I ordered a Star Labs Byte in June and should be expecting it in the mail here in the next couple weeks. it’s got a Rysen 7 5800u , AMD Radeon graphics and 32 Gb RAM. I noticed that most if not all Linux computer companies (star labs, slimbook, tuxedo etc.) only offer specific distro’s to come pre-installed, and none of them offer a Red Hat based distro like Fedora. It’s all Ubuntu or Arch based. Is there a reason for that? would non specified distro no run as well? I want to put Fedora on my new machine when it get in but don’t wanna install it and not run to it’s full potential or worse not work at all.
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If you ask them I bet at least one company would pre-install it for you.
Taking some wild guesses…
It might be because Ubuntu and Arch are long time favorites for desktops and Fedora’s popularity (by comparison) is recent so asking for it might get them to put it on the order form.
They also have a faster major release cycle which’d make stocking pre-installed drives more awkward and they may be worried about customer experience because it doesn’t seem front of mind to newer users yet that Fedora is an un-opinionated desktop and expects you to know the packages/configs for the bells and whistles you’d like to have.
Fedora really should be available though especially if Arch is there.
I would venture to say yes it will run fine. Linux PC companies like System 76 use “open hardware”
Generally speaking Linux hardware vendors are using hardware where drivers have been upstreamed or if not, they have started the process and it will be available soon or like in the case of Tuxedo, they provide the drivers for multiple distributions using the Open Build Service.
Much appreciated, hardware stuff makes my head spin, but I’ll get there as I train. I had to ask seeing as that was an obvious omission to distro choice. I thought there had to be a reason. So I’ll put Fedora on this machine if it ever gets here. Next challenge learn Coreboot in order to put Fedora on it.
thanks again
Usually yes, but in some rare cases something could not be working properly like e.g. the backlight keyboard where one company releases drivers for some supported distributions but not for all. I have this case with a Slimbook. Otherwise it takes any Linux distro.