Is Fedora 21 enough for you to switch from your daily driver?

Fedora 21 was just released, and my download just finished. I don't want to go into specifics, but to say the least when I boot this for the first time, I expect what awe I got when first trying SUSE. Fedora has been my go to OS for a year and a half of the two years I've been using Linux until a few months back when I tried SUSE. Since then, I haven't looked back. Fedora is awesome in that the community drives it, but the thing holding me back was YUM. Dandified Yum looks great, but won't be an option until Fedora 22. Just out of curiosity, can Zypper be used? Well anyway, what do you guys think of the projects release?  

Actually just installed Fedora 21 on an old laptop. I like it so far.

You can use DNF instead of yum, use the "inst.dnf" boot option. DNF is still considered experimental, but it's working as far as I can see. Yum is great with Yumex though.

Fedora is great for performance and security, and it's bloody stable for such bleeding edge, much more stable than Arch, and all things considered, a bit better optimized than OpenSuSE Factory.

How does it compare to OpenSuse 13.2?

It's pretty great. You've just got to try it. I'll look into Yumex. I still really like SUSE. It comes down to Zypper Vs. DNF in my case. I guess I'd say Fedora is a tad better for development, and SUSE is more for the mainstream. I think I'm going to use it for a few months on my flash drive (it's perfect for that) until my first rig is done (it's nothing special, just something to play KOTOR and do some R&D with). But yeah, when that's done I'm going to use Tumbleweed. Unfortunately, even a dual boot of Linux on my laptop is a no go as I have over $1k in magnification software i got from a grant with it. I'd feel terrible removing it. Not to mention I only have 60gb left dye to my games. I'm sorry, but I don't think an i5 3230m with 4g RAM could handle Shadow of Mordor in Wine... I regret not having of told the guy about Linux. I could've gotten a maxed out Dell XPS, but hey, what can you do.

Development of all RPM distros is pretty much the same lol.

The focus is different. Fedora is a naked distro, OpenSuSE is packed in standard version, but there is also a minimal version, that lets you install what you want, and the minimal version of OpenSuSE is more minimal than the standard version of Fedora. Fedora 21 Workstation is not as minimal as Fedora 20 Desktop: for instance, Fedora now also offers non-OSS packages in the standard repos, which is more than for instance Ubuntu does, and pretty much the same as Debian does. I would say that Fedora is the RPM equivalent of Debian, whereas OpenSuSE is the RPM Equivalent of Ubuntu, if that makes sense to you.

The nice thing about RPM distros is that they are all very stable, much like Debian, more stable than Ubuntu or Arch, and still offer a lot of bleeding edge packages that are packaged to high standards, which is definitely the problem with Debian once you're used to RPM packaging standards.

Fedora is also all about security, with the only really good implementation of SELinux (OpenSuSE is on AppArmor, and it's well implemented, Ubuntu is on AppArmor too, but it's not well implemented, Debian doesn't have a standard MAC, but for server purposes, there are the third party grsec hardened kernels available, that everyone uses, but they are older kernels, and they make little sense on desktop installs).

RPM distros also use full end-to-end encryption for package downloads from the repos, but Fedora is the only one that has discarded md5 checksum for instance, because it's considered compromised. RPM distros also use DeltaRPM, which saves a ton of time and bandwidth for updates, but then Debian for instance doesn't have as many updates as RPM distros have. RPM distros also have very good implementations of systemd, better than Arch, more stable and trouble-free, and DEB-distros are just starting to use these, and it's still chaos in the systemd department. Fedora is also the only distro that has a stable and perfectly working implementation of kernel-based netfilter, the successor to firewalld, whereas DEB-distros are still on pre-firewalld arrangements.

Fedora is also the only distro with a very good and stable implementation of native 3D printer tools, and with native integration of Docker, Sandstorm.io and full kernel-based support for Chromium sandboxing technologies. Of course, these are applications that not everybody uses, they are especially relevant for enterprise use and development. OpenSuSE is specialised in EAS compatibility and native Xenserver integration.

I tend to use different distros for different purposes. It's not about choosing one distro over another, it's about choosing the most efficient distro for the purpose at hand.

There are some things that I don't like about Fedora. The most important thing is that RedHat has taken full control over fedoraproject, and has slashed a lot of community development. The most visible aspect of that, is that there are no official versions with alternative DE's any more. You can either clone fc21 or use the Server version, and put your own alternative version together, or you can just live with the Gnome Shell edition which is the only edition that is made available in a desktop orientated version. OpenSuSE still offers all the DE's with full support, which is a bonus for desktop users that want a fast trouble-free install with an optimized version of another DE than Gnome Shell. Fedora used to do spins for particular purposes, like for robotics, electronics, music production, etc... and those have also been slashed. The packages are still available, but there is no community support for them any more. In fact, these spins are still available based on Scientific Linux, the CERN-version of RHEL, which is now maintained up to speed with RHEL, but it missed the bleeding edge character of Fedora. OpenSuSE offers a lot more flexibility for environments that serve multiple purposes. That's mainly why I switched to SLES coming from RHEL, and to OpenSuSE coming from Fedora, but that doesn't mean I won't use Fedora any more for specific purposes, and especially, for the latest and greatest in development tools and security. I still love Fedora a lot, because it really is the engineer's distro, it's a serious tool, no compromise, and that was unclear with Fc20, but is now set straight again with Fc21.

One of the pitfalls of Fedora 20, the built-in spyware features, have been discarded in Fedora 21, so that's definitely a good thing. That was my biggest gripe with Fedora 20, because it was very counter-productive for Fedora in particular, it was the wrong message for the distro.

Another big gripe I have with Fedora, and we'll see whether or not they will remedy that, is that they spent a lot of energy in making Fedora quasi-rolling, with Fedup (rawhide is rolling like Debian Sid, but Fedup makes release updates painless, unlike Debian Stable), and then they went and decreased the release cycle. That is so stupid. The whole sexiness of Fedora was exactly the fact that it had a 6 month release cycle and was always super bleeding edge in a stable release. There simply is no bleeding edge stable release distro any more right now, as Fedora dropped down to a 12 to 18 month release cycle. The closest thing is OpenSuSE Factory, which is crazy good and stable, and replaces both Factory and Tumbleweed, and is rolling. I kinda liked the idea of a quasi-rolling super bleeding edge stable release schedule a lot, and that seems to have died completely. But maybe, when Fedora gets its act together again on community level, this might come back again, and there will maybe be a bleeding edge stable release distro again, who knows lol. Let's enjoy Fc21 while it is fresh and savour the new features and technologies lol. It's definitely worth getting in to. Fc21 is an unhyped release, much more silent than OpenSuSE 13.2, but it is a stronger release in terms of new technologies than OpenSuSE 13.2, even though the kernel support is actually less bleeding edge, with OpenSuSE 13.2 now available on kernel 3.17, and Fc21 on kernel 3.16, but Fedora actually maximizes more kernel technologies than OpenSuSE.

We're so spoiled as linux users though if you think of it. We don't need proprietary graphics drivers any more on Intel and AMD GPU's (Linux users shouldn't be using nVidia GPU's since 2012!), and we can even enjoy binary blob-less Catalyst drivers on bleeding edge distros, and enjoy proprietary codec acceleration without exception on SELinux or AppArmor, running Catalyst well-contained in userspace if we need the extra features of fglrx versus xorg-video-ati. The new Catalyst is even developed for Linux first, and then ported to MS-Windows, which is a pretty awesome evolution, that would be unthinkable before 2012. If Intel can catch up on compiler optimization and Beignet development, that would be great, but we have a stable high performance AMD platform to work with in Linux that just works, doesn't require binary blobs, and is very accessible both in terms of availability (also unthinkable 5 years ago) and in terms of price (yes Intel has newer hardware, but what can you actually do with it in comparison to running AMD hardware on Linux, MS-Windows doesn't offer the same level of performance on either platform lolz). We now have user-friendly GUI tools that allow us to set CPU scheduler modes for the kernel with a single click of the mouse in Linux, to get every last bit of efficiency from the CPU's for the exact applications we want to run, we can virtualize all the things, we have more direct control than ever before without having to go crazy in CLI. The Linux foundation is cleaning up the kernel to get even more performance, they're working on adding optimizations to GCC for more performance and better hardware targeting because of the influence of the RISC-world, they're adding real-time functionality, and you can simply download a preconfigured real-time version of OpenSuSE for instance, which would also have been unthinkable 5 years ago. We have all those new super high performance filesystems with incredible ease of use and features like btrfs and f2fs and xfs. We're really spoiled in comparison to the poor souls that still have to make do with 30 year old locked down operating systems that need ever more expensive high performance hardware just to not bug the hell out of the users, and that makes perfectly good premium hardware into dumb archaic XBox-like contraptions lol. And most importantly, we have freedom of choice, we have the freedom of using exactly the tools that work best for us, and if we need more, we can change every last bit of the code to make it work even better, without getting sued for using a rectangle with rounded corners, without having to shell out hundreds of bucks on software that is sold as touch optimized, but is hardly usable on a touch device, etc...

We Linux users are spoiled. But think about it, if we weren't, things like AMD going Linux firsg, and Steam releasing for Linux never would have happened. I think most companies should go Linux first. How cool would it be if that 1.2% of the population, rocketed to 25%. What people who use non Unix based operating systems fail to realize, is that Linux is the future. I've been typing an article for my school that advocates the use of Linux instead of XP, 7, and Server (I'm recommending SUSE as it's backed by Novell). 

I don't honestly prefer Fedora over SUSE, or vise versa, but Fedora is where most software development for Linux happens. Yeah, I miss the spin offs, but you can't have your cake, and eat it too; there's always a compromise. Fedora should, without doubt, refresh their install images every month or so for newer hardware. I prefer how SUSE handles their upgrade proccess ad its straight forward unless something changes. I don't like RedHat's ruling on software like MATE and Cinnamon, but I'm fine with Gnome even though I wished it looked like Gnome 2. What sucks is, Compiz lost support for magnification as far as I can tell. I really liked XFCE and MATE with it, but hey, what am I going to do? 

You're right when said not one distro is better than the other, however there are distros better for certain tasks. As much as I hate Ubuntu, I may never have used Linux without it (granted I had Debian up and running a day later). 

Can't wait to see what happens in Linux in about a decade.

 

 

Can't wait to see what happens in Linux in about a decade.

As much as I love Linux, Linux users have been saying that for quite some time anticipating it'll make a huge mark in the industry. The fact of the matter is, it will take leaps and bounds for publishers/dev teams to put [serious] money into a niche that simply can't take-off at a large scale, in the consumer world. It nibles at people's feet at a large scale (Chromebooks and Android devices) but still can't gather the tools to make consumer-grade desktops and laptops successfully use a *nix distro without someone needing to be a programmer, script monkey, or system admin, only to ensure it continues to operate at an acceptable level at a day-to-day basis.

Linux users have been saying that for quite some time anticipating it'll make a huge mark in the industry.

I know you mean consumers, but the amount of Android devices out there is quite staggering ("nibbles"? Haha). Distros are much less likely to take off on a consumer scale because of early shared monopolies by the likes of Microsoft and Adobe, as well as the PC game developers. That has been taking a shift recently, and it's only a matter of time before we can delegate applications and complete systems that stay out of your hair.

That said, I put Linux Mint on an old laptop of a friend of mine, a 64-bit laptop that was running 32-bit Vista (hah). I asked her about it a few months later, and she said she liked it. That was over a year ago now, and if there were any problems, knowing her, I would have heard about it by now. That was from a vanilla install. So no, I don't think you need a geek or a nerd to use a Linux distro - we just need to get it onto the laptops and desktops in the first place.

I didn't mean taking one industry and saying they excel in it, 'so there'. I said it was nibbling at a large scale :P

i think you mean shared monopolies between Microsoft and Apple. Adobe is it's own issue, however.

Yes, game developers are "taking a turn" but it's not them, it's the publishers that's giving the direction. Unless there's disposable income for Linux development, there won't be much.

I'd love to agree with you on your example, but I simply can't...There's a difference between people that use their computer for Facebook, Twitter, other social media crap, checking your email, and surfing the net and then those who plug-in their camera, phone, want to simply share media across their network, use relatively new devices (Corsair K70 RGB, for example), I can go on and on...I wish it were that easy to say that "simple" people can use Linux but it's not entirely true.

This is the age ol' argument, though and it's really beating a dead horse...