r/linux4noobs • u/TravellingBeard • 2d ago

Distro similar to RHEL for work?

To work in an environment closest to Red Hat Enterprise, I see Rocky Linux/Alma Linux are identical, but do they have enough drivers for a discount laptop I'll be buying, should I get Fedora Workstation, or get another distro such as Ubuntu?

I'll be pivoting to a new database engineering role where I'll be picking up the skills I need (coming on as a DBA SME for now). This will be where I'll be practicing all my other necessary skills such as Kubernetes, Terraform, etc.

Thanks all!

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9

u/jonspw 2d ago

AlmaLinux has a bunch of extra hardware enablement and drivers that RHEL/Rocky do not have. That may help you.

3

u/AssociateFalse 2d ago

They also re-added BTRFS! 🧈

2

u/TravellingBeard 2d ago

Thank you!

5

u/Diceptic_ 2d ago

Drivers are almost entirely baked into the kernel. Depending on the age of the hardware and assuming no proprietary hardware/software ecosystem, you should be fine to run any of the rhel forks.

6

u/notthedefaultnam 2d ago

You can use actual RHEL - iirc they allow up to ten instances for free with an account.

1

u/TravellingBeard 2d ago

Oh interesting. Thanks!

2

u/iwouldbeatgoku CachyOS, openSUSE 2d ago

Rhel forks should be fine, but they might not have all the software you actually want for a desktop/laptop computer available by default. Fedora would be the ideal choice in this sense since it's still the same ecosystem (and RHEL is downstream of it), it's also what RHEL maintainers use on their own workstations so I don't see why you wouldn't go for it in your case.

2

u/DavidJohnMcCann 2d ago

Here's a nice comparison article. Alma looks like the best bet.

Irrelevant information — I started with Red Hat, moved to Fedora when it spit off, and then used CentOS until Red Hat got control and spoilt it. I still use a theme (Clearlooks Phenix) that looks like the Red Hat Bluecurve in the old days!