Ubuntu or Fedora?

mmm, interesting, I've never been a big fan of Ubuntu but I must admit it's from bad experiances some years ago.

I'd like to give both a try
 
If I had to choose between the two I'd say Ubuntu...the documentation on it is just so much better than on any other distro that comes to mind. And also based on the highly supported debian with its nice package manager.. In my eyes still the ultimate "instant-noob-friendly-distro". Fedora is redhat based, and I personally where never fond of redhat..but like the writter said comes down to personal choice. But for Linux noobs I'll advise ubuntu for the more experienced goal oriented oke(by that I mean someone that wants to setup their systems to excel in specific applications/services) user I'll advise Gentoo
 
Whoever wrote that article clearly doesnt know much about Fedora, comparing apt-get to RPM is completely innacurate. RPM and DEB's compare. The claim that apt-get has resolved dependancies for ubuntu while Fedora has not is also wrong. All the way back from the days of Red Hat 9 (pre fedora) there has been yum which pulls the installers and resolves deps automatically.

Sooooo they are pretty much similar in most respects, its just a case of which you prefer.
 
I am in the process of changing my home server from Centos (RedHat clone installed about 3 years ago, but kept up to date) to Ubuntu. What a pleasure! Moved my laptop over from WinXP to Ubuntu about a year ago and have not looked back since then. Somehow everything I could not do on the old RedHat system (rpm dependency hell!) just works under Ubuntu - definitely a plus if you have a day job outside of IT.
 
I have Fedora (8, 9 & 10 - 32 & 64bit), Linux Mint and Ubuntu (8.04) installed on two PCs. For some reason, I always end up going back to Fedora - that's my main (favourite) distro. Fedora is very much a "bleeding-edge" distro and some updates will break things. That's the nature of the beast. Luckily I always have another version or even distro to fall back on! I also keep at least 3 kernels around. Even though I always do full updates (kernel and everything), it is hardly ever necessary for me to boot another distro. And the updates come at an incredible rate - sometimes 2 or more a week. Maybe I need to get out more, but that sort of thing excites me!

Linux Mint, however, is the distro that I recommend to most of my friends/family. It is based on Ubuntu, but I find it less buggy and it also seems to run a bit faster. Maybe it depends on what hardware you have?

Anyway - I'm planning to do a lot more distro-hopping. It's just this damn expensive bandwidth that is holding me back. Hard drive space is not and virtualisation is getting better and better.
 
Fedora uses the excuse that it is bleeding edge, but it is no more so than Ubuntu. Both have a similar aggressive release schedule and both have similar backing and similar approaches, to push the envelope. The big difference is that when something is wrong in Ubuntu people blame Canonical for making a mistake, but people make excuses for Fedora, saying it is bleeding edge.

Adrainx says he expects Fedora to break, but likes it anyway. This is akin to Windows users who use a broken OS knowingly and excuse its faults. Why would anyone choose to use a crippled system when they don't have to.

I have many distros installed. Fedora 10 is one of them, but I keep going back to my main distro which has never let me down for my main distro. It is Ubuntu 8.10. I have run Ubuntu since Feisty and have installed alphas and betas in that time. I have experienced crashes of individual applications, but I have never had the OS become unstable and unusable.

I have had Fedora 8, 9 and 10 stable releases break and become unusable. That is the difference in my mind. Most guilty for breakage is poor package management. When apt breaks, the fix is easy. When RPM breaks you are basically pooched. It is not as bad as in the past, but that is far from making it good.

I am very hard on package managers. I install every desktop, window manager, piece of eye candy and multimedia codecs and restricted driver that I can. This is partially intentional. I like to see how far that things can be pushed. It is also that I don't like being restricted in what I can install, so I install to find the limitations. Every distro is different, even ones using the same management system.

The worst is OpenSUSE. I can break it just doing updates. Its resolve dependency dialogues frequently only compound the problem. Breaking Fedora is a little harder, but it is easy to do. I do updates and then keep adding packages. It is just a matter of time. The hardest RPM distros to break are Mandriva and PCLOS, but they can break, too.

I can break Ubuntu in the same way. The difference is that Ubuntu is easy to fix both from the commandline and from Synaptic with the fix broken dependency selection. It is simple, straightforward and it works.

I deal with my own experiences in using Fedora 10 on my blog at http://linuxcanuck.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/an-ubuntu-user-takes-fedora-10-for-a-test-drive/

I am not self promoting here. I just don't want to repeat myself.
 
PCLINUXOS for me

The "out of the box" 3G and mobile phone support by the newest Ubuntu is about 3 years overdue for linux.

Ubuntu REALLLLY needs to fix their poo-themed UI.
 
LinuxCanuck said:
Adrainx says he expects Fedora to break, but likes it anyway. This is akin to Windows users who use a broken OS knowingly and excuse its faults. Why would anyone choose to use a crippled system when they don't have to.
Click to expand...
I just want to clarify something. When I say that I expect Fedora to break, it is mostly because I spend a lot of time in the forums, and sometimes the "vocal minority" tends to get to me. In my own experience, Fedora doesn't break nearly as often as some people claim. Remember, I always do *full* updates of *everything* - especially kernel updates.

As for the RPM vs. dpkg (it's not apt) thing, the reason I hardly ever boot Ubuntu anymore, is because I screwed it up with apt-get! I'll have to RTFM a bit to get Ubuntu up and running again. Don't have time to do that now. ;)
 
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I downloaded the Fedora dvd this morning, will install it this weekend....
 
if fedora 10 is anything like fedora 9 i wont even bother giving it a shot fedora 9 gave me grey hairs
 
i'm running three fedora systems. all at 10 now after updating 2 from 8 and one from 9. i've used fedora since FC4 and I am yet to break it.

as for support, forums.fedoraforum.org is about the only resource you need when running fedora. it is no less helpful and informative than ubuntuforums.

but having said all that, even though i always run the latest version of fedora on one of my systems, it is debian that i run back to. especially of the sid variety.

but what it really comes down to is that if you have linux versions running the same kernel version, the differences tend to reduce greatly. you will of course get the more "power" user distros like gentoo when you really want to tweak your linux distro.

i keep on meaning to get round to playing with it, but constantly use the excuse of waiting for a more powerful computer.

EDIT: Something to add, I suppose, is what you feel your level of competence is with Linux. If i have an issue with the distro i am using i will tend to search what seems the most popular forum for that distro. however given the nature of linux, a solution for one distro has a very good chance of working with another distro so i don't confine myself to just looking at debian/fedora solutions.
 
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OS Information
OS: Linux 2.6.22.19-0.1-default i686
Current user: gru@ogre
System: openSUSE 10.3 (i586)
KDE: 3.5.7 "release 72.9"

Is it the worst distro? I don't know, I happen to like it. It has it's quirks and once you've got it potty-trained (like you have to do with any new OS install) then it's a pleasure to work with. As an ATI user I also have less of a ball ache to get my graphics card to work properly. Out of the box it runs Quake 3 arena full graphics etc without a hitch. I have yet to manage that feat on this same machine with my ubuntu 8.04 installation (with the "proper" ATI linux drivers.
 
Freespire works nice for me, it is very XP like.

Off topic I think if you look at the route Symbian is taking - and the hardware it is taking on - that in the future it will be a nice alternative.
 
Rouxenator said:
Freespire works nice for me, it is very XP like.

Off topic I think if you look at the route Symbian is taking - and the hardware it is taking on - that in the future it will be a nice alternative.
Click to expand...

haha symbian is way hot cant wait to see s60v5 in action on the n97 (will be the one of the first to buy it as soon as it reach our shores)
 
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