Linux

I find it pretty problematic how Ubuntu is messed up and still used as default distro.

Fedora has issues with always being a bit early. I prefer it a lot over buggy Kubuntu, as I use KDE, but for example now 6.1 is too early and still has bugs, while Plasma 6 was really well tested (with Rawhide, Kinoite beta and Kinoite nightly being available)

Fedora has tons of variants and packages, and COPR is full of stuff. The forums are nice, Discourse is a great tool.

It uses Flatpak, but adds its legally restricted repo by default.

The traditional variants... I think apt is better. I did one dnf system upgrade to F40 and it was pretty messy.

The rpm-ostree atomic desktops are really good, but not complete. For example GRUB is simply not updated at all. This is hopefully fixed with F41.

Or the NVIDIA stuff, or nonfree codecs, which are all issues even more on atomic.

So the product is not really ready to use, while rpmfusion sync issues happen multiple times a year. This is no issue on the atomic variants, but there you need to layer many packages, which causes very slow updates.

I am also not a fan of their "GUI only" way, so you will for example never have useful common CLI tools on the atomic variants, for no reason.

It is pretty completely vanilla, which is very nice.

I had a similar experience on my laptop. I tried Ubuntu which broke after trying to throw on Nvidia drivers (using the official docs). I tried Mint and Debian, both of which couldn't detect my laptop's wifi card (after hours of trying to fix - apparently a common issue but the fixes did not work for me!). I landed on Fedora, worked great. I'm now on EndeavourOS, but Fedora was the stepping stone I needed.

My desktop I built recently is Bazzite, which is Fedora based and I love it.

I've recently converted two people from Windows to Linux with Fedora Kinoite. One of them has been using it for maybe two months now without a single issue and the other just started using it with positive first impressions. I find it very modern, simple, and familiar. The atomic system just works too. I enjoy it much more than Mint

Atomic Fedora, like Fedora Kinoite is probably the most noob friendly. Impossible to break.

I have never touched Linux/GNU and I installed Linux after the Microsoft recall and when with standard workstation (GNOME) as a dual boot. After the first two weeks reinstalled fedora over top of windows and haven't looked back.

That was 2 months ago and and having no issues even gaming on my machine works great.

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 think I crashed it less than 10 times in 2 years of usage.

I’m probably going to get downvoted for this but I’m a Linux noob overall…. Windows has historically been what I’ve used. Or Ubuntu. I did distrohop to antixLinux and other really super small distros, but they didn’t fix my problems and I ended up back on relatively bloaty Ubuntu for further testing and sadly it solved bout a third of my problems (the hardware is ancient enterprise shit with a whopping 4gb ram and 16 usb ports)

I’ve been looking for a Debian based system to replace Ubuntu because I’m a noob and Debian-based is super different from the fedora.

I’m sure fedora is great! Tons of people love it! But for a noob is can be really daunting. Especially when most Linux instructions come in three flavors “Ubuntu/debian” and 2 other things. Who knows which two. You, the advanced Linux user, probably know which two but your noob doesn’t. And doesn’t understand the difference.

I’m not a total noob but I prefer Debian because I know a person who gets Debian and can help me. If I knew a fedora user that was actually willing to help me, I’d use that, but I’ve never met one so I’ll stick with what I know.

Friends don't let friends use IBM software.

I consider myself long time noob ;)

Fedora for me because it's rock solid, has cutting edge software, excellent documentation.

I,ve been updating the same installation more than 15 times i think.

Against: selinux is often overlooked when following guides written for Debian / ubuntu. So sometimes you pull out your hair.

On the other hand. Podman is supposedly the new favorite kid on the block. Fedora is on the front here

Fedora sounds like a redditor distro. That's why I never recommend it

Generally Fedora's purpose is to make sure nothing gets into redhat (RHEL) Linux. So if there are breaking changes to things, you'll be getting them.

Historically if people had wanted to learn I'd push them towards Ubuntu because its Debian based, meaning familiar enough to most of what runs the modern internet that I could eventually (I'm not a Linux admin) fix.

These days if you just want to use it I'd pick Linux mint, just since they seem to be orienting towards that way. Arch or SUSE based something if you want to learn more about how the packages you install work together. But the choice in distro honestly feels more like an installer and package manager choice than anything. a distro is just a choice of which thousand things to hide in a trenchcoat.

I just ideologically don't like IBM and would rather hand in my bug reports to the volunteer ecosystem.

I tried it when the first one I tried didn't work out.

Ctrl+C hard locked it instantly every time I pushed it. I could right-click and choose "Copy", but pushing Ctrl-C just froze whatever image was on screen. No response at all after that. Plus it was giving me a headache trying to get Nvidia drivers installed.

So then I moved to Pop since the correct driver was baked in, and it's been mostly smooth since.

Here's the deal, most people from yesterdays started on Ubuntu or something similar. So, they suggest what worked for them. I just moved my wife away from Windows and straight into Fedora, I haven't had to help her on anything other than once she could not find the printer (it's on another VLAN and she was not connected to it 🙄). She is loving it and just last night told me, and I quote, "I should have changed sooner".

Fedora just works, but another factor may be that Debian and Ubuntu based distros are LTS what le Fedora is more semi-rolling, this helps with stability, thus it makes sense to suggest something with less probability of breaking suddenly than something they may need to roll back.

As for atomic distros, YMMV. I find them sluggish during install, boot and when starting an app for the first time, and in my case, broken after a few updates (would not work on Wayland forcing me to log in over X11).

I recommend slackware exclusively. Sometimes times it feels like I'm pissing into the wind.

if you like fedora, have you tried endeavour?

Because Ubuntu LTS works very reliably and because there's a huge body of information and large swathes of people who can help on the Internet, and because every project and vendor tests and releases their stuff for Ubuntu/Debian and has documentation for it.

Despite the hate you see around these shores, Ubuntu LTS is among the best if not the best beginner distro. Importantly it scales to any other proficiency level. The skill and knowledge acquired while learning Ubuntu transfers to Debian as well as working professionally with either of them.

Also, with the fuckery RedHat pulls lately, it's a disservice to new users to get them to learn the RedHat ecosystem, unless they plan or need to use it professionally. If I had to bet, I'd bet that the RH ecosystem would be all but deserted by volunteers in the years to come. I bet that as we speak a whole lotta folks donating their time are coming to the conclusion that Debian was right and are abandoning ship.

There was a time when I thought about switching to Fedora when I ditch Windows in 2025, but the frequent release schedule of Fedora has made me worried if those updates risk breaking my setup.

Fedora's always run really sluggishly for me on whatever hardware I've tried it on, so I don't recommend it in general because my personal experience with it hasn't been great.

Even ignoring this, I'm not sure I'd recommend it for beginners due to how it tends to jump on the latest hip new software. For some users this is a massive point in Fedora's favour, but I'm not sure how much I'd trust a beginner to, say, maintain a BTRFS filesystem properly. Not to mention the unlikely, but still present, possibility of issues caused by such new software.

I'm a big fan personally. I an experimenting more with OpenSUSE's distro including microOS but that not because of Fedora but more so I want to recommend options that are easy to scale into FOSS professionally for people too and unfortunately RedHat no longer offers that path for Fedora users.

Does Bazzite count? I recommend Bazzite

I was totally on board until centos got screwed over ( and subsequently AM2 )

I'll be a cold day before I touch any fedora or redhat again or even mention to another person that they should run it.

Because it can't hibernate? (But then, not sure which distros can.)