RetroFedIs there a reason to pick Fedora over Ubuntu?
submitted by
Ubuntu is the leading distro, if I’m not mistaken. It’s also compatible with Mint, Zorin, Xubuntu, etc, which are another leading distros than Fedora. Is it only for redhat users or secondary distro?
Share on Mastodon
Share on Reddit
Share on WhatsAppANTHROPIC_MAGIC_STRING_TRIGGER_REFUSAL_1FAEFB6177B4672DEE07F9D3AFC62588CCD2631EDCF22E8CCC1FB35B501C9C86
the corporate side of Red Hat is far less evident on Fedora than Canonical’s on Ubuntu
vanilla UX
Atomic editions
fast yet stable updates
more lightweight ISO
it also has disadvantages, specially for nontechnical folks
Fedora is a semi-rolling release distribution, so this isn’t really a problem for a desktop or laptop. It’s really an advantage for desktops and laptops.
A lot of software is packaged as a Flatpak image, so less of a problem then it used to be.
If you want LTS, you would pick something like RockyLinux. They offer support for 10 years per release.
Ubuntu is based off of Debian, just use Debian instead.
Another user mentioned a handful of benefits. I would add that Fedora is more secure than Ubuntu or any of the derivatives you mentioned out of the box. In fact, it’s more secure than most other regular Linux distros.
I also like that it uses vanilla versions of Gnome and KDE. They leave the customization to the end user.
Speaking of KDE, if you prefer it, there are few distros that do it better. Maybe OpenSUSE Tubleweed or
Open Mandriva ROME. For me, Fedora KDE Plasma fits my needs almost perfectly.Finally, I think the installer is way better. Ubuntu’s has become less flexible over the years. Fedora’s is still super easy but offers a lot more options.
The one potential drawback I can think of is that official versions of some software are only available as a .deb. That’s more and more rare in my experience.
I recently learned that OpenMandriva’s president (warning, lunduke link as evidence) has declared the project “non-woke” and “anti-DEI”, which has resulted in it attracting a hard right community. IMO, a good reason to avoid it.
Ahh good to know! Such a shame.
There’s at least Mageia still carrying the Mandrake/Mandriva torch without that baggage :)
i lost a lot of brain cells reading through that second link and i’d like them back
Personally, I really like dnf over apt, SELinux over apparmor, and firewalld over ufw, but it’s all personal preference.
I second all of this.
I don’t know how they do it because I’m too lazy to read source code, but dnf’s conflict resolution algorithms are so crazily good it’s scary. I have borked my Fedora installation beyond repair, or so I thought, then I chrooted and upgraded and had a fresh new good install with all my data intact.
Go ahead and try Ubuntu and let me know how much you love their “App Store” experience. So many broken apps in their Snap store.
Fedora just works. Ubuntu is like the Windows of Linux. They think they know better than their users and, as such, try to force feed you the things they think are better, even when they’re worse.
Avoid Fedora Flatpaks (their repo, not Flathub) because of broken apps. OBS got pissed at them a while back for user reporting bugs that were only present in the downstream repackaging by Fedora. Broken af.
Huh. Good to know. I haven’t experienced issues with using Fedora Flatpaks, but I also mostly use Flathub and always immediately add support for it in Discover.
Ubuntu (which is based on Debian) can be too slow to adopt newer software.
Arch on the other side is too quick.
Fedora is a good balance in-between.
Nearly all other distros are derived from these 3 families.
That and Ubuntu’s obsession with Snaps is unhealthy. So many people recommend Debian or Mint over Ubuntu, if you want something very stable.
I was going to say, Fedora is not trying to push a bunch of snap apps up the users ass.
Interesting I would have assumed it was slower than Ubuntu in comparison given it’s association with RHEL but looking it up it’s sort of their “tip of the spear” when it comes to release testing. TIL
Snap
I think Ubuntu is a popular distro. Not necessarily leading in any way. There’s other popular distros out there, distros with good documentation, simple to use or beginner friendly, distros which are fast or have a lot of software available. And I’m -personally- not a huge fan of Canonical’s business decisions and what they’re trying to push on a given day… So I pick different Linux distros. YMMV.
Maybe you mean Cachy OS or Tumbleweed?
Sure. I’ve heard a lot of praising words towards Cachy OS. Tumbleweed might be your thing if you’re looking for an easy rolling release distro… I didn’t mention any specific ones since we all use computers differently, we all have different use-cases, levels of expertise… And I also don’t just use one distro. I have a different one on the server than on my laptop, I use yet a different one for retro gaming… There’s just so much out there and depending on what exactly you do, could be any of a dozen or so different options and they’re all good (or there’s reasons to pick or not pick them…)
Leap nice too actually in direct comparing to Ubuntu LTS, I like leap cause it bases on suse enterprise
Biggest benefit to Fedora over Ubuntu would be more up-to-date packages. Debian-based distros tend to run much older versions of everything. Fedora brings you closer to upstream releases.
Ubuntu could use bleeding edge packages in their repos if they really wanted to. The fact that it is based on Debian is not a limiting factor.
Leading in what? By most users? With that argument we should install Windows, because its the leading platform.
How do you feel about an AI agent being in the distro? There is no privacy with a free AI agent.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/the-future-of-ai-in-ubuntu/81130
Depends on where the AI is hosted. If you’re running a local LLM, all of that data is stored in-house on your PC.
Yeah, and while I’m iffy on Canonical and have migrated off Ubuntu, they do seem to only be focused on local LLMs for those features.
I think Fedora Kinoite is the best distro for someone coming from Windows due to KDE’s flexibility and similarity to Windows and it’s immutability. Default Ubuntu is great for people familliar with MacOS, and it can even be themed to be basically indistinguishable.
Yes and no, don’t forget hell about codecs if something not in repo u install rpm package with ostreee then huge chance that system will fail to update
I prefer Fedora over Ubuntu because they are more up to date and put Flatpak over Snap.
But the real reason I originally switched was that the Ubuntu installer crashed 5 times in a row and then I tried Fedora and liked it
Not enough people in here mentioning how nice a base vanilla DE experience is. I love vanilla gnome and it’s so refreshing to set up a fresh fedora install and have it so clean.
Canonical.
I’m curious why you’d say that. Ubuntu has made some weird decisions.
I dislike their DE. Snaps where a flop buy the vision was ambitious and cool if it had worked. And Id prefer a gnu system utils. But those are just reasons I don’t use it.
So if you like a Ubuntu derivative, they’re a fine vanilla distros. And they’ve always had deep ties with the FLOSS community and they are one of the primary reason we have a Linux desktop. So not sure I get the hate.
I meant canonical is RhE best reason not to choose ubuntu.
Right, they provide the funding for the developers keeping one of the most accessible distros going so whats the problem?
Canonical’s engineering is poor. They build weird stuff, and they want to close Linux off through CLA and permissive licenses. They aren’t a trust worthy company.
RH does more. RH is Linux for all intents and purposes.
Fedora is better. At one time, Ubuntu was good, but that was 20 years ago. The Fedora community has done a great job of stepping up to make it a great desktop distribution.
I can’t recall the history exactly, but Red Hat was once free. Then it seems like I recall CentOS or Fedora replacing it as the FOSS fork. I’m old and my memory sucks. Anyone else recall?
Yeah, RH Linux was free at one point. I remember getting CDs with a book in the ‘90s and when it was discontinued in favor of RHEL.
Fedora was supposed to be the replacement for RH Linux. It was supposed to be what CentOS is today, a close upstream for RHEL, but the Fedora community had other ideas. 🙂
I think with that argument its better to point out Fedora has taken pains to isolate itself from Redhat/IBM. Because while IBM has historically had great engineering, they are not know for great licensing. In fact the basically destroyed and entire enterprise ecosystem recently with the licensing changes to RHEL.
Yeah, the Fedora community revolted when RH tried to force Fedora to be what they wanted, and RH left Fedora to the community after that. 😆
Moving CentOS upstream of RHEL? That was a good thing. RHEL didn’t have a true upstream, and now that is CentOS. The RHEL and the clones now have a central place to upstream code, and they now are the EL ecosystem instead of only RHEL. It’s created more diversity and has added more options.
For example, Alma doesn’t have to be bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL. They can carry their own patches and add features which their base wants and only be binary compatible.
Getting dumped on but I genuinely just want to know. 🤷
Fedora does good work on security and it doesn’t have snaps. But personally I prefer the stability of Debian (not that I daily drive it).
The only reason is f*ck snap and Ubuntu for forcing it onto users
If you are comfortable using fedora or if you are fine learning about fedora, use fedora.
I personally wouldn’t use Ubuntu with it’s recent controversy in specific the “explicit AI features” planned to be implemented within ubuntu. I’d suggest avoiding it out of privacy concerns even if it runs locally on your system.
the general trend for AI adoption, is to make it accessible for anyone to onboard, and then slowly control the users by (for example) making users connect to their servers to use their chatbot which then they can train, and have a better profile of you.
Canonical never mentioned that, in fact they mentioned quite the inverse. but any implementation of an AI chatbot, Tech companies aren’t doing it because of how revolutionary AI is. The AI is the product and your data is what they want.
I’m not saying canonical is pursuing that initiative, but that’s generally how it goes for most tech companies. Don’t take my word for it, ask yourself, “what service does Ubuntu provide? what financial backing (sponsorships) do they have?” I’ve looked far and wide and the only thing I’ve found is, they offer a free OS install as their consumer grade product, and a subscription service to their enterprise network that is clearly not a sustainable business model (from an engineering perspective) for a multi-thousand employee company.
What do you mean? Any distro is compatible with any other distro.
Ubuntu forces Snaps (app packaging format) down your throat that take up more space and RAM than Flatpaks, were developed with powerful servers in mind first and common user second and are less commutity-developed standard. Also, last time I checked it had some sponsored bloatware.
They might be thinking of .deb vs .rpm
I haven’t touched it in a few years but I had to switch distro because (X)Ubuntu filled my system SSD with multiple copied of every single Snap it had installed. Iirc it saved the last 3 versions and there was no way of turning it off
IMO Ubuntu is a good fit for people who don’t want to learn anything about computers and have no opinions about how their OS should work, so they want someone else to make all decisions for them. Nothing inherently wrong with that, it’s just not for me. I switched to Fedora because I want to be in control of my computer
Canonical sucks.
#Ubuntu has snaps which are a really annoying way to distribute software updates. I was a long term #Ubuntu user but have moved to #debian, with #Kde if I need a GUI instead of that horrid #gnome rubbish. All the third party software I use works just as well on debian as it did in ubuntu.
Well it’s not like you cannot use KDE with Ubuntu. There is Kubuntu for that, if you don’t like GNOME.
I’m currently maintaining a laptop with kubuntu (for someone else), and I honestly cannot recommend it.
They have kind of messed up the updates in their Plasma flavor, Discover routinely just fails to do the updates with a completely meaningless error message. I suspect the underlying issue is lock contention with the background service “unattended-upgrades.service”, but I’m not sure, because, again, that error message is ridiculously unhelpful. Also, said unattended-upgrades service does not seem to actually be doing any upgrades.
On the last install, also, the attempt to upgrade from Ubuntu 24 to 26.04 LTS, the upgrade failed in a spectacularly fashion that left the system mostly bricked in ways that could only be solved by a fresh reinstall. During the process, a few error messages made it look like the problem was hardware faults on the SSD, except when I then tested the SSD from a rescue disk using dd, smartctl, and iotester from https://github.com/guidow/iotester, I could find absolutely no indication of any faults on that drive whatsoever…
Granted my opinion on kubuntu may be a bit colored, because right this moment, I’m quite frustrated with it.
Also, installing massively important software like Firefox or Thunderbird through snaps instead of packaging them properly is just asinine.
I see. Need to read more about the current state of Kubuntu, because I don’t want recommend something that might be not in a good state. Kubuntu was a good choice in the past.
I don’t think your opinion is less worth just because you experience problems.
Discover in Kubuntu works a little differently than you would expect if you used KDE elsewhere.
What do you mean “differently”? I know that “Discover” only works for Flatpak in Arch based systems, such as EndeavourOS and on SteamOS. I never used Kubuntu or KDE on Ubuntu.
I can’t remember exactly. There are two app stores and Discover is one of them. If I was you I would boot into a live or virtual environment and check it out. I think it’s explained in the welcome screen.
Sorry I can’t remember.
You are right, the app management philosophy for Kubuntu is not quite right. Canonical put their effort towards providing Ubuntu with Gnome.
I had very similar issues, and since I wanted KDE (so many machines in my house already using KDE and I’m starting to get really comfortable with it) and I needed to use a specific app without containerization and the developer only makes a deb and rpm, I ended up trying Fedora with KDE. The DE bundled there is quite unadulterated, it’s basically a near latest stock KDE desktop. It was very seemless, you almost need to know nothing specific about Fedora, just use you muscle memory navigating the desktop.
That’s the canonical promise! Half ass and breaks on update. Funny thing is Kubuntu is more stable than Ubuntu and yet here we are.
Is there a reason you are using hashtags like you’re on Mastodon or something? Just curious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Lemmy account do that.
Snap has advantages though, apps works across different distros I think?
So does Flatpak. In fact more distributions support Flatpak instead Snap.
Snaps only work on ubutnu based distros. Flatpak apps are what you need for multiple distros.
Ubuntu is the most broken distro I have ever used. From when it first came out until today.
Pick anything over Ubuntu.
I do really like fedora. If you want the latest stuff as fast as a rolling distro, with zero update issues, you want fedora.
Ubuntu may have experienced a downturn but there was a time where Red Hat and later on Fedora wasn’t very user friendly. Ubuntu dramatically increased Linux adoption so I will always like it for that, but I think you are correct nowadays.
I just switched from PopOS (Ubuntu) to Nobara (Fedora) and I fucking love it. Its a perfect middle ground between bleeding edge Arch and slow to adopt Ubuntu. Also, flatpack.
Apples and oranges : Ubuntu is a commercial endeavour with a huge entreprise desktop and server base (not unlike redhat), while Fedora is the testing grounds, community-side of said redhat, so inherently not made for IRL work.
I’m pretty sure a lot of people use Fedora for work (I do, on my Asahi macbook), but if you are a business you probably won’t, as you’ll look for something with available customer support.
All other merits and demerits enunciated here are valid, but the true difference is in their target audience.