There comes a time when everyone has to sit and think about what they use on their PC, especially if you're on Linux. For me, Arch Linux (via EndeavourOS) just wasn't working out any more and so I've moved to Fedora.
While I was reasonably happy with Arch Linux, it's just not stable enough for me personally. It's a very subjective thing of course, and highly dependent on what hardware you use — along with how often you update. For me, it just messed things up a bit too often, and last night was the final straw.
I updated either that day, or the day before, and just before a livestream was due to start, my SteelSeries headset no longer worked. No matter what I tried, following guide after guide about PipeWire, nothing helped. Just this weird and very quiet electrical static noise whenever I tried piping audio to it. Eventually it worked again by some downgrading, plus random hotplugging and testing it on a Windows machine for a sanity check and it started somewhat working again. My Microphone was another issue, at the same time it decided to be ridiculously quiet for no apparent reason I could see so there were wider problems. I had enough, I had work to do and after hours of hair-pulling — hello from Fedora.
Fedora's KDE Spin
Thankfully, with the likes of Flathub / Flatpak packages and how far along apps like Discover have come along for installing packages and setting things up, there's not a whole lot to learn. It's been a very long time since I used Fedora, and it was one of my first Linux distributions I tried sticking with back when it was "Fedora Core" and wow — it's always surprising to see how far we've come as a platform for doing anything.
Fedora does come with some of its own issues, like NVIDIA drivers being a nuisance to install, which they definitely should improve. If other distributions can do one-click or one-line installs, I'm sure they could do it too. However, it's just another point towards me swapping to AMD when prices settle, or perhaps Intel when Arc properly launches for desktop. I also need to figure out why Dropbox won't load on startup, some little things like that.
Anyway, are you really a Linux nerd if you don't distro-hop at least once a year? Jokes aside, I look forward to seeing why people keep recommending Fedora nowadays as a stable distribution, let's see how long it takes me to break it.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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slaapliedje Apr 8, 2022
In my experience, Fedora is a great system when you first install it. But inevitably when you do updates, for some reason it randomly breaks things. They're usually small things. Like suddenly the touch screen scrolling stops working in Firefox, or auto rotation on a tablet breaks. Since they are niche use cases, it's weird that the out of the box install is fine, but then an update breaks it.
The bit about nvidia drivers? They ARE easy to install. Enable rpmfusion repo, yum install them, and reboot. Done.
The bit about nvidia drivers? They ARE easy to install. Enable rpmfusion repo, yum install them, and reboot. Done.
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Pipewire may not be ready yet, but I totally approve his approach to stop the fragmentation in the linux audio ecosystem by embracing the existing technologies instead of trying to just replace them.How ironic,
Pipewire (apparently broken in Arch, which uses default upstream configs) has been created by Wim Taymans, Principal Engineer at Red Hat which in turns sponsors Fedora :)
Even more reason to avoid pipewire
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I've been getting performance issues on Arch lately (intermittent micro stuttering), I switched to Fedora and it stopped. I love the idea of Arch (building your perfect OS from scratch, no unnecessary bloat), but lately I've had a better experience on a finely crafted experience like Fedora, which still has less bloat than most + uses up-to-date packages.
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Will you try fedora on the steamdeck?
Until the Deck-specific drivers and tweaks are in the mainline kernel it'll be a very lackluster experience with anything other than SteamOS. Even after these tweaks get mainlined I cannot see myself wanting to run anything other than SteamOS on my Deck.
Maybe if you used the deck exclusively docked?
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As an Arch user on all my devices (except the Pi). Yeah. Yeah I don't blame you one bit. I haven't experienced any breakage with my hardware but I keep reading about it and other issues that can occur, so while I do love Arch, it kind of feels like a minefield at times even for me. Fedora's a great choice! I tried it on a laptop just over a week ago and I'm a big fan, packages are relatively up to date and it's so simple to set up. A bit bloated out of the box, for my tastes, but that's just nitpicking really, so I'm definitely recommending Fedora KDE or Mint to anyone who might ask me what their "first distro" should be.
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As an Arch user on all my devices (except the Pi). Yeah. Yeah I don't blame you one bit. I haven't experienced any breakage with my hardware but I keep reading about it and other issues that can occur, so while I do love Arch, it kind of feels like a minefield at times even for me. Fedora's a great choice! I tried it on a laptop just over a week ago and I'm a big fan, packages are relatively up to date and it's so simple to set up. A bit bloated out of the box, for my tastes, but that's just nitpicking really, so I'm definitely recommending Fedora KDE or Mint to anyone who might ask me what their "first distro" should be.
Yeah, arch still has and always will have a special place in my heart. It is good, but probably not for the every day use of a person who does not want or does not have the skills to tinker.
Fedora for new users? Well, I certainly would not recommend that. In my personal opinion there are better distros for that, though based on Ubuntu (as Neon) which I wouldn't touch, for new users who want stability, the LTS kernel and just "use" the systems and very likely... mostly just a web browser in todays time, it's perfectly valid.
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When you've had enough of all the other distros breaking for no reason, I'll be here waiting with Debian at the ready. :)
Obviously I'm taking the piss here, people can use whatever they want. It will be interesting to see if Fedora lasts for Liam. I like Debian and Siduction is my preferred distro.
I feel you 😅
Debian as a desktop and notebook workstation since 2015, server since either woody or sarge, dont remember exactly.
I switched desktop distributions like every other day, until I finally had enough, never going back, it will be Debian until either of us dies^^
The best fedora for me was 6 (zod), after that it was a slippery slope
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As a long time Fedora user, I don't see it getting nearly the love it deserves. It's stable and reliable and has a LOT of spin options to get the look and feel you want. I run it with XFCE4 myself. Enjoy!
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Once you go with Arch you never go back.... :P
I am using EndeavourOS which is kinda Arch with easy installation...
Is just everything works...
I am even on testing repos on Arch with KDE Unstable , very few issues which most issues are solved within a day.
Last edited by wolfyrion on 8 April 2022 at 9:54 pm UTC
I am using EndeavourOS which is kinda Arch with easy installation...
Is just everything works...
I am even on testing repos on Arch with KDE Unstable , very few issues which most issues are solved within a day.
Last edited by wolfyrion on 8 April 2022 at 9:54 pm UTC
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So I visit my parents every now and then and advocating Linux obviously every time. They always had an Ubuntu installation they never booted to. A month ago I visited them and thought, hey let's experience with Manjaro on their PC (instead of mine), they won't use it after I leave anyway.
Long story short, they are used to it now, and have been on Manjaro for a month. Now, I should be happy right? Except it's bound to break sooner or later and who the hell is going to fix that?
Long story short, they are used to it now, and have been on Manjaro for a month. Now, I should be happy right? Except it's bound to break sooner or later and who the hell is going to fix that?
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Fedora as a stable alternative to Arch? Well, you know what they say: have it your way.
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As a long time Fedora user, I don't see it getting nearly the love it deserves. It's stable and reliable and has a LOT of spin options to get the look and feel you want. I run it with XFCE4 myself. Enjoy!
Using fedora for 4 month now, breaking my system once I'm not sure if that's true. Though, was played by Nvidia drivers, but for me it was not a stable experience.
I still use it though, it's still the best option for me.
Fedora is not stable, considering 80 % of the GPUs in the laptop space probably are Nvidia.
I do understand their stance towards that. Just, that won't be good for any average user.
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Fedora as a stable alternative to Arch? Well, you know what they say: have it your way.
On that part it's probably really more stable. They usually don't break on fundamental stuff in a stable release cycle.
But to be fair, distributions are just that. They maintain upstream packages.
The difference with Arch and Fedora is, Fedora undergoes a quality gate. Which Arch never did, never does, and probably never will do.
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pleasereadthemanual Apr 9, 2022
I tried to give Fedora a shot last year when my laptop's NIC died, but I couldn't figure out how to get the Wi-Fi driver compiled. I messed around with DNF, Yum, and probably yet another package manager but never ended up getting an internet connection after a few hours. On Arch, it took me about 2 hours to follow a pretty simple guide to getting my Wi-Fi drivers compiled.
I don't think I'll ever be able to use another distribution; Arch is the only one I've been able to figure out.
I don't think I'll ever be able to use another distribution; Arch is the only one I've been able to figure out.
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DrDickGind Apr 9, 2022
timeshift or some other recovery tool is a great idea when using arch. Im really happy with it. Sorry to hear you jumping of the: I use arch btw train :D
Last edited by DrDickGind on 9 April 2022 at 2:53 am UTC
Last edited by DrDickGind on 9 April 2022 at 2:53 am UTC
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Friendship ended with Arch, now Fedora is my best friend
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Somewhere I followed a wrong command, didn't pay enough attention, stuff got removed that shouldn't and it all died. It was a learning experience
You have to watch out for those embedded 'sudo rm -rf /' suggestions. ;-P
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slaapliedje Apr 9, 2022
Cool, I hope Fedora works for you, I’m more than happy with it since several years. Fedora shines with its Gnome integration (which I use), but don’t know how well the KDE integration is set up.I was amused when I watched a video that was trying to push the idea of not suggesting different distributions, and instead to suggest people use something based on the desktop environment. I sort of agree. If trying to convert someone over, we should ask what the person is looking for. Based on these questions, you suggest the 'best of breed' for the DE, and be sure to ask if they want stability or continuous new features.
For example; if someone wanted simple, out of your face system where you can just launch applications and get work done, I would suggest stock Gnome. If they wanted new features over stability, I would suggest Fedora over Debian.
If they want complete customization, I would probably suggest Suse over Fedora, with KDE. At least it used to be a great KDE distro. Not sure how great it is now.
I kind of miss Xandros, but that might be the Tequila talking...
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Hello, we have chatted before on Twitter when your site was small, I doubt you'll remember me.
Anyway, because Arch *needs* to be bleeding edge, it always uses the latest packages, we all know that; now, I have a Geforce GT710 2GB VRAM, although I can run 95% of games of the 700 on my list, NVIDIA decided to drop support for my card and throw it to legacy drivers. And Arch didn't like that. Manjaro also didn't like that. So I said bye bye and just got a SSD, I would use my HDD to put games, builds, etc, and the OS on the 256GB Kingston SSD.
I decided to install MX Linux, which I never used, and sounds strange, but that is because it's the devs of Mepis and Artix joined and made this distro. It was on top on DistroWatch at that time, and was on top yesterday as well.
It's super stable, everything works, the default WM is XFCE, and the best thing is, it doesn't use systemd, uses a custom sysv on init. It's FAST, I know I never tried a SSD, but I can tell it's really fast.
So, I update packages every time is needed, and set to use the latest NVIDIA drivers that supported my card. I don't like Legacy.
All games work as before, and with this speed I don't see the value on using Arch, I prefer something more stable, I already got speed.
Anyway, because Arch *needs* to be bleeding edge, it always uses the latest packages, we all know that; now, I have a Geforce GT710 2GB VRAM, although I can run 95% of games of the 700 on my list, NVIDIA decided to drop support for my card and throw it to legacy drivers. And Arch didn't like that. Manjaro also didn't like that. So I said bye bye and just got a SSD, I would use my HDD to put games, builds, etc, and the OS on the 256GB Kingston SSD.
I decided to install MX Linux, which I never used, and sounds strange, but that is because it's the devs of Mepis and Artix joined and made this distro. It was on top on DistroWatch at that time, and was on top yesterday as well.
It's super stable, everything works, the default WM is XFCE, and the best thing is, it doesn't use systemd, uses a custom sysv on init. It's FAST, I know I never tried a SSD, but I can tell it's really fast.
So, I update packages every time is needed, and set to use the latest NVIDIA drivers that supported my card. I don't like Legacy.
All games work as before, and with this speed I don't see the value on using Arch, I prefer something more stable, I already got speed.
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