title, and to be clear I mean for my usecase specifically. Redhat is being absorbed into IBM and i’m a little worried about how that might affect the fedora project. I’m aware that they’ve been owned by IBM for a while but we are seeing all the typical signs of a company about to go to shit thanks to bad management. I am looking into and preparing to switch in case the fedora project is messed up as well.
I use my pc mainly for gaming (so steam is required) and stuff in my browser and I have a gtx 1650 (can’t get new stuff bc i’m broke) so although I don’t need the proprietary drivers necessarily, I prefer them. I use KDE with a handful of kwin scripts (like temp virtual desktops and karousel) and some cosmetic stuff like klassy, better blur, and a custom color scheme. I need all of that to remain possible. I currently use fedora kde edition, but I have been looking into immutable distros because I don’t know what I’m doing and I want to have a much lower chance of breaking stuff (or at least a way to easily unbreak it). I also want something at least reasonably up-to-date, because I like to get new features quickly. I don’t need to get them as fast as something like arch, but ubuntu and debian are way to slow for me.
what do y’all think would work best for me? I’ve looked at a few things but I haven’t been able to find anything but fedora that serves my usecase the way I want it to yet.
I don’t think Fedora is going anywhere for quite a while. I’d stick with it. If IBM eventually kills it, it’ll be far enough in the future that whatever you choose now will no longer the best option.
Fedora is its own thing, and unless IBM was RHEL to die, they have to keep kicking resources in, because the majority of non-security contributions come downstream from the Fedora community.
This assumes IBM will act rationally, which doesn’t have much recent precedence.
i figure, I just want to be ready if something does happen.
Then you should just keep backups of your user data separate from your OS, so that you can more easily migrate.
i dont have anything big enough to back up to. my system has 1.5 TB.
Probably no need to rush into anything. It sounds like the reorg is moving a data security team into Red Hat, and isn’t necessarily enshittifying anything.
A backup plan is always good, but this could wind up being a nothingburger.
If you are worried about corporate ownership and like KDE. Debian is a good stable Distro for your needs.
I ditched Fedora because I didn’t like the way the wind was blowing. I mention because despite having a bias against Redhat, I agree with most of the sentiment in the comments. I don’t think the future of Fedora is in any kind of jeopardy and if you’re happy with the distro, you should keep using it.
Opensuse tumbleweed if you want stability, rpm packages, and bleeding edge. They also have a fantastic KDE edition.
I’ve been using Tumbleweed for years, and it’s great.
I’m definitely leaning that way so far, are there any major differences from fedora I need to be aware of?
I would guess yast, merlyn, zypper, no rpm fusion (?), but you get OPI, good security defaults like apparmor and ufw (which messes with printers). I like it so far. I’ve found most packages im looking for and it hasn’t broken on me once during an upgrade. Zypper also recently got a big speed buff that I’m aware of.
I don’t think you have to change. But if you want a new hobby, try Arch. I got it just the way I like it years ago and haven’t had to change anything. I picked Arch because I always ended up on their wiki anyway.
The Arch wiki is useful not matter what distro you’re on.
even when I was on like tuxedo os it was helpful
Or try arch light aka cachyos.
how much easier/less complex is cachy? it looks interesting but I havent tried it.
CachyOS is like Mint but for gaming and based on Arch Linux.
so mint on a better base and with a good de… I’ll have to look at it again
ive tried arch a couple times but I dont really get a lot of the options and its a bit more technical than I’m looking for.
If you don’t like bog standard Debian, you might really like Debian Testing.
It allows you to get decently new packages; I’d say typical lag is one week to a couple months depending on the popularity and/or complexity of the project.
I’ve been using it on my desktop for over three years just fine. It’s been quite stable while still getting new software versions in a mostly timely fashion.
Do note though that Testing means Testing; it’s not really concerned with being a rolling release distro, but with preparing for the next release, so there’s a few quirks:
- Sometimes, a package you’re using gets removed while its dependencies undergo a transition, forcing you to use the Flatpak.
- When a new stable release starts to get close (usually 6 months), they’ll start what’s called freezes, where they let in progressively less changes until release, after which things start speeding up again.
- As a general annoyance of anything rolling release-esque, software behavior may change over time, meaning a previously good config can suddenly break, and you have to fix it.
Personally, I’ve grown tired of Debian Testing and rolling release in general; while I still using Testing on my desktop, I’ve thrown Debian Stable on most things I’ve owned since then, and if I really need a newer version of software, I’ll just install the Flatpak or use a container.
Did you try Kalpa? (opensuse) unfortunately, I don’t know in which state it is. Aeon works very well for me. I’ve used silverblue before and I was surprised how good it is.
i dont think I have. ive tried leap and tumbleweed or whatever they’re called before but I didn’t see any reason to use it over fedora at the time.
I’ve got exactly the same experience as on fedora silverblue except that openssh, flatpack firefox, distrobox and other goodies are installed by default. If you want to stick to fedora, you can use dnf in a distrobox.
I didn’t have a valod reason to switch. I hesitated for very long because additional benefit was basically 0. Make a backup of your home dir and the effort of switching is minimal.
The only difference is that I now support a European company and not an american.
well given that I’m american I dont have an issue supporting an American company (if you’re European, good job getting out from under our thumb. we have too much power) but I do want to support a more trustworthy company.
Garuda has been great for gaming, super easy and stable. I landed there after Bazzite and it has been great.
might have to look at that
Although fedora is unlikely to break bad anytime soon, it’s better to support a distro with a good downstream company.
KDE recently released their own immutable distro based on Arch. It’s still early though, so maybe use Bazzite or Kinoite in the meantime.
OpenSUSE MicroOS is another immutable like Fedora Atomic, and you can use it as a desktop.
yeah ive heard about KDE Linux but its too early to use rn. hadn’t heard of microOS
Is nobody using Ubuntu (just wondering)? 🤔
Ubuntu’s not “cool.” Personally I don’t care for GNOME or the theming in general. Also snaps are not popular. I do like the Debian base though, so I just use Debian KDE.
snaps! hiss
Ubuntu desktop is only gnome based. They modify it pretty heavily before shipping it.
If you don’t care for the gnome workflow that is fine but if you have issues with the Ubuntu desktop it is probably caused by Ubuntu.
true, but imo its even worse on Ubuntu. i just like KDE better
I did for quite a while, since it was basically Debian with some extras that I found useful. (The PPA build farm and server, for example.) Then they started forcibly replacing native packages that I used with snaps, which caused me more trouble than I was willing to tolerate, so I switched to Debian Stable.
I still have family members using Ubuntu. I’ll probably migrate them to Debian eventually, but there’s no hurry, since their needs are pretty basic.
In my experience some packages are also broken such as podman
thats definitely something I want. i really want to be able to have compatibility with as many apps as possible and podman/toolbx are awesome for that.
It is either dead or dying
It is still pops up from time to time but isn’t what it used to be
I do and find it stable and comfortable, but for most those two things make it boring i suppose :D
xubuntu is where it’s at.
Why wouldn’t you use Debian Xfce4?
I’ve not been on linux for long, but I like my kubuntu system. Took a bit of fiddling (non standard video drivers, non standard Proton for steam, wayland was buggy on my hardware), but now it’s been working a treat for both gaming and productivity.
Judging by the sentiments for Ubuntu on here, I feel like it’s unfairly maligned. It seems like everyone wants Linux to be easier to adopt by the masses, but they don’t like the distros that fill that niche.
Nixos
I’d rather just use any distro with Ansible for configuration
