I’m an experienced Linux user, you could say I was an early adopter. My roots go back to mid ninety’s influenced by friends and a disdain for Microsoft . I have used several distros over the years from Puppy, PClinxOS, Ubuntu, Crunch Bang , Arch, etc. Mostly Ubuntu and minimal installs with Openbox or Fluxbox and a smattering of LXDE , but never Unity.
So I’ve decided to revisit Fedora and want to know what sets it apart from the crowd in y’alls opinions.
Other than the different package manager(dnf) vs (apt), I’m not seeing a big diference.
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Staff note: such threads almost never lead anywhere. So, if it gets out of hand, we’ll close the topic.
As far as “what makes Fedora different?”, if you have worked with so many different distributions, you’ll know that they basically provide the same set of software. What is different between them is the community, its philosophy and its policies which dictate its products.
So, please try the live image out and see what you think. if it works for you, use it.
More on what the Fedora community is about here:
Edit: if you have specific questions on how software in Fedora is provided to users and so on, please ask them as separate topics.
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Maybe I should have phrased it a little differently.
What is it about Fedora that keeps you using it? What features , systems updates, community are the reasons you stay ? I stayed with Ubuntu for the community originally and then because I was complacent and it was just easy to maintain. My biggest gripe with Ubuntu is they way you get orphaned on old releases.
This is again merely personal preference. I can give you some information, but you must make up your own mind.
Fedora is now balancing between being fast but stable when it comes to software. This also includes information on how frequently updates are pushed to users:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fesco/Updates_Policy/#stable-releases
Like most other distributions, the Fedora community is massive, with lots going on all the time:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/orgchart/
As for each release, Fedora follows a 13 month life cycle, so you either need to fresh install or upgrade to a new release every 13 months.
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Taking into account this
can I nonetheless share my answer to this:
@paulj, I 'm not as experienced as you and I haven’t tried Arch ) After coming from Windows I’ve started using Ubuntu, tried OpenSuse, Debian (somewhat), Mint a bit, etc.
I think I moved from Ubuntu primarily because of stale packages. I’ve started messing with ppa’s, tried to get a newer version of OpenOffice (then) with some success – because it was already available, and changes were promising, but it wasn’t in the repos, recompiled myself Warzone 2100 because it was changing rapidly and repos had quite an old version… It must have been the first program I’ve compiled myself) Fun days… ) that’s all on a non-LTS release.
After some distro hopping and having several options at once installed on my computer, in a course of a couple of years maybe I’ve found myself not using other distros anymore.
Fedora for me struck a near-perfect balance between stability and speed of updates, having new interesting things / technologies to look at and try. I haven’t try to go to bleeding edge like Arch, I’m not that adventurous, and now after some years even less so.
One of the most exiting things for me then was actually seeing with my own eyes, feeling with the tips of my fingers how the Linux was evolving – that’s kindled my interest a lot, fueled a sense of wonder. You don’t get this in Windows at all, just some jumps from release to release. Ubuntu/Suse was just too conservative for me to feel it, I think. I’ve seen things that were not quite useful or plain bad get better after a couple of releases. On Windows there’s just no such thing, you have to live with what you’ve got. And here I see real changes for the better with my own eyes 
And that’s now, I’ve heard a lot that really rough Linux desktop experience was before my time
I still see it regularly with Fedora. I think this real evolution also makes me want to help, to contribute – though I have a problem in this area which I justify with the lack of time. )
I do understand that these changes are generic to the Linux world, not Fedora specific. I think Fedora just helps me see them better, because it doesn’t afraid to try and test new things, because of it’s quite fast update cycle.
And actually I find yum/dnf much more convenient than apt I was really surprised to see that there’s no transaction history in apt (it’s dnf history), that I can’t see what the recent package changes were to troubleshoot a problem.
That’s all highly opinionated, of cause, an may not strike your interest at all ) I’m not sure if it’s of any use to anyone, but that’s what you’ve asked for)
I won’t talk about Fedora community. I’ve been using Fedora for about 10 years or more, but only now I’m trying to engage with other Fedora people. So far the experience is very good, thanks to people here at Ask Fedora. ))
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For me it is simple, besides things like community, packages, security and all the usual culprits, It’s about detecting my network printer. I have an Epson Workforce printer that is available via Wi-Fi for other users. Besides Fedora, none of the distributions that I have tried are able to detect the printer. It is a real pain to discover the correct way to use that printer with the other distributions.
Silly huh?
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Name any single metric for what YOU think makes a good distro;
Community
Features
Security
Speed
Stability
Ease of Use
Install Options
Support
others I’m forgetting, what is important to you?
By any metric which a distro may be judged, Fedora may or may not “Be #1” in a particular metric, but it scores high in all/any of them.
Been using since RedHat 5.2’ish, and have changed to the distro of the week a few occasions over the years; but have always started pining for Fedora, and always come back. Opinions may vary, but mine is that Fedora is simply the best.
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That will be an issue here too as we are close to bleeding edge. Releases come out about every six months and are supported for approximately 13 months. This means you could skip one release, but if you skip two you will stop getting updates.
That being said, updating Fedora to a new release is very easy and you don’t have to reinstall.
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I am currently using Fedora on one of my devices as it is the only distribution that works without any messing around, it is always stable and the community is really helpful.
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My $0.02:
Using Fedora is a way to see the future of the Linux ecosystem; it’s paradoxically cutting-edge and yet extremely stable (personally I’ve never seen a kernel panic or lost a machine to “¯\_(ツ)_/¯”.
I thought I’d give it a try as a way to learn systemd when that was new, and revert back to some other flavor, but in reality Fedora fits exactly the way I want, in terms of great tech, and a friendly community (especially on IRC). Never looked back!
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Of the universe of distributions available, Fedora gives me my preferred desktop out of the box, and has never left me in any sort of panic after an update, provides a great community, and is easy to install and use, but very up-to-date and capable of basically whatever you want to do in terms of Linux.(Desktop,Server,Development,Virtualization,IOT, etc) I used Ubuntu for a while, but snapd did it in for me. I respect Fedora’s stance on free software too, but I sometimes wish for larger acceptance by closed source companies, because sometimes it’s a challenge to get things like Nvidia GPUs to work as well as they can, thankfully there are usually users who make that easy as well. Thanks negativo17.org
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HI @razorbackstothefinis! It’s a bit of an offtopic here, but you do know about NVidia drivers in rpmfusion, don’t you?
Look here and here for detasils in case you somehow didn’t know.
It’s asked/discussed quite a lot here on Ask Fedora, I though I’d mention it – just in case.
There’s quite a good progress on the matter with NVidia drivers, and some more additions with fedora-workstation-repositories package. Also flatpak helps with inclusion of non-free software.
Upgrading too fast to the newest kernel version is what makes Fedora different, and is why I have to leave for the third time. I’ll be back in the future, bit for now it is impossible to work with kernel 5.2 on AMD Radeon Vega graphics. I need a stable kernel, 4.19 or as most recent version 5.0. See you in the future.
I’ve heard some talks about possibility of LTS kernels in Fedora. I haven’t done any research, just read through some discussion. I can’t say what it’ll require from the maintainers, i.e. how hard is it really to do and maintain.
But for cases like @peterjmb’s that can be a near-perfect solution.
In the 1990’s I worked as a consultant for large manufacturing companies. They were Unix based (HP, Solaris, AIX, …)
When I was between contracts, I missed the Unix functionality. A friend introduced me to RedHat Linux, pre-Fedora days. At that time, all of RH Linux would fit onto a 800meg CD. Some time later RH introduced Fedora Core. I installed Core and used it to dig deeper into the workings of Linux. Later, the CD became too small for the subsequent version of Fedora, and we all upgraded to DVDs.
Fedora Core was tops at that time, and it was well supported. As Linux popularity and functionality increased, RH renamed Fedora Core to “Fedora” . I have consistently used Fedora as my main bootable system. I use it for Gnome and I use it for KDE.
Fedora is pretty innovative. They integrated the Deepin and Pantheon and KDE. With Fedora 30, I got introduced to Deepin as installed on top of Fedora Gnome. It is a better Gnome than Gnome, and Gnome could learn from Deepin. For my wife, I installed Pantheon, This latter interface makes Linux more inviting. With Deepin experience, I began to explore other Distributions and user interfaces.
Where am I now. For many years I was using a Fedora Remix which was Fedora + all codecs. That Remix’s last version was 29. I also do blogging and much online writing. I need programs that Fedora does not include, but are available from rpmfusion. Fedora has to decide yes, or no, to include rpmfusion in the default list of repositories. I understand there is a reluctance to do so as Fedora is a USA company and the Americans are very litigious. Fedora cannot or will not provide a link to tainted (non FOSS applications or applications requiring a license Fedora now provides a tainted repository containing drivers for graphics cards.
Lately, I have been switching between Fedora 30 and using SUSE’s Tumbleweed. Tumbleweed is a rolling release, Rolling releases provide the most recent updated compilers and tools --recent versions are what I need to use and thus, are important to me.
I have noted that some of the new compilers/tools will be in Fedora 31 that I am testing. (I am actually writing this with Fedora 31 beta). Fedora has backported much of the tools to Fedora 30.
I am a retired system engineer. I have time to study other distributions. My home system has 7 disks. It would have 8, but I am unable to remove a heatshield that covers a M.2 nvme slot. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I boot Fedora 30 Gnome, Fedora 30 KDE and on the other days I test out the competition Tumbleweed Gnome, KDE Neon. Fedora 31 gnome.
I intend to remain with two distributions Fedora 31 primarily and Tumbleweed. The two share a common home folder and thus, it makes no difference to me which of the two I boot. Gnome is Gnome on both systems.
Fedora 31 is looking very good and very stable. Because of Fedora’s innovation, concentration and user community I am planning to standardize on Fedora for the next year.
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Well, thousand users thousand different answers.
But in my case, I prefer Fedora because it ships new software without compromising the stability. It’s a great community where I feel comfortable, and it offers quality software with a lot of effort put into testing and QA
Hope this answers your question, Paul.
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I converted to Linux in 2002. My first distro was RedHat-based ASPLinux 7.3, box set edition. When ASPLinux died in 2008 I switched to Fedora 10 but soon found myself distro hopping. Fedora 10 was ok, I just wanted something new. So, I had them all: Slax, Suse, BSD (Free and Open), Debian, Sabayon, Calculate, Mint, Ubuntu all flavors, Knoppix, ROSA, ALTLinux, Deepin, elementary, Manjaro to name just a few… to get back to Fedora in the end. As it was mentioned above, Fedora offers the perfect balance between cutting-edge and stable. It completely satisfies my desire to use the freshest software without being afraid to ruin my system with an occasional upgrade. Also, since I live in Russia, I need Russian language support in my OS. Fedora is the only distro that provides en-ru keyboard switching out of the box, i.e. without any hackery from my part. Linux is about doing stuff via console, true, but there are some basic things such as multilanguage support or wifi connection or nice-looking and usable default desktop that, to my mind, should be available instantly and that is exactly what Fedora has.
~Kate
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I used Solus before Fedora and when programs crashed after a kernel update, I changed to the LTS kernel and when it updated, the same problems arose.
Thus far Fedora 31 is working great with the latest 5.5.8 kernel on a PC from 2013.
The software center is easy and responsive to use, with enough choice.
Fedora also didn’t break when I changed some things to suite me.
Most of all it’s more snappy than Ubuntu, while not being as difficult to install and use like Arch based distro’s.
I too have been using Linux since the 90s. I started with Mandrake, then RedHat, Fedora Core, then Ubuntu for a long time. Those are the distros I’ve stuck to most and tried some of the others as well. When Fedora Core was out I tried it for a while but at the time it felt pretty bare. I used Debian a couple years till a friend introduced me to Ubuntu and then I used that for a long time. I kept coming back to try Fedora but it always felt a little bit behind and I liked the vast support that Ubuntu seems to have. Eventually though Fedora caught up and passed Ubuntu by as far as packages go.
I’m also an RHCE and I like Fedora because since it’s upstream of RedHat, it helps me stay on top of what’s in the pipeline for RHEL.
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