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.
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- requires a fair bit of post-installation configuration (suboptimal OOTB experience for newbies)
- Uses btrfs by default but comes with no snapshots or GUI manager pre-configured for system restore
- Less software availability compared to Ubuntu or Mint
- More likely to break than Ubuntu or Mint
requires a fair bit of post-installation configuration (suboptimal OOTB experience for newbies)
I’m not the biggest fan of Gnome’s defaults but the regular, non-techie users want a browser (maybe Chrome instead of Firefox, depending on preference) and possibly Steam for gaming. Both are on Flathub, available from Gnome Software.
Less software availability compared to Ubuntu or Mint
The software that isn’t available, isn’t of interest to newbie/non-techie users.
More likely to break than Ubuntu or Mint
If anything causes breakage, it’s those web tutorials telling inexperienced users to add a bunch of PPAs to do shit. “So you use Ubuntu but video playback is a big laggy on your super new, hardly upstream-supported Radeon graphics card? Easy, add this PPA with untested git snapshots of Mesa and Kernel.” Yeah, no.
requires a fair bit of post-installation configuration
This is crazy to me because of all the distros I’ve tested over the years Fedora Kinote is by FAR the one I’ve had to do the least amount of tweaking with. It’s almost boring how “just works” it is. It’s honestly changed my perspective of what a distro can be.
Wait until you try out bazzite for gaming or just the regular kinoite ublue images. Both are basically kinoite with more tweaks and added software on top.
Uses btrfs by default but comes with no snapshots or GUI manager pre-configured for system restore
False on Fedora Atomic.
Less software availability compared to Ubuntu or Mint
Distrobox and Nix exists.
More likely to break than Ubuntu or Mint
Mint, perhaps. For Ubuntu, this was only true in the past. And only if PPAs were used sparingly. But Snaps have been a disaster for them in this case. So much so, that even Valve told Ubuntu users to use the Flatpak for Steam instead of the Snap.
even Valve told Ubuntu users to use the Flatpak for Steam instead of the Snap
Hahaha really? That’s awesome. I wonder if Canonical will ever take the hint that nobody wants Snap when better, more open alternatives exist
Yup. Here’s the post as found on Mastodon by the developer that works on Steam on Linux on behalf of Valve.
More likely to break than Ubuntu or Mint
how so?
More frequent kernel updates.
fair enough, but its generally ok as long as maintainers wait for a few point releases beforehand.
A crash 1-2 times a week sounds very strange no matter what Linux distro you’re using. I would suggest testing your RAM right away, it could be a hardware problem.
Yeah that’s not a distro’s fault that’s something wrong. I run several machines with a variety of distros and nothing crashes ever, unless I’m testing partially working software.
It’s not a RAM problem lmao it rarely crashed on Windows and it’s not crashed with Fedora either.
If you did a full memtest and it came out good then OK.
I’m just saying don’t discount hardware issues. Bad RAM blocks are notoriously hard to diagnose by use alone because there’s not just one symptom you can point at, and they can manifest themselves wildly differently on different apps and different OS depending how large the blocks are and how they are spread.
Luckily there’s a very simple and straightforward test you can make to put it out of your mind.
Curiously that’s not as accurate as you might think. Different systems use memory differently, even just between different Ubuntu flavors or customizations. 1-2 crashes a week is not normal, unless it was consistently happening when you did something specific. Also, what exactly do you mean by crashing? Did you get a black screen with some error or the computer would just freeze or reboot?
That being said I don’t think this is likely to be a hardware issue. One thing that comes to mind is maybe swap, did you had swap on Ubuntu and do you have swap on Fedora now? If Linux runs out of memory it freezes, having swap prevents it from doing so, so if you have low enough memory it’s possible that it would get filled up and freeze your system without swap (Windows has the equivalent by default)
That doesn’t mean anything. I once had an issue where every few hours, a random application would crash on Arch Linux, but not on e.g. Debian or Windows. But this wasn’t an Arch issue per se, but was instead related to an UEFI overclock setting (which defaulted to on). After turning it off, everything worked fine.
So while it seemed like an Arch issue, it was actually hardware/overclock related, it’s just that the other OS wouldn’t run into the trigger for the crash.
Crashes aren’t normal even in Windows. Rare crashes mean a hardware problem 99.7% of the time. Typically RAM as others have pointed out. The only way to figure that out is 4 passes of Memtest86+ without red. Yes 4 because the the first pass is a short one made to spot obviously bad RAM quickly. Less bad RAM might need more. I’ve had a case of 4 sticks that each pass on its own. Every two passed on their own. All 4 failed on the third or fourth pass. And if you think I tested for shits and giggles, I did not. I was see checksum errors on my ZFS pool every other day. No crashes. Nevertheless, if it wasn’t for ZFS I’d have corrupted files all over my archive.
Yeah that’s not a distro’s fault that’s something wrong. I run several machines with a variety of distros and nothing crashes ever, unless I’m testing partially working software.
People generally recommend Debian-based distributions because they tend to be more popular, have more applications designed first and foremost to work on them, and tend to have the most community support because they are more popular.
This has been my experience. I used Fedora for a while years ago, but rpm was already second fiddle to deb. Plus, I was already selling into my “old man distro” so I kept ending up with some Ubuntu version.
I did recently Manjaro and Linux Mint, but ended up with Ubuntu again, although this time Kubuntu, Ubuntu with KDE!
No shade from me though for going with Red Hat.
I’ve also found that the documentation online is much better, or at least easier to search, with Ubuntu in particular than any other distro. This is probably mostly due to popularity at this point as you said, but I think they got that popularity because of the straight forward and easy to digest documentation. And I’m not just talking about self-help support forums, I mean published and polished wikis and guides hosted by the distro itself.
Because on Fedora sometimes you are required to use terminal for some stuff like installing nvidia drivers and you dont really want to send a total beginner to Fedora
Nvidia can be installed through the App Store (or whatever it’s called) now. You just have to enable the non-OSS repo in the settings.
idk I have only needed the terminal once, with Ubuntu/Gnome it was a daily occurrence.
What were you using the terminal for that now you don’t need it? I personally prefer KDE to GNOME as well, and I think lots of it can be related to that and not the distro itself.
I’m a little lost here…when I started using Fedora I was pretty much a complete beginner (used Ubuntu a little bit before but not extensively, only GUI applications) and stuff like this wasn’t an issue. Just copy and paste from some online guide. Didn’t have to use the terminal frequently either.
Fedora is pretty easy.
Unfortunately boring distributions don’t get recommended because users of boring distributions don’t bother commenting on distribution discussions.
And it’s really unfortunate that obscure distributions have more vocal fans, because boring distributions are much better for beginners.
Ironically this is how I feel about Arch, for me it’s worked flawlessly for years.
I don’t bother getting in ‘discussions’ about using it, because if other people have problems I’m not going to convince them that I don’t.
It’s mostly the installation and initial setup that’s a pain on arch, so definitely not a beginner distro, but very good nonetheless
Yeah totally, I think to use Arch successfully you need an opinion about what your system needs, and that takes experience with using Linux.
Installation is pretty trivial these days with the install script
I’m salty on Red Hat and won’t touch anything near it.
I recommend Zorin because it’s Debian based and I’ve been running Debian Stable for over 20 years. If there’s an issue I can probably help.
I’ve actually tried Zorin and was really impressed! My favorite use of GNOME I’ve seen for sure. Though it’s technically Ubuntu based (which is Debian based).
Good point! I forgot Zorin is actually based on Ubuntu. Thanks for the reminder.
I’m switching to COSMIC on Debian Stable when that becomes an option. Until then, It’s Fedora with Qtile Wayland (and Hyprland as backup).
Edit: though I have a Debian VM where I’ll try to get Qtile Wayland set up via pipx and document the process so might go to Debian before then.
That’s funny, you’re the second person today to mention Cosmic to me. I hadn’t seen it yet – now I’m interested as well.
I tried the prealpha and it’s missing a few things I want (they’re WIP). I’d suggest checking out some Youtube videos of it, and not to expect too much, as it’s still not there imo.
Why does nobody here ever recommend Fedora to noobs?
It does happen. It’s simply not the popular choice for the following reasons:
- Fedora and its predecessors were until relatively recently simply more cumbersome in use compared to Debian and Ubuntu;
- There was a time (like at least over 10 years ago) in which package managers didn’t necessarily know how to resolve dependencies. However, Debian’s package manager at the time did it earlier than the package manager found on Fedora’s predecessor. Hence, this was a clear reason to prefer Debian or Ubuntu over Fedora('s predecessor).
- Freezing packages and offering stable releases with two years of support (like Debian does), has been and continues to be a very pleasant way to run your Linux OS. That’s why, even in the past, Fedora’s slower cousin (i.e. CentOS) was very popular (though being RHEL clone didn’t hurt either). Fedora, on the other hand, offers a semi-rolling release cycle of 6 months with only 13 months of support since release. With semi-rolling release, I refer to the fact that some packages are frozen and some are not frozen. Hence, you should expect daily updates. Access to the latest and greatest software is great. However, every update is a possible cause/reason for something to bork/break on your system. It’s therefore unsurprising that some prefer the predictability found on other distros. Though, for the sake of completeness, one has to mention that Fedora Atomic does a great job at tackling this problem; especially the uBlue projects.
- A couple of years back, Fedora switched in quick succession to systemd, Wayland and GTK4. Thankfully, I didn’t experience this for myself. But, from what I could gather, it was a mess. Users, perhaps rightfully so, questioned Fedora’s decision-making. While Fedora wasn’t particular loved, this didn’t help to retain new users, nor did it help to cultivate a trusted environment.
- Due to the previous reason, Fedora has not particularly been a very popular distro. Hence, troubleshooting your issues through Google is less straightforward compared to Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Additionally, as Fedora’s user base has primarily been more experienced users compared to the ones found on Linux Mint or Ubuntu, it’s unsurprising to find less discussion on elementary stuff. Simply by virtue of Fedora’s user base already being past that.
- Fedora, like Debian and openSUSE, offers a relatively bare bones experiences. It does make a lot of sane decisions for you. However, it doesn’t focus on being particularly GUI-friendly or newbie-friendly. By contrast, distros like Bazzite, Linux Mint,
Manjaro,MX Linux, Nobara, Pop!_OS and Zorin OS (amongst others), do put thought and effort into streamlining the experience as much as they can; especially for newer users. - While Fedora is
primarilycommunity-driven, Red Hat’s influence is undeniable. As such, people that hate corporate interest and/or Red Hat and/or IBM will favor the use of Arch and Debian.
Having said all of that, I’ve been using Fedora Atomic for over two years now. Heck, Silverblue was my first distro. And it has been excellent so far. Furthermore, with Bazzite (based on Fedora Atomic) and Nobara (based on Fedora) often mentioned in conversations regarding beginner friendly distros, even if Fedora itself isn’t explicitly mentioned, the ecosystem is clearly healthy and will continue to flourish.
Yeah, package manager is a big one. Many of us got burned by rpm’s early on and just avoided all rpm-based distros since then.
Of course as you say that hasn’t been a problem for over 10 years but the scars haven’t gone away.
I’d only recommend Ubuntu to someone if I knew they knew some else using Ubuntu (so I could tell them to hassle that person instead of me when they have problems).
Otherwise, I’d absolutely recommend Fedora, because it’s actually up to date unlike Debian. I use it myself because it tends to have the best of what the open source community has to offer while not needing constant tweaking
- Fedora and its predecessors were until relatively recently simply more cumbersome in use compared to Debian and Ubuntu;
Long-time Fedora user here. I do not think Fedora is noob friendly at all.
- Their installer is awful
- Their spins are really well hidden for people who don’t know they exist
- The Nvidia drivers can’t be installed via the GUI
- There’s no “third party drivers” tool at all
- The regular Flathub repo is not the default and their own repo is absolutely useless
- AMD/Intel GPUs lack hardware acceleration for H264 and H265 out of the box, adding them requires the console
- Their packages are consistently named differently than their Ubuntu/Debian counterpart
I really like Fedora for their newish packages without breaking constantly. I still would not recommend it for beginners.
What do you mean the installer is awful? I have found it quite straightforward. Select the disc, your keyboard setup, timezone and then it install itself…
It caters to a middle ground that barely exists, meaning it doesn’t have enough options for a power user and too many for a newcomer.
For example, a newcomer doesn’t know what a root account is and doesn’t have to care, yet they have to choose if they want to enable or disable the account. They can also remove their administrator privileges without knowing what it means for them. I get asked what a root account is every time somebody around me tries to install Fedora.
I recommend spinning up a Ubuntu 24.04 VM and taking a look at their installer.
They have a clear structure on how to install Ubuntu step by step while Fedora presents you everything at once. They properly hide the advanced stuff and only show it when asked for it. They have clear toggles for third party software right at the installer and explain what they do. Fedora doesn’t even give you the option to install H264 codecs or Nvidia drivers.
It also looks a lot cleaner and doesn’t overload people with too much info on a single screen. And yet it can still do stuff like automated installing and has active directory integration out of the box, where the Fedora installer miserably fails for a “Workstation” distro.
The Fedora installer works, but it doesn’t do much more than that and the others do it better in many areas.
Don’t even get me started on disk partitioning. I feel like they somehow have the most obtuse partitioning setup out of every distro I’ve ever installed. It feels like if you don’t just hand over your whole disk (which, if you do that, I feel like it doesn’t make it clear how it’s going to partition it), the installer gets very spiteful and just goes “fine then, figure it out”. I’ve never had so much trouble manually partitioning a disk before, I would literally rather just use fdisk lol.
If you’re installing an OS you should absolutely understand what the root account is. That’s like buying a car without understanding the concept of keys.
No, it’s like buying a car without understanding how the engine works, which a lot of people do.
That’s absurd. You don’t need to understand the inner workings of the kernel to know what a root account is. If you’re regularly encouraging people to install a new OS when you aren’t even confident in their ability to understand what a root account is, you’re not doing them any favors.
• The majority of useful packages are hidden in RPM Fusion
Half of your complains are fixed in newer releases. For instance it asks you if you want to enable third party repos. If you hit yes it enables the repo for chrome, Nvidia and others plus it setups stock flathub.
That only applies to the GNOME variant, the KDE spin is missing the third party repo toggle.
At least the Flathub repo is fixed on the GNOME variant now. The Nvidia repo is added but the driver is not installed, meaning you still need to use the CLI to install the drivers.
Their packages are consistently named differently than their Ubuntu/Debian counterpart
I agree with all your points, but this one has way more to do with Debian being a bunch of weirdos about how packages are packaged. Its really more of a Debian demerit than anything since sometimes their packaging practices can be somewhat hostile to projects not directly associated with Debian, especially since the Debian community can have a certain “Our way is the only right way” attitude. That said, the Debian packaging standards can make it easier as a developer to experiment with creating a software package to interact with an existing package. Like there’s a reason to do it that I can support and I wish Debian packagers would more often say “we package things like this so people can experiment” instead of “Everyone else does packaging wrong and our way is the only way”
Completely agree. I mean, I’m what you’d call a power user, and I still opt for using a flatpak for my browser (Floorp) because codecs are a pain.
When the time came to pick which boring old man distro to use, the people who picked and would recommend fedora all got jobs supporting rhel. They don’t have time or energy to devote to computer touching when they get home from their serious business jobs making sure the computer keeps increasing shareholder value.
Fedora is very good.
I wouldn’t be confident in recommending Fedora to noobs, because its a distribution that is on the bleeding edge side. But it depends on what type of noob we are talking about. There are noobs in Linux, who are technically well versed in Windows and have no problem in adapting to a new system. If someone wants to have the newest software, then Fedora might be it.
Also not many people have experience with Fedora, therefore less likely to be recommended. Most people use or used Ubuntu, maybe even started with Ubuntu. You or me may not like it, but its proven that Ubuntu is generally a good choice for newcomers to get into Linux. And that also plays into how many people know and are able to help. In contrast, Fedora is too much of a niche.
Fedora is not bleeding edge like Arch. It’s “leading edge”; the packages are a lot more tested before being deployed.
People being more experienced with Ubuntu/Debian is a good point
How are the packages more tested than on Arch? Both systems have multiple testing stages in place, doesn’t it? In Archlinux there are 2 more stages before it lands on the actual end user. Sometimes one has to wait long time, in example for me RetroArch was updated after 6 weeks after official release. That’s not bleeding edge at all. Only the system core files get updated extremely quick. But that’s only about updating new packages.
The “leading edge” term of Fedora is about a total different aspect. It’s leading, because Fedora adopts certain technologies first, before even Archlinux adopts it. In example Pipewire. Archlinux waits a bit before the technology is adopted widespread, while Fedora is leading and adopting it early. And that has nothing to do about how often the packages itself get updated. People often mixup these two things (and so I did probably).
From this article, an interview with Fedora’s project leader:
On the other hand, the long-term distributions work by basically not making changes. Fedora doesn’t follow that, your packages will get updated. We try to make it so that major breaking changes happen on releases rather than just as updates. But sometimes, if there is a security problem, we will put out a newer version of something. So for that kind of stable, it is much less so."
That’s why Fedora users are stuck with e.g. the older GNOME version until the next release.
The difference between Fedora and Debian regarding stability is that there’s a new Fedora release every 6 months, while on Debian you have to wait like 2 (?) years for major updates.
That’s how I always interpreted the term “leading edge”.
By that description, Ubuntu does the same, matching the release cycle of non LTS Ubunu versions; every 6 months with breaking changes (just like Fedora). The difference to Fedora is, that Ubuntu users do not need to upgrade to the next major version, while Fedora have to, because there is only one version.
The problem with Fedora and especially the atomic versions is that when you Google “how to do X on Linux” you pretty much always get information for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives. The atomic versions have it mildly harder because now you also have to learn how immutable distros work, and you can’t just make install something from GitHub (not that it’s recommended to do so, but if you just want your WiFi to work and that’s all you could find, it’s your best option).
It’s not as bad as it used to be thanks to Flatpak and stuff, but if you’re really a complete noob the best experience will be the one you can Google and get a working answer as easily as possible.
Once you’re familiar and ready to upgrade then it makes sense to go to other distros like Fedora, Nobara, Bazzite, Kionite and whatnot.
I don’t like Ubuntu, I feel like Mint is to Ubuntu what Manjaro is to Arch, Pop_OS is okay when it doesn’t uninstall your DE when installing Steam. But I still recommend those 3 to noobs because everyone knows how to get things working on those, and the guides are mostly interchangeable as well. Purely because it’s easy to search for help with those. I just tell them when you’re tired of the bugs and comfortable enough with Linux then go start distrohopping a bit to find your more permanent home.
if you’re really a complete noob the best experience will be the one you can Google and get a working answer as easily as possible.
Those Ubuntu “as easily as possible” answers on the web often revolve around adding random PPAs which cause breakage over time, especially the more PPAs are mixed and mashed. If anything, those easy answers from random Ubuntu forums and websites, last updated 2014, cause more harm than good.
I do, Fedora is simply the best and meets the most use cases. It combines good privacy and security out of the box with a clean UI (at least with Workstation and KDE spin) while having a package manager that’s easy to learn and easy access to Flathub and up-to-date apps (can’t stress this enough, even windows and Mac keep apps up to date and don’t hold them back for the sake of LTS (sorry Workstation Debian fans). It also brings in newer and better technologies without breaking almost anything (at least for me).
This is just my opinion though, I know people like to reccomend Mint but I personally do not like it, and despise it’s desktop options (I am one of the people that do not and never have liked Cinnamon).
I decided the nuclear option using mint with kde plasma 5
Well I did switch to opensuse tumbleweed, liked kde plasma a lot so while setting up weekly backups, I ended up… uh… “overwriting” it and my last external backup was a month old mint backup, so to not set things up again I just install kde on mint and said F it.
Just finished moving all 3 of my computers to Fedora and WOW it is so good compared to ubuntu. I was missing out. Everything is working on both AMD and Nvidia, even wayland.
I’ve been having a tough time with it. Maybe I’m unlucky with my hardware and setup. Spend hours this week recovering from a black screen after upgrading to F40. Issue with Plymouth + Nvidia + Luks at boot. Also getting Nvidia to work on F39, my first install. Secondary computer (laptop) macbook 2017, keyboard doesn’t work with Fedora compared to Linux Mint.
I’d recommend Linux Mint for beginners after my experiences. imho
Nvidia can be a bitch. And it’s unfortunate that Fedora isn’t particularly well known for handling that graciously.
I’d recommend Linux Mint for beginners after my experiences.
Absolutely fair. FWIW, if you ever feel like giving Fedora another chance, consider doing it through its derivative (i.e. Bazzite).
Thanks for the recommendation, I just installed Bazzite. Had been trialling LMDE but found it frustratingly lacking. No Driver Manager on that edition made NVIDIA drivers a nightmare. Meanwhile that’s handled in Bazzite and it has a shortcut to install Moonlight? Awesome.
You’re welcome 😊!
I agree that Bazzite is very very good. So much so, that it’s the first distro I recommend in person.
Enjoy 😉!
One of these days, I’ll have to give Universal Blue a look for general computing. Bazzite is excellent, but I don’t imagine my MiL is going to care about having Steam and gamescope installed out of the box, should I ever have to do a fresh install for her.
I understand. And to be frank, I agree with you that perhaps it’s too much focused on a particular set of things (i.e. gaming).
There’s also Aurora and Bluefin (see uBlue’s website) for those that seek a very similar experience but without the focused-on-gaming part. The reason I prefer Bazzite over those two is related to Waydroid (i.e. software to run Android (apps) on Linux). However, your mileage may vary.
Finally, uBlue used to dedicate resources and documentation on their base images; i.e. relatively not-opinionated images for Silverblue, Kinoite and Fedora Atomic with basically any desktop environment you could imagine plus hardware enablement. These are perhaps still worth considering. However, personally, I’ve been having a better time on Aurora/Bazzite/Bluefin.
I always forget about Aurora and Bluefin. Thanks for the reminder!
Things should get a lot better with NVIDIA soon in distros like Fedora that want to stick with only open software.
And not only did everything “just work” flawlessly, but it’s so much faster and more polished than I ever knew Linux to be!
Congrats, you are very lucky. But try to survive couple of version upgrades before recommending it to noobs.
I’ve been running Fedora OStree variants for over two years. I version upgraded and rebased between entirely different spins, rawhide and over to ublue variants then back to fedora mainline. All off the original install, keeping my userspace intact. Never once has it self destructed.
Years ago major upgrades and to lesser degree even minor upgrades made me to give up trying to keep installation running. I don’t even remember if it was Red Hat or Debian.
Eventually I realized, that I like running newest version of Desktop and I ran into cases of getting frustrated with lack of newer versions, which had fixes for issues I ran into. Then I realized that best wiki was not a snapshot distribution.
In the end I tried rolling distribution and remain happy for years.
Debian or derived distribution is easiest to get google help for and it is the simplest choice for me, when running on the cloud.
Although, Alpine is pushing through containers quite forcefully.
