Mint versus Fedora

[Forkjulle]

I'm a Mint convert and will probably stay one. But I must admit that I'm curious to check out Fedora 15. I've read various reviews, so I don't know who to believe. I've heard that Fedora doesn't play nicely with certain drivers and plugins. For example, will my current Nvidia Xserver drivers work (I have fairly new graphics cards). And what about the MS font pack? Is it easier than Mint 11?

What are your experiences with Fedora (15), if you have any?

[randomizer]

MS fonts on Fedora are more of a pain to install. There are no prebuilt packages so you have to create the RPM yourself using one of the many msttcore-fonts-2.0-x.spec files floating around (it's a good idea to inspect it first to make sure it's legit). It's not really that difficult, it's just a few additional steps compared to other distros. Some people have built the RPMs already but I wouldn't trust a random RPM lying around on the net.

Personally I haven't had much luck with Fedora 15. GNOME Shell crashed many times and the rendering often screwed up as well. No issues in Arch so it's not an upstream GNOME Shell problem.

[Forkjulle]

Gnome 3 crashes? I wonder how Mint will be on Gnome 3...

[randomizer]

Like I said, it works fine in Arch (ok, unless I restart the shell multiple times in quick succession). It's just buggy for me in Fedora 15. Then again, it works fine in Fedora for other people, so I guess you'd just have to give it a whirl and see how it runs for you

[frank75riz]

I tried Fedora, hated the new interface (desktop). Killed it and put on Suse 11.4, then could not get wireless. Then killed Suse and put Mint on my laptop, booting with XP, and it , so far is working seamless. I love mint.

[proxima_centauri]

* Moved to Chat about Linux & Other Distributions subforum from Newbie Questions

[SimonTS]

I've tried many distros, yet the one I keep coming back to is Mint (most recently 9LTS for stability and LMDE for masochism). I hated Fedora - on a tablet computer the desktop might be OK, but on a laptop screen it was horrid so on a full monitor it would be abysmal. I also had all sorts of problems with installing the required drivers for my network and graphics cards. OK, so they aren't detected by Mint 9, but installing them is a damn sight easier.

[mads]

...the one I keep coming back to is Mint (most recently 9LTS for stability and LMDE for masochism).

[MALsPa]

Enjoying the KDE spin of Fedora 15 here. I also added Xfce to it, which I'm typing from right now. I've had this spin of Fedora 15 running since June, and it's been great so far.

A few weeks ago, I downloaded the main (GNOME) F15 .iso, which I've run a few times from a flash drive, just to get a feel for what GNOME 3 is all about. I'm okay with GNOME 3, from what I've seen so far, but I didn't install Fedora 15 with GNOME 3 because I'm happy with the KDE spin.

There are also LXDE and Xfce spins, of course: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options

[Forkjulle]

Thanks for the replies. I'm definitely sticking with Mint.

It seems that, wherever I go, Mint has overwhelmingly positive reviews, while Fedora doesn't.

[mads]

Thanks for the replies. I'm definitely sticking with Mint.
It seems that, wherever I go, Mint has overwhelmingly positive reviews, while Fedora doesn't.

Thanks God, at least one intelligent and sane person among us Linux users. Usually as soon as a distro
gets positive reviews, people get desperate to find a new one.

[Forkjulle]

Thanks for the replies. I'm definitely sticking with Mint.
It seems that, wherever I go, Mint has overwhelmingly positive reviews, while Fedora doesn't.

Thanks God, at least one intelligent and sane person among us Linux users. Usually as soon as a distro
gets positive reviews, people get desperate to find a new one.

Why do you think this is?

[mads]

Why do you think this is?

Cause we are insane and have so much free time.

[MALsPa]

Wow. Yeah, stick with Mint, you're probably better off. I'm sure there's no reason why so many people like Fedora.

Instead of reading reviews and asking for comments in a "Mint versus Fedora" thread here (which might not prompt many positive comments about Fedora, right?), perhaps try using Fedora yourself. I did -- installed it for the first time back in December 2010 -- and I've been very surprised and pleased at what I've seen so far. Definitely a quality distro.

Your mileage may vary, as always. Fedora isn't as simple to install and set up as Mint is. But it's a strong distro, great documentation available, big team behind it, and it's one of the big names in Linux. If it works with your hardware as well as it does with mine, you might find yourself as impressed as I've been. Or maybe not.

[Forkjulle]

Wow. Yeah, stick with Mint, you're probably better off. I'm sure there's no reason why so many people like Fedora.

Instead of reading reviews and asking for comments in a "Mint versus Fedora" thread here (which might not prompt many positive comments about Fedora, right?), perhaps try using Fedora yourself. I did -- installed it for the first time back in December 2010 -- and I've been very surprised and pleased at what I've seen so far. Definitely a quality distro.

Your mileage may vary, as always. Fedora isn't as simple to install and set up as Mint is. But it's a strong distro, great documentation available, big team behind it, and it's one of the big names in Linux. If it works with your hardware as well as it does with mine, you might find yourself as impressed as I've been. Or maybe not.

This kind of comment is great. I've heard about Fedora's strict open source policy, which worries me. I use dual Nvidia cards with the Xserver driver. Is that available on Fedora too? And what about stuff like Flash and MS fonts and Wacom etc?

[MALsPa]

This kind of comment is great. I've heard about Fedora's strict open source policy, which worries me. I use dual Nvidia cards with the Xserver driver. Is that available on Fedora too? And what about stuff like Flash and MS fonts and Wacom etc?

Sorry, I don't know much about all that stuff. Might try the Fedora forums and/or documentation. Flash is working fine here, though. There are both "free" and "non-free" repos available. I think the situation isn't all that different from Debian, which also has a strict open source policy. I don't think either distro ships with non-free stuff, so that could be a major factor for a lot of people. See how you feel after looking at this page: http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

I don't know, no distro is a perfect fit for everyone, but I usually find that there are good reasons why people like a particular distro, and my approach is to give it a try, give it some time, and see what I think. I haven't had much experience with .rpm distros outside of PCLOS, so Fedora was kind of an unknown for me. But it's turned out to be one of the better distros I've got installed here. But, again, not as easy out of the box as something like Mint, that's for sure. Once I got things installed and set up, my feeling has been that it's a very quality distro. Haven't had to ask many questions at the forums; I've been able to follow the documentation for just about everything, so far.

Not a fan of the default GUI package manager, PackageKit (or for KDE, KPackageKit). I prefer to use Yumex. yum itself (from the command line) seems quite powerful and not too difficult to figure out. Haven't had any problems with stuff crashing or with dependency issues. Just seems like they've put this thing together well.

[zerozero]

if you want to try fedora (and you should, it's a great distro), but are a bit afraid of the unknown, there are 2 projects that might help ease the transition:

1- Fusion Linux- i started with this one when i wanted to try it (but then i couldn't go for fedora itself);
it's like they usually say about ubuntu and mint, frusion is fedora with codecs, restricts drivers and so on, and as a bonus you get mintmenu
http://fusionlinux.org/

2- Fuduntu - this one i never tried, because in the meantime i went fedora all the way, but the reviews are very good: the aim is to make a fedora respin with codecs and drivers enabled by default;
http://www.fuduntu.org/

once you get more confidence and want to check the mother distro, there are a few projects (kinda UbuntTweak if i may say so) that make life a lot easier: autoplus, fedorautils and easylife
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/07/easily-i ... ns-in.html

[Robin]

The only "Fedora-vs-Mint" issue that matters to me is that Fedora doesn't offer LTS (Long Term Support) editions. I haven't distro-hopped much since I'm down to one 'puter and it's "mission critical." When I get a new one I'd like to try Fedora just so I can say I've seen it, lol.

[Forkjulle]

I've watched a few reviews, in the meantime, of Fedora 15, and I already don't like what I see. What I like about Mint is the simplicity of the single panel at the bottom. Having everything there is brilliant, especially on a big screen with 2500x1500 resolution. Ubuntu's layout is terrible for screens like mine, with the applets at the top right and the launcher at the far left. While Mint's applets are also at the far right, there is more streamlined flow in everything being in one panel, including MintMenu.

I'm very interested to see what Mint will look like with Gnome 3. Fedora 15 looks a bit like Ubuntu, which I don't like.

[DrHu]

http://fedoraproject.org/en/features/
--usually it is enough to look through the features and decide; at least to test it
I think Fedora has always been pretty good, especially their KDE versions, and they seem to want to try the latest incarnations of those desktops, often being the first ones out the box

However, I don't particularly like rpm as a package manager, preferring apt (Debian) style more..

I don't particularly distro-hop; I think it is relatively pointless if one distribution is working well for you

However I have parked at LXDE 10x for now, but I expect to upgrade at some time in the future, probably also with that desktop
--I doubt I will need to go with a full blown desktop manager such as KDE or Gnome anytime in the future, even if that does put me outside the mainstream choices provided by most Linux distributions