I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are “mainstream” “beginner friendly” distros, right? I don’t want anything too advanced, right?
Well, ubuntu recently updated and it broke my second monitor (Ubuntu detected it but the monitor had “no signal”). After trying to fix it for a week, I decided to wipe it and reinstall. No luck. I tried a few other distros that had the same issue and I started to wonder if it was a hardware issue but I tried a Windows PC and the monitor worked no problem.
Finally, just to see what would happen I tried a distro very very different than what I’m used to: Fedora (Kinoite). And not only did everything “just work” flawlessly, but it’s so much faster and more polished than I ever knew Linux to be!
Credit where it’s due, a lot of the polish is due to KDE plasma. I’d never strayed from Gnome because I’m not an expert and people recommend GNOME to Linux newbies because it’s “simple” and “customizable” but WOW is KDE SO MUCH SIMPLER AND STILL CUSTOMIZEABLE. Gnome is only “simple” in that it doesn’t allow you to do much via the GUI. With Fedora Kinode I think I needed to use the terminal maybe once during setup? With other distros I was constantly needed to use the terminal (yes its helped me learn Linux but that curve is STEEP).
The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.
I am FULLY prepared for the responses demanding to know what I did to make it crash and telling me how I was using it wrong blah blah blah but let me tell you, if you are experienced with Windows but want to learn Linux and getting frustrated by all the “beginner” distros that get recommended, do yourself a favor and try Fedora Kinoite!
edit: i am DYING at the number of “you’re using it wrong” comments here. never change people.
You seem to be ignorant; the use of this word is not meant derogatory. In all fairness, it’s perfectly fine; we all gotta start out somewhere. So, please allow me to elaborate.
Being the first distro on which new technologies are introduced
Consider checking up on where Wayland, systemd, PipeWire, PulseAudio etc first appeared; so on which particular distro.
Also atomic branch?
Fedora Atomic, i.e. the first attempt to Nix’ify an established distro. Most commonly known through Fedora Silverblue or Fedora Kinoite. Peeps formerly referred to these as immutable. However, atomic (i.e. updates either happen or don’t; so no in-between state even with power outage) is more descriptive. It’s also the most mature attempt. Derivatives like Bazzite are the product of this endeavour. From the OG distros, only openSUSE (with its Aeon) has released an attempt. However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision. I wish it the best, but I find it hard to justify it over Fedora Atomic.
SELinux might be a fair point, but I doubt that ss unique to Fedora tbh.
OOTB, apart from Fedora (Atomic), it’s only found on (some) Fedora derivatives and openSUSE Aeon (which forces you to use GNOME and Aeon’s specific container-focused workflow). Arch, Gentoo and openSUSE (perhaps even Debian) do ‘support’ SELinux, but it can be a real hassle do deal with. And it’s not OOTB.
If you make claims, you better substantiate it. I just did your homework 😂. Regardless, I’m still interested to hear a distro with more impressive USPs. Let me know 😉.
I am not sure I understand what you mean by:
Consider checking up on where Wayland, systemd, PipeWire, PulseAudio etc first appeared; so on which particular distro. Are you referring to use those packages as default? Afaik Fedora OS is not even rolling release, so I cannot fathom how it has packages earlier than the typical bleeding-edge candidates. Fedora Atomic Why are you mixing Fedora Atomic with the regular Fedora Distro? It’s also the most mature attempt. Derivatives like Bazzite are the product of this endeavour. From the OG distros, only openSUSE (with its Aeon) has released an attempt. However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision. …how is something like this objectively valid? I understand you like Fedora, but you make claims without any proof or just pure opinion based.
Thank you for the reply!
Are you referring to use those packages as default?
I don’t understand why this is relevant. But, to answer your question, a modern system should already be on systemd, Wayland and PipeWire unless one has (for some reason) ideological qualms with systemd or if the maturity of Wayland isn’t quite ready for their specific needs.
The “should” used earlier isn’t used as my personal bias or whatsoever. It’s simply the default found on the upstreams projects. GNOME and KDE (the most popular DEs) default to Wayland. PipeWire has become default for at least GNOME (even on Debian). And systemd is the default on almost all Linux systems.
Furthermore, this set of software is not a random set for which Fedora happens to be the first to adopt. In fact, these are crucial parts of how we interact with Linux; these constitute the backbone if you will.
Afaik Fedora OS is not even rolling release
Firstly, no one refers to Fedora as Fedora OS. Secondly, Fedora’s release cycle is often referred to as semi-rolling release. With that, it’s meant that some packages arrive as they come (very close to how rolling release operates). However, other packages only arrive with the next point release. Though, Fedora has its Fedora Rawhide branch that operates as its rolling release branch.
However, the fact that you mention this, means that we have misunderstood eachother. I don’t claim that new versions/updates arrive first on Fedora. I don’t even claim this for any of the earlier mentioned packages. However, what I do mean is that Fedora is the first to adopt these technologies in the first place. So, the first release/version of systemd, PipeWire, Wayland etc was released on Fedora. Then, within months or years, it was adopted by other distros as well.
so I cannot fathom how it has packages earlier than the typical bleeding-edge candidates.
See previous paragraph. And, you don’t need to fathom it; I’m just stating the facts. If you do seek a reason, it’s related to Fedora’s relation to Red Hat and how most of these technologies originate from efforts coming from either Red Hat employees or made possible through their funding. Then, when it comes to testing those things, Fedora acts as their guinea pig. That’s why Fedora is sometimes referred to as Red Hat’s testing bed distro. This doesn’t only come with its positive side, because it may also come with a negative impact to its stability. However, if one is interested in what’s next for Linux, then there’s no alternative to Fedora.
Why are you mixing Fedora Atomic with the regular Fedora Distro?
Because OP actually was in praise of Fedora after using Fedora Kinoite (i.e. Fedora Atomic KDE). And then, you critiqued it (i.e. Fedora) for having no selling points. So, it was rather ambiguous.
Furthermore, Fedora has actually mentioned (for at least two and a half years now) that they intend for Fedora Atomic to be the future of Fedora. So, in a few years of time, what we’ll refer to as Fedora will simply be Fedora Atomic of today. Take note that this doesn’t mean that traditional Fedora will cease to exist. Rather, it will be referred by a different name (perhaps Fedora Classic (but I actually don’t know)).
…how is something like this objectively valid?
Alright, I made a couple of claims:
“It’s also the most mature attempt.”;
First of all, we’d have to properly define what “Nix’ify” even means or what I used it for. So, in the simplest of terms, I meant it as “Taking design elements of NixOS and applying them to an existing product. And then publishing/releasing it as a new product.”
So, basically every distro that’s commonly referred to as ‘immutable’ and that’s originated from or has loose relations to an existing distro applies. Therefore, something like Guix System does not apply; because it’s an entirely new project with nothing that pre-existed it without its NixOS influences. On the other hand; Fedora Atomic, openSUSE MicroOS Desktop and the upcoming Ubuntu Core Desktop definitely do apply. (If the upcoming Serpent OS is “Solus v2” then we can also mention that one here). The addition/admission of distros like Arkane Linux, AstOS, blendOS, MocaccinoOS, Nitrux and Vanilla OS (to name a few) is murky, but (for the sake of argument) we’ll not exclude these.
So, a proper study of their relative maturity would require a lot more effort than either of us is willing to put into. But, I made the claim based on the following (in alphabetical order):
- Adoption; Popularity of a distro is very hard to quantify on Linux. However, based on the discourse, it’s hard to deny how much more popular Fedora Atomic seems compared to its immutable peers. However, if BoilingSteam’s reports do qualify as representative, then (I think) we’ll see a very significant growth for Fedora in the next report (as the most recent one already has informed us about). And that growth can almost completely be attributed to Bazzite switching to RPM Fusion’s Steam. Hence, Bazzite and thus Fedora Atomic’s adoption would be very significant.
- Age; By itself, this is not very telling. However, when you consider that work on Fedora Atomic started (at least) over ten years ago with Project Atomic. And that it even released a version that same year (in 2014). Which eventually culminated to the release of Fedora Atomic Workstation (i.e. Silverblue) in February 2018. It’s a joke to compare this to the others that have only erupted in the last 2/3 years; so not within the same ballpark. The only exception to this would be openSUSE that launched its Project Kubic in 2017. But MicroOS Desktop only had a release in 2021.
- Development Cycle; Other projects are in beta/RC, while Fedora Silverblue has had its general availability release (at least) over two and a half years ago. To name a couple of the more interesting ones:
- blendOS; Had their v4 Alpha last year and have just (within a month ago) gone out of it. AFAIK they didn’t have any beta or RC releases. Which makes me suspect that their ‘release’ may just be the beta/RC for other more serious projects. Furthermore, blendOS is known for rigorous changes in between their versions. Not quite what I’d refer to as mature.
- openSUSE Aeon; released a month ago (or so) its RC2. openSUSE Kalpa (i.e. KDE) is still in alpha.
- Vanilla OS; still in beta.
- Funding/Man-hours; A project backed by Red Hat (i.e. Fedora Atomic) vs anything else. Adding in the fact that development also started significantly earlier, this is pretty much a given in favor of Fedora Atomic.
(And finally) Rate of ‘Nix’ification’; Atomic -> Reproducible -> Declarative. These stages are passed through by aspiring ‘immutable’ distros when Nix’ifying.
For example, from almost its inception, Fedora Atomic was atomic and had a healthy portion of reproducibility. With the relatively recent transition to OCI (for updating etc), it also became (somewhat) declarative and further improved its reproducibility.
Likewise, we see similar developments in other projects:
- blendOS; Started out as only atomic and has attained reproducibility and declarative since.
- openSUSE Aeon; Started out as atomic. Wishes to be reproducible (and more robust) through transition to image-based. Not much more info on this.
- Vanilla OS; Went from only atomic to a similar OCI model like Fedora for reproducibility and becoming declarative.
Fedora Atomic has (almost) completed/finished its “Nix’ification”. While the same can be said about other projects, this does not apply to all of them. Hence, even if Fedora is not necessarily the best at this, it definitely finds itself amongst the frontrunners.
“Derivatives like Bazzite are the product of this endeavour.”
This is simply a fact. Bazzite is only possible because of Fedora Atomic.
“From the OG distros, only openSUSE (with its Aeon) has released an attempt.”
I define OG distros as the big, independent distros that will probably never lose their relevancy. Think of Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, NixOS, openSUSE, Slackware, Solus OS, Void etc. For the sake of argument, we could include all independent distros. Out of these; Fedora, openSUSE, Solus and Ubuntu are the only ones for which we know their team/organization are actively working to erupt an ‘immutable’ distro while (originally) their distro followed a traditional model. Ubuntu Core Desktop has yet to release and the same applies to whatever Solus is cooking. From openSUSE, we have openSUSE Aeon (and Kalpa) and for Fedora we got its own 4 atomic spins. Furthermore, we got dozens of derivatives based on Fedora Atomic. So once more, this is just factual.
“However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision.”
This is definitely a loaded claim. I’ll answer this in my next comment.
I understand you like Fedora
Exactly. But it’s on merits. On the other hand, it seems as if you dislike Fedora for some reason. However, it’s unclear to me as to why that is.
but you make claims without any proof or just pure opinion based.
I can back up (almost) every claim I’m making (as you should have noticed by now). Not citing sources or whatsoever is due to laziness and because I don’t think you’ll check those sources anyway (like how you seemingly didn’t check if the earlier mentioned software indeed were first adopted on Fedora and if so; why). However, if you want me to cite sources on statements I make, then please mention the exact statements I’m making and I will back those up with sources.
It’s also peculiar that you make uninformed guesses or claims without backing them up yourself. Nor do you feel compelled to look up if the unsure statement/claim is even correct or not in the first place. Though, I should at least compliment you for being honest/transparent when making unsure claims/statements!
Yet, I’m still waiting for you to name a distro with more impressive unique selling points 😜.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I see where you are coming from but I for example never head about Fedora Atomic whilst I am familiar with OpenSUSE MicroOS, GUIX, NixOS. I noticed that MicroOS is the server oriented immutable whilst Aeon is the new orientation for Desktop… ANYWAY, all this immutable talk is anyway pointless, because I was talking about general distributions and not a discussion about immutable distros.
On the topic which distro adopted what first, my confusion did stem from by what context. As I tried to make clear with my confusion about fedora not being rolling release. To cut all this talk short here my answer to your question:
The default value of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty strong because
- rolling release
- zypper having sane args for regular tasks (install, search etc.)
- btrfs as default filesystem
- optimal snapper integration which leads into
- making a rolling release distro suitable for non-technical people/daily usage without fear of regular updates
But this is just a general recommendation for “distros”. If the requirements get more specific it makes much more sense to make proper recommendations.
I don’t understand why this is relevant. But, to answer your question, a modern system should already be on systemd
Dear lord…I will try to read the rest but you are not off to a good start. What has modern to do with systemd?
(CONTINUED)
This second comment only exists because all I wanted to say didn’t fit in the previous one.
So without further a due.
“However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision.”
I will not commit to a rigorous comparison in which their respective PR talks or points related to ambition, scope and vision are mentioned. Instead, I’ll put forward reasons for why I believe this to be the case.
- Fedora has mentioned (two and a half years ago) that they want for Fedora Atomic to be the default. openSUSE has yet to make similarly ambitious statements regarding MicroOS. At best, we’ve Richard Brown (lead MicroOS Desktop) that states that he thinks Linux (or openSUSE) (can’t remember the exact statement) should only be consumed as MicroOS (Desktop). However, this is only the preference laid out by the project lead. This is especially interesting when one considers how much more logical it is for openSUSE Aeon to be the future of openSUSE Tumbleweed compared to Fedora Atomic to be the future of Fedora. Yet, less ambition…
- From inception, Fedora Atomic was very ambitious. The image that represents the system is created from ‘scratch’, layers are applied through
rpm-ostree, for the container workflow Toolbx’ inception is materialized. Reproducibility (to a very significant degree) is achieved. And, as mentioned earlier, it can even start boasting about being declarative (to a degree). By contrast, where does openSUSE Aeon stand? It’s only achieved atomicity. That’s it. No mention of reproducibility. No mention of the ambition to be declarative. Nothing. Their commitment to container workflows didn’t even lead to building in-house tooling. Instead, they "outsourced’ it by using an existing solution (first Toolbx and then Distrobox) that was derived (but ultimately became more of a superset) of Toolbx; i.e. Distrobox. Don’t get me wrong; I have preferred Distrobox over Toolbx (and will probably continue to do so). However, isn’t it painfully obvious that one is inferior (in ambition) when its has to rely on tooling provided by the other? - The debacle of Kalpa. Like, how is it possible that it has remained in Alpha with no positivity surrounding it for over a year. Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be any effort in helping the clearly struggling single maintainer of the project. Meanwhile Fedora Atomic is working on its ARM/Asahi remix and the one with COSMIC as its DE. And, honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fedora releases those two before Kalpa leaves Alpha…
- Container-based, but limited in scope. openSUSE is (as they proclaim) committed to the container-based workflow. However, their base system continues to be one relying on btrfs snapshots rather than OCI or whatever container-based solution is out there. Heck, Vanilla OS and blendOS were using something similar with their original inception; ABRoot for Vanilla OS*. But, somehow, a group of developers from Vanilla OS were able to erect a f*ck tonne of tooling for (effectively) their reimagining of Fedora’s model. Like, how can this group of developers succeed where openSUSE seems to fail? I literally fail to understand. Heck, the same could be said for blendOS that’s headed by a (very talented) teenager. Somehow, even Fedora seems to be more committed to the container workflow. At least, their efforts suggest as such.
- In over two years since I’m on Fedora Atomic, I’ve seen so many developments; it’s actually astonishing. OCI has been adopted for updates. And even
bootchas been successfully created to tackle some problems. The ambition is clear. Meanwhile, I just don’t see the same advancements for openSUSE MicroOS. Heck, even YaST, one of openSUSE’s killer features is absent. Why? One of the reasons is because it allows for too much customization… Peculiar. Because I thought that openSUSE’s reliance on btrfs snapshots would allow them to customize a lot more easily. But, unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. - Like how all of these efforts are inspired from NixOS, we see that a lot of projects are also inspired by Fedora Atomic. They take over their ways and allow themselves to be inspired by them. Vanilla OS’ maintainers (among others) have basically accepted doing this as well. We don’t see this (to that degree) for openSUSE. The only thing I’ve seen is atomic upgrades through btrfs snapshots. That’s it. It’s unfortunate, but that’s literally it.
- For some reason, MicroOS Desktop was an afterthought until Richard Brown brought it up in 2019. By contrast, at that point, Fedora had released its Fedora Atomic Workstation (what would eventually become Fedora Silverblue) for over a year.
The writing above was a lot more ramble-y and unorganized compared to what I write usually. Blame my aching wrist. Regardless, it should be more than enough. However, if you disagree or if I’m wrong, then I’d love to hear about it.
And, if you somehow believe that openSUSE Aeon is more ambitious than Fedora Atomic, then please feel free to state why you think that to be the case.
Edit: I just noticed how I missed a question:
I am not sure I understand what you mean by:
Consider checking up on where Wayland, systemd, PipeWire, PulseAudio etc first appeared; so on which particular distro.
So, it was meant for you to notice the trend of how new, (r)evolutionary and crucial tech (i.e. software) are first adopted on Fedora. For each one of them, if you look at their respective wiki page, you can check how it’s adopted and from which distro it started out. This trend has been going on for quite some time and will continue to be the case.
Btw, I apologize for the insane info dump 😅.
