Why Fedora?

I don't understand why Fedora is so popular? Its the most buggy distro I've used. I'm planning to purchase a new notebook so I guess I'm going to have to ditch Debian for now . I'm most likely going to jump to Fedora since its bleeding edge.

What are some other reasons that makes Fedora so good?

 

I guess because Fedora is the test bad for Red Hat, and because it has tons of community support by it, and provides a nice balance between stability and total-bleeding-edge-ness(is that a word?). It's also easy to setup. Also, Fedora 14 was just released, in a few weeks it'll be a lot more stable.

 

If you want bleeding edge debian check out sidux <--- btw you can talk directly to the devs if you have any issues with sidux in their excellent IRC channel. They also provide a gigantic manual if you need help and their package manager is insane (good thing).

Yeah fedora = tons of support

And if you really want bleeding edge and I do mean rEALLY then get archlinux (my favorite)

I've been distro hopping since 2005, until I met archlinux in 2008.

Desktop: archlinux
server: archlinux
htpc: archlinux

 

I am already using it.
It is quite stable, a few minor bugs with cairo package which is due to the unpatched new version. But most importantly it is very fast and responsive.
I dare say it is more responsive than Ubuntu.
It is bleeding edge and I am already using systemd as the session launcher.
I documented the steps to make it "complete" here (No hand-holding for ubuntu n00bs =P ).

 

Sidux is called Aptosid now.

But you should avoid some "forbidden" words. Those include "sxmi", "mplayer" and probably some others too.

Another good reason for Fedora is, that it's purely free software. When I was a Linux beginner and looked for a distro, Fedora and Debian were my final candidates. I prefer rock solid over bleeding edge, this is why I chose Debian. Otherwise I would have surely gone for Fedora, and from a social (not technical) point of view I still feel more related to Fedora users than to Ubuntu users.

btw: I'm under the impression that in this forum one could freely change the name of the distro in the title as long as it's not Ubuntu or Mint.

 

Hey thanks it's been awhile I used sidux

Why?

I honestly don't care if it's free or proprietary, never did. I just want a stable flashplugin, stable nvidia kernel drivers, I don't care if the latest linux kernel just made a new discovery in the x0505050305050505305%%==%=% which means the CPU now calculates ljsdfljsadflasjfd bla bal bla. There's a funny comicstrip which says something similar like we don't care if the linux kernel is even more patched, if we can't get the basics working then nobody cares about the OS.

It's 2010 and linux is still a farcry from being a desktop alternative compared to apple or microsoft. Sure after 2005 and 2.6 we've had massive improvements but were still far away.

Sorry for going a bit off topic

btw: I'm under the impression that in this forum one could freely change the name of the distro in the title as long as it's not Ubuntu or Mint.[/QUOTE]

^^I don't understand what you mean by that. Despite the 100 000 of distros we have to choose from, they are still using the same kernel.

Fedora = prebuilt distro with a huge community
ubuntu = prebuilt distro with a huge community

gentoo = build it yourself, fairly large community
archlinux = build it youself, standard community

 

There have been some - lets call it "social differences" in the Sidux community with those projects. One was a dispute with "h2", the developer of sxmi, which was never an official part of Sidux, but a widely used tool to make the Debian unstable basis easier to handle. There have always been different opinions on sxmi within the Sidux community but the general position was: "Use it or don't use it, both is ok, but don't ask us for support." After the breakup some users even got kicked from the channels for only mentioning sxmi.
Another of those disputes lead to the renaming from Sidux to Aptosid, because the developers couldn't find an agreement with the owner of the name concerning the future development of Sidux.
I'd have to look up what's the problem with mplayer.

Well, I do. And i know some others who think like me. Most of them are Debian users, but you'll find them in the Fedora community as well, because the distributions attitude towards free software is similar.
That doesn't mean that I only use free software, but I prefer it if it fits my needs. And I want to decide on my own for every piece of proprietary software if I will use it or not. That requires you to know the difference, which is easier if you use a distribution that includes only free software out of the box.

I guess you mean at least partly its market share. Actually I don't care about the market share of Linux. The only thing I care about is, if others will respect that not everyone uses MS or Apple software. Therefore I strongly support open standards.
Linux (or better: GNU) does everything I want to do. MacOS or Windows is no reasonable alternative for me. Some weeks ago I worked on WinXP for half a day again which was pretty much in its initial state after the installation, and it was terrible. No POSIX shell, lots of popups all the time, and some other minor problems. I know this can all be adressed, but why should I bother with that if I can have a better state with Linux out of the box.
I respect people who prefer other OSes, it's their free choice. But I demand them to respect me the same way.

But the only two distributions that are actually taking place in this forum are Ubuntu and Mint. Some of the users don't even state the distribution name anymore because they think that everybody should be so familiar with their releases that it isn't necessary to name the distribution. Honestly, that bugs me.
If most of the Linux users here use those two distribuitions, that's ok, but they shouldn't expect everyone else to think about Ubuntu if all the information they provide is "I'm using Linux".
10 years ago there was a similar situation with Suse where I come from, and in the end it was almost like bullying users of other distributions just because they weren't using Suse. I don't want to see that happening again.

 

Well remember in the Linux vs OS X vs Windows debate, linux is just a kernel, when we take this as meaning linux distributions as a whole, you have to sit down and compare each distribution. I'd say the best distributions out there are Opensuse and Ubuntu, Mint I'm not terribly fond of(though it is great) because it's really just a small extension on Ubuntu, and it's niche is ever closing.

I choose Opensuse because of the high degree of quality and support of the distribution, commercial and community. And also the high volume of available software(using the build service).

I choose Ubuntu because of the high degree of quality, the support behind it ans the great community. Ubuntu is a great distribution, that's making good progress.

 

The problems with statements like these is, that "I'd say" is often mistaken for "It is fact that". Therefore I always add some kind of disclaimer that the best choice in my opinion might be different from the opinion of someone else.

I disagree. Opensuse has a good quality at the moment, but 11.0 and 11.1 had terribly unstable implementations of KDE4 and SSH. I almost had to reboot my Suse computer every week back then.

When you are used to the Debian repository, the Opensuse repository looks ridiculous. Adding the build service improves this a bit, but you never know how good the packages from the build service are. Their qualitity doesn't seem to be better than what you can find in Ubuntu-PPAs. Most of it is ok, but there are always some broken packages.

Sorry, but please be more precise! What do you mean with "quality" in this context? With every Ubuntu release since 8.04 I had stability problems in the first 3 or four months. There was not a single one that I could just install on a desktop and run it for several months without experiencing some kind of regression. I came to the rule of thumb, that if you really want a stable Ubuntu system, install a release when the next one has just been released. That's not what I associate with quality.

True.

 

Replies in bold.

 

I have done ubuntu for a while, but the latest developments like wireless/display not properly working in new releases and the Weyland/Unity roadplans are putting me off. I might check out opensuse, though. As I don't know much fedora, I'd say... hmm, really why fedora?

 

1)Light, and fast
2)Latest features (systemd is out) might break but that is a trade off
3)Stable supporting latest hardware (uses new Kernels)
4)Developers for Fedora works on GNOME as well.
5)Linus uses Fedora...
6)Few Spammers on the Forums
7)Few Noobs on the forums resulting in friendlier people.