this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are "mainstream" "beginner friendly" distros, right? I don't want anything too advanced, right?

Well, ubuntu recently updated and it broke my second monitor (Ubuntu detected it but the monitor had "no signal"). After trying to fix it for a week, I decided to wipe it and reinstall. No luck. I tried a few other distros that had the same issue and I started to wonder if it was a hardware issue but I tried a Windows PC and the monitor worked no problem.

Finally, just to see what would happen I tried a distro very very different than what I'm used to: Fedora (Kinoite). And not only did everything "just work" flawlessly, but it's so much faster and more polished than I ever knew Linux to be!

Credit where it's due, a lot of the polish is due to KDE plasma. I'd never strayed from Gnome because I'm not an expert and people recommend GNOME to Linux newbies because it's "simple" and "customizable" but WOW is KDE SO MUCH SIMPLER AND STILL CUSTOMIZEABLE. Gnome is only "simple" in that it doesn't allow you to do much via the GUI. With Fedora Kinode I think I needed to use the terminal maybe once during setup? With other distros I was constantly needed to use the terminal (yes its helped me learn Linux but that curve is STEEP).

The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.

I am FULLY prepared for the responses demanding to know what I did to make it crash and telling me how I was using it wrong blah blah blah but let me tell you, if you are experienced with Windows but want to learn Linux and getting frustrated by all the "beginner" distros that get recommended, do yourself a favor and try Fedora Kinoite!

edit: i am DYING at the number of "you're using it wrong" comments here. never change people.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

I’m probably going to get downvoted for this but I’m a Linux noob overall…. Windows has historically been what I’ve used. Or Ubuntu. I did distrohop to antixLinux and other really super small distros, but they didn’t fix my problems and I ended up back on relatively bloaty Ubuntu for further testing and sadly it solved bout a third of my problems (the hardware is ancient enterprise shit with a whopping 4gb ram and 16 usb ports)

I’ve been looking for a Debian based system to replace Ubuntu because I’m a noob and Debian-based is super different from the fedora.

I’m sure fedora is great! Tons of people love it! But for a noob is can be really daunting. Especially when most Linux instructions come in three flavors “Ubuntu/debian” and 2 other things. Who knows which two. You, the advanced Linux user, probably know which two but your noob doesn’t. And doesn’t understand the difference.

I’m not a total noob but I prefer Debian because I know a person who gets Debian and can help me. If I knew a fedora user that was actually willing to help me, I’d use that, but I’ve never met one so I’ll stick with what I know.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I tried a bunch on distros when I switched to Linux full time. Currently I have OpenSUSE in my laptop but I don’t think that will last too much longer. I’ve been running Fedora on my main machine for months now and it makes a lot of my other distros just feel clunky.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

I find it pretty problematic how Ubuntu is messed up and still used as default distro.

Fedora has issues with always being a bit early. I prefer it a lot over buggy Kubuntu, as I use KDE, but for example now 6.1 is too early and still has bugs, while Plasma 6 was really well tested (with Rawhide, Kinoite beta and Kinoite nightly being available)

Fedora has tons of variants and packages, and COPR is full of stuff. The forums are nice, Discourse is a great tool.

It uses Flatpak, but adds its legally restricted repo by default.

The traditional variants... I think apt is better. I did one dnf system upgrade to F40 and it was pretty messy.

The rpm-ostree atomic desktops are really good, but not complete. For example GRUB is simply not updated at all. This is hopefully fixed with F41.

Or the NVIDIA stuff, or nonfree codecs, which are all issues even more on atomic.

So the product is not really ready to use, while rpmfusion sync issues happen multiple times a year. This is no issue on the atomic variants, but there you need to layer many packages, which causes very slow updates.

I am also not a fan of their "GUI only" way, so you will for example never have useful common CLI tools on the atomic variants, for no reason.

It is pretty completely vanilla, which is very nice.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

My først linux experience is actually Fedora 39. I was just hooked on how it looks, (Gnome) but I don't know anything under the hood. But I wio recommend it to noons like me, because I know there is a lot of help in the internet, and we all have to start somewhere. And BTW I'm not someone who understands all the technics and coding orstuff.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.

I think I crashed it less than 10 times in 2 years of usage.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Atomic Fedora, like Fedora Kinoite is probably the most noob friendly. Impossible to break.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

I put my tech illiterates on Fedora with GNOME without issue. If you're the one doing the installation and can install the RPMFusion stuff like drivers and codecs then yeah it's pretty smooth sailing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

I have never touched Linux/GNU and I installed Linux after the Microsoft recall and when with standard workstation (GNOME) as a dual boot. After the first two weeks reinstalled fedora over top of windows and haven't looked back.

That was 2 months ago and and having no issues even gaming on my machine works great.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Because Ubuntu LTS works very reliably and because there's a huge body of information and large swathes of people who can help on the Internet, and because every project and vendor tests and releases their stuff for Ubuntu/Debian and has documentation for it.

Despite the hate you see around these shores, Ubuntu LTS is among the best if not the best beginner distro. Importantly it scales to any other proficiency level. The skill and knowledge acquired while learning Ubuntu transfers to Debian as well as working professionally with either of them.

Also, with the fuckery RedHat pulls lately, it's a disservice to new users to get them to learn the RedHat ecosystem, unless they plan or need to use it professionally. If I had to bet, I'd bet that the RH ecosystem would be all but deserted by volunteers in the years to come. I bet that as we speak a whole lotta folks donating their time are coming to the conclusion that Debian was right and are abandoning ship.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Because Ubuntu LTS works very reliably

Ubuntu pulled a blinder many years ago with their LTS model. You get a new one every two years with five years support for each one and a guarantee of moving from one to the next. That gives you quite a lot of time to deal with issues, without requiring you to live in the stoneage.

For example: Apache Guacamole is a webby remote access gateway thingie. It currently requires tomcat9 because TC9->10 is a major breaking change. Ubuntu 22.04 has TC9 and Ubuntu 24.04 has a later version (probably 10). However Ubuntu 22.04 is supported until 2027. So we stick at Ubuntu 22.04 and get security updates etc.

Guacamole is currently at 1.5.5, and the next version will be 1.6.0. The new version will have lots of functionality additions. The devs will then worry about Tomcat editions and the like. Meanwhile Ubuntu will still be supported.

In my opinion the two year release/five year supported model is an absolute belter.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Fedora sounds like a redditor distro. That's why I never recommend it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Here's the deal, most people from yesterdays started on Ubuntu or something similar. So, they suggest what worked for them. I just moved my wife away from Windows and straight into Fedora, I haven't had to help her on anything other than once she could not find the printer (it's on another VLAN and she was not connected to it 🙄). She is loving it and just last night told me, and I quote, "I should have changed sooner".

Fedora just works, but another factor may be that Debian and Ubuntu based distros are LTS what le Fedora is more semi-rolling, this helps with stability, thus it makes sense to suggest something with less probability of breaking suddenly than something they may need to roll back.

As for atomic distros, YMMV. I find them sluggish during install, boot and when starting an app for the first time, and in my case, broken after a few updates (would not work on Wayland forcing me to log in over X11).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Curious how your atomic distro broke, since you can rollback and rebase pretty easily after a problematic update. I'm running Bazzite on a 10yo laptop, and it's been great; I even rebased to a completely different DE, then did a rollback when I decided it didn't work for me.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

if you like fedora, have you tried endeavour?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I prefer Fedora. I think Fedora lost the war on easy Linux branding to Ubuntu 15 years ago.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I consider myself long time noob ;)

Fedora for me because it's rock solid, has cutting edge software, excellent documentation.

I,ve been updating the same installation more than 15 times i think.

Against: selinux is often overlooked when following guides written for Debian / ubuntu. So sometimes you pull out your hair.

On the other hand. Podman is supposedly the new favorite kid on the block. Fedora is on the front here

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I recommend slackware exclusively. Sometimes times it feels like I'm pissing into the wind.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Coincidentally, that's what using it is like, too. :)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

I was totally on board until centos got screwed over ( and subsequently AM2 )

I'll be a cold day before I touch any fedora or redhat again or even mention to another person that they should run it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Generally Fedora's purpose is to make sure nothing gets into redhat (RHEL) Linux. So if there are breaking changes to things, you'll be getting them.

Historically if people had wanted to learn I'd push them towards Ubuntu because its Debian based, meaning familiar enough to most of what runs the modern internet that I could eventually (I'm not a Linux admin) fix.

These days if you just want to use it I'd pick Linux mint, just since they seem to be orienting towards that way. Arch or SUSE based something if you want to learn more about how the packages you install work together. But the choice in distro honestly feels more like an installer and package manager choice than anything. a distro is just a choice of which thousand things to hide in a trenchcoat.

I just ideologically don't like IBM and would rather hand in my bug reports to the volunteer ecosystem.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

So if there are breaking changes to things, you’ll be getting them.

No, Fedora has a policy against compatibility breaking updates mid-cycle. That's why Gnome is never updated to a new major release on a Fedora release. You'll have to wait for the next Fedora release to come out for such upgrades.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Does Bazzite count? I recommend Bazzite

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Fedora's always run really sluggishly for me on whatever hardware I've tried it on, so I don't recommend it in general because my personal experience with it hasn't been great.

Even ignoring this, I'm not sure I'd recommend it for beginners due to how it tends to jump on the latest hip new software. For some users this is a massive point in Fedora's favour, but I'm not sure how much I'd trust a beginner to, say, maintain a BTRFS filesystem properly. Not to mention the unlikely, but still present, possibility of issues caused by such new software.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I tried it when the first one I tried didn't work out.

Ctrl+C hard locked it instantly every time I pushed it. I could right-click and choose "Copy", but pushing Ctrl-C just froze whatever image was on screen. No response at all after that. Plus it was giving me a headache trying to get Nvidia drivers installed.

So then I moved to Pop since the correct driver was baked in, and it's been mostly smooth since.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There was a time when I thought about switching to Fedora when I ditch Windows in 2025, but the frequent release schedule of Fedora has made me worried if those updates risk breaking my setup.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Because it can't hibernate? (But then, not sure which distros can.)

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