“Just”, lol. I’m sure yours is a much more comprehensive and powerful solution, but it definitely looks more complex than just installing a plugin on your IDE!
Is pluging a LSP server that hard on vscode/intellij? Because it’s automatic with a lot of LSP clients, open a .sh file, get asked if you want to install the corresponding LSP server, answer yes and that’s it. Some LSP clients don’t do automatic server install but you just have to install the server with your packet manager. At least that’s how it is with vim / emacs.
Funny thing is that LSP was actually created for VSCode. That’s the now standard protocol to decouple language specific things (completion, formatting, linting…) from the editor so you don’t have to use an editor for each language. You can now use any editor that supports LSP, either directly or through a plugin, and turn it into a fully fledged IDE by installing the LSP servers for the language you need. I guess some VSCode plugins use LSP under the hood and just embed the server.
the ubuntu installer has always been the key difference for me specially with zfs and multi-monitor/fractional scaling/nvidia setups that it has configured well over the years where other installers leave you with a lot still to do
There is no single Bash standard to follow, only a few guidelines. One way you can check for some basic errors and formatting would be using an editor with support for Bash (in best case with a builtin LSP). At the end, you have to find your style and coding standards or adapt what others do if you want work with them or edit their files.
Otherwise there is a well known tool for checking Bash files: www.shellcheck.net You can use it online and as a downloaded program on your local machine. After using shellcheck for a bit I got used to some of its conventions and recommendations, such as always wrapping variables like in ${variable} and some other things.
Related is the Bash Reference Manual from GNU: www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html Off course this is not a guide on how to style or program, but it helps in understanding how GNU does things.
I would not encourage anyone to join the EL universe as I don’t consider it as stable as others.
TLDR; Redhat’s being absorbed into IBM and they don’t care about RHEL. RHEL (in my view) is dying a slow death. Without RHEL, there is no Fedora or Centos Stream. There’d also be no Rocky or Alma, as things currently stand.
(Although if that happened, I’d not be surprised if the users of Fedora merged with Rocky and Alma in some form of new and fully independent distro - we’ve already seen how well such disasters can be worked around)
Longer reasoning: Redhat, in my view, have made some unpredictable and frankly terrible decisions over the past few years with RHEL which have caused a great deal of concern in the business sector about its stability as a product. (Prematurely ending Centos 8 six years early, paywalling the source code, and more recent anti-rebuilder steps. They also treated the community team working for Centos appallingly throughout these leading to many resignations.) Further more, these were communicated without warning or consultation and have sometimes come across as petty and spiteful, rather than as professional business decisions.
IBM bought Redhat shortly before this happened, mostly for its cloud services. It seems from the outside that RHEL is being squeezed. There have been two major rounds of layoffs. In all, this paints a picture of a company that is in decline and we’ve seen a reduction in contributions to the excellent work done by Redhat in the foss world. IBM have a long history of buying and absorbing companies - I don’t see why Redhat would be any different and RHEL doesn’t make enough money.
Our company is moving away from EL and I know of several others who are doing so. We’re all choosing Debian.
I actually agree with you, it would survive. It would change, but it’s big enough to have that critical momentum.
Historically Fedora has been suggested as a free way to learn Enterprise Linux skills for a career. RHEL now provide free licences so that doesn’t apply. Has this hurt Fedora at all? Probably not and may no longer be relevant.
For anybody that does not know, Fedora was founded by Red Hat to be their “community” dostro. Before Fedora, there was only Red Hat Linux and it was trying to be both commercial and community. Red Hat founded Fedora to be an explicitly community distribution and then released the first version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL ). This resolved their commercial / community conflict.
Fedora is explicitly NOT an enterprise distribution. They are annoyingly committed to only free software. They release often and have short release cycles. Fedora is certainly not aimed at enterprises.
Rocky and Alma are RHEL alternatives and are absolutely aimed at the enterprise. Fedora merging with either of these projects would be super surprising indeed. It would make no sense whatsoever.
The “community” enterprise option from Red Hat is not Fedora, it is CentOS Stream. Alma has rebased onto CemtOS Stream ( which is what RHEL is also derived from ). That makes sense.
I have fewer comments on the health or future of RHEL or Red Hat itself or how much IBM. Ares about it. I guess I will say that I have never seen so many ads for it. I think revenues are at record levels. It does not feel like it is dying.
I don’t use Fedora or RHEL but Red Hat is one of the biggest contributors to Open Source. So, I hope this cynical poster is wrong. GCC, Glibc, Systemd, Xorg, Wayland, Mesa,SELinux, Podman, and the kernel would all be massively impacted by less Red Hat funding.
Rocky and Alma are RHEL alternatives and are absolutely aimed at the enterprise. Fedora merging with either of these projects would be super surprising indeed. It would make no sense whatsoever.
It would make a lot of sense to Rocky and Alma though - as if RHEL went there would be a huge vacuum and their models would be impossible. I know there was a lot of talk in both companies when the source was paywalled about building directly from Fedora’s sources (Alma may actually be doing that, I’m not sure). Both R & A have significant user bases, both Enterprise and Community, and there would be considerable desire to keep the wheels turning. Some sort of collaboration (or just downstreaming directly from Fedora) feels inevitable as a choice if that were to happen.
The “community” enterprise option from Red Hat is not Fedora, it is CentOS Stream.
Centos Stream is not community by the way - it’s entirely owned and run by Redhat (AIUI, They took over the name from its community origins and replaced the board with its own employees. The vote to end traditional Centos (which was community run) was given as an ultimatum with a great deal of bad feeling) Stream’s purpose is as an upstream staging area for new releases of RHEL. Redhat state it’s not suitable for production use, so it’s of no real benefit to anyone that isn’t part of that test cycle. (In some defence of Redhat here, Centos was struggling with low resources for a long time before this and point releases often took weeks or even months to appear behind RHEL)
RHEL don’t publish sales figures afaik, so they’re the only ones who could say whether they’re up or down. I’m just one guy who’s worked in a mostly EL based world which has been negatively affected by these decisions, so I’m keeping half an eye. I could be completely wrong, but the facts we do know aren’t healthy for someone wanting to enter into a business relationship with them, which is what a corporate company does when choosing a supported distro like RHEL.
And yes, I am quite cynical - you’re right to point that out. I also hope I’m wrong. If I’m not, I have a lot of confidence that the world will continue with or without RHEL, but yes, it would be a big loss to the FOSS contributions they have made and continue to make - as well as a lot of good people losing their jobs.
Full disclosure - I do not use any of these enterprise distros anymore although the stance taken by Alma makes them attractive to me. I am looking for ways to use them.
If we had more time and maybe more beer, I would be interested to get into a discussion about what “community” is.
CentOS pre-Stream was not a “community” distro in my view as I do not see “downloads that cost no money” as the backbone of what makes a community.
CentOS ( pre-Stream ) could not innovate their own distro. They could not even fix a bug without breaking their “bug-for-bug” RHEL compatibility promise. All they did was recompile and redistribute RHEL packages with the trademarks removed. What kind of community do you have if you do not produce anything? Everything from CentOS was actually provided by Red Hat. It was just literally “RHEL without paying”. There was no diversity.
CemtOS Stream is managed by Red Hat for sure as its primary purpose is to become the base for a future version of RHEL. However, it is Open Source and developed fully out in the open. Contributions are possible.
Unlike CentOS of old, the “community” can contribute to and debate the future of CentOS Stream. Alma has contributed bug fixes for example. It has been a bit painful as Red Hat is used to being the only one in the sandbox but the process is evolving. CentOS Stream has multiple contributors ( not just Red Hat ). This means that others have some influence on what RHEL looks like in the future. “The community” can build on that.
In my view, CentOS Stream is already a lot more of a “community” distro than the original CentOS was. You do not have to agree of course. Anyway, I hope other projects join with Alma and Red Hat in contributing to CentOS Stream.
For all their flag waving about “the community”, distros like Rocky and Oracle have shown no interest in contributing to CentOS Stream. They continue to clone the distro that Red Hat forks from CentOS Stream. They don’t get involved until all the work has been done. Then they make money off it ( the only reason they are there ).
All good points and I appreciate and enjoy the discussion.
In my view, CentOS Stream is already a lot more of a “community” distro than the original CentOS was.
This is possibly a semantic point, but for me, a community distro is owned and operated by the community without any corporate control. All the points yonu make are true and valid, but ultimately, Centos is owned by a very large corporate entity that could stop it whenever they want to and nobody else can do anything about that.
Some examples of community owned distros are Debian, as well as Rocky and Alma Linux. Both of the latter have commercial arms, but are are fully independent legal entities owned by the distro. Rocky is owned by Rocky. This point was particularly important because that’s what the community thought Centos /was/, but it turned out that Redhat owned Centos. I don’t think either of the new distros would have been as trusted if the same thing that happened to Centos - a corporate entity ultimately deciding what happens - could have happened to them. When abandoning a sinking ship, it’s prudent to check you’re not boarding another with a big hole in it.
I did happen to look follow Rocky’s path closely, and our company chose it to migrate our doomed Centos8 machines to, because our developers didn’t have time to rebuild everything for Debian in that particular window. That decision was largely based on that legal standpoint because we didn’t want Centos repeating on us. It was also reassuring that Rocky was founded by Greg Kurtzer, who founded Centos and had that project effectively stolen from him, and he least of anyone wanted the same thing happening. (BTW, Rocky was named after the other co-founder of Centos, who has since died - a nice gesture)
My cynicism of Redhat and their motives are real and may be misplaced, but I don’t think they’re done piddling in the EL swimming pool just yet. I adored the company once and had nothing but respect for what they achieved. But that was then and this is now.
Being cynical about Red Hat is fine as long as we keep it factual. I enjoy their contributions but otherwise have no skin in their game.
I am not as enthusiastic about Rocky. I cannot see at all how you can compare them to Debian. It seems unfair even to Alma to lump them in with Rocky as Alma is taking the high road. Best of luck with Rocky though. Truly.
Your make a good case that “community” means “cannot be shut down by a corporation”. Thank you for that. Can a “bug-for-bug RHEL clone” be community though? If Red Hat cancels RHEL ( unlikely ), is there still a Rocky Linux?
Rocky is only comparable to Debian in terms of the licencing model, but IANAL. Both are owned by a non-profit organisation that can’t be bought.
Would Rocky survive? Nobody knows - but that’s why I said I think Rocky and Alma will pool resources with Fedora in the interests of all. R&A could just rebuild downstream of Fedora and invent their own release cycle, so they may do that.
Redhat is a publicly traded company, so yes, their financials are strong. But my question was about RHEL, which is an internal project and not publically known.
Red Hat is not a publicly traded company and has not been for 5 years. They are a division of IBM. What you can know about Red Hat financials comes from IBM’s financial statements.
Red Hat has three primary product lines of which RHEL is one.
Long story short, Fedora is RedHat, RedHat is mostly aimed at companies, so most random users haven’t encountered it. I used Fedora for a few months, a Friend of mine was very passionate about it, I personally didn’t find anything special about it and disliked rpm at the time, so I ended up switching back to Mint (I think it’s what I was using at the time).
So, long story short, people are not recommending it because they’re not using it, but I know a few people who use it and swear by it, so it looks like you’re on the road to join their club, and don’t let anyone tell you you should be using any other distro, as long as you find something that works for you, that’s what matters.
That being said have you tried Kubuntu? I feel lots of what you had issues with could be the old GNOME vs KDE argument.
“Fedora is Red Hat, Red Hat is mostly aimed at companies”.
I said this in another comment but Red Hat Linux used to target both the community and commercial interests. Fedora was founded to be an explicitly community distribution that was NOT aimed at companies. Red Hat then created Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL ) which absolutely targets companies ( for money ). The whole point of founding the Fedora project was for it not to target companies.
Fedora release often, has short support cycles, and is hostile to commercial software. It would be a terrible choice for a business in my view. It is a leading community distribution though.
The top foundational distros that all the others are based on are Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and Arch ( and maybe SUSE — I am not European ).
In my view, Ubuntu’s best days are behind it. Fedora has never looked so good.
I use one of the other distros above but I used Fedora long ago and it treated me well. I think it is a solid choice. My impression has been that it is gaining in popularity again.
OpenShot went terribly for me. Cool idea but did not work. Ate hours and hours of editing by failing to export. I tried everything, even opening Github issues to figure out where the problem was. Systematically re-cut and edited and moved every clip. Still couldn’t get it to export even though everything worked flawlessly in editing and previewing. Tried switching to latest, alpha, whatever, none of them could export. Absolute nightmare. Do not recommend. Eventually had to re-do everything in kdenlive.
What do you mean the installer is awful? I have found it quite straightforward. Select the disc, your keyboard setup, timezone and then it install itself…
It caters to a middle ground that barely exists, meaning it doesn’t have enough options for a power user and too many for a newcomer.
For example, a newcomer doesn’t know what a root account is and doesn’t have to care, yet they have to choose if they want to enable or disable the account. They can also remove their administrator privileges without knowing what it means for them. I get asked what a root account is every time somebody around me tries to install Fedora.
I recommend spinning up a Ubuntu 24.04 VM and taking a look at their installer.
They have a clear structure on how to install Ubuntu step by step while Fedora presents you everything at once. They properly hide the advanced stuff and only show it when asked for it. They have clear toggles for third party software right at the installer and explain what they do. Fedora doesn’t even give you the option to install H264 codecs or Nvidia drivers.
It also looks a lot cleaner and doesn’t overload people with too much info on a single screen. And yet it can still do stuff like automated installing and has active directory integration out of the box, where the Fedora installer miserably fails for a “Workstation” distro.
The Fedora installer works, but it doesn’t do much more than that and the others do it better in many areas.
If you’re installing an OS you should absolutely understand what the root account is. That’s like buying a car without understanding the concept of keys.
That’s absurd. You don’t need to understand the inner workings of the kernel to know what a root account is. If you’re regularly encouraging people to install a new OS when you aren’t even confident in their ability to understand what a root account is, you’re not doing them any favors.
Don’t even get me started on disk partitioning. I feel like they somehow have the most obtuse partitioning setup out of every distro I’ve ever installed. It feels like if you don’t just hand over your whole disk (which, if you do that, I feel like it doesn’t make it clear how it’s going to partition it), the installer gets very spiteful and just goes “fine then, figure it out”. I’ve never had so much trouble manually partitioning a disk before, I would literally rather just use fdisk lol.
Their packages are consistently named differently than their Ubuntu/Debian counterpart
I agree with all your points, but this one has way more to do with Debian being a bunch of weirdos about how packages are packaged. Its really more of a Debian demerit than anything since sometimes their packaging practices can be somewhat hostile to projects not directly associated with Debian, especially since the Debian community can have a certain “Our way is the only right way” attitude. That said, the Debian packaging standards can make it easier as a developer to experiment with creating a software package to interact with an existing package. Like there’s a reason to do it that I can support and I wish Debian packagers would more often say “we package things like this so people can experiment” instead of “Everyone else does packaging wrong and our way is the only way”
Half of your complains are fixed in newer releases. For instance it asks you if you want to enable third party repos. If you hit yes it enables the repo for chrome, Nvidia and others plus it setups stock flathub.
That only applies to the GNOME variant, the KDE spin is missing the third party repo toggle.
At least the Flathub repo is fixed on the GNOME variant now. The Nvidia repo is added but the driver is not installed, meaning you still need to use the CLI to install the drivers.
I think Fedora is solid choice. I will tell you why I do not recommend it to new users myself.
1 - Fedora is very focused on being non-commercial ( see my other comments on its history ). This leads them to avoid useful software like codecs that I think new users will expect out of the box
2a- the support cycle is fairly short and whole release upgrades are required
2b - Fedora is typically an early adopter of new tech. It is not “bleeding edge” but it may be moreso than new users need.
3 - it is does not really target new users like say Mint does though it does target GUI use
4 - I do not use it myself anymore and I do not like to recommend what I do not use. What I do use has a reputation for not being new user appropriate ( not sure I agree ).
Nothing wrong with Fedora though in my view. I would never discourage anybody from trying it.
Fedora is generally liked by the corporate world for testing environments and desktops. As long as people understand that it moves quickly then they are happy. I’m not sure why you think it is anti commercial. The Fedora trademark is owned by Redhat
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.
As I run openSuse and plan to introduce it to a few friends who want to switch: where did it go wrong for you? What pitfalls should I be aware of, that I might be blind to by now?
You seem to be ignorant; the use of this word is not meant derogatory. In all fairness, it’s perfectly fine; we all gotta start out somewhere. So, please allow me to elaborate.
Being the first distro on which new technologies are introduced
Consider checking up on where Wayland, systemd, PipeWire, PulseAudio etc first appeared; so on which particular distro.
Also atomic branch?
Fedora Atomic, i.e. the first attempt to Nix’ify an established distro. Most commonly known through Fedora Silverblue or Fedora Kinoite. Peeps formerly referred to these as immutable. However, atomic (i.e. updates either happen or don’t; so no in-between state even with power outage) is more descriptive. It’s also the most mature attempt. Derivatives like Bazzite are the product of this endeavour. From the OG distros, only openSUSE (with its Aeon) has released an attempt. However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision. I wish it the best, but I find it hard to justify it over Fedora Atomic.
SELinux might be a fair point, but I doubt that ss unique to Fedora tbh.
OOTB, apart from Fedora (Atomic), it’s only found on (some) Fedora derivatives and openSUSE Aeon (which forces you to use GNOME and Aeon’s specific container-focused workflow). Arch, Gentoo and openSUSE (perhaps even Debian) do ‘support’ SELinux, but it can be a real hassle do deal with. And it’s not OOTB.
If you make claims, you better substantiate it. I just did your homework 😂. Regardless, I’m still interested to hear a distro with more impressive USPs. Let me know 😉.
Consider checking up on where Wayland, systemd, PipeWire, PulseAudio etc first appeared; so on which particular distro. Are you referring to use those packages as default? Afaik Fedora OS is not even rolling release, so I cannot fathom how it has packages earlier than the typical bleeding-edge candidates. Fedora Atomic Why are you mixing Fedora Atomic with the regular Fedora Distro? It’s also the most mature attempt. Derivatives like Bazzite are the product of this endeavour. From the OG distros, only openSUSE (with its Aeon) has released an attempt. However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision. …how is something like this objectively valid? I understand you like Fedora, but you make claims without any proof or just pure opinion based.
This second comment only exists because all I wanted to say didn’t fit in the previous one.
So without further a due.
“However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision.”
I will not commit to a rigorous comparison in which their respective PR talks or points related to ambition, scope and vision are mentioned. Instead, I’ll put forward reasons for why I believe this to be the case.
Fedora has mentioned (two and a half years ago) that they want for Fedora Atomic to be the default. openSUSE has yet to make similarly ambitious statements regarding MicroOS. At best, we’ve Richard Brown (lead MicroOS Desktop) that states that he thinks Linux (or openSUSE) (can’t remember the exact statement) should only be consumed as MicroOS (Desktop). However, this is only the preference laid out by the project lead. This is especially interesting when one considers how much more logical it is for openSUSE Aeon to be the future of openSUSE Tumbleweed compared to Fedora Atomic to be the future of Fedora. Yet, less ambition…
From inception, Fedora Atomic was very ambitious. The image that represents the system is created from ‘scratch’, layers are applied through rpm-ostree, for the container workflow Toolbx’ inception is materialized. Reproducibility (to a very significant degree) is achieved. And, as mentioned earlier, it can even start boasting about being declarative (to a degree). By contrast, where does openSUSE Aeon stand? It’s only achieved atomicity. That’s it. No mention of reproducibility. No mention of the ambition to be declarative. Nothing. Their commitment to container workflows didn’t even lead to building in-house tooling. Instead, they "outsourced’ it by using an existing solution (first Toolbx and then Distrobox) that was derived (but ultimately became more of a superset) of Toolbx; i.e. Distrobox. Don’t get me wrong; I have preferred Distrobox over Toolbx (and will probably continue to do so). However, isn’t it painfully obvious that one is inferior (in ambition) when its has to rely on tooling provided by the other?
The debacle of Kalpa. Like, how is it possible that it has remained in Alpha with no positivity surrounding it for over a year. Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be any effort in helping the clearly struggling single maintainer of the project. Meanwhile Fedora Atomic is working on its ARM/Asahi remix and the one with COSMIC as its DE. And, honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fedora releases those two before Kalpa leaves Alpha…
Container-based, but limited in scope. openSUSE is (as they proclaim) committed to the container-based workflow. However, their base system continues to be one relying on btrfs snapshots rather than OCI or whatever container-based solution is out there. Heck, Vanilla OS and blendOS were using something similar with their original inception; ABRoot for Vanilla OS*. But, somehow, a group of developers from Vanilla OS were able to erect a f*ck tonne of tooling for (effectively) their reimagining of Fedora’s model. Like, how can this group of developers succeed where openSUSE seems to fail? I literally fail to understand. Heck, the same could be said for blendOS that’s headed by a (very talented) teenager. Somehow, even Fedora seems to be more committed to the container workflow. At least, their efforts suggest as such.
In over two years since I’m on Fedora Atomic, I’ve seen so many developments; it’s actually astonishing. OCI has been adopted for updates. And even bootc has been successfully created to tackle some problems. The ambition is clear. Meanwhile, I just don’t see the same advancements for openSUSE MicroOS. Heck, even YaST, one of openSUSE’s killer features is absent. Why? One of the reasons is because it allows for too much customization… Peculiar. Because I thought that openSUSE’s reliance on btrfs snapshots would allow them to customize a lot more easily. But, unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Like how all of these efforts are inspired from NixOS, we see that a lot of projects are also inspired by Fedora Atomic. They take over their ways and allow themselves to be inspired by them. Vanilla OS’ maintainers (among others) have basically accepted doing this as well. We don’t see this (to that degree) for openSUSE. The only thing I’ve seen is atomic upgrades through btrfs snapshots. That’s it. It’s unfortunate, but that’s literally it.
For some reason, MicroOS Desktop was an afterthought until Richard Brown brought it up in 2019. By contrast, at that point, Fedora had released its Fedora Atomic Workstation (what would eventually become Fedora Silverblue) for over a year.
The writing above was a lot more ramble-y and unorganized compared to what I write usually. Blame my aching wrist. Regardless, it should be more than enough. However, if you disagree or if I’m wrong, then I’d love to hear about it.
And, if you somehow believe that openSUSE Aeon is more ambitious than Fedora Atomic, then please feel free to state why you think that to be the case.
Edit: I just noticed how I missed a question:
I am not sure I understand what you mean by:
Consider checking up on where Wayland, systemd, PipeWire, PulseAudio etc first appeared; so on which particular distro.
So, it was meant for you to notice the trend of how new, (r)evolutionary and crucial tech (i.e. software) are first adopted on Fedora. For each one of them, if you look at their respective wiki page, you can check how it’s adopted and from which distro it started out. This trend has been going on for quite some time and will continue to be the case.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I see where you are coming from but I for example never head about Fedora Atomic whilst I am familiar with OpenSUSE MicroOS, GUIX, NixOS. I noticed that MicroOS is the server oriented immutable whilst Aeon is the new orientation for Desktop… ANYWAY, all this immutable talk is anyway pointless, because I was talking about general distributions and not a discussion about immutable distros.
On the topic which distro adopted what first, my confusion did stem from by what context. As I tried to make clear with my confusion about fedora not being rolling release. To cut all this talk short here my answer to your question:
The default value of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty strong because
rolling release
zypper having sane args for regular tasks (install, search etc.)
btrfs as default filesystem
optimal snapper integration which leads into
making a rolling release distro suitable for non-technical people/daily usage without fear of regular updates
But this is just a general recommendation for “distros”. If the requirements get more specific it makes much more sense to make proper recommendations.
Thank you for reading through that info dump and thank you for your reply!
I see where you are coming from but I for example never head about Fedora Atomic whilst I am familiar with OpenSUSE MicroOS, GUIX, NixOS.
Interesting. So, you never heard of Fedora CoreOS, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, uBlue, Aurora, Bazzite and Bluefin?
ANYWAY, all this immutable talk is anyway pointless, because I was talking about general distributions and not a discussion about immutable distros.
On the topic which distro adopted what first, my confusion did stem from by what context. As I tried to make clear with my confusion about fedora not being rolling release.
Thank you for clearing that up!
To cut all this talk short here my answer to your question:
Finally 😜.
The default value of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty strong because
Thank you for your answer! First of all, regardless of which distro you would have chosen, I would have respected your answer. Though, depending on your answer, I could have definitely judged you for it 😂. Thankfully, however, you’ve shown to have great taste; openSUSE Tumbleweed is indeed a formidable distro. Unfortunately, I’d argue it’s (somehow) underrated and underappreciated; which is really a pity for how excellent of a distro it is. I hope it will garner a bigger audience, because it simply deserves better. Regardless, openSUSE Tumbleweed is definitely a top contender for best traditional distro IMO and I might have been daily driving it were it not for ‘immutable’ distros.
Secondly, while I agree with you generally, I can’t deny that the total package deal specifically is what makes openSUSE Tumbleweed special. So, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
zypper having sane args for regular tasks (install, search etc.)
zypper’s args/syntax don’t seem very different from dnf and apt in terms of saneness. But, if this is a selling point for you, what prevents dnf (which is found on Fedora) from being a selling point for you?
btrfs as default filesystem
Fedora also ships Btrfs by default, though TIL that Btrfs was first adopted by openSUSE. But, once again, this begs the question why this isn’t a selling point (according to you) when it’s found on Fedora?
optimal snapper integration which leads into
Snapper also seems to be properly integrated on the derivatives of other distros; e.g. Garuda, Siduction and SpiralLinux to name a couple. So, again, this selling point doesn’t seem unique.
making a rolling release distro suitable for non-technical people/daily usage without fear of regular updates
Excellent. This is openSUSE Tumbleweed’s USP (if it’s combined with the fact that it’s a well-funded independent distro, great security standards et cetera et cetera). And if this is precisely what you seek from your distro, then openSUSE Tumbleweed is what you rightfully should stick to.
But this is just a general recommendation for “distros”.
Fair. I’m not necessarily opposed to it.
If the requirements get more specific it makes much more sense to make proper recommendations.
Interesting. Like, in which cases would you recommend something else for example?
Interesting. So, you never heard of Fedora CoreOS, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, uBlue, Aurora, Bazzite and Bluefin?
Silverblue yes, rest no.
Snapper also seems to be properly integrated on the derivatives of other distros; e.g. Garuda, Siduction and SpiralLinux to name a couple. So, again, this selling point doesn’t seem unique.
I have no clue how that is done on those distros, never tried any of those. I just know that it is even “hard” to replicate the configuration of snapper on a system like Void Linux. But that might also stem from my lack of knowledge. At least the guides I found didn’t provide the same result.
Interesting. Like, in which cases would you recommend something else for example?
I am glad you also think highly of Tumbelweed, but I think it has the disadvantage of not having such an amazing documentation as other distros. If you stumble upon something and are looking for a fix online, you won’t find as much resources for it as there are for debian based distros for example.
All in all, I have to thank you for this amazing exchange. I think this is one of the most friendly and informative exchanges I had on lemmy so far. :)
I just know that it is even “hard” to replicate the configuration of snapper on a system like Void Linux.
Yeah lol 😅. It’s definitely a blessing when it’s setup by default. For example, while Fedora Atomic does come with a built-in rollback mechanism through rpm-ostree, Fedora does actually not. Hence, Fedora users are often interested to set it up themselves. And then, they find this gargantuan guide 😂.
But that might also stem from my lack of knowledge. At least the guides I found didn’t provide the same result.
To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if openSUSE Tumbleweed’s implementation is simply better. At least, it would make sense if that were the case. So, I will give you that 😉.
but I think it has the disadvantage of not having such an amazing documentation as other distros.
Fair. Fedora’s documentation isn’t that great either 😅. Though, in that regard, I’d argue only Arch and Gentoo have excellent documentation. Granted, I suppose that’s a prerequisite if the distro claims to be unopinionated; which both of them do while Fedora and openSUSE don’t.
If you stumble upon something and are looking for a fix online, you won’t find as much resources for it as there are for debian based distros for example.
I agree. But, for Debian (and Ubuntu), I feel their documentation isn’t necessarily better. Instead, their user base is simply more substantial. Hence, there’s a pretty good chance that someone has experienced the same issues before you did. And thus, it’s easier to find resources on the internet to help with troubleshooting.
All in all, I have to thank you for this amazing exchange.
I feel the same. Thank you! And I would also like to thank you for being patient with me 😅. I have got the tendency to write very long answers and not everyone appreciates those 😅. I even noticed how you weren’t particularly appreciative in this interaction. So, to be honest, I was very happy when you messaged me back earlier today. I really appreciate you for that!
I think this is one of the most friendly and informative exchanges I had on lemmy so far. :)
Thank you for being you! I am really grateful for these wholesome and sweet compliments!
Sometimes, I question if it’s worth pursuing these conversations. But, thankfully, exchanges like these make it worthwhile. My fate in humanity has just been rekindled. From the bottom of my heart, thank you 😊!
Not true at all. For one dnf is very solid which is why many organizations like RHEL. Also Fedora has recent packages but still has stability and is willing to test new ideas. They also are very secure.
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.
It will break a little but I’ve never had anything crazy major. If you are worried either run Linux Mint or update to the next version of Fedora a month after release. Also Fedora doesn’t ever release releases on time.
i wonder why we have so many foss video editors. i get if there were multiple implementations to serve KDE / Gnome but it’s insane that all of them have some kind of bugs or fall short of having the features somebody trying to leave the commercial ones behind would want…
openshot
kdenlive
shotcut
flowblade
pitivin
as far as i’m aware there’s only one gimp and i would have guessed photo editing to be more simple than video editing
yeah kdenlive is probably the best one, i had some ui bugs in the recent past which made it unusable because panels would just have black text on black background :/
i really want to like flowblade, but i assume they need some more dev time to get there
Had that as well on macOS. Problem went away when I switched the system from dark mode to light mode (or the other way round, don’t remember). But generally, I have to use Premiere for work anyways. For personal projects I prefer DaVinci Resolve though because, in my experience, it’s the most stable and performs the best of any program I’ve tried.
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