Hi there Fedorians, I am very new to this and I have one fundamental question. Coming from Windows, I am used to be able to install any compatible versions.
As I understand, the Fedora Design Suite comes with pre-installed apps and tools. Which is what directed my web searches to the project.
Now I wonder, will I be able to install any versions of i.e. Blender on this Linux distribution/project? Because I will have to run Blender 4.2.X and I would like to also install Blender 4.4.X.
The same question goes for Darktable and other apps. Is it possible to install the latest and/or any version I want?
Or should I go for a vanilla Linux distro and manually install what I need? And how about Wine? (If I feel adventurous I might go down the rabbit hole of installing Windows app like Lightroom… Because I really really want to get away from Windows.)
For GUI apps you can consider using Flatpaks[1], if available. While the standard option is to always have the latest version of a branch, via updates, there is the possibility to install from different branches. See also the Warehouse app, which apparently manages this task without needing the CLI.
The other option is to use containers for older versions of apps. E.g. while Fedora 42 and 41 has Blender v.4.4.x in the repos, Fedora 40 has v.4.2.x[2].
This answer is general, and not particular to Fedora Design Suite offering.
If I understand you correctly, there might be problems installing an “older” version of Blender on Fedora 42 or 41? Or could I simply install whatever Blender version manually?
Or are you saying that I can install whatever version, just not from the proposed market place?
One advantage of Windows, since it carries a lot of old code, is that it’s good at running ancient apps. I somehow can’t imagine that an LTS version of some app would not work on the latest Linux distro… At least within, let’s say 3 - 5 versions, or within a räsonable amount of months.
I am not afraid of the console at all. In the contrary, I am looking forward to get the power back at my fingertips. While rusty, I admit! I remember that moving hundreds of frames on Irix Magic Desktop took minutes, sometimes for ever and in the shell it took a split second. Also rlogging in and render on various machines was a breeze and my bash scripts for renaming files and various other things were something I really missed on Windows. I actually ran a command line Interpreter on Windows which let me use unix commands in Windows and even ran some of my bash scripts, for years…
But since I switched form Maya to Blender, I fear a bit that incompatibility and insanely fast release cycles and non descriptive support, could be occurring on Linux in general.
On the other hand I remember that we needed to change the patch level to write to a DAT and revert that change, to be able to run Softimage or Power Animator… But besides the “gifted” bicycles and rod rage trips through the desert, which were part of buying a lot of sgi machines, there also was 24/7 on-site support included.
Thanks again and sorry for the noobish questions and text walling…
In that case I would suggest getting familiar with the concepts of:
traditional software packaging in general and DNF as RPM-based Linux distributions’ package management utility
Flatpaks, as an alternative way of packaging/installing/managing applications and runtimes
container technologies (you can start with Toolbx/toolbox, which comes preinstalled on Fedora).
I imagine you’ll be able to use the current versions of specific apps as RPMs or Flatpaks, and the older versions either as Flatpaks, or within containers.
This is just a general approach, you’ll have to try it yourself with the specific apps for which you’d like to have different versions installed.
!