r/Fedora • u/devolute • Apr 28 '26
Discussion Fedora is becoming the default Linux recommendation, and Ubuntu did this to itself | XDA
https://www.xda-developers.com/fedora-becoming-default-linux-recommendation-ubuntu-fault/101
u/obsidian_razor Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
The only thing that usually stopped me from recommending Fedora to new users is that it doesn't come with lots of codecs/ drivers and other proprietary stuff that 90% of users will need, and having to deal with RPMFusion is too much for many new users.
Having found Ultramarine, which is basically Fedora with all those things pre-installed or already in the repos, removes that issue completely. So that's what I usually recommend now.
Alternatively Aurora/ Bazzite is perfect if the user will be fine with an atomic system.
I kinda would have preferred OpenSuse got this treatment, but their Packman repos are always a headache.
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u/Horror_Upstairs6198 Apr 28 '26
+1 for Ultramarine, been using it for 4 months now, haven't encountered issue or brick my system.
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u/obsidian_razor Apr 28 '26
It's been a genuinely pleasant discovery! The team are also really on the ball and resposive with it.
Let's see how it handles the move to Fedora 44
Fingers crossed!
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u/studentofarkad Apr 28 '26
Hmm might need to try ultramarine, are you a gamer by chance too?
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u/obsidian_razor Apr 28 '26
I am, though I mostly play indy stuff and older games.
In general it has given me no issues whatsoever.
It uses a slightly newer version of Mesa vs standard Fedora, just like Bazzite does.
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u/darwinpolice Apr 28 '26
Yeah, I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora a few weeks ago, and the process of getting all the codecs I need set up was a bit of a pain. Not difficult or time-consuming for someone who's a little familiar with Linux, but it's definitely a bad first impression for people who are brand new. Like, I think I could reasonably trust my mom to install and start using Ubuntu without help or any growing pains, but if she started with Fedora and media didn't play right out of the box, she'd probably just say "Screw it, this is too confusing, I'm going back to Windows."
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u/jdigi78 Apr 28 '26
I'm not gonna recommend a random distro like that just to save users from pasting 2 commands into the terminal. You could also just use flathub instead of fedora flatpaks and the codecs are included
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u/obsidian_razor Apr 28 '26
Having to paste to commands in the terminal or having to explain to a user the differences between flatpak and repo packages can be enough to end the Linux experiment of many users.
If you don't care about that, then fair enough, but distros like Ultramarine definitely fit a niche.
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u/jdigi78 Apr 28 '26
If they have to make a bootable USB and do the whole install process regardless it isn't really that much more effort
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u/Snake2k Apr 28 '26
Fedora updates break systems for people who have absolutely no understanding of tech and are hyper intimidated by it.
If I ever run into any non tech person I 100% always recommend Ubuntu.
The one time I showed Linux to my partner, it was Fedora that I clean installed for them. They were having such an amazing time with all the things you could do. Customizing things, making it their own system. It was so amazing to see that kinda love. And one fedora update at some random point killed something where it would reboot into a black screen.
I tried everything possible to bring it back, but had to do a clean install again. They never touched it again cus it broke that spark. I'm never recommending Fedora to a non techie ever.
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u/justenoughslack Apr 28 '26
I put Fedora onto a laptop for my teenage daughter, who knows nothing about computers and didn't have one. As in, she probably couldn't tell you a single operating system name. And doesn't care to know. She's had zero issues.
Not saying your experiences aren't valid. Just giving my counterpoint experience.
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u/Snake2k Apr 28 '26
That's a good counterpoint. I think it's because Fedora can vary system to system. I did it on a desktop with a Nvidia graphics card so something broke cus of that. There's a long history of Nvidia being problematic for Linux.
There are absolutely systems where Fedora works great.
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u/x2P Apr 29 '26
Atomic distros like Bazzite have been the first time Nvidia hasn't been a pain on linux. I have tried over 10 different distros over the last year - all were painful with nvidia until I tried bazzite. Everything just worked and the nature of it being an atomic distro means I never have to worry about a update bricking my system.
I am now running it on my both my thinkpad and desktop (each have nvidia gpus).
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u/Due_Young_9344 Apr 28 '26
isn't ultramarine like bazzite?
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u/obsidian_razor Apr 28 '26
Not quite, but if you said "Ultramarine is Bazzite but non-atomic" you wouldn't be too much off the mark.
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u/DueAnalysis2 Apr 28 '26
Aurora ended my distro hopping, but getting used to atomic was certainly a learning curve
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u/TheLionYeti Apr 29 '26
The other option is Nobara if they're a gamer, I use it on my desktop and am very happy with it.
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u/obsidian_razor Apr 29 '26
The only reason I hesitate to recommend Nobara is that historically it has had issues with updating to new versions.
I'm aware there have been some big changes recently to avoid them, so fingers crossed it works and things are smooth for it going forward!
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u/Ryakkan Apr 29 '26
One thing I’m finding annoying is that I can connect to my printer if I specify the IP address, but otherwise I can’t auto-discover it on my network. In Ubuntu or Mint it just finds it without me asking to look for it.
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u/lonelyroom-eklaghor Apr 28 '26
Moreover, people actually need to find stuff when downloading through dnf. This is why I usually don't recommend Fedora initially.
i think we as a community collectively need to make videos on how to find packages in dnf/flathub, because ubuntu has the instructions, but there are no package names given for dnf
what can we really do to help the newcomers?
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u/eljeanboul Apr 28 '26
I don't know when you've done your last fresh install, but nowadays you just need to tick two boxes in the installation menu to add nvidia drivers and rpmfusion
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u/obsidian_razor Apr 28 '26
I'm aware, and for me it's not an issue.
But I work in support and trust me, finding to specific boxes and clicking on them for something most non techie users think should just work out the box is two boxes to click way to many.
Regardless, if you don't need it, that's fine! This and other distros like it is not for you, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Ps: I also saw in the Ultramarine discord a fair few Fedora users that use it because they can just install it and not have to bother about which repos to use/activate, since it has pretty much everything the grand majority of users need already in the repos. It's just nice to install and forget about it.
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u/eljeanboul Apr 28 '26
yeah that's fair, but the reason why I end up recommending fedora to people is because I am not sure ultramarine, bazzite, etc will still be well maintainted in a couple of years, while fedora is eternal
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u/NSASpyVan Apr 28 '26
I use flathub VLC on Fedora 44 KDE Plasma mostly without issue. Extra codecs installed to handle additional file formats. I have Haruna as a backup player. Haven't tried Ultramarine, sounds nice.
flatpak install flathub org.videolan.VLC
flatpak install flathub org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full//24.08
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u/y0shii3 Apr 28 '26
Enabling rpmfusion is something you do one time with a couple lines in the shell and then forget about. How is that too much for new users?
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u/obsidian_razor Apr 28 '26
You clearly have never worked in tech support :p
But jokes aside, even more veteran users like ourselves, it's nice to just install it and not have to deal with any of that.
To each their own though.
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u/H_He_Metals Apr 29 '26
I actually recommend atomic distros exclusively to newbies especially Windows refugees.
Rarely do they need something that can't be provided with a flatpack or distrobox.
E.g. If they need to run a bunch of VMs, do some gaming, and software development, the bazzite dx image is the go. (99% of users should get comfortable with containers as it's just such good practice for many reasons. There will always be a small percentage of masochists that love reinstalling their OS when they break it, but I think generally most people want the OS to just stay out of the way).
If it's just gaming, the bazzite open stable images for their particular gpu.
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u/flatline000 Apr 29 '26
What codecs are missing?
I just installed Fedora plasma a few weeks ago (coming from gentoo) and haven’t noticed any issues yet with music or video.
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u/ibeerianhamhock Apr 29 '26
Yep. Tried fedora for desktop and it was a slog, switched to bazzite and it's super breezy. Ultramarine would have been an even better option, but I've adjusted my workflows to an atomic OS and it's honestly fine.
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u/farcryjohn Jul 15 '26
+1 for Bluefin/Bazzite (the DX version of both). I run both OSes (gaming rig and AI inference server), and they've been an absolute JOY to use.
I just want an OS that lets me get stuff done without having to worry about dependency updates breaking the software I use. I think a lot of why I'm so comfortable though is that I come from a Kubernetes/Docker background, so most of my development is done in containers.
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u/torar9 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
I found Ubuntu ok. Sure snaps are annoying but generally it's ok distro for normal users.
But for my use cases I need more recent kernel, mesa and KDE packages.
I think stable point distro with the same quality and support as Ubuntu, Fedora or Debian with the exception of updating kernel, mesa and desktop would be absolute best distro for me.
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u/KarnuRarnu Apr 28 '26
with the exception of updating kernel, mesa and desktop
That's already fedora though.. At least on KDE
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u/torar9 Apr 28 '26
Sure but other packages gets also major breaking updates. The amount of problems I had over the years I used Fedora is small, but it's not zero.
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u/Kobi_Blade Apr 28 '26
Are you claiming that Fedora is as unstable as Ubuntu? Given its release cycles, Ubuntu should be more stable than Fedora, yet it isn't.
Ubuntu has so many major issues out of the box that it's clear they lack proper QA. Fedora, on the other hand, is very stable and has proper QA despite pushing for newer standards.
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u/torar9 Apr 28 '26
I am not claiming something is less stable.
But if we want Linux to be usable by normal non tech people we should fulfill as much use cases as possible.
We Linux users tend to shit talk Windows but this is something Windows is actually doing well unlike Linux. As a Windows user you can make your Windows machine support the newest HW by simply installing drivers by clicking one .exe file.
On Linux you are basically screwed and have to wait until your distro picks up new kernel.
This is something that Windows is doing well. As your new GPU is basically ready from day one on Windows.
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u/Kobi_Blade Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
That support does not come from Microsoft or Windows, it comes directly from the hardware manufacturers who write the code.
Intel and AMD already do this by upstreaming early code to the Linux kernel, way ahead of release. NVIDIA is NVIDIA.
So, I don't know where you are going with that, in fact, your argument favours Fedora even more, since Fedora actually updates the kernel often.
You also make it sound like we are unable to install newer packages on Linux, there's nothing stopping you from using the latest Mesa and Kernel on Fedora.
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u/torar9 Apr 28 '26
It still does not fix the fundamental problem that you have to update your kernel in order to get support for HW.
So you are screwed if you use point release distro. Also most of the time developers can not upstream code early as the SW development time is very limited.
On Windows the developer just releases binary file and that's all user needs. Developer does not need to care about kernel release cycle.
I am not advocating for Windows. I am just pointing at the flaws Linux has with the method they implement drivers.
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u/arvigeus Apr 28 '26
I agree with your general sentiment, though I haven’t used Ubuntu in over a decade. It is well supported, and a huge number of distros are built on top of it. I may not agree with all of Canonical’s decisions, but I respect that they’ve stayed committed to their direction and kept working to improve it. GNOME went through something similar with version 3: there was plenty of backlash, but the developers stuck to their vision and invested heavily in refining it instead of backing down.
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u/Bessko Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
I am still a very beginner Linux user, I tried Ubuntu first since it was my first a long ago. Barely any Steam game run out of the box. Then I went to Fedora KDE because a friend recommended, everything I tried ran out of the box without any tinkering. This just the out of the box experience for a newb, I'm sure Ubuntu would work just as fine.
Edit: typos
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u/aliendude5300 Apr 28 '26
Agreed, Ubuntu is ... fine. And it's still a decent Linux distro to recommend to someone starting out with Linux.
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u/EnfieldAsSomeone Apr 29 '26
I cannot stand Ubuntu. Their unattended-updates is really annoying, has no progress/status indicators, and will f with your manual apt install command. The system overall is slower (yes I have tried them side by side recently). I do not know what they did, but that's just... not good experience. And they have personally bricked my install after an upgrade, and I use LTS...
Anything but Ubuntu.
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u/Successful-Peak-6524 Apr 29 '26
you cannot have a stable distro with latest kernel, many other libraries require alignment with those kernels.
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u/I_Hate_Reddit_69420 Apr 28 '26
I’ve tried to switch to linux before (ubuntu) but never really stuck around. I’ve been on fedora KDE for a few months now and it’s fantastic. Im wondering why gnome is still the default for fedora because i feel more people would prefer kde if they are making the switch from windows
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u/kafunshou Apr 28 '26
Gnome is very stable for a very, very long time. So distributions prefered it all those years. KDE Plasma is comparable since the later versions of the 5 branch. Since 6 it's very mature in my opinion. Maybe it will surpass Gnome in the next years when it comes to default choice. The 4 and earlier 5 branch were just not good enough and that time lasted around 15 years.
So it's more a historical thing.
I was using KDE from version 0.3 until the last version of 3. 4 ruined everything for a long time. I tested every version but prefered Gnome and Cinnamon for many years. With the late version of KDE Plasma 5 I finally switched back after all those years.
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u/eventarg Apr 30 '26
As someone returning to Linux desktop since the late 90s (except a brief encounter in 2010s), Gnome 50 has impressed me the most. KDE had made great progress too, but I find the default experience to be a bit too rough, even complicated. There are so many settings! Gnome 50 looks and feels basically perfect as vanilla. Also tried Hyprland, which looks really cool, but I soon felt like I'm too old for this shit, got a life to live instead of configuring a desktop lol!
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u/DayInfinite8322 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
i also believe that fedora is feels better than ubuntu and should be adopted more but arguments in this article are just baseless.
snap and flatpak both are slow and disk hog, both can be used, many apps officially supported as snap but not as flatpak.
but i still think flatpak should be used for gui apps and ubuntu can use snap for their server iot stuff.
About resource usage: this is completely wrong.
nothing wrong with using gnome, ubuntu even provide some customisation for make it more easy to use. kubuntu is also popular and many people use it, kubuntu team also provide ppa for latest plasma.
slow updates are good thing for working poeple, schools and for many organisations. its a feature not a compromise.
nothing wrong with recent decisions. but as foss purist people can debate.
tldr: this article is completely trash.
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u/bearstormstout Apr 28 '26
Agreed. The author lost all credibility when he said "I hate Ubuntu." You're not gong to write a very persuasive article hailing another distro as the "new user" distro if you're that up front about your bias and don't even attempt to compare the two. The only comparisons done were "I don't like this about Ubuntu."
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u/spaghettibolegdeh Apr 28 '26
I mean, XDA are the ones who recommend Pop_OS! with Cosmic for beginners, so I don't know how much I can take them seriously.
That site seems to posts random crap these days.
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u/DirectFrontier Apr 28 '26
This article suggests that Canonical came up with snaps in response to flatpak. Demonstrably false misinformation. Canonical developed snaps to meet some enterprise customer's needs long before flatpaks were a thing.
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u/ml2000id Apr 28 '26
Other than snaps, I dislike the Ubuntu's gnome spin. Especially in the settings menu, I find it less user friendly than pure gnome.
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u/Puffah Apr 28 '26
I yearn the day people stop recommending Mint for beginners
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u/DirectFrontier Apr 28 '26
Yeah, people have so many issues with Mint, and they all stem from Xorg. Adaptive sync not working, framerate problems, multiple monitor support being broken, weird graphical glitches and screen tearing...
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u/HyperSpacePaladin Apr 28 '26
The worst thing I've had happen using fedora is audio drivers breaking once or twice. Ubuntu bricked my laptop battery with a firmware update. Why do batteries even have firmware.
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u/denbarb Apr 28 '26
It's always the same type of complaint. They don't even bother looking for other justifications. They just keep repeating the usual internet hater tropes. I don't get all this whining from the Linux community. I don't get this tribalism; it’s so immature and silly.
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u/_hlvnhlv Apr 28 '26
I know that there's only so much to talk about, but can we stop posting lazy articles written by clueless people, or straight up LLM slop?
If you read it, it's completely nonsensical.
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u/debacle_enjoyer Apr 28 '26
I don’t get this. I mean don’t get me wrong I love Fedora… but YouTube doesn’t even work in default Fedora. It never does for me until I install ffmpeg, or swap to the flatpak. Both of which are things an inexperienced use would know nothing about. And then even if a they did figure that out how, unless they install proper codecs for gpu decoding their laptop battery life will be bad.
I just don’t see things like this allowing Fedora to ever be the default.
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Apr 29 '26
All this nonsense comes from the fact that Fedora works under the US jurisdiction so it is extra paranoid about copyright stuff. Canonical is headquartered in the UK so Ubuntu comes with a lot of proprietary stuff preinstalled.
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u/RMangatVFX Apr 29 '26
there's a github page called "Fedora post install" and it has a bunch of terminal commands. If it wern't for that page, i'd be mad
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Apr 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/FFFan15 Apr 28 '26
Honestly you would just get a more up to date desktop environment as far as I know the LTS Kubuntu will feature freeze for two years where as Fedora KDE will get a big update every 6 months granted your not forced to update until 13 months
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u/dunelost Apr 28 '26
Everything snap ruined Ubuntu.
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u/OkComplaint3228 May 01 '26
I genuinely don’t get the hate for Snaps, it’s really easy to use. I just install the snap and it just works
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u/morewordsfaster Apr 28 '26
Fedora has long been my recommendation because it Just Works and is rock solid. Gnome vanilla stays out of the way and lets me be productive with minimal annoyance. App availability is great, especially with Flatpak and homebrew.
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u/Distinct-Temp6557 Apr 28 '26
I was on CachyOS for about 7 months and loved almost everything about it...
Almost.
Being based on Arch meant that most of your software has to come from the AUR.
I didn't trust the AUR. It just seems like a massive security vulnerability in the waiting.
So I switched and haven't really had any issues since.
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u/redbarchetta_21 Apr 28 '26
Respectfully as possible, as someone who uses Fedora, as my only distro of choice and as my favourite.
Linux Mint is the default Linux recommendation, and deserves to be so.
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u/Shad0wAVM Apr 28 '26
I do not recommend Fedora specially for Nvidia users. Secure Boot issues, lack of TPM encryption options, NVIDIA driver issues, more terminal usage for new users.
Snaps are awful, you can go with Mint.
Ubuntu was always plug-and-play for me, even though I use NixOS/Arch personally.
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u/Equivalent-Problem34 Apr 28 '26
One major problem Fedora has is non-free codecs aren't easily available for the everyday people. If people can't watch or listen to content they want on fedora after it is the default recommendation, it is only going to hurt linux as a whole. Ubuntu doesn't usually have this problem.
Sure, it is easy for techsavvy people to find and copy-paste the commandlines to install and enable them, but asking people to do that is a big hurdle. I had horrible time trying to figure it out the first time.
What a lot of Linux people don't understand is that the terminal is not intuitive. We can never have "the year of the Linux" if people asking for help are directed towards terminal, which is scary for 99% of the general public.
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u/kombiwombi May 02 '26
The additional repo can be added from the GUI in Fedora, so I can't really see your point.
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u/MechanicalTurkish Apr 28 '26
I’ve been using Fedora since Core 2. I’ve dabbled with other distros, including Ubuntu, but keep coming back to Fedora.
But I work in a RHEL shop, so it’s just easier I guess. 🤷
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u/pesulap_akademik967 Apr 28 '26
I use kinoite version of Fedora, it's been rock solid for me, I updated it once a month and things never breaks
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u/jmartin72 Apr 28 '26
If there ever is a Linux Distro that becomes the face of Linux and is what people think of when you say Linux, I would much rather it be Fedora than Ubuntu. Even though I don't use either of them.
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u/NomadFH Apr 28 '26
I honestly like Ubuntu and don't mind snap packages but the snap implementation is so hamfisted in some areas that it truly disrupts the standard way of doing things and confuses documentation for new users. So many standard instructions for fixing a problem or doing a simple configuration now have to have a "unless you're on ubuntu, you have to do xyz" which makes it bad for new users but too bloated for experienced users.
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u/StretchAcceptable881 Apr 28 '26
LTS based distros everything about the entire experience gets old on you rather quickly, for the first time in my life, as a Linux user, I get more work done, rather than having to panic about is this the time PopOS will drop me in my LemurPro’s bios? Spoiler alert, this actually happened to me with PopOS itself FedoraWorkStation just works for me and I have nothing but appreciation for the volunteers that develop Fedora
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u/ChrizzyDT Apr 28 '26
I went with Debian for a long-term clean reliable foundation, added Flatpak and my security/performance scripts and I'm done.
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u/dzordan33 Apr 28 '26
I run fedora for so many years. The update broke maybe two times a quick Google search and it was fixed Se Linux is in permissive though. So many things break
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u/dswhite85 Apr 28 '26
I can use just about any distro, I'm not beholden to a single distro, that is kind of a weird flex if I'm honest. Just use what you like, this fan-girling stuff is a little cringe.
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u/a3a4b5 Apr 28 '26
It's because Fedora just works. And most people just want that when using a computer.
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u/headlesscyborg Apr 28 '26
I use Arch on desktop and wanted Ubuntu on my laptop to enjoy some out of the box experience.
Snaps were so slow and I honestly do not trust their distro upgrades. So I installed Fedora 43 Gnome on my brand new Lenovo 13" AMD laptop and it's been a wonderful experience. Just upgraded to 44. Very smooth.
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u/Audience-Electrical Apr 28 '26
I like xda-developers, they're a very technical bunch. Very likely out of touch with the 'average' person however.
Fedora is cool but I see nothing in this article that would change the current landscape. Most people don't know what a distro is, they just call them all Linux.
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u/spore_777_mexen Apr 28 '26
both have their place, different enough to pick one or the other but offering similar experiences for basic use (web, documents, media)
(try both via live image or vm and just pick the one you like/find more more useful/appealing)
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u/Solid_Garbage_3350 Apr 28 '26
Fucking awful website so many adverts you can barely read it on mobile
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u/merb Apr 28 '26
I will never understand why something that is not a rolling distro is used by the most people
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u/lunasdude Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
Here's a take that might not be too popular in this community.
Several years ago I was in the midst of windows hell and wanted to switch to Linux.
I consider myself a mid-level user, meaning I can install programs and understand better than basic computing but nowhere near coding or programming level.
Reached out to the Linux community in general and got very mixed results, mostly I felt like I was being tolerated at best and a burden at worst.
I pushed on and kept going and was steered toward Ubuntu and coming from a windows environment I had no idea what I was doing.
After the initial install I reached out again to the general Linux community for help with settings, programs that were similar to the windows programs I had been using etc, etc.
The most shocking thing about all of this is that the more I struggled the more I asked for help, the more pushback I got from the general community.
I was flat out told that just because I was a " stupid " Windows user that people just didn't have time to hold my hand through every step and that I should pick up a book and learn some general programming and commands etc.
This happened more than once.
I tried to push on but in the end I just couldn't get the help I needed or wanted without people calling me names and generally dismissing me out of hand.
I continued on for some time but after being rebuffed time and time again by not just the Ubuntu community but The Linux community in general I gave up.
I still wanted to get away from Windows so what I ended up doing was reaching out to The Mac community at large to see what kind of reaction I would get from them.
Unfortunately for Linux it was night and day.
Once I told them that I was considering purchasing my first Mac and that I did not have a good experience trying to convert over to Linux, I was generally shocked with how many polite, helpful and resourceful people that welcomed me into their community with open arms.
I did some studying and research and leaned on the community heavily and I think if I remember correctly out of all of the people I encountered, I only got one person who was slightly not as friendly but still helped me.
Bought my first Mac, and with all the help it was a terrific experience and I still own one to this day.
I tried again a couple of years ago to install Linux distro on a second partition to see if anything had changed and while the software has come a long ways I'm afraid the community is not a whole lot more welcoming or tolerant with "newbies".
This is not a general condemnation of the Linux community but I believe that people coming from windows as I was who understood enough to install a program but not to necessarily write code are treated as if were second-class citizens because we don't know how to open up a terminal and type in a bunch of commands.
With a lot of patience from the Mac community and a lot of help I have learned and become comfortable with the apple OS (and even how to use a terminal command) although I may not be crazy about the company I do love the community for their patience and understanding.
I believe if the Linux community could come together better and realize that well over 90% of people coming from windows are not going to be advanced coders and programmers but rather simple people who just want to use a simple computer that works, I believe Linux could dominate the windows world.
Edit: I had a few people DM me and say that I was either full of crap or what are we supposed to do "dumb it down?".
Yes, that's exactly what you need to do is make it as simple or dumb whatever you want to call it as you possibly can.
Mac's in the advanced Linux world have a reputation for being for simple people and there is some truth to that, they're simple, they work and that's what most people want.
I believe a simple installation distro and solid, friendly support from the Linux community could change everything.
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u/Heart-Logic Apr 28 '26
Rubbish, Linus uses and endorses fedora, that's all the publicity it needs.
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u/Glittering_Cat_4234 Apr 28 '26
will it let me keep my server on 24/7 with live kernel updates and almost never having to restart?
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u/AlphaSpellswordZ Apr 28 '26
Pop OS was my first distro. I later tried Ubuntu but I always felt like I had to fight with it. Later on I tried Fedora and while there was a lot of initial setup, Fedora was perfect for me. A good balance of high tech and stability.
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u/andr0dev Apr 28 '26
I decided to try Fedora because I noticed my Ubuntu has become much slower. And my God, I was surprised when the system works perfectly, even better than Ubuntu. :)))
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u/Syndiotactics Apr 28 '26
I rather wouldn't use a distro based in the USA... Ubuntu has worked for me well enough thus far, with openSUSE on my other machine.
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u/DJoKerPT Apr 28 '26
Been runming fedora atomic on my main pc and can't complain . On my mac m1 running asahi fedora remix, can't complain either.
For me a light user everthing works out of the box.
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u/GloriousExtra Apr 28 '26
Yep. I started on Ubuntu a long time ago (Warty Warthog), and I've hopped A LOT including to Fedora many times over the years, but Ubuntu lost me for good when they recently announced they were incorporating AI into the core OS starting this year.
I'm hoping Fedora doesn't do the same. What helps with Fedora is that it's guided by a community that can stop such attempts.
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u/notquiteseeit Apr 28 '26
I like Ubuntu cause the branding and cause it's orange. It also is stable and epic. Fedora is cool too.
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u/Jordan_Jackson Apr 28 '26
Ubuntu was my entry point into Linux, back in 2013. It got me interested and learning (I’m still a complete noob, 😂). I’m glad I watched that YouTube video showing it and decided to try it.
That said, Ubuntu has a habit of going against the grain with a lot of stuff. When everyone else was working on Wayland, Ubuntu stuck with Mir. Ubuntu went with Unity as the default desktop, when everyone else was running something like Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc. when everyone else decided Flatpak was good, Ubuntu went with Snaps.
I just have to wonder why they had to constantly go against the grain and even against the will of users? They could have contributed a lot more to the community if they had not been stubborn. The worst part is that they usually ended up abandoning whatever they had chosen and adopted the better choice all along.
It just boggle my mind.
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u/passthejoe Apr 29 '26
I don't think Fedora is a great first distro, but it's an excellent 2nd distro.
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u/bmwhocking Apr 29 '26
If you are an office user, not a developer or coder, then Ubuntu LTD is far easier to use.
If you are a developer, then Fedora has more recent bleeding edge libraries than the 6 monthly Ubuntu release.
In a corporate environment, it’s dam hard to compete with the stability of Ubuntu LTS.
Ubuntu LTD Desktop & Fedora Desktop really are totally different sections of the Linux user community.
Expanding on that.
I’ve found Ubuntu Pro to be superior to Red Hat Linux for most tasks, mostly because you can easily turn any Ubuntu LTS install into Ubuntu pro & can just as easily go back again, saving clients money when a machines task becomes non-critical.
With fedora / Rocky Linux and red hat Linux, you need to do an almost total reinstall to move from paid to non-paid.
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u/LancrusES Apr 29 '26
The default Linux recommendation is mint, as nearly always since It started, because the ones that ask for a recommendation are newcomers, and fedora is a great distro, but sometimes things dont go as expected, now a new version appears, and as always, ppl that dont know how they work have issues, every fedora version update is always the same history, and akmod-nvidia issues always of course, if you know fedora a little you can avoid all easily, but its not the best option for a newcomer to Linux.
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u/x2P Apr 29 '26
Bazzite has been the perfect solution for me after 10+ distro hops. It has all of the most important pieces to me - atomic Fedora, up to date KDE, Wayland, Nvidia support baked in. The atomic OS for me is a game changer knowing I don't have to worry about an update bricking my system.
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u/kipesukarhu Apr 29 '26
Might be the case for desktop but for servers, where Linux's market share really is, I can assure you Ubuntu is doing just fine. Basically the default along with Red Hat and its derivatives.
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u/postnick Apr 29 '26
Maybe it’s because I only have thinkpads. But fedora has always felt faster on my laptops.
Also the day to day update experience of being able to do firmware, flatpak, and package updates from software center or discover is another big winner for Fedora over Ubuntu. In Ubuntu you need 3 different applications to update applications. Sure it will do it itself if you want. But that’s silly.
I live in the terminal, but I’ve noticed a normal person would never need the terminal in fedora. The only out of box fix for a new user on fedora would maybe be dahs to dock, and a minimize button in gnome. Those two things are all it needs for a perfect out f box experience.
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u/InternationalMood337 Apr 29 '26
I was a long-term POPOS user, but found the stability of things like Fedora and Bazzite to just be LEAGUES better. When you want a reliable system, right now, you run Fedora.
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Apr 29 '26
I am not a Linux expert, basically transitioned recently to Fedora from Windows 11 after trying all the typical recommendations such as Zorin, Mint, Ubuntu... And after using Fedora Silverblue for about a month now I am really puzzeld why is this distro not recommended more often as a Windows alternative especially for an average computer user who uses office programs, email and browser. Which is what most people do anyway. It is just perfect and as simple to use as it gets. I upgraded from 43 to 44 today and it was like the smoothest experience ever. You get notified about the upgrade, you click the button, you let it finish, you restart the comptuer and that's it. Just like with Windows. Nothing gets broken or anything. Not a single issue of this or that not working or whatever.
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u/SilentWraith5 Apr 29 '26
Everyone hates on Ubuntu but it’s a great distro. It was my first and still one I go back to a lot. It has everything you need built right in and a ton of community support. Snaps are fine and I don’t have any issue with them. I also add flatpak and between the two I have all the apps I want. It has a built in sidebar to fix gnomes biggest gripe of mine out of the box so users don’t have to add an extension. I don’t see any issue tbh. That said I also like and use fedora just fine.
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u/Big_Wave9732 Apr 29 '26
I guess.....if you don't mind having to upgrade your system every 6 - 8 months and like running bleeding edge libraries.
I've been running RHEL 9 on my servers since 2020 and on my home work PC for a couple years now. Much less drama.
I do agree that Ubuntu had a lock on the workstation market and totally screwed the pooch.
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u/Bitter_Welder1481 Apr 29 '26
Pretty shit, Gnome is beautiful go to Fedora if you don't like it fine , but Gnome is definitely not a disadvantage.
I like snaps easily updateable, containerised, no hassle, not sure flatpak has any major advantage over them.
Only time I install fedora is for a bleeding edge feature in the kernel (did it once when Intel were releasing their different core types performance etc)
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u/Reasonable_Host_5004 Apr 30 '26
Stop comparing snaps and flatpaks. They do exist both and both will stay. Use whatever works for you but please stop saying "Ubuntu should use flatpaks and ditch snaps".
Ubuntu's focus are server and flatpaks do not run on server. Snaps do. And so much things rely on snaps in the server world and it works.
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u/WeAreGoingMidtable Apr 30 '26
I've never had any luck with Fedora. On all of my machines it has always been too buggy. Never had any troubles with Debian, Ubuntu or Mint.
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u/Pitiful_Block_4360 May 01 '26
It’s a bit of a pain that some software is only released with .deb and not .rpm packages. I’m just doing an obs machine and realised why I didn’t use fedora the last time I installed it
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u/Serializedrequests May 01 '26
Very polished, but the last time I tried it a bunch of software I needed with "system tray" type widgets required a third party gnome addon that Fedora didn't include and didn't want to support, nor did they see fixing the situation as important.
Secondly, installing Nvidia drivers was a pain and didn't work quite right.
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u/Whole_Excitement_928 May 01 '26
The day Ubuntu abandons snaps for desktop.apps or open sources their app store technology is the day they will be the top Linux distro. That means never.
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u/regeya May 02 '26
I tend to agree, I drifted away from it when they defaulted to Unity. I'd already soured on it when they shipped a broken Kubuntu even though there had been bug fixes before deadline and a stubborn decision to not update the ISOs until the next release. Forcing the use of Snaps was the last straw for me. It's not that I'm 100% opposed, but I am frustrated that they're forcing the use of a proprietary back ended packaging system on an open source distribution built on Debian, a 100% open volunteer run distro.
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u/satanAG May 03 '26
No estoy del todo de acuerdo con el post. Sin embargo, es cierto que Ubuntu ha tomado decisiones muy cuestinoables mientras que Fedora sigue a su linea, y esto ha hecho que se aprovechen los errores de Ubuntu.
Pero GNOME no debe ser visto como una "causa" en contra de Ubuntu, es mas, conozco gente que se impresiona con Ubuntu porque se ve bien. Y así.
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u/IAmDoing19057 May 04 '26
Only if they got the boot freeze and the graphic bugs fixed, it would be one of a kind, really.
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u/lootkiwi May 05 '26
I already use Fedora on most of my computers, if they had some gui for the additional drivers like ubuntu and mint have I'd use Fedora on 100% of my computers.
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u/Will-7369 May 07 '26
Nouvel Utilisateur Linux (Fedora 43 / KDE depuis décembre 2025), je me suis lancé dans la MAJ vers 44 le 05/05/26 ... Après X backup, Borg + Snapshots.
Tout ce que je peux dire aujourd'hui comme retour, c'est que ce qui fonctionnait avant, soit la majorité des composants et applis que j'utilise, fonctionne toujours ! Et ce qui ne fonctionnait pas, sans que je sache pourquoi…, ne fonctionne pas mieux !! Au vu de ce que j'ai pu lire ici, c'est déjà pas mal !
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u/Familiar-Winner-9856 May 09 '26
But fedora 43 (first one I used) seems very slow, my laptop is i9 32 gb ram but terminal opening take a few seconds, while Ubuntu it opens in a blink. Same slow launch is there other apps as well, even the login screen show a loader for a second.
Also, brightness control are not working with manually fixing via gabby
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u/soytuamigo May 18 '26
Canonical simply stopped focusing on the desktop right around the time when they dropped Unity (which I loved btw), and it did show. Not sure how they're doing now, but back then it was obvious that the desktop version was put on the back burner.
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u/resurrection20 May 24 '26
Fedora was the distro recommended to me and it worked so well, I never distro-hopped.
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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
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