Not enough people in here mentioning how nice a base vanilla DE experience is. I love vanilla gnome and it’s so refreshing to set up a fresh fedora install and have it so clean.
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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Ubuntu (which is based on Debian) can be too slow to adopt newer software.
Arch on the other side is too quick.
Fedora is a good balance in-between.
Nearly all other distros are derived from these 3 families.
That and Ubuntu's obsession with Snaps is unhealthy. So many people recommend Debian or Mint over Ubuntu, if you want something very stable.
Interesting I would have assumed it was slower than Ubuntu in comparison given it's association with RHEL but looking it up it's sort of their "tip of the spear" when it comes to release testing. TIL
I was going to say, Fedora is not trying to push a bunch of snap apps up the users ass.
I just switched from PopOS (Ubuntu) to Nobara (Fedora) and I fucking love it. Its a perfect middle ground between bleeding edge Arch and slow to adopt Ubuntu. Also, flatpack.
If you are comfortable using fedora or if you are fine learning about fedora, use fedora.
I personally wouldn't use Ubuntu with it's recent controversy in specific the "explicit AI features" planned to be implemented within ubuntu. I'd suggest avoiding it out of privacy concerns even if it runs locally on your system.
the general trend for AI adoption, is to make it accessible for anyone to onboard, and then slowly control the users by (for example) making users connect to their servers to use their chatbot which then they can train, and have a better profile of you.
Canonical never mentioned that, in fact they mentioned quite the inverse. but any implementation of an AI chatbot, Tech companies aren't doing it because of how revolutionary AI is. The AI is the product and your data is what they want.
I'm not saying canonical is pursuing that initiative, but that's generally how it goes for most tech companies. Don't take my word for it, ask yourself, "what service does Ubuntu provide? what financial backing (sponsorships) do they have?" I've looked far and wide and the only thing I've found is, they offer a free OS install as their consumer grade product, and a subscription service to their enterprise network that is clearly not a sustainable business model (from an engineering perspective) for a multi-thousand employee company.
Go ahead and try Ubuntu and let me know how much you love their "App Store" experience. So many broken apps in their Snap store.
Fedora just works. Ubuntu is like the Windows of Linux. They think they know better than their users and, as such, try to force feed you the things they think are better, even when they're worse.
Ubuntu is based off of Debian, just use Debian instead.
The only reason is f*ck snap and Ubuntu for forcing it onto users
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the corporate side of Red Hat is far less evident on Fedora than Canonical’s on Ubuntu
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vanilla UX
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Atomic editions
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fast yet stable updates
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more lightweight ISO
it also has disadvantages, specially for nontechnical folks
- Free Software Policy (NVIDIA drivers and some codecs not pre-installed)
- non LTS version available (Atomic desktops are easier to manage if keeping un-updated for very long periods)
- it uses RPM packages which are good, but there might be some software only offering DEBs (containers and extraction tools can help with that)
- non LTS version available (Atomic desktops are easier to manage if keeping un-updated for very long periods)
Fedora is a semi-rolling release distribution, so this isn’t really a problem for a desktop or laptop. It’s really an advantage for desktops and laptops.
- it uses RPM packages which are good, but there might be some software only offering DEBs (containers and extraction tools can help with that)
A lot of software is packaged as a Flatpak image, so less of a problem then it used to be.
If you want LTS, you would pick something like RockyLinux. They offer support for 10 years per release.
I prefer Fedora over Ubuntu because they are more up to date and put Flatpak over Snap.
But the real reason I originally switched was that the Ubuntu installer crashed 5 times in a row and then I tried Fedora and liked it
Personally, I really like dnf over apt, SELinux over apparmor, and firewalld over ufw, but it's all personal preference.
I second all of this.
Snap
Another user mentioned a handful of benefits. I would add that Fedora is more secure than Ubuntu or any of the derivatives you mentioned out of the box. In fact, it’s more secure than most other regular Linux distros.
I also like that it uses vanilla versions of Gnome and KDE. They leave the customization to the end user.
Speaking of KDE, if you prefer it, there are few distros that do it better. Maybe OpenSUSE Tubleweed or ~~Open Mandriva ROME~~. For me, Fedora KDE Plasma fits my needs almost perfectly.
Finally, I think the installer is way better. Ubuntu’s has become less flexible over the years. Fedora’s is still super easy but offers a lot more options.
The one potential drawback I can think of is that official versions of some software are only available as a .deb. That’s more and more rare in my experience.
I recently learned that OpenMandriva's president (warning, lunduke link as evidence) has declared the project "non-woke" and "anti-DEI", which has resulted in it attracting a hard right community. IMO, a good reason to avoid it.
i lost a lot of brain cells reading through that second link and i'd like them back
Ahh good to know! Such a shame.
There's at least Mageia still carrying the Mandrake/Mandriva torch without that baggage :)
Ubuntu is the most broken distro I have ever used. From when it first came out until today.
Pick anything over Ubuntu.
I do really like fedora. If you want the latest stuff as fast as a rolling distro, with zero update issues, you want fedora.
Canonical sucks.
Biggest benefit to Fedora over Ubuntu would be more up-to-date packages. Debian-based distros tend to run much older versions of everything. Fedora brings you closer to upstream releases.
Ubuntu could use bleeding edge packages in their repos if they really wanted to. The fact that it is based on Debian is not a limiting factor.
Ubuntu is the leading distro
Leading in what? By most users? With that argument we should install Windows, because its the leading platform.
I think Ubuntu is a popular distro. Not necessarily leading in any way. There's other popular distros out there, distros with good documentation, simple to use or beginner friendly, distros which are fast or have a lot of software available. And I'm -personally- not a huge fan of Canonical's business decisions and what they're trying to push on a given day... So I pick different Linux distros. YMMV.
Maybe you mean Cachy OS or Tumbleweed?
Sure. I've heard a lot of praising words towards Cachy OS. Tumbleweed might be your thing if you're looking for an easy rolling release distro... I didn't mention any specific ones since we all use computers differently, we all have different use-cases, levels of expertise... And I also don't just use one distro. I have a different one on the server than on my laptop, I use yet a different one for retro gaming... There's just so much out there and depending on what exactly you do, could be any of a dozen or so different options and they're all good (or there's reasons to pick or not pick them...)
Leap nice too actually in direct comparing to Ubuntu LTS, I like leap cause it bases on suse enterprise
How do you feel about an AI agent being in the distro? There is no privacy with a free AI agent.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/the-future-of-ai-in-ubuntu/81130
There is no privacy with a free AI agent.
Depends on where the AI is hosted. If you're running a local LLM, all of that data is stored in-house on your PC.
Yeah, and while I’m iffy on Canonical and have migrated off Ubuntu, they do seem to only be focused on local LLMs for those features.
I think Fedora Kinoite is the best distro for someone coming from Windows due to KDE's flexibility and similarity to Windows and it's immutability. Default Ubuntu is great for people familliar with MacOS, and it can even be themed to be basically indistinguishable.
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Fedora does good work on security and it doesn't have snaps. But personally I prefer the stability of Debian (not that I daily drive it).
#Ubuntu has snaps which are a really annoying way to distribute software updates. I was a long term #Ubuntu user but have moved to #debian, with #Kde if I need a GUI instead of that horrid #gnome rubbish. All the third party software I use works just as well on debian as it did in ubuntu.
Is there a reason you are using hashtags like you're on Mastodon or something? Just curious. I don't think I've ever seen a Lemmy account do that.
with #Kde if I need a GUI instead of that horrid #gnome rubbish
Well it's not like you cannot use KDE with Ubuntu. There is Kubuntu for that, if you don't like GNOME.
I'm currently maintaining a laptop with kubuntu (for someone else), and I honestly cannot recommend it.
They have kind of messed up the updates in their Plasma flavor, Discover routinely just fails to do the updates with a completely meaningless error message. I suspect the underlying issue is lock contention with the background service "unattended-upgrades.service", but I'm not sure, because, again, that error message is ridiculously unhelpful. Also, said unattended-upgrades service does not seem to actually be doing any upgrades.
On the last install, also, the attempt to upgrade from Ubuntu 24 to 26.04 LTS, the upgrade failed in a spectacularly fashion that left the system mostly bricked in ways that could only be solved by a fresh reinstall. During the process, a few error messages made it look like the problem was hardware faults on the SSD, except when I then tested the SSD from a rescue disk using dd, smartctl, and iotester from https://github.com/guidow/iotester, I could find absolutely no indication of any faults on that drive whatsoever…
Granted my opinion on kubuntu may be a bit colored, because right this moment, I'm quite frustrated with it.
Also, installing massively important software like Firefox or Thunderbird through snaps instead of packaging them properly is just asinine.
That's the canonical promise! Half ass and breaks on update. Funny thing is Kubuntu is more stable than Ubuntu and yet here we are.
I see. Need to read more about the current state of Kubuntu, because I don't want recommend something that might be not in a good state. Kubuntu was a good choice in the past.
Granted my opinion on kubuntu may be a bit colored, because right this moment, I’m quite frustrated with it.
I don't think your opinion is less worth just because you experience problems.
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