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Jediwan @lemy.lol

Why does nobody here ever recommend Fedora to noobs?

I have tried Linux as a DD on and off for years but about a year ago I decided to commit to it no matter the cost. First with Mint, then Ubuntu and a few others sprinkled in briefly. Both are "mainstream" "beginner friendly" distros, right? I don't want anything too advanced, right?

Well, ubuntu recently updated and it broke my second monitor (Ubuntu detected it but the monitor had "no signal"). After trying to fix it for a week, I decided to wipe it and reinstall. No luck. I tried a few other distros that had the same issue and I started to wonder if it was a hardware issue but I tried a Windows PC and the monitor worked no problem.

Finally, just to see what would happen I tried a distro very very different than what I'm used to: Fedora (Kinoite). And not only did everything "just work" flawlessly, but it's so much faster and more polished than I ever knew Linux to be!

Credit where it's due, a lot of the polish is due to KDE plasma. I'd never strayed from Gnome because I'm not an expert and people recommend GNOME to Linux newbies because it's "simple" and "customizable" but WOW is KDE SO MUCH SIMPLER AND STILL CUSTOMIZEABLE. Gnome is only "simple" in that it doesn't allow you to do much via the GUI. With Fedora Kinode I think I needed to use the terminal maybe once during setup? With other distros I was constantly needed to use the terminal (yes its helped me learn Linux but that curve is STEEP).

The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.

I am FULLY prepared for the responses demanding to know what I did to make it crash and telling me how I was using it wrong blah blah blah but let me tell you, if you are experienced with Windows but want to learn Linux and getting frustrated by all the "beginner" distros that get recommended, do yourself a favor and try Fedora Kinoite!

edit: i am DYING at the number of "you're using it wrong" comments here. never change people.

282 comments

  • Why does nobody here ever recommend Fedora to noobs?

    It does happen. It's simply not the popular choice for the following reasons:

    • Fedora and its predecessors were until relatively recently simply more cumbersome in use compared to Debian and Ubuntu;
      • There was a time (like at least over 10 years ago) in which package managers didn't necessarily know how to resolve dependencies. However, Debian's package manager at the time did it earlier than the package manager found on Fedora's predecessor. Hence, this was a clear reason to prefer Debian or Ubuntu over Fedora('s predecessor).
      • Freezing packages and offering stable releases with two years of support (like Debian does), has been and continues to be a very pleasant way to run your Linux OS. That's why, even in the past, Fedora's slower cousin (i.e. CentOS) was very popular (though being RHEL clone didn't hurt either). Fedora, on the other hand, offers a semi-rolling release cycle of 6 months with only 13 months of support since release. With semi-rolling release, I refer to the fact that some packages are frozen and some are not frozen. Hence, you should expect daily updates. Access to the latest and greatest software is great. However, every update is a possible cause/reason for something to bork/break on your system. It's therefore unsurprising that some prefer the predictability found on other distros. Though, for the sake of completeness, one has to mention that Fedora Atomic does a great job at tackling this problem; especially the uBlue projects.
      • A couple of years back, Fedora switched in quick succession to systemd, Wayland and GTK4. Thankfully, I didn't experience this for myself. But, from what I could gather, it was a mess. Users, perhaps rightfully so, questioned Fedora's decision-making. While Fedora wasn't particular loved, this didn't help to retain new users, nor did it help to cultivate a trusted environment.
    • Due to the previous reason, Fedora has not particularly been a very popular distro. Hence, troubleshooting your issues through Google is less straightforward compared to Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Additionally, as Fedora's user base has primarily been more experienced users compared to the ones found on Linux Mint or Ubuntu, it's unsurprising to find less discussion on elementary stuff. Simply by virtue of Fedora's user base already being past that.
    • Fedora, like Debian and openSUSE, offers a relatively bare bones experiences. It does make a lot of sane decisions for you. However, it doesn't focus on being particularly GUI-friendly or newbie-friendly. By contrast, distros like Bazzite, Linux Mint, Manjaro, MX Linux, Nobara, Pop!_OS and Zorin OS (amongst others), do put thought and effort into streamlining the experience as much as they can; especially for newer users.
    • While Fedora is primarily community-driven, Red Hat's influence is undeniable. As such, people that hate corporate interest and/or Red Hat and/or IBM will favor the use of Arch and Debian.

    Having said all of that, I've been using Fedora Atomic for over two years now. Heck, Silverblue was my first distro. And it has been excellent so far. Furthermore, with Bazzite (based on Fedora Atomic) and Nobara (based on Fedora) often mentioned in conversations regarding beginner friendly distros, even if Fedora itself isn't explicitly mentioned, the ecosystem is clearly healthy and will continue to flourish.

  • Long-time Fedora user here. I do not think Fedora is noob friendly at all.

    • Their installer is awful
    • Their spins are really well hidden for people who don't know they exist
    • The Nvidia drivers can't be installed via the GUI
    • There's no "third party drivers" tool at all
    • The regular Flathub repo is not the default and their own repo is absolutely useless
    • AMD/Intel GPUs lack hardware acceleration for H264 and H265 out of the box, adding them requires the console
    • Their packages are consistently named differently than their Ubuntu/Debian counterpart

    I really like Fedora for their newish packages without breaking constantly. I still would not recommend it for beginners.

    • What do you mean the installer is awful? I have found it quite straightforward. Select the disc, your keyboard setup, timezone and then it install itself..

      • It caters to a middle ground that barely exists, meaning it doesn't have enough options for a power user and too many for a newcomer.

        For example, a newcomer doesn't know what a root account is and doesn't have to care, yet they have to choose if they want to enable or disable the account. They can also remove their administrator privileges without knowing what it means for them. I get asked what a root account is every time somebody around me tries to install Fedora.

        I recommend spinning up a Ubuntu 24.04 VM and taking a look at their installer.

        They have a clear structure on how to install Ubuntu step by step while Fedora presents you everything at once. They properly hide the advanced stuff and only show it when asked for it. They have clear toggles for third party software right at the installer and explain what they do. Fedora doesn't even give you the option to install H264 codecs or Nvidia drivers.

        It also looks a lot cleaner and doesn't overload people with too much info on a single screen. And yet it can still do stuff like automated installing and has active directory integration out of the box, where the Fedora installer miserably fails for a "Workstation" distro.

        The Fedora installer works, but it doesn't do much more than that and the others do it better in many areas.

    • • The majority of useful packages are hidden in RPM Fusion

    • Half of your complains are fixed in newer releases. For instance it asks you if you want to enable third party repos. If you hit yes it enables the repo for chrome, Nvidia and others plus it setups stock flathub.

      • That only applies to the GNOME variant, the KDE spin is missing the third party repo toggle.

        At least the Flathub repo is fixed on the GNOME variant now. The Nvidia repo is added but the driver is not installed, meaning you still need to use the CLI to install the drivers.

        https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA

    • Their packages are consistently named differently than their Ubuntu/Debian counterpart

      I agree with all your points, but this one has way more to do with Debian being a bunch of weirdos about how packages are packaged. Its really more of a Debian demerit than anything since sometimes their packaging practices can be somewhat hostile to projects not directly associated with Debian, especially since the Debian community can have a certain "Our way is the only right way" attitude. That said, the Debian packaging standards can make it easier as a developer to experiment with creating a software package to interact with an existing package. Like there's a reason to do it that I can support and I wish Debian packagers would more often say "we package things like this so people can experiment" instead of "Everyone else does packaging wrong and our way is the only way"

    • Completely agree. I mean, I'm what you'd call a power user, and I still opt for using a flatpak for my browser (Floorp) because codecs are a pain.

  • I wouldn't be confident in recommending Fedora to noobs, because its a distribution that is on the bleeding edge side. But it depends on what type of noob we are talking about. There are noobs in Linux, who are technically well versed in Windows and have no problem in adapting to a new system. If someone wants to have the newest software, then Fedora might be it.

    Also not many people have experience with Fedora, therefore less likely to be recommended. Most people use or used Ubuntu, maybe even started with Ubuntu. You or me may not like it, but its proven that Ubuntu is generally a good choice for newcomers to get into Linux. And that also plays into how many people know and are able to help. In contrast, Fedora is too much of a niche.

  • I do, Fedora is simply the best and meets the most use cases. It combines good privacy and security out of the box with a clean UI (at least with Workstation and KDE spin) while having a package manager that's easy to learn and easy access to Flathub and up-to-date apps (can't stress this enough, even windows and Mac keep apps up to date and don't hold them back for the sake of LTS (sorry Workstation Debian fans). It also brings in newer and better technologies without breaking almost anything (at least for me).

    This is just my opinion though, I know people like to reccomend Mint but I personally do not like it, and despise it's desktop options (I am one of the people that do not and never have liked Cinnamon).

    • I decided the nuclear option using mint with kde plasma 5

      Well I did switch to opensuse tumbleweed, liked kde plasma a lot so while setting up weekly backups, I ended up... uh... "overwriting" it and my last external backup was a month old mint backup, so to not set things up again I just install kde on mint and said F it.

  • The problem with Fedora and especially the atomic versions is that when you Google "how to do X on Linux" you pretty much always get information for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives. The atomic versions have it mildly harder because now you also have to learn how immutable distros work, and you can't just make install something from GitHub (not that it's recommended to do so, but if you just want your WiFi to work and that's all you could find, it's your best option).

    It's not as bad as it used to be thanks to Flatpak and stuff, but if you're really a complete noob the best experience will be the one you can Google and get a working answer as easily as possible.

    Once you're familiar and ready to upgrade then it makes sense to go to other distros like Fedora, Nobara, Bazzite, Kionite and whatnot.

    I don't like Ubuntu, I feel like Mint is to Ubuntu what Manjaro is to Arch, Pop_OS is okay when it doesn't uninstall your DE when installing Steam. But I still recommend those 3 to noobs because everyone knows how to get things working on those, and the guides are mostly interchangeable as well. Purely because it's easy to search for help with those. I just tell them when you're tired of the bugs and comfortable enough with Linux then go start distrohopping a bit to find your more permanent home.

    • if you’re really a complete noob the best experience will be the one you can Google and get a working answer as easily as possible.

      Those Ubuntu "as easily as possible" answers on the web often revolve around adding random PPAs which cause breakage over time, especially the more PPAs are mixed and mashed. If anything, those easy answers from random Ubuntu forums and websites, last updated 2014, cause more harm than good.

  • I would not encourage anyone to join the EL universe as I don't consider it as stable as others.

    TLDR; Redhat's being absorbed into IBM and they don't care about RHEL. RHEL (in my view) is dying a slow death. Without RHEL, there is no Fedora or Centos Stream. There'd also be no Rocky or Alma, as things currently stand.

    (Although if that happened, I'd not be surprised if the users of Fedora merged with Rocky and Alma in some form of new and fully independent distro - we've already seen how well such disasters can be worked around)

    Longer reasoning: Redhat, in my view, have made some unpredictable and frankly terrible decisions over the past few years with RHEL which have caused a great deal of concern in the business sector about its stability as a product. (Prematurely ending Centos 8 six years early, paywalling the source code, and more recent anti-rebuilder steps. They also treated the community team working for Centos appallingly throughout these leading to many resignations.) Further more, these were communicated without warning or consultation and have sometimes come across as petty and spiteful, rather than as professional business decisions.

    IBM bought Redhat shortly before this happened, mostly for its cloud services. It seems from the outside that RHEL is being squeezed. There have been two major rounds of layoffs. In all, this paints a picture of a company that is in decline and we've seen a reduction in contributions to the excellent work done by Redhat in the foss world. IBM have a long history of buying and absorbing companies - I don't see why Redhat would be any different and RHEL doesn't make enough money.

    Our company is moving away from EL and I know of several others who are doing so. We're all choosing Debian.

  • I do. Nobara specifically since it has the non-free repos and codecs by default, and a bunch of tweaks for gaming and editing already set up or easily added in the Welcome app.

  • I am installing fedora kinoite to most of the people I install gnulinux to. All noobs.

  • I had a similar experience on my laptop. I tried Ubuntu which broke after trying to throw on Nvidia drivers (using the official docs). I tried Mint and Debian, both of which couldn't detect my laptop's wifi card (after hours of trying to fix - apparently a common issue but the fixes did not work for me!). I landed on Fedora, worked great. I'm now on EndeavourOS, but Fedora was the stepping stone I needed.

    My desktop I built recently is Bazzite, which is Fedora based and I love it.

  • I find it pretty problematic how Ubuntu is messed up and still used as default distro.

    Fedora has issues with always being a bit early. I prefer it a lot over buggy Kubuntu, as I use KDE, but for example now 6.1 is too early and still has bugs, while Plasma 6 was really well tested (with Rawhide, Kinoite beta and Kinoite nightly being available)

    Fedora has tons of variants and packages, and COPR is full of stuff. The forums are nice, Discourse is a great tool.

    It uses Flatpak, but adds its legally restricted repo by default.

    The traditional variants... I think apt is better. I did one dnf system upgrade to F40 and it was pretty messy.

    The rpm-ostree atomic desktops are really good, but not complete. For example GRUB is simply not updated at all. This is hopefully fixed with F41.

    Or the NVIDIA stuff, or nonfree codecs, which are all issues even more on atomic.

    So the product is not really ready to use, while rpmfusion sync issues happen multiple times a year. This is no issue on the atomic variants, but there you need to layer many packages, which causes very slow updates.

    I am also not a fan of their "GUI only" way, so you will for example never have useful common CLI tools on the atomic variants, for no reason.

    It is pretty completely vanilla, which is very nice.

  • I put my tech illiterates on Fedora with GNOME without issue. If you're the one doing the installation and can install the RPMFusion stuff like drivers and codecs then yeah it's pretty smooth sailing.

  • The atomic updates are fantastic too. I have not crashed once in the two weeks of setup whereas before I would have a crash maybe 1-2 times per week.

    I think I crashed it less than 10 times in 2 years of usage.

  • Generally Fedora's purpose is to make sure nothing gets into redhat (RHEL) Linux. So if there are breaking changes to things, you'll be getting them.

    Historically if people had wanted to learn I'd push them towards Ubuntu because its Debian based, meaning familiar enough to most of what runs the modern internet that I could eventually (I'm not a Linux admin) fix.

    These days if you just want to use it I'd pick Linux mint, just since they seem to be orienting towards that way. Arch or SUSE based something if you want to learn more about how the packages you install work together. But the choice in distro honestly feels more like an installer and package manager choice than anything. a distro is just a choice of which thousand things to hide in a trenchcoat.

    I just ideologically don't like IBM and would rather hand in my bug reports to the volunteer ecosystem.

  • if you like fedora, have you tried endeavour?

    • I have not but it was actually on my list of distros to try if Fedora didn't work out. I should give it a look.

  • Here's the deal, most people from yesterdays started on Ubuntu or something similar. So, they suggest what worked for them. I just moved my wife away from Windows and straight into Fedora, I haven't had to help her on anything other than once she could not find the printer (it's on another VLAN and she was not connected to it 🙄). She is loving it and just last night told me, and I quote, "I should have changed sooner".

    Fedora just works, but another factor may be that Debian and Ubuntu based distros are LTS what le Fedora is more semi-rolling, this helps with stability, thus it makes sense to suggest something with less probability of breaking suddenly than something they may need to roll back.

    As for atomic distros, YMMV. I find them sluggish during install, boot and when starting an app for the first time, and in my case, broken after a few updates (would not work on Wayland forcing me to log in over X11).

  • I was totally on board until centos got screwed over ( and subsequently AM2 )

    I'll be a cold day before I touch any fedora or redhat again or even mention to another person that they should run it.

282 comments