I’ve been using Debian on servers for maybe 20 years now, so I’m very experienced with Debian on servers, but I’ve never really used the Fedora/RedHat/CentOS side of things.
The last time I used a Linux desktop was Ubuntu back in 2006 or so, back when it was still a new up-and-coming distro and they’d send you a free CD (very useful since I was using dialup at the time).
I’m thinking about which distros I should try since I want to switch from Windows. I’ve heard Mint and Pop OS are good? I might try Debian too. I used to love tweaking the OS back in my teenage years, but now I’m in my 30s and don’t have time to fix random breakages… I just want something stable that works well. (that’s why I was considering Debian)
Debian remains the king of “something stable that works well”. And with release of Debian 12 that brought a lot of quality-of-life improvements, easier non-free package managing etc, many users go for it on their desktops. So I suggest you do too.
Fedora runs at a twice annual release model and includes kernel and firmware updates within those releases whereas Ubuntu matches a kernel with a release.
Their packages, to me, feel much higher quality in terms of reliability and reaction time to reported bugs. They also test and guarantee updates for packages in their repos. I ran my college laptop through 15 system upgrades without any issues, nothing has been that reliable for me.
I enjoyed using Ubuntu for several years and hadn’t considered Fedora until they were the first to default to Wayland (f21) and never switched again.
You can do anything on any distro, so you end up just shopping for your fav package manager and default repo and staying there.
I encourage you to play with all of them with a separated /home partition or so it’s easy to shop.
I ran my college laptop through 15 system upgrades without any issues, nothing has been that reliable for me.
I’ve got a VPS running Debian Bookworm (12.0, latest version at the moment) that I haven’t reformatted since Etch (4.0, 2007). I’ve just done an in-place upgrade every time a new version is out.
That’s not a GUI setup though, so probably more stable when updating…
Fedora tends to include a lot of the latest tech in a stable working configuration, stuff like Wayland and GNOME in the past and more. I like that I can get that while still enjoying a nice curated set of package repositories without relying on something like the AUR for most packages. I’m happy to let others do the testing on the absolute bleeding edge and take the risks while I get to enjoy the fruits of that with Fedora.
Fedora is moving a bit faster than Debian(but it’s pretty unstable), the main selling point is in my opinion dnf/rpm, but on a server a rhel clone would be a better choice. Pop OS and especially Mint are great distros, Debian is great but very outdated, I would try them live and then decide
After using Fedora Silverblue for some time I can not say it is unstable or Linux Mint is more stable. But Mint is sure old, I even compiled some shit for newer versions, which seemed ‘too much’. I now use GNOME and I absolutely love it, I could even skip Linux Mint entirely, Cinnamon is good, but feels old and lacks customization both KDE and GNOME have. I feel all that advices to use Linux Mint outdated, there are much easier and more modern distros, unmutability plays really well with flatpaks. Sure Mint is still good for older hardware or for those, who wants Windows-like experience.
What makes Fedora good?
I’ve been using Debian on servers for maybe 20 years now, so I’m very experienced with Debian on servers, but I’ve never really used the Fedora/RedHat/CentOS side of things.
The last time I used a Linux desktop was Ubuntu back in 2006 or so, back when it was still a new up-and-coming distro and they’d send you a free CD (very useful since I was using dialup at the time).
I’m thinking about which distros I should try since I want to switch from Windows. I’ve heard Mint and Pop OS are good? I might try Debian too. I used to love tweaking the OS back in my teenage years, but now I’m in my 30s and don’t have time to fix random breakages… I just want something stable that works well. (that’s why I was considering Debian)
Debian remains the king of “something stable that works well”. And with release of Debian 12 that brought a lot of quality-of-life improvements, easier non-free package managing etc, many users go for it on their desktops. So I suggest you do too.
Fedora runs at a twice annual release model and includes kernel and firmware updates within those releases whereas Ubuntu matches a kernel with a release.
Their packages, to me, feel much higher quality in terms of reliability and reaction time to reported bugs. They also test and guarantee updates for packages in their repos. I ran my college laptop through 15 system upgrades without any issues, nothing has been that reliable for me.
I enjoyed using Ubuntu for several years and hadn’t considered Fedora until they were the first to default to Wayland (f21) and never switched again.
You can do anything on any distro, so you end up just shopping for your fav package manager and default repo and staying there. I encourage you to play with all of them with a separated /home partition or so it’s easy to shop.
Thanks for the details!
I’ve got a VPS running Debian Bookworm (12.0, latest version at the moment) that I haven’t reformatted since Etch (4.0, 2007). I’ve just done an in-place upgrade every time a new version is out.
That’s not a GUI setup though, so probably more stable when updating…
I use Fedora Plasma. It’s a spin on KDE. I really like it. Fedora is what i learned Linux on originally and it’s nice to go back.
edit: rm useless comment part.
Fedora tends to include a lot of the latest tech in a stable working configuration, stuff like Wayland and GNOME in the past and more. I like that I can get that while still enjoying a nice curated set of package repositories without relying on something like the AUR for most packages. I’m happy to let others do the testing on the absolute bleeding edge and take the risks while I get to enjoy the fruits of that with Fedora.
Thanks for the info!
Fedora is moving a bit faster than Debian(but it’s pretty unstable), the main selling point is in my opinion dnf/rpm, but on a server a rhel clone would be a better choice. Pop OS and especially Mint are great distros, Debian is great but very outdated, I would try them live and then decide
After using Fedora Silverblue for some time I can not say it is unstable or Linux Mint is more stable. But Mint is sure old, I even compiled some shit for newer versions, which seemed ‘too much’. I now use GNOME and I absolutely love it, I could even skip Linux Mint entirely, Cinnamon is good, but feels old and lacks customization both KDE and GNOME have. I feel all that advices to use Linux Mint outdated, there are much easier and more modern distros, unmutability plays really well with flatpaks. Sure Mint is still good for older hardware or for those, who wants Windows-like experience.