HI there
I am Mohsen. nice to meet you all. I am looking for a distro of Linux that be easy for my family too. We need a distro that we can brows web , read pdf books,print papers with my Hp Printer and to have something that has office collection. if it be modern looking its better .I have an old computer with 2 Gb of ram and enough HDD space . My CPU also is 3.4 GHz . now can fedora desktop help me, or do you know any other helpful distro. Thank You All.
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Welcome to AskFedora, @moshen77
Yes, I think Fedora could fulfill those needs as long as one of you is able to setup and maintain the system(s). After that, it is mainly a matter of which Desktop Environment you choose. Many prefer KDE, while my personal choice is Gnome. There are several others available, too.
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Thank you dear blueshurricane4. I will try your suggestion.
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I’d recommend you try Kubuntu rather than Fedora as Fedora requires some experience with Linux. Kubuntu is quite beginner-friendly and its Desktop Environment, Plasma, is lighter, familiar, more modern-looking (imo) than GNOME on vanilla Ubuntu. You should be able to install software you need with KDE Discover, and easily troubleshoot probems on AskUbuntu. Grab the latest 19.10 Kubuntu here.
Fedora is very friendly as you wont have to fix as many bugs. Also the software selection is very good.
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I think Fedora is a good choice for new users.
The release cycle provides a newer kernel, which means your laptop/desktop hardware is more likely to work. Fedora strikes the perfect balence of new AND stable.
The default DE, Gnome, is unique but it is a very popular DE so there are tons of resources available. Not to mention there is a little guide on how to navigate Gnome after a fresh install.
There’s also a great community on Ask forums and here on Discussion forum to assist with any questions.
The only hurdle I might see is if you have specific software requirements that are non-free software. But if you go to flathub.org you can quickly add the flathub repo and get many of the tools you need. There are also the rpmfusion repos if you need non-free system packages. So there are tons of resources.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that GNOME is the default DE. Yes, GNOME does
get the prime billing, with the GNOME Spin being shown above other options,
but images are available for each of the main DEs.
I’m not sure what exactly the flathub stuff has to do with Fedora, that’s more
of a Silverblue thing. Right? At least, as far as I know.
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Since Fedora and Red Hat are the prime movers behind both Flatpak and Flathub, I’d say it has a lot to do with it, although both the hub and the tech itself are distro-agnostic.
Not really, no. Silverblue enforces it since dnf is taken out of the equation, but I’ve been using Flatpak and Flathub since it was called xdg-app and I was still on Arch Linux. I’ve wanted to reduce the number of root-installed packages since back then, both for security reasons and to reduce the dependency hellscape you inevitably get into with package managers packaging GUI apps (even the AUR (which is great, so much better than copr) struggles with this)).
Yea, maybe “default” isn’t the right word. I just think of it that way since it comes in the Workstation ISO.
@evenreven said it really well and i agree. Flatpaks deploy a better security model by abstracting resources out of system space and will reduce future upgrade concerns.
Fedora project has started packaging flatpaks that are available for all Fedora editions. Since these are built from free software packages, if a user needs non-free software, flathub.org is a good resource.
Since Fedora and Red Hat are the prime movers behind both Flatpak and
Flathub, I’d say it has a lot to do with it, although both the hub and the
tech itself are distro-agnostic.
I don’t really understand how this is the case, but I’ll have to take your
word for it. I guess it’s possible they shovel that mess at folks in
Workstation?
I’ve wanted to reduce the number of
root-installed packages since back then, both for security reasons and to
reduce the dependency hellscape you inevitably get into with package
managers packaging GUI apps (even the AUR (which is great, so much better
than copr) struggles with this)).
Oh boy. I wish people wouldn’t fall for that dogma. We have RPM for a reason.
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Interesting that you’re so out of step with the chief developers of your preferred distribution. They’re the ones taking it in this direction, you know? And yes, Workstation too.
Personally, I think flatpak, despite its bugs and workarounds needed, is the best thing to happen to Linux gui apps in a decade. The fact bad tech like appimage exists at all is because universal distro-agnostic packaging is necessary for application developers, and keeping applications updated in the distro standard point release model is almost impossible, making copr and ppas necessary, with instability and dependency hell as result.
You’re talking about Flatpak like it’s some kind of violent disease that has befallen your family. I guess that makes me the bearer of bad news: KDE isn’t immune either.
But this is getting very silly, and very much off-topic.
To answer the original post instead: Yes! I think Fedora Workstation (preferably with Gnome, although that’s a matter of taste) is a very nice distro for Linux newbies, and my go to recommendation for newbies now. I used to recommend Mint, and before that, Ubuntu, but now Fedora is the overall best one. (Silverblue is my preferred distro for myself, but some parts of it are a bit weird and counter-intuitive for newbies.)
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People are packaging KDE apps there, yes. But the KDE spin doesn’t include
this nonsense, instead preferring traditional RPM packages provided by Fedora
itself.
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I’ve been pretty tempted to migrate some family from Mint (my previous distro of choice prior to Fedora) over to Fedora Silverblue. I’ve been sort of test piloting silverblue for myself, but I’m a dev so for me it is like an alien world I want to be a citizen of really badly.
I think for average users Silverblue could be really great! Especially if it follows on the promise of a safe system that can easily be upgraded, which so far I’ve experienced is true. The weirdest part will be of course applications. But my family uses firefox and maybe libre office. So Silverblue is already more than enough.
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I successfully switched 4 of my family members laptops to Silverblue. Why?
- it’s easier to maintain the OS. I simply update the base image once every few days/weeks and they update Flatpaks themselves. Really simple and much more straightforward that Ubuntu or any other similar distro;
- the OS is a lot harder to mess with. Read-only /root partition really makes it robust and secure. Even if they do something wrong, I can simply rollback to a previous image;
- bloat is minimized;
- I consider Silverblue to be the future of a Linux desktop OS;
- Fedora loves FOSS and their community and devs are one of the biggest contributors to Linux overall!
The only thing I do after a fresh install is disabling the bundled in Firefox. I install the one from Flathub because it has all the necessary codecs built in! Therefore I don’t need to enable 3rd party repositories, and every app I need has a Flatpak version. 
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It’s very important to make a distinction here between non technical users and newbies
For non technical i would agree having Silverblue set up by an experienced linux user and admin is the way to go. For all the reasons @roc1nante270 points out above. And Getting non techies into the FOSS/ Appropriate Technology Ecosystem is the right and ethical thing to do.
Now if your a novice linux user I’d go with workstation or a spin and enjoy the ride Fedora could be a little better at it’s teaching function, but things are improving in that regard, and the community is friendly enough.
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This is very true. I set some family up with Silverblue and after only a week or so they were asking me if I could revert them back to Linux Mint, which they had gotten used to.
I’m pretty sure it was the shift from Cinnamon to GNOME that was the real culprit, but they wanted to be comfortable in Mint so I complied happily.
I really wouldn’t recommend Silverblue for anyone, but Fedora KDE Spin is an
excellent experience for new users. I’ve had success getting 300+ to use KDE
Spin as daily drivers with a previous employer. From everything I’ve heard,
the GNOME spin is also alright, for users that are coming from MacOS.
I’d wholeheartedly agree with @roc1nante270, Silverblue is a very stable choice. Good luck @mohsen77, and welcome to the community.
What makes you “not recommend Silverblue for anyone”?
Have you tried it before and have had bad experiences?
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