tuning, my company just installs its fleet management tools, but there's no actually tuning involved, just a couple of policies. I don't really know what to make of large Windows fleets and I don't use Windows since eons, but most laptops work OOB nowadays (barring removing some adware). BUT: I was comparing Linux-to-Linux, other OSes may be a bit different. I agree that finely tuning a Linux distro, in a large company, could be feasible. But it can be tricky: you need to override repositories or pin packages, otherwise things can break... and it's not a job anybody would like to do. And yes, some people used to do manual patch management for Windows workstation deployments, once upon a time. I don't know if it's still a thing, but it was very messy and the famous "mixed-patch environments" were a boon for attackers (some vulnerabilities could only be exploited in those unpredictable scenarios). I want my basic OS experience to be managed by whomever creates it.
phendrenad2 4y ago
> Ubuntu OOB experience right now is still the best for a Linux Strongly disagree. Installing Ubuntu is still a bewildering process for non-Linux-experts. It actually seems to have gone downhill in the last 10 years. Mint is quite a bit more understandable.

ungamedplayer 4y ago

I hear this often, but it confuses me, reasons listed below: > Fedora versions as desktops on fully supported hardware Is there a list somewhere, as I have not seen this. (Seriously). > oh my, they were quite bad in terms of stability (bluetooth not working, Fedora has a practiced behavior of fixes getting upstream first before shipping, (rising tide lifts all boats). If bluetooth was broken for fedora, it likely would be broken across multiple distribution, and the ubuntus would have had to do something that wasn't upstream. If ubuntu ship patches different than upstream, then it just come down to a timing issue of when your specific hardware has been fixed. I can talk more about the other points you mentioned, They seem more anecdotal than provable (Which is fine, perception is 9/10ths of the law).

alanfranz 4y ago
About Fedora: the company where I work has about 150-200 engineers, and the default suggested Linux is Fedora. A lot of rants and similar issues are shared in support channels. These don’t happen with Ubuntu, at least not with the same rate. hardware is usually some Lenovo Thinkpad (X and P series) that work with RH. Now that you tell me, it seems that Fedora has no official compatibility list. But Ubuntu has it. Isn’t that a Fedora problem? > Fedora has a practiced behavior of fixes getting upstream first before shipping, (rising tide lifts all boats). If bluetooth was broken for fedora, it likely would be broken across multiple distribution, and the ubuntus would have had to do something that wasn't upstream. That's exactly what I mean about Ubuntu being a desktop-oriented _product_. In that instance, it was a kernel problem. Ubuntu clearly has this idea of testing for desktop features, and probably not releasing (or patching) something if it's a problem for desktop users. Fedora just pushed the new kernel through, and probably helped fixing the issue within the kernel. But it's not a great end-user experience. Btw, of course this is an opinion. I don’t have hard long-term, wide-population data on the subject.
- gtirloni 4y ago
  > These don’t happen with Ubuntu, at least not with the same rate. Switch to Ubuntu and you will start hating it just as much.
  - alanfranz 4y ago
    No. I’m using Ubuntu lts (pop os actually) and it works far better on the very same hardware, and other people that made the same jump can confirm.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
  I have ubuntu on my personal laptop (freelance work) and fedora on my work laptop. Work laptop had a problem with a broken kernel delivered. I also always lag one major fedora version behind for safety, which goes against the philosophy, but this is mostly because gnome api for plugins is highly unstable and I really depend on some of those to do my work. I wish I went with KDE. On the personal laptop I use Kubuntu (ubuntu with KDE). The UI has been consistent and stable, for mostly 6 years. I love that aspect. Yesterday I upgraded it and I got a broken kernel (panic on boot). Overall I faced the same issues across the two in 6 years (ubuntu) and 2 years (fedora). With Fedora I have the latest software usually, which is a blessing or a curse. With ubuntu i have slightly outdated software, which is a blessing or a curse. I like both distro, I'm also used at the rough edges of desktop linux. Thinkpads seems to work out of the box with Fedora. The Ubuntu laptop is a system76 laptop, before popos was a thing.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >before popos was a thing Has system76 never realized how unfortunate their OS name is?
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
      Lol! They do have a weird casing to it, so maybe day did
- 4y ago

bubblethink 4y ago

>I’ve been running a couple of Fedora versions as desktops on fully supported hardware and, oh my, they were quite bad in terms of stability (bluetooth not working, video calls breaking), speed, and general UX when compared with Ubuntu. These things have little to do with the distro. They should be identical, barring version differences. Maybe you had breakage with Fedora because of bleeding edge stuff, but the other way round is equally likely, where Ubuntu LTS will be too old for new hardware. Once your hardware is 1-2 years old, all distros become largely identical. And if your hardware is already old, RHEL/Rocky/Alma will work too.

sitzkrieg 4y ago
i have compared several distros on a 4yr old workstation with all supported hardware and had catastrophic differences
- bubblethink 4y ago
  Did you have an nvidia GPU perchance ? Hardware issues are a function of the kernel and all distros do an adequate job of maintaining/backporting to their branch. What's an example of a catastrophic difference ?
  - sitzkrieg 4y ago
    no, intel integrated. usually the DE randomly stopping working (crashing/looping login screen etc) not even after updating is what id call catastrophic. , or things that are usual suspects like bluetooth, wifi, integrated audio, etc working flakey vs other distros
simion314 4y ago
- Maybe that is the reason, Fedora probably ships bleeding edge stuff that is not well tested, you get the latest features but a the same time you get the latest bugs. - There are also configuration differences, ubuntu can blacklist some hardware for certain features. - Ubuntu also gets bug reports from users and customers, the developers will apply the fix in Ubuntu but it might take time until the upstream project applies the fix, or even if upstream applies the fix it will only appear in the other distros in the new release unless the distro has the energy to backport non security stuff.

Yizahi 4y ago

Exactly this, I had the same experience. Outside of the embedded boxes with predefined distro, I usually use some Virtualbox VM on my PC. And in practice only Ubuntu (I'm running Xubunty variation) is mostly stable, non-glitchy, predictable, and no issues or weird settings with package manager (and snap also works fine). Debian Stable, Fedora, Manjaro all had a lot of different and highly annoying to breaking issues in my environment. And I'm not a Linux admin, my Linux knowledge about debugging drivers, package managers, 2D and 3D acceleration, release upgrades etc. is about zero, despite working daily on Linux boxes. That's my failing, sure, but I do want some distro which I can use right now, and that's often Ubuntu family.

hef19898 4y ago
A couple of years ago, two or so, I made my private daily a dual boot Win 10 and Ubuntu machine. And how do I love Ubuntu! It is what I expect an OS to be. Boots with out issues, doesn't crash, runs all the software I really need and care about, is owned by me, no cloud accounts needed or asked for, updates are painless and as far as I know no telemetry being sent anywhere (please correct me if I'm wrong on that). Windows is there for the odd games Steam didn't port to Linux, and to compartamentalize my son's use from mine. Heck, I hacked around less in Ubuntu than I did back the day installing Windows 2000, or to figure out how to make a Win 10 Pro instance run with local user accounts only. And battery life on my X1 Extreme Gen 2 is bad under either OS, I deactivated hybrid graphics and only use the GeForce card. Otherwise, I just never got dual / external monitors to work through Thunderbolt. Plus, it is used as a gaming device, so I don't care about on-board Intel graphics at all.

pxc 4y ago

> Sure, distro X, _when properly tuned_, will be better than Ubuntu. But a lot of users, even power users, are in Linux to do their job, which is NOT tuning linux distros. So let people whose job does include 'tuning' operating systems handle that. Does your company not have an IT department or something? > Open to changing my mind. But please, let’a discuss a default experience, not a ton-of-tuning-patches-installs experience. Again, where is this double-standard coming from? Since when do fleets of Windows laptops run without any 'tuning'? The work it takes to get a decent UX on Linux given known hardware, selected for the purpose, is extremely trivial for anyone who knows Linux at all. It's not hard to master your own install media for most distros either. Buy your shit from a decent Linux hardware vendor and they'll even install whatever custom OS you want before they send you the machines. This idea that a whole-ass company should be somehow helplessly captive to distro defaults is pitiful. Hire someone with decent Linux competency and prepare a suitable OS image! It's what you should be doing regardless of the Ubuntu question.

esperent 4y ago
> Does your company not have an IT department or something? Yes. It's me. And I'd rather spend my time doing my actual job rather than tuning linux distros.
- gtirloni 4y ago
  Isn't that your job too?
alanfranz 4y ago
> Since when do fleets of Windows laptops run without any 'tuning' My Ubuntu systems runs fine without tuning. My MacOS laptop runs fine without tuning, my company just installs its fleet management tools, but there's no actually tuning involved, just a couple of policies. I don't really know what to make of large Windows fleets and I don't use Windows since eons, but most laptops work OOB nowadays (barring removing some adware). BUT: I was comparing Linux-to-Linux, other OSes may be a bit different. I agree that finely tuning a Linux distro, in a large company, could be feasible. But it can be tricky: you need to override repositories or pin packages, otherwise things can break... and it's not a job anybody would like to do. And yes, some people used to do manual patch management for Windows workstation deployments, once upon a time. I don't know if it's still a thing, but it was very messy and the famous "mixed-patch environments" were a boon for attackers (some vulnerabilities could only be exploited in those unpredictable scenarios). I want my basic OS experience to be managed by whomever creates it.

phendrenad2 4y ago

> Ubuntu OOB experience right now is still the best for a Linux Strongly disagree. Installing Ubuntu is still a bewildering process for non-Linux-experts. It actually seems to have gone downhill in the last 10 years. Mint is quite a bit more understandable.