I tried Arch for a while... it was too much work for me. I did learn a lot though and the Arch documentation is A+ even when using other distros.
I also briefly tried fedora but had driver issues and didn't care for the feel of it. Apparently the fedora leadership is a clusterfuck too.
For now I stick with base debian. It works perfectly... all the freak'in time. Only down side so far is that sometimes if I want the latest version of something I'll have to manually get it since the package repo is kept at maximum stability.
I had a colleague who would've replaced his engine management system with Debian if he could. He'd have installed a keyboard and changed gears in bash too. When forced to install something on Red Hat once, he installed Debian in a chroot and ran the service from there.
It's been on my mind for a while to try something else out as well. However, I do like Ubuntu. I like how familiar it is, while giving me a lot of the same flexibility that everyone praises about Linux. I'm one of those people who like Windows as well, so some familiarity is nice to me.
However, I'm delving more into the command line so I can learn more about how my OS is working. There are a lot of benefits to that.
I've posted something similar before but theres a few things to consider.
Its close to upstream. What you get is fairly similar to exactly what the software developers made. Fedora devs push fixes upstream for everyone as well.
It takes security seriously, from download to running it. Fedora has thought about security in pretty much all areas of the organisation, from intrastructure, to distro security (though sining, selinux, download verification, etc.), to incident responce plans. Many distros dont go much further than signed packages. (Debian also does it well)
Its well supported and has a good community Fedora has good backing, its upstream of RHEL (not a red hat beta test). Fedora is to red hat, what debian is to ubuntu. Theres lots of user support for it from forums, foedra ask, fedora magazine, IRC, here (theres lots of us here). The package support is pretty great too.
It has good values (freedom, friends, features, first) It tries to be leading edge instead of bleeding edge, so features come where there ready, not to late, not to early. You also find that it has a focus on freedom, and in that aspect, propriatory and patent encumbered software isnt included. You need rpmfusion repos for that (also supported), it recently had an infrastructure upgrade to align with Fedora, and it works well (its a few clicks to install). And the slightly inconvenience it hink it good in the long run if it keeps the distros free.
Its standard. It tries to be ahead of the curve when technology is ready to use, but tends to use technology that ends up being widely used and supported across free software.
Its up to date (the aim for leading edge not bleeding edge as mentioned) So things like amdgpu the new mesa, etc. will come out quickly, theres no need to mess around with extra repos for bleeding edge software (though you can if you want through copr repos that has the git builds of mesa and co). Itll come in the distro or will end up in the next 6 month release.
Fedora has some similarities to Debian, but you'll find it ahead of them in terms of up to date software. They also tend to be quicker to implement new technologies. I find it better for desktops over debian as debian ends up just being to slow to update to newer drivers and day to day software.
the main difference is the package manager. If your used to the command line, youll find dnf is your friend, you can do it all from there, search, install, check dependencies, manage repos, manage copr repos, etc. Its quite good. and the basics are the same (dnf search, dnf install, dnf remove).
Like debian, there on systemd, like them they're using standard file hierarchy standards.
You can also use the netinstall, which will let you pick what components to install from the install (so you can choose what DE, dev tools, server, etc. to install)
hm.. theres probably loads more i could say. Question, just ask.
I was glad to see a tie between Fedora and Arch. I moved from Ubuntu ==> Debian ==>Arch but Fedora in there would be a good thing, I think. Debian is fine though, I just prefer Pacman. Then Arch's rolling release, the AUR, the ArchWiki and the granularity grew on me. So Fedora or Arch; and Fedora THEN Arch would be a good idea for comparison.
It's rare that anything lasts long though ... I was with Debian since the days of woody. More recently I've got Ubuntu on my server and Mint on my desktop. I feel no shame about this.
It has been over 4 years, most of that with a single Arch install, and that has never happened - even with a power fail mid kernel update. The only reason for the current second install was a personal choice to migrate, not any sense of necessity.
Sure for the learning curve, why not. However, especially with Arch, a VM will mask many situations that can only really be addressed on bare metal. One obvious example of this is bringing up the NIC and establishing network connectiions. In a VM your NIC is already up and running on the host and the hypervisor is just sharing or bridging another path.
Also many desktop environments suffer in a VM.
For learning the package management and some of the configuration though, a VM is just fine. Hell every Centos instance I have is on a VM. Thanks Linux Academy!!
Not VM. Container. You can have any distro running on the same kernel as the host, so there's no drop in performance. I used to fire up either Arch, or just shortcut applications that, when clicked on, would fire up Arch in the background and open up in Fedora (still running inside Arch, but if you couldn't tell the difference if it was running on the host or in the container). Quite handy when you want to install some obscure or untrusted software, and instead of searching for some repos or compiling it yourself you'd just (in Fedora) open a terminal and type in 'pacaur -S randomapp' (and maybe create a shortcut) and be done with it. I've mentioned it multiple times that containers are awesome, but I feel like I have to make a video about it for people to realize actually how it makes life so much easier.
Honestly, you may as well ask, "What is the best model and size shoe for me?"
I think the biggest mistake that most folks make is thinking that they can somehow choose their ideal distro, without actually taking any of them for a test drive. How can you decide if you like A more than B, if you've never used B ... or A for that matter. What would be the down side of dropping a new ISO on your flash drive once a week and booting the live image? It will only take 3-4 minutes to decide if you hate it, or not.
Since the biggest difference between distros typically tends to be the desktop environment, you can install multiple new DE's on your current installation. You can then select a different DE one at each boot! There are also no shortage of YouTube distro reviews to watch, which will also help you to choose an ISO for your flash drive.
Once you settle on a desktop environment, you can drill down. For instance, openSUSE is known for their KDE implementation, Bodhi is known for their Enlightenment implementation, Mint is known for their Cinnamon implementation, etc. That doesn't mean that you can't have KDE on Fedora, or Cinnamon on Arch, but you may have a more plain vanilla experience than you otherwise would. Of course, some folks specifically look for the plain vanilla experience, so that they can make their own custom tweaks.
Which is why I didnt ask which one is best, I asked which one is going to be easier to move to.
wut
I know this. I'm trying to learn more about working under the hood. thats like saying "if you want to learn how a chevy drives, paint your honda with chevy paint". The fact is, I so rarely interact with a linux DE these days that I dont care for one or the other. My ubuntu machine is headless.
Which is why im asking the community what they think instead of digging through a bunch of garbage on youtube.
What do you intend to use it for? SELinux can be a real pain for many web applications and some server software. There's quite a bit of work in writing SELinux policy. As @Eden states fedora is on the edge but historically it's also been on the bleeding one and it's a bit more experimental than some other distros so it's worth keeping that in mind.
Fedora is not a bad choice but it might depend a bit on what you want to use it for.
I bounce between Ubuntu based and Fedora/CentOS/RHEL depending on which machine I'm on. At home I use Ubuntu on most machines. It was my first distro, still is in LTS, why not use it?
For work I'm on "RPM" systems. Be advised Fedora has quick release cycles and you'll have to update. Which can break things. CentOS is nice, most packages are older and I've been limited on the repos before, but it's server software in reality.
OpenSUSE has never worked for me, but that may be a layer 8 problem.
Fedora and GNOME 3 suit me at my job well. I have faster workflow on Fedora/GNOME 3 than on Ubuntu/Unity.
Every distro does something's awesome and is weaker than others in areas. I guess try to match what you want to do with the machine to the distro.
Check it out - Do you want a badass workstation - consider Fedora Do you want to have a "PC Desktop" and want to be able to watch YouTube - stick to Ubuntu. Headless server -try a minimal install of CentOS Want to learn about the under-pinnings of a distro, give arch a shot.
Well if the Debian way works for you, then plain Debian is allways pretty sollid. Maybe the new Debian stretch 9 might be worth a look.
I think that @Eden has some good and vallid points. If you wantto go further into Linux professionally, and you want to get away from the Debian base. Then Fedora or Open Suse are definitelly some of the better choices wenn it comes to professional use. Open Suse in particular with live kernel patching is one of the better distributions to use on servers for example. On which Fedora and Debian are really nice distribution for workstations. But also Open Suse and Fedora have their main goals set on professionality and security.
