Mint versus Fedora

[linuxviolin]

As I said, it "could be a big drawback for some people." Obviously, Fedora's support cycle would be a reason some people would choose not to use the distro. Don't get too hung up on that word ("drawback"); read it within the context of the entire sentence.

OK OK But again, you are not *absolutely* forced to update every 6 months, Fedora maintains its releases for more than 6 months. And if this can "be a reason some people would choose not to use the distro", then, as I said, a distro like Frugalware for instance should scare them away with long strides as it is much worse...

[MALsPa]

OK OK But again, you are not *absolutely* forced to update every 6 months, Fedora maintains its releases for more than 6 months. And if this can "be a reason some people would choose not to use the distro", then, as I said, a distro like Frugalware for instance should scare them away with long strides as it is much worse...

All true.

Yeah, Fedora's 12-13 month support cycle could be a big drawback for some people.

Even with that, at the Fedora forums I notice that quite a few people continue to use outdated versions.

But, the point, of course, is that some people prefer stuff like LTS versions, or something like Debian Stable, or long-lived rolling-released distros like PCLOS. Fedora isn't really like that, as linuxviolin has correctly pointed out. I think what linuxviolin is saying is that it's no reason to knock the distro, and I agree. I don't think Robin was knocking the distro, just saying that it doesn't fit in with what he wants.

Here, Fedora looks very high-quality. So I'm gonna keep it running for a few years, through a few releases, and see what I think down the road. It isn't all that much trouble to re-install every year or so, at least not for me -- and keeping good notes seems to help quite a bit. They also have an upgrade method, but I haven't tried it yet -- I just don't feel all that comfortable upgrading to a new distro version, and would rather just do a fresh installation.

What I'm most interested in seeing is how things look from one version to the next. I've read that Fedora can be a bit inconsistent in that area. I've also read that it's best to stick with the even-numbered releases, but I don't know if that's true or not.

[linuxviolin]

Hehe, now MALsPA I totally agree with you.

About the upgrade to another version, you have PreUpgrade. It's even a GUI... I used it to upgrade F13 to 14 with absolutely no problems. You can see here for this:

Upgrading and specially How to use PreUpgrade

[MALsPa]

Hehe, now MALsPA I totally agree with you.

I must be losing my touch.

Just kidding. Good info on PreUpgrade, I'll give that a shot sometime, maybe.

[Forkjulle]

So, does anyone know what the next Mint (gnome 3) will look like?

[zerozero]

Forkjulle, nobody can tell you that, now for sure
Clem just wrote this on the blog

R&D started on Gnome 3. Although the new desktop is extremely different than what we’re aiming for, it looks extremely promising from a technical point of view and easy to modify and improve upon. We’re planning to do some R&D on Gnome 2 as well in order to assess the work involved in maintaining it within Linux Mint. Of course, all you probably want to know is whether Mint 12 will come with Gnome 3, Gnome 2 or something else.. and I’m afraid you’ll need to wait a little more before we can tell you for sure. At this stage it might go either way, or it’s possible we might support both versions of Gnome going forward. We’re aware of what the community wants, we’ve got a precise idea of what we want to achieve, and based on the technicalities, and confidence we have in these two technologies, not only now, but for the future, we’ll take our time and make the right decision.

so basically, all options all on the table

[Forkjulle]

Knowing the amount of apps and and easy installations and websites dedicated to Ubuntu (and thus Mint), is it even worth using Fedora? I mean, it's really just an interface difference, yes?

[MALsPa]

Knowing the amount of apps and and easy installations and websites dedicated to Ubuntu (and thus Mint), is it even worth using Fedora? I mean, it's really just an interface difference, yes?

Hm, interesting question(s). I don't know. For the most part, one Linux distro is about as good as another, as far as I'm concerned! It's worth it to me to use Fedora because I'm interested in getting a feel for that distro, but it might not be worth it to someone else.

I think that Fedora is doing a better job with their KDE spin than Mint is doing right now with theirs. But Mint has some advantages, too.

So I guess I'm totally waffling on the questions. Sorry. I guess the correct answer is, "No, but yes."

[Forkjulle]

I'm asking because most say "it's a personal choice", and it is, but it seems that Mint is a more intuitive choice. Firstly, Mint installs everything that the daily user needs (Flash, MP3, Nvidia drivers, etc). Fedora doesn't because they put philosophy over practical. (Who wants a PC that can't play MP3s or a YouTube video? Or has to struggle to get dual Nvidia graphics to work?) Sure, you can install such additions later, but Mint - from what I've been reading - seems a lot more intuitive and polished and less worried about philosophical rubbish. Even these Mint forums are more polished than Fedora's (and even Ubuntu's). And Mint's developers actually care about the community and don't have a corporation behind them. There's something nice about that.

I don't know. Maybe I'm being harsh, but I started this thread being intrigued by Fedora, but after reading all the comments (and googling), I am being to wonder why someone would want to run Fedora.

[tdockery97]

I have run Fedora a little while back. It was the LXDE spin and was pretty nice. But it didn't do anything better than Mint, and in fact at least one thing not as well. Fedora's package management has to be the slowest I've ever used. The distro is very nice, but it doesn't overcome the very slow package manager as far as I'm concerned.

[zerozero]

why fedora?
- fedora is more bleeding edge than mint (ok, that comes with a price, it's not as stable, but it's a trade-off);
you see new technologies in fedora that only reach the mainstream distros in the next or two releases after (gnome3, sistemd are just a couple examples)
this is some of the work fedora does
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview

- fedora is 100% FOSS-compliance (and that attracts a lot of users)

in the end of the day, you said it all

"it's a personal choice"

[MALsPa]

I don't know. Maybe I'm being harsh, but I started this thread being intrigued by Fedora, but after reading all the comments (and googling), I am being to wonder why someone would want to run Fedora.

zerozero pointed out some good reasons for going with Fedora. And my reasons for running it are good -- for me. Might not be something you'd want to run, though. The only way to really know is to try it for yourself, I guess -- if you want to. And, again, if you go to their forums you'll find lots of people who seem to think that Fedora is a very good choice; maybe a lot of them wonder why someone would want to run Mint!

Fedora's package management has to be the slowest I've ever used. The distro is very nice, but it doesn't overcome the very slow package manager as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, it's kinda slow. Seems to work very well, though. The slowness bothered me a lot more when I first started out with Fedora, but not so much anymore. I prefer Synaptic's speed but Yumex is a nice tool, too (I don't use PackageKit or KPackageKit). Anyway, the yum "slowness" hasn't made me want to stop using the distro; for anyone who's interested, some explanation can be found here: http://fedoraunity.org/Members/zcat/yum-rpm-faq

Also note that yum will check for and download updated package metadata every 1.5 hours by default (see metadata_expire in /etc/yum.conf (man yum.conf)), leading some to the false conclusion that it's "slower" than apt-get because apt-get only works from the fast and stale cache until you manually tell it to update with "apt-get update". To emulate this behavior with yum, use the "-C" option to use only the cache (e.g.: "yum -C install foobar" will install the most up-to-date version of foobar that your cache knows about, *without* first checking for updates from all your other enabled repos.

[KBD47]

It had been awhile since I tried Fedora 15 so I decided to try it one more time hoping it was not as bad as I remembered. Using Fedora usb creator I made a live usb. It is supposed to have persistence, but no luck, that is a bug report still waiting to be fixed. It still really bad IMHO. Have to google how to turn the thing off, you must hit the alt button when you go to the suspend menu to shut it down. Were they trying to create a user-unfriendly version or what? I'd like to cut this distro some slack, but it is really bad. Gnome 3 makes Unity look and feel heavenly by comparison. I wish it was better than it is.
KBD47

[linuxviolin]

it's really just an interface difference

I don't think so, no. There are differences. To give just one example, I guess the config files are not always at the same places in the system in all distros...

Knowing the amount of apps

You have also "amount of apps" for Fedora. You'll find often for instance, if you download apps from their web sites, .deb AND .rpm packages for apps. Even sometimes I had apps with just .rpm packages. Other app sites propose packages for other distros too.

"it's a personal choice"

Yes when you have seen and understood their different politics, goals, views, targets etc

it seems that Mint is a more intuitive choice...

Well, for you. But maybe yes but because their goals... see above. Fedora is not for newbies, though of course some motivated newbies can use/try it, and even Fedora's priorities tend to lean towards enterprise features, rather than desktop usability, as DistroWatch says. Security, SELinux etc this distro has not the same goals and other than Mint. Fedora is used by developers, among other. This is no accident if Linus uses Fedora...

For a description of Fedora you could see here: Top Ten Distributions - An overview of today's top distributions

Even these Mint forums are more polished than Fedora's

As I said, this and other things are not really their main goals. It is NOT Mint, neither Ubuntu. It is a quite different beast and can't really compare to Mint.

Fedora's package management has to be the slowest

Yes, Yum is quite slow. But, as said MALsPA, it works very well.

Yumex is a nice tool

Yes. Although I don't (didn't) use it, it is quite nice.

a bug report still waiting to be fixed.

OK and what? How many (old and new) bugs still waiting to be fixed in a distro like Ubuntu? And many will be never...

Have to google how to turn the thing off, you must hit the alt button when you go to the suspend menu to shut it down. Were they trying to create a user-unfriendly version or what? I'd like to cut this distro some slack, but it is really bad. Gnome 3 makes Unity look and feel heavenly by comparison.

Yes, GNOME 3 sucks.

[fraxinus_63]

Even these Mint forums are more polished than Fedora's

As I said, this and other things are not really their main goals. It is NOT Mint, neither Ubuntu. It is a quite different beast and can't really compare to Mint.

I agree. Fedora occupies a completely different space in the Linux ecosystem from Mint, and will benefit users who are different from Mint's main base.

I would not dream of using Fedora myself - but it's an incredibly important part of the Linux development world. Users of 'friendly', approachable distros benefit downstream from all of the cutting-edge work and innovation that goes into Fedora development and testing.

* post edited - typo corrected ...*

[linuxviolin]

I agree. Fedora occupies a completely different space in the Linux ecosystem from Mint, and will benefit users who are different from Mint's main base.

I would not dream us using Fedora myself - but it's an incredibly important part of the Linux development world. Users of 'friendly', approachable distros benefit downstream from all of the cutting-edge work and innovation that goes into Fedora development and testing.

Yes. And Fedora contributes a lot to Linux: "Its contributions to the Linux kernel, glibc and GCC are well-known and its more recent integration of SELinux functionality, virtualisation technologies, Systemd service manager, cutting-edge journaled file systems, and other enterprise-level features are much appreciated among the company's customers."

It is also one of the most innovative distributions available today.

That said, and although I used Fedora on several PCs and still use it (but perhaps for much longer anymore yet) on one of them, I didn't saying I'm a Fedora "fanatic".

[kernowmint]

Maybe you could try Kororaa, which I gather is based on Fedora. It worked pretty well out of the box for me, except that it set the time incorrectly. Don't know what it's like with different sorts of hardware and I haven't tried it with my printer. I'm not really a KDE fan but Kororaa could almost turn me into one.

[frank75riz]

ENOUGH