RetroFedF*ck Windows: move to Fedora or Ubuntu
Today, lovely Windows 11 installed an update. And since then I don’t have internet access because Microslop Wincrap 11 can somehow magically no longer connect to the DNS server - to any DNS server. No other device in my network has the same issue. I’ve been bugfixing for over an hour and haven’t found a solution. setting the DNS manually, resetting the network adapter, flushed all DNS entries (I used the commandline tool on Windows!). nothing works.
I don’t have ANY more patience with W11!
I already tried Linux. I’m using Ubuntu Server for hosting Nextcloud and Fedora just to play around.
Do you prefer Fedora or Ubuntu? I have an old Thinkpad…
(And no, I will not go down the rabbit hole of Arch ;-) At least not for now.)
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I am a Debian man myself for servers. I don’t want any Canonical bullshit to break mid LTS.
While I am still running win 10 I am undecided which desktop to switch to. CachyOS and Fedora are the front runners but man do I hate Gnome.
I use cachyOS with kde plasma on wayland right now and would recommend.
I’m scared of Arch and cachyOS was the easiest OS install and config I’ve probably ever done. Maybe OSX was easier, but that’s it. It’s sooooo good, and I had zero issues getting everything working perfectly.
Fedora had three big issues and many small. Fedora was actually the worst to get going. My hardcore difficult use cases include playing a video file from my NAS, seeing the music library on there, changing the desktop theme without it going crazy, and not having the aux jack send a huge horrible pop noise to whatever is plugged in when the sound device constantly goes to low power mode.
Both cachy and fedora on the same exact model of machine, both at the same time (two machines, hardware is perfect, also windows 10 LTSC IoT dual boots to them both which worked… as well as windows works I suppose, good enough)
Debian for everything.
I’m not a big fan of Gnome on Fedora either. Everything is just so big and needs so much space. CachyOS is a tad to new for my taste for using it as a daily driver.
why not fedora KDE? it is a full edition now and a really smooth experience
Seconding Fedora KDE. But if you’re not a fan, you could also opt for many of the other supported desktops (cinnamon, XFCE, etc.)
Cinnamon is the way to go if you have finicky peripherals like Razen keyboard/mouse or a Wacom tablet.
CatchyOS being bleeding edge has actually alleviated a lot of my complaints with Ubuntu/Fedora. Sometimes I really want that brand new shiny thing. And so far I haven’t had too many issues with Catchy breaking. Granted I only run it on my testing laptop not my main machine.
Another vote for Fedora KDE. But I’ll add get the atomic version (Kinoite).
You don’t have to use Gnome on Cachy or Fedora. Fedora has spins for nearly every DE, and Cachy also has an option for nearly every DE on install.
I am running Fedora with KDE.
Debian is perfectly good on the desktop too
Fedora is wonderful. I would not recommend Ubuntu to anyone. Fuck Canonical, who fancy themselves the next Microsoft.
For an easy version of Arch, try Cachy.
Highly recommend Fedora over Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Server and Desktop has some dumb defaults that look measly next to Windows, but still annoying next to Fedora.
Fedora also generally has more solid documentation without a bunch of LTS slag threads with outdated answers.
and sorry for the ragebait. I’m just a little bit frustrated and had to write it down
I have been on Fedora since 33 or 34, and quite like it. I will say that I have had upgrade woes twice though. I set up Nextcloud on Ubuntu using snaps about 10 years ago, and it’s still kicking, although it goes down every time it decides it’s going to update itself. Win 11 at work: Randomly, half our fleet stopped loading Teams chats last week, and six machines lost their UEFI boot entries today. Big fan.
Not Ubuntu. Mint or Fedora.
You like Gnome (how everything looks in Ubuntu)? Use Fedroa Workstation, or use Mint and install Gnome yourself.
This is only my opinion. After all, this is your computer; do what you want.
Yeah. I’m in a phase between Ubuntu and mint but moving on with my change over. Ubuntu is trying to commercialize the platform. I can sniff that a mile away. Mint is basically the open source version of Ubuntu.
I like Ubuntu as little as the next guy, truly, but there are so many legitimate issues with Ubuntu/Canonical that we don’t need to make up fake stuff on top. Both Mint and Ubuntu are completely open source, and in fact, Mint couldn’t exist if Ubuntu was proprietary, seeing as how Mint is a derivative offshoot from an Ubuntu base.
Alright, let’s touch on that subject:
https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/tutorial/attach-your-ubuntu-pro-subscription/
In Linux if I want a proprietary thing, I choose to do that. In Ubuntu however you may not get all the updates. Some updates are paid pro subscription. It’s not really proprietary vs open source yet…but it’s walking into the enshitification void.
It’s typically not a good idea to install a DE that is not supported by your distribution, Mint just repackages upstream gnome - is it ubuntu’s vanilla gnome or debian’s btw? Either way you’re just ending up with an old ass GNOME package that’s untested on your distro.
If you’re interested in GNOME get a distro that ships it and supports it, which is pretty much all of them minus Mint.
Fedora
Thank you all for the many replies!
I’ll summarize it as followed:
Since I already tried Fedora, I’m going with Linux Mint for the moment.
(In fact, the installation of Mint is running right now and I’m using the whole SSD, no windows boot manager partition will survive!!!)
Give openSUSE Tumbleweed a shot.
LMDE or ubuntu based? I’d recommend LMDE over ubuntu based
Started and stopped there, I love it and never even think about windows anymore
I didn’t want to program shit; I don’t care about command line; I love a good gui and didn’t want to fuck with finicky drivers. Moving to Ubuntu from Windows allowed me to continue to use my mostly browser-based computing existence without having to learn to use a new tool. I may not use Arch but one less Windows victim must be a step in a better direction.
Fedora. Better than Ubuntu in pretty much every regard.
If those are the only two options, I’d go Fedora.
But honestly I’m trying really hard not to distro shame anyone - whatever gets you off windows is a win imo. I don’t want to end up like that grounds keeper willy meme about the scottish.
Im using linux Mint. no issues so far, except maybe dropbox integration. never going back to microslop
Love Linux Mint. I switched to LMDE, stable as a rock. PC came with windows installed. Removed crapware immediately.
I moved to Fedora a few years ago. Spent a week or two orienting myself, like going to a new town and not knowing how to get around. So glad I did. I choose when and what to update.
Not perfect though, it lost keyboard connection yesterday. Reboot fixed it.
what made you decide to use Fedora and not Ubuntu. Or Linux Mint?
Not the original guy, but I went to Fedora (Silverblue) first, because I heard so much about Ubuntu being shit and basically slightly less corpo infested Windows. I had Fedora recommended to me by a person I know + privacy guides recommends it I think.
I just wanted a simple distro that is seen as privacy respecting for anyone who didn’t want to go into the deep end of Tails OS and the like.
Silverblue is atomic, which is typically advertised as “Noob-proof” since you can’t really touch the OS and system files itself. But I like to tinker a little and found it frustrating to work around, so I ended up going with regular Fedora Plasma KDE. Been a year or almost 2 now and it’s been great. My biggest “normal” issue was bluetooth and touchpad issues. Bluetooth issue was caused by not doing a full power cycle after a kernel update, and touchpad was randomly disabling itself in settings for some reason… The other issues were needing specific software for class purposes like VirtualBox (signing keys and shit for virtualization ig) or coding apps (had to start it in terminal).
Wifi blew up once and tried to troubleshoot to no avail, a reboot or two later and it fixed itself 🙏
I had a great experience with Fedora on my thinkpad, it’s almost as if they’re made for each other. It’s basically the testing version for Redhat. If you want something more stable and still enterprisey, Rocky Linux or Almalinux are both basically RHEL rebranded.
I’ve abandoned Ubuntu, even though it was what I started on and used for over a decade. Canonical is kind of like the Microsoft of linux right now, a bit hostile toward the rest of the community, but still an acceptable choice. I would recommend Linux Mint instead, though.
Keep in mind that the look and feel you’ll experience is all the desktop environment, so if you don’t like it, trying using a different one instead of looking at a new distro. I highly recommend using a few live USBs of what you want you try before installing to get a feel for what you like.
Give mint a try just to start. It’s ubu-based, super polished and great for a first distro. That being said, don’t think Linux doesn’t have those update/dependency hell horror stories. If you go into it with realistic expectations, you’ll have a great time with it.
Debian for the overwhelming majority of everything. With KDE, I don’t do gnome.
My thinkpads both run arch, you may want to look at endeavouros for a simple approach to arch.
This is the answer. Debian is rock solid.
Ubuntu? What is this, 2008?
Fedora, mainly because ubuntu is putting ai into it’s release in the coming months. Which is fine if you’re visually impaired, but afaict that’s not why they’re putting it in.
I’ll be switching to Cachy once I’m forced to switch.
AI backed into the OS? No thanks, that’s really a reason to NOT go for Ubuntu. Edit: corrected typo
Yeah. It was really disappointing to hear that. I’ve been using Ubuntu for almost a decade now. ;-;
Since Mint is Ubuntu-based: do you know if Mint will have the same AI crap in the OS?
I’m honestly not sure.
Go LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition), since Ubuntu is based on Debian, you cut off their bullshit.
Linux Mint DE, Debian Edition.
Fun fact, Ubuntu is based off of Debian then branched into its own world.
Mint all the way for me. Mint’s based on Ubuntu unless you’re adventurous and choose LMDE which is based on Debian instead (Ubuntu is also based on Debian, so it cuts out the middleman.)
And the Cinnamon desktop, which is the default, is very Windows-like and native to Mint. Perfect for refugees. I was one when my Win 7 SSD died and I thought that that was a perfect time to switch.
I can’t speak to Fedora (I still haven’t forgiven Red Hat for what they did to CentOS), but Mint has honest-to-goodness old-school forums where you can ask for help if you get stuck.
Edit: typo
I’ve been pointing newbies to LMDE for ages now. Standard Mint is okay, but with the underlying Ubuntu changes, I’ve found it can teach those new to Linux some unconventional habits and it seems like LMDE just sticks a bit closer to what I would consider to be the “base level” introduction to Linux without being too manual.
Don’t settle immediately. If you can spare the time, distro hop for a few weeks / months. On the shorter run of things, give each OS you try a good week before moving on to the next. All distros do essentially the same thing, they just flavor it diffetently. Do you like typing apt, or dnf, pacman or yum? Do you prefer being deep in CLI or prefer using an application store? How do you like your userspace to look? Shiny? Bubbly? Classic? Retro? GNOME, Plasma, Xfce, Mate, Cosmic?
There’s enough options out there to make your head spin. Without touching arch, you should at least visit the following -
Little Champs
Big Champs
Gaming focus
Give each or those that pique your interest a fair shake. A week at the minimum. Some you may not need a week, some you’ll find yourself in a natural swing of things. You’ll know when you know.
Bazzite on my gaming machine, Bluefin on my other machines. Both are Fedora Atomic based (meaning read-only kernel). Secure, stable, amazing. Apps are installed via Flatpak, and cli tools using Homebrew.
I’ve been a full time Linux user for 25ish years now. I’m currently happy here, but have tried most of them
I’ve been on Bazzite for like 2 years now, and I’ve never (purposely) used Brew. What kinds of things do you use it for?
Not a whole ton truthfully. If you run ‘brew list’, you’ll see a lot of things already installed via Homebrew. The main one I install explicitly is ‘yt-dlp’, and I’ve played with llama.cpp and similar too
Hmmm, I use yt-dlp but forget exactly how I installed it. Definitely not flatpak, definitely not distrobox, and I’m pretty sure I never layered it.
App image maybe?
Edit: I think I literally just downloaded the Linux binary?
from pip? that’s how I have yewtube
I used to download their binary from github and put in /usr/local/bin
Hoembrew will update that now whenever I update my system so I don’t think about it anymore.
Hmmm, I guess I’ve just been running an outdated version of it for a while then.
The update last month somehow both moved every single file I have back into one drive (I’ve had to remove them and turn off one drive multiple times now) and then a few hours later delete EVERYTHING. Windows help said there was no options, once it’s gone it’s gone.
Thankfully I had just backed everything up recently. I had been meaning to dual boot this computer for awhile all I just installed Mint and haven’t looked back. Screw windows.
Tried Fedora, tried Ubuntu, tried Mint, tried Debian, tried flavors of Arch that don’t make the install process take an hour.
They all suck compared to openSUSE Tumbleweed. Rolling release with good hardware support out of the box and snapshots/easy rollback coupled with extensive testing before each release? It’s the winner for beginners, and it’s not even close.
The first time a user gets the itch to learn Linux and go deeper and borks their install, they will hate any distro without snapshotting.
The first time an immutable distro user needs to install OEM drivers, they will hate their distro.
I used to recommend Linux Mint, and I still would maybe to those I know will never ever open the console.
For everyone else, openSUSE Tumbleweed all day everyday and twice on Sunday.
Thanks, I’ll keep openSUSE Tumbleweed in mind. I think I’m going to try this after two weeks of Mint
I’ve generally found that while there is almost always package equality between deb and rpm distros, when there isn’t I’m more likely to find a deb. I’d recommend Mint for you, followed by Debian Stable.
fedora > ubuntu
personally, i like the ublue images, at least for general desktop and gaming - bluefin and bazzite.
Fedora all the way.
Ubuntu and Fedora are both great choices.
I will also recommend OpenSUSE Leap (NOT tumbleweed as it’s a rolling release vs long term support model) and Linux Mint.
It is some years since I ran Fedora. Ubuntu is still predominant at work. But I run Debian on my ThinkPad and all my laptops for many years. I think this ThinkPad is my third laptop that I have installed Debian on: they don’t last forever. Before that, I was running Mint. They all run well, so there’s not much to choose between them, from my perspective. Neither Fedora nor Ubuntu would be a bad choice.
Over the decades, I’ve tried Ubuntu, mint, arch, fedora in that order. I would rate my experiences arch > fedora > mint > Ubuntu.
Endeavor os would be my first recommendation, Cachyos then fedora. If you want that classic windows 7 experience and very solid support, I recommend mint. If you need the latest drivers endeavor.
For a new user - Ubuntu LTS. In a few years move to Debian.
Any distro > Ubuntu > Qubes (not for beginners haha)
So far I’ve only tried Pop!_OS and Mint, and I much much much prefer Pop!. I even got my wife to start using it.
Edit: Pop!_OS is also Ubuntu based.
I didn’t really like Mint at all.
I mentioned it recently somewhere else, there is rush in plugging a USB with whatever linux and select the option to erase the whole disk when previously installed thing is Windows.
Fedora is great but I did hit some really annoying snags a couple of times. Ubuntu is easiest and generally is most supported. I don’t like snaps and some other Ubuntu things so I go Ubuntu-based instead, with pop os. I really like it.
Literally anything but Ubuntu
What snarky point are you making?
OP mentions that they’re sick and tired of Windows 11’s bs; Ubuntu is much better but still has some Canonical bs, go with Fedora (Silverblue, if you’re adventurous)
I 🎮 on Bazzite
Wait till you learn about Distrobox and Distroshelf.
Make a Fedora and Ubuntu box to install
.rpmand.debapps to your Bazzite host, when you need to install things not available asflatpakorhomebrew. Since layering apps withrpm-ostreecan get messy/ugly.Have all three. 🤯
For various ways to install apps on an atomic image based OS:
Also checkout Project Bluefin and Aurora.
Delete and reinstall your nic. Check your firewall. Test connectivity over port 53 to your dns server.
If you have any 3rd party software that messes with dns, disable or remove it.
I’d recommend Linux Mint Xfce. It’s the closest to an “it just works” situation while being open to tinker and quick to respond, this last part as the micro delays from Linux Mint Cinammon for most things being what pushed me away from Windows in the first place.
Both Mint versions are made by the same people and found in the same site.
Also, note that LMint installs many Ubuntu components, but supports Flatpak apps out-of-the-box, but not Snap.
Also maybe a niche case but since the source of your irritation is connection, I think it’s worth mentioning:
If you use a certain VPN whose widget is for Debian/Ubuntu only in this family of distros coughcoughprotoncoughcough*, please take the time to learn how to use the WireGuard integration from the VPN instead. The widget version if installed on Mint is way too prone to breaking, being a matter of *when*, and not *if it will break. And WireGuard instead I have yet to see breaking on its own.
Thank you very much for pointing that out. Highly appreciated. That’s exactly the VPN case for my setup. I’ll keep that in mind.
Iirc, I set it up with this article from Proton: https://protonvpn.com/support/wireguard-configurations
Echoing everyone else, Mint. Bazzite (which is Fedora based) if you’re planning to run more recent games on it. Mint isn’t bad at running games by any means, Bazzite is just more fine tuned towards it. With Cinnamon/KDE they basically feel like Windows minus the bloat.
Kubuntu has been pretty nice to me. It has the beginner friendliness of Ubuntu and the modern desktop of KDE
I jumped ship around a year ago after similar update BS frustrations. I had tried Ubuntu a few times over the years but didn’t like their shift to Unity or later choices.
When I did make the jump, I ran Bazzite for the first 3-4 months as the immutability let me gain confidence that I wouldn’t break something and showed me just how easy Linux gaming has become.
I loved Bazzite but gradually encountered more things that were harder to do because of the immutability and a couple of software packages that didn’t play nice with flatpak so I pivoted to KDE Fedora and love it to bits. It still plays all the games I need it to and super stable.
I prefer Fedora over Ubuntu because Canonical’s direction has been worrying, not that Fedora’s leads have been doing any better in certain areas. Depends on how old the Thinkpad is, a lot of the rolling release distros tend to support a certain range of devices out of the box (not super old, but not also super new hardware). If the Thinkpad is from 2021 or later, you’ll probably be okay! There are distros that you can research for better compatibility with older hardware.
Yeah, going down the rabbit hole of Arch isn’t for everyone, learn, and explore, decide your comfort levels before deciding on that (in the further future). I personally use Garuda Linux (which is based on Arch, not as difficult).
Try either one and see for yourself. I would recommend to partition carefully isolating /home so that you can wipe distro but keep your files and settings. Distro pick is rather personal thing - folks find their groove in various ways. I’m on Fedora and have been with Fedora for ages, never owned Windows machine so I’m not your average user, BUT looking at self-starters today I do see a lot more gravitating towards Fedora whereas previously I saw more Ubuntu jumps. YMMV, but distro-hopping is not a bad thing. Partition wisely and pains of distro-hopping won’t be as pronounced 😃
What would you say was a good size/ percentage for a home directory partition?
+1 Fedora (Workstation, in my case) When I set up Fedora on the machines I loaded it on, I normally allocate 50 GB to /root and the balance of the space to /home after setting up my swap and /boot partitions. This has worked well for me so far, YMMV. It also sounds like its not a bad idea to leave a small percentage of a drive un-allocated but I haven’t done this personally.
Thank you.
My assortment of varied storage devices & drives me nuts sometimes.
I’d been boping along just fine, but had to install window the other day to do something and I been meaning to look into this before jumping back over.
Leaving a bit of change on the drive sounds like a good idea too.
if you care to walk “on the wild side” I’d say use LVM, create one big volume covering entire drive then do 50G for / and 20G for /home . I use ext4 since it offers live resize2fs. So the drill is: you set up OS etc. and whenevr you get closer ti the allocated limit bump it by 5G with lvresize + resize2fs which allows you to “grow into” your setup. Also allows snapshots of running OS in cases of iffy updates OR parallel second distro install with subsequent distro removal and space still being at your disposal after it’s gone. BTRFS is fun but offers less flexibility than LVM IMO.
I’m on Win10 LtSC IOT.. The only reason I moved from Win7 to that operating system was so I could keep steam alive. My steam account is 18-19 years old. Any one have step by step instructions on how to get the nicest, easiest to use Linux distro for a guy who uses 5 different windows keyboard shortcuts entry 5 minutes?
I’ve been with Windows since 95, I’ve been working in IT support since XP.. I just want to get away from Microsoft, keep all my games, keep a file explorer and be able to quick change my brain to learn new (just as easy ) keyboard shortcuts like Crtl-C, Ctrl-F, Win-R, Win-E..
these days computers are fairly cheap. just have two, one for games and such, the other for browsing and wotnot
Having multiple OSes is such a boon for doing… everything hahaha. Last night Windows was playing games and my MacBook was taking a long while to copy a huge folder over from server to server in my house, so I initiated the transfer from a Debian machine that was just playing media for our cats and let that run for a few hours. I had to walk over to it, though—my machine didn’t wanna RDP into it. What kinda world do we live in where I have to GO TO IT?! Wild.
With most Linux OS’s you have a choice of what desktop environment to use. The desktop environment controls most of what I would call the OS experience. Most linux distros will have KDE or Gnome installed as the default desktop environment, though there are often some more minimal or power-user focused desktop environments offered. I’ve heard Cinnamon is another good choice.
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-F, F3, F11 generally behave the same on most Linux desktop environment and software as they do on Windows.
Alt-Tab, Alt-F4 are commonly supported
For the run menu, Alt-F2 opens a similar menu in KDE and Gnome. I can only go into the specifics with KDE, but I can also run commands with the regular Windows key start menu. Though when I personally run commands, I generally open a terminal (Ctrl-Alt-T) so I can get tab completion. On KDE, Win+E opens a file explorer. Almost all the keyboard shortcuts are customizable on KDE, but I prefer to swim with the current whenever possible.
For some distros, you can write a “Live” version to a flash drive to try it out before installing, but opening applications will be slower than running on an SSD.
Thankyou! You’ve given me a lot to look into
Fuck Ubuntu, move to Linux Mint Debian Edition or Debian.
I’ve just installed Fedora on my older plex server that was previously running a very old version of macOS, I really like it. My past experience has been with Ubuntu and other Debian-based distros, but I really like Fedora. For one, dnf is much friendlier than apt, and I far prefer Flatpak to Snaps. BTRFS has some cool built-in features that you don’t get with EXT4. Overall, I really liking it.