Hello there,
I have been using Ubuntu for several years and have grown quite comfortable with it. Although, I have recently become curious about Fedora and am considering making the switch.
I have heard great things about its cutting edge software and timely updates.
The emphasis on free and open source software aligns well with my values.
I am interested in trying out GNOME in its purest form, which I have read Fedora offers.
I have some queries in my mind which I wish to clear:
How steep is the learning curve for someone transitioning from Ubuntu to Fedora? Are there any major differences in package management or system maintenance that I should be aware of?
Are there any significant differences in the availability of software between Ubuntu and Fedora? I use a mix of open-source tools and proprietary software in my workflow.
How does the community support compare between Ubuntu and Fedora? I’ve found Ubuntu’s community resources extremely helpful and am curious if Fedora’s community is just as active and supportive.
Also, I have gone through this post: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/should-i-switch-from-ubuntu-to-fedora/74478golang which definitely helped me out a lot.
What has been your experience with the performance and stability of Fedora, especially compared to Ubuntu? I am particularly interested in knowing if Fedora’s more frequent updates impact its stability.
Thankyou in advance for your help and assistance.
It is not that big of a gap, but clearly a little bit steeper if you are totally new to Linux, which you are not.
Fedora uses rpm packages and the tool is called dnf whereas Ubuntu uses deb packages with apt. Though they work very similarly on the command line. I see no problem here, the syntax is similar. Though if you use a graphical package manager that becomes irrelevant.
Proprietary software is better supported under Ubuntu but you can add almost any software to Fedora, but sometimes you have to research more. Codecs are alway a pain in fedora, even though it got better. At one point you will be searching for additional repos in Fedora, like RPM Fusion.
The community I guess is smaller but nonetheless top notch. You will find all the help you need.
Fedora is just as stable and usable as Ubuntu and more up-to-date. Personally I find Ubuntu a bit more streamlined as an LTS release.
Just try it. Linux is just Linux. I am a Debian guy usually but Fedora is a really nice distribution and I used it in the past.
But if you are really happy with Ubuntu then there is probably no real reason to switch either.
A lot of the community members here use Fedora and also some of the creators of this same community, so you will find help here easily and we will be happy to assist.
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Hello! It’s great to see your interest in switching to Fedora! The learning curve for transitioning from Ubuntu to Fedora is generally manageable, especially since you’re already comfortable with Linux. The main difference lies in the package management; Fedora uses DNF instead of APT, which might take a little getting used to. Regarding software availability, both distributions support a wide range of open-source tools, but some proprietary software might be more readily available on Ubuntu.
Community support for Fedora is quite active, and you’ll find helpful resources, though Ubuntu’s community is larger. As for performance and stability, many users report that Fedora is stable, but its frequent updates can occasionally introduce bugs. Overall, it sounds like a rewarding switch! If you have more questions or need assistance, feel free to reach out. https://www.redspider.ae
The biggest difference I can think of that may not even be a concern to you is that Fedora doesn’t support Nvidia out of the box whereas Ubuntu does. That is unless Fedora has very recently changed.
Fedora now meant to have Nvidia drivers in repository which should make it easier.
RPM Fusion is your friend when you are looking for packages not included in Fedora by default.
like Howto/NVIDIA - RPM Fusion
My experience with Fedora and Nvidia drivers is a bit on and off. Have had way more boot to black screens on Fedora distros then Ubuntu based, also Fedora Spins. Recently reinstalled Nobara twice after not having patience to sort out Nvidia issues after an update.
But have also had more experience fixing issues on Ubuntu based distros so probably just my lack of experience on Fedora coming through.
Still intending to come back to Fedora to have a go with the Budgie spin, since I used to love Solus, but not quite there yet.
Universal Blue is based on atomic Fedora, but offers Nvidia ISOs.
If you don’t already, I recommend start making full disk backups using clonezilla.
I did it using just the command it uses and somehow grub is completely missing after an upgrade.
Now, the only way to boot my pc, without UBCD super grub 2 program, is to boot from my literal backup of my system, and somehow it started booting from the usually boot disk with the upgraded system, and both disks at the time had the same UUID.
So I had to go in and manually change one of the partitions for one of the disks, and an extra partition, now cloned on both disks, to even access my home directory partition.
Still haven’t understood how to reinstall grub, even though the backup disk has it before I upgraded, it says “no bootable medium” in the BIOS, so I still have to keep this setup until I fix that.
Other than that, no major issues, and I skip every other update, so I don’t pull so often from the servers. This setup has lasted since 35 or somewhere around there, still going.
I can’t upgrade to 42 until I figure out how to fix bootloader, and a bit on a limited timescale, because it is not recommended to wait three or more releases between upgrades.