this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Some questions about fedora (self.linux)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by HumanPerson to c/[email protected]
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Hello. These questions are self-hosting related, but I feel they do partially belong here as they are also about fedora linux in general. I have a server which is currently running Debian. It has an arc GPU, and no matter what I do, video encoding refuses to work. I was thinking I might move it to Fedora, but have some questions first.

  1. How are Fedora's updates? I believe they are about once a year, so how is it to switch between versions? I can deal with annual maintenance, but don't want weird issues causing downtime.
  2. Also about updates, how should I do auto updates on fedora?
  3. I am currently on apparmor. I know seLinux has more features, but I have also heard that it can be annoying to deal with.
  4. I mentioned the arc GPU. Has anyone managed to get video encoding working on it on fedora? If so how?

Edit: also, how is it to move a raid over. It is mdadm raid 5 with ext4. It is VERY important that nothing happens to the data, unfortunately I have not yet implemented a backup, although I do intend to soon.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I'm also thinking about moving my server from Debian to Fedora, especially the Atomic variant (uBlue CoreOS).

I think you should consider the IOT/ CoreOS variant instead of the regular Fedora Server version.

Debian is a great server distro because of its stability (in terms of update frequency) and spread of use, but Fedora Atomic is way more robust and lower maintenance.

Regular Fedora is too unstable (too many updates) for my taste as a server, and on Atomic, I can always just roll back and wait until something is fixed (which should never happen anyway, but just in case).

If you consider Fedora as server, then use the immutable versions, they offer more benefits, one of which is the strong separation between the host OS and the user/ programs.

Regarding your questions:

  1. 2 major updates a year. On desktop, you just click "Update to Fedora 41" for example, but on server, you have to do this manually, which can be very annoying. And if you missed it for a year, good luck...
    One of the reasons why I recommended the image based variants is that you can upgrade more easily and revert those changes, in case it causes trouble, and freely rebase between various editions.
  2. You can use uBlue/ set up staged updates on Atomic, which I would recommend. It then downloads and applies updates on your future image. The next time you boot up the server, it will boot into the updated image without downtime. On regular Fedora, you can maybe set up a cron job or search for a option in the DNF config.
  3. Never had trouble with SELinux. Fedora has it set up fine for me, and I never had to deal with it.
  4. I don't have an Intel Arc, but uBlue has all the codecs already bundled into it. It should work fine ootb. But my information is more based on desktop use, maybe you also have to enable an option in Docker or so.
  5. Regarding RAID, first back up everything, as you said. But it should also be easily possible on Fedora Atomic too. If it works on Debian, then it will work on Fedora too. And if the tool you used isn't available on Fedora, use Distrobox and create a Debian container.