As a python developer one of the things I particularly like about Fedora is its inclusion of Python systemtap probes. This allows you to examine at a glance which python functions are taking most of the runtime. The fedora patches have been submitted for upstream inclusion at http://bugs.python.org/issue4111 . More details about this feature can be found at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SystemtapStaticProbes... . fwiw I am not affiliated with Redhat or any other OS vendor in any way.
I just tried the default F14 desktop and the KDE spin (both on Live CDs) and I can't believe how depressing the desktop environments still are.
The colors are depressing, there are little tiny buttons and icons everywhere, but no indication or popups as to what they do. The UI transitions are clunky (at least what I'm used to on Mac OS X and W7). Fonts are blocky. The KDE desktop looks kinda nice in screenshots, but once I started interacting with it, my positive impressions changed.
I'm a guy who spends his time in Terminals, but like it or not, the GUI has become an effective management tool for all of this.
Everything is virtually as I left it in 2001. This is depressing, because my plan was to eventually go back.
Can't comment on KDE because I never liked them, but Ubuntu/Gnome has progressed quite nicely since 2005 (my first "Linux year"). In fact my opinion is 180 degree opposite of yours: 2 years ago I switched to OSX and couldn't tolerate how dumb and unusable the UI felt: I waited a year hoping to adjust but surrendered and went back to Gnome.
I've given up on arguing about GUIs though: it all comes down to individual preferences, oftentimes in coffee shops and offices I look at people and notice how bizarre some of their UI habits are, and I'm sure others can say this about me.
I think the thing that especially appeals to me about the OS X and W7 environments is that they're not an eye sore (warm colors & effects, not kludgy looking), and they have quick access to system-wide search that works (Spotlight and Windows Search, respectively). These are my rather minimalist needs.
I have a hard time coming up with an analogy, but when I open windows on one of the live CDs, I feel like there's a gnome (no pun intended) in the background grabbing and stapling up shoddy UI mockups on the inside of my LCD.
It all comes down to tastes, as you say, though. I used to be a MOTIF and IceWM guy, so mine have definitely changed. I can't imagine "most people" would like the state of the Linux UI, though.
Having used KDE (since it was an ugly Windows 95 clone, anyone remember those initial efforts?) and GNOME from their births, not much has really seemed to change. Meanwhile, the UI paradigms have shifted significantly, in the rest of the computing world.
On the surface perhaps, but the beauty of Linux is that what you see is not what you can get. There are plenty of cool UI paradigms available just an apt-get away.
For example, I use Ubuntu, but I auto-hide the taskbar and use Gnome-Do to access everything. Terminal is available via Guake drop down. Windows are arranged in workspaces on the surfaces of a 3D rotating cube. Mouse is 100% optional for controlling windows and OS. And if I wanted I could exchange all that with a tiling WM like Xmonad or Awesome (though I find Compiz Grid + Guake equally efficient).
Now, I haven't used Windows since my Win 7 eval copy expired last February, or OS X since the last time I walked into an Apple Store, but I don't see that their UI paradigms have shifted significantly at all. It's still basically the same mouse-controlled window systems, perhaps with a few new bells and whistles like desktop search, GPU-enhanced eye candy, and optimized performance thrown in. But none of those change the usage paradigm as far as I can tell.
I keep being tempted to move to something other than Ubuntu. Got my start on Linux way back when it was still called "Fedora Core" so I think I'm going to wind up installing this to see how it looks these days.
I use Fedora's LXDE spin on my netbook, and the KDE spin on my workstation. Once I felt comfortable using Linux, I wasn't liking some of the directions Ubuntu was headed in (not that it's bad - it just wasn't targeted at someone like me), so I switched. Almost everything has always worked out-of-the-box for me, which has always been one of Ubuntu's strongest points. I used to do a lot of work with a custom kernel, and Fedora has some great tools for that kind of development. It's not as polished or user-friendly as Ubuntu, but if you like the Unix-ness of Ubuntu as opposed to the glitter, you'd probably feel more at home with Fedora, which is more traditional and generally has a more advanced community.
edit: Plus, I've always had good experiences with Red Hat's products, so I like to be loyal :)
Speaking for myself, this is why I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora. Let me clarify that I completely understand why most users would prefer's Ubuntu's approach, and I'm sure there are ways to make Ubuntu work this way, but basically I just feel more comfortable on Fedora for these reasons:
- There's a huge amount of Ubuntu branding and renaming. I initially paid attention to this after the pretty silent updates that added "Ubuntu branding" to Firefox. I saw a lot of packages and applications that were renamed (or at least represented differently) to make them more generic. Personally, I would rather use the raw software and see the real names for the software packages. Fedora does this a bit too, but to a lesser extent.
- The interface is very polished, but I like having a very raw, stripped-down interface. I generally work quickly, and I can't stand it when the OS can't keep up. I like KDE, and this can be a memory hog, but Ubuntu's additions are even worse, IMO. It was getting harder and harder with each version of Ubuntu to get the interface where I wanted, and now that they're branching away from standard GNOME, I only see this getting worse.
- On that note, I was very unimpressed by Kubuntu, as it had obviously not received the same quality of attention as Ubuntu. As I prefer to use KDE and LXDE, I appreciate the very consistent quality between all the "spins" of Fedora.
- SELinux and hard-drive encryption work out of the box. Again, I'm sure I could get this running just fine on Ubuntu, but it's so much easier with Fedora, so this contributed to me just feeling more at home.
- The kernel had been modified a ton before it got shipped in a release. When I recompiled a kernel it wreaked havoc on some of the software that had previously relied on the added functionality. On Fedora I rebooted into a vanilla kernel and had no problems.
I realize some of these are pretty abstract reasons, but these seem to be directions they're heading more and more, so as I said, I just feel more at home on Fedora, now that I'm comfortable using Linux.
The gnome problem is definitely an issue for me. Ubuntu's focus is obviously the "average" user so they make their changes in favor of people who don't know what they are doing and while it makes sense, it's not what I need/want. I think the Unity thing is a good example of this. While nice and easy for people to figure out, it's another step in the wrong direction from standard gnome.
I don't think they even do it well. I prefer the default menus system on Debian/Gnome. They think they are UI experts and clearly they are not. I think the best thing they could do is unify the system control panel - copy that from OSX rather than this weird hybrid thing they are doing. Though I'm hoping their unity project will mature into something nice. I'm not even that bothered that they are straying from Gnome. Having said that I have enjoyed Ubuntu - though I put most of my good experience down to the system sitting on Debian.
Thanks for that. I abandoned Ubuntu and went back to Debian (desktop) for some of the same reasons - I don't like Ubuntu's take on Gnome.
I think Ubuntu should have versions/spins like Fedora. I think it's confusing for the end user with their odd branding Kubuntu etc. How about Ubuntu - Education Edition, Ubuntu - Lightweight Edition, Ubuntu - Netbook Edition - something like that instead.
I switched to Debian from Ubuntu (where I got my start in Linux) because I no longer felt like I needed the UI or install to hold my hand and wanted to be able to build up my own system from a minimal install. I chose Debian simply because my Ubuntu experience had made me very familiar with aptitude, and I wanted to stick with something popular so my chances of successfully Googling for help were higher.
My work's servers use Debian, and my home ISP runs an unmetered repository for it too.
I've tried Fedora in the past when I was still very much a newbie and found it intimidating. Given I know next to nothing about Red Hat derivatives of Linux it would probably pay to get familiar with them sometime over the next few months.
That's a difficult question. I like Debian because I can build it up piecemeal from a minimal install. A lot of that is down to the package manager. Fedora might have similar functionality these days - though I didn't have a great time the last time I used Yum.
I like to drive my computer with the keyboard. I tried to avoid Gnome on my last install, but it's keyboard config, theme manager and Nautilus won over other desktops. I use metacity, which is boring but good.
To be honest I'm not totally enamoured with any Linux distro. But I like the ones that try to remain free. Oh and the ones that work with my hardware.
Red Hat (where I work) has a large team of people dedicated entirely to virtualization, so for that use, particularly higher-end server virt, it's getting very good.
I've been using Fedora since the early days, when it was still called Red Hat (Red Hat 6 was my first one) and it's a really great distro. Perhaps not as friendly as Ubuntu but maybe a bit more cutting edge.
You will find that Fedora and Ubuntu are largely equal. However, coming from a .deb based distro you will probably find all the minor differences in RPM based distros really annoying; I feel the same frustration whenever I use Debian or Ubuntu.
Yes, I do. And it's a prefect operating system for a developer. Latest versions are tested enough to be bug free, all developer tools are available in repository. Out of the box wifi, graphics card support. Works very well on my 2 year old Compaq AMD laptop so should work with almost everything out there. Community support is excellent. No mumbo jumbo fancy type stuffs as compared to other major main stream linux distro.
Got my start on Linux way back when it was still called "Fedora Core"
Wow, way back in 2007? Did you have to enter your programs on punch cards back then? :-)
I use Fedora, and for the past few years it seems like every couple of months an update breaks something, like sound or wifi. Upgrades from one release to another are practically guaranteed to break something. So a while ago when I got a new laptop I installed ubuntu on it instead, hoping that things would be better. But after living with ubuntu for a while I didn't feel like it was any more stable, so I went back to Fedora just because that's what I know best. The vast majority of the bugs I run into are introduced upstream and both distros just pass them along for me to find.
Apt is still faster than yum, and Ubuntu still seems to have somewhat more packages available than Fedora, but Fedora has closed the gap in both areas in recent years. All in all, I don't see a strong argument for either one over the other.
Yup, I use it as my main development PC - I have a runtime for my project that runs on Fedora, but the main target is a Gentoo distribution.
As others have noted, it's a bit more cutting edge than Ubuntu, which is fine, but some times cutting edges leaves you bleeding. I prefer to stay one step behind, ie now that Fedora 14 is out, it must be about time for me to move to Fedora 13 :) I find that the first 3 months or so of a distribution's life cycle tend to be a bit unstable, but you could probably safely upgrade after that time, no need to stay an entire cycle behind like I do, it's just that I tend to be rather cautious!
My work pc is powered by Fedora (my boss is a huge fan). It is not what I would choose for my laptop/home desktop (I love to tinker and I find myself perfectly at home with Arch right now), but it's a pleasure to have this distro in a pc where you need the utmost stability and the distro choice must be as transparent as possible.
I don't mean this sarcastically, but in the age of VirtualBox (which is not only a great product, but is also FOSS, so it appeals to a large market), why not just install F14 and give it a whirl?
That way, you won't be dissuaded by someone else's opinion, and you won't have to explain your metrics to them.
Having said that, I mostly agree with the other posters on this thread: Ubuntu is for your "I just want it to work" types, and Fedora is for sysadmin-hackery-types.
Fedora/yum has a kick ass killer feature, which is called "presto - The delta RPM" . I live in a developing country where the internet/bandwidth is costly. Presto saves my bandwidth and money. When i last updated my F13 Presto reduced the update size by 83% (from 194 M to 33 M). For this i will stay with Fedora for ever.
I'm relatively new to the linux world. I started using Ubuntu about 3 years ago. I moved to Fedora just to experiment, and it was one of the best choices I made. They do well to encourage their community to contribute, and they make it so easy to do.
It got me involved from the start, and had me starting to dabble in python and learn how to make desktop widgets. Also, having all the dev tools needed available in meta-packages is a huge plus. As well as starting me on the path of coding and learning how to contribute to a project, Fedora may very well be the reason I am back in school for CSIS. That's something other OS's may have never offered me. I have a lot to thank these guys for, hopefully one day I'll be able to.
I'd say it's totally worth trying out. There's a lot of young and innovative minds out there that are googling "how to be a hacker" as I write this, and I hope that they come across the Fedora project while searching.
The lack of this is the primary reason I don't consider running Fedora over Ubuntu. Shallow, perhaps, but when you stare at a computer screen all day, good font rendering matters.
There is a guy who maintains a set of Fedora packages with versions of Cairo and Xft with the relevant patches for that beautiful font rendering: http://www.infinality.net/blog/?p=5
I've always been reluctant to jump to Fedora and rely on this guy to keep up his work, though.
EDIT: Looks like this guy already has these patched packages (and some Freetype tweaks too) ready for Fedora 14, see his most recent post.
I still really wish this would get out of the "some dude has to patch it in" territory and just become the standard font rendering configuration for Linux distros besides Ubuntu.
I had never heard that there was a difference before reading your comment, so I did a web search for "ubuntu font rendering", and most of the results are something like "How to fix Ubuntu's terrible, ugly, blurry font rendering." It's interesting how much people's preferences vary on this subject.
Is the patch that Legion refers to the same one that's in Ubuntu, or is that something else?
In what applications do you see a difference? I've spent some time looking quite closely at Firefox's font rendering in Fedora vs. Ubuntu and didn't notice any differences.
Comparing it to your patched F14 version, the roman typefaces look quite different, but overall I can't say I prefer one to the other. The italics, on the other hand, look much better in your version.
There is one strange thing in your F14 screenshot, though--the upper left of the lowercase letter 'a' is straight horizontal, rather than curving down as it does in all the other screenshots, both yours and mine.
Your Ubuntu screenshot looks very similar to your F14 screenshot, but not quite identical: see the dots on the lowercase i, and the above-mentioned problem with the lowercase a.
Personally I can't really tell the difference, but I'm guessing this is the patented hinting algorithm? If so, Fedora can't ship it, because Red Hat is a large US-based target with lots of money. However rpmfusion is available for those of us in the free world:
I would say it has not been slow in the last few distros. I really like the delta downloads (it only downloads the changes and not full programs). It is generally a very nice distro to work with.
It seems to me that the delta thing has made updates slower, not faster. I have a reasonably fast network connection and a P4 CPU; maybe with a slow connection and a fast CPU the equation works out better with deltas. But I imagine the real advantage of using deltas is server-side, not client-side.
Deltas or no deltas, apt feels significantly faster, but yum isn't slow enough to be a real problem for me.
It's still slower than apt. Partly this is the use of Python (an extremely unsuitable choice for this), and partly because the repository metadata is less space-efficient (stored as XML and SQLite database dumps). It did get a bit faster around Fedora 10, so it's not painful.
The real problem with yum (and apt) is poor dependency solving. This is an NP-complete problem sufficiently close to 3-SAT that a good SAT-solver can solve this way faster than the stupid Python/C++ heuristics in yum/apt. I wish they'd switch to using something like zypper.
Do you have any benchmarks? Gentoo's Portage is also Python, and it always seemed much faster than apt or yum. Sure, you never want to search for something with it (use eix, which exists for the same reason "locate" exists instead of "find"), but since the bottleneck seems to be more on the speed of the hard drive it doesn't seem like it matters much what language the package manager is in. Plus part of Portage's speed is concurrent downloads as well as allowing concurrent emerges running.
After getting into an argument with one of the yum developers some time ago, I did sit down and attempt to benchmark apt vs yum, but it's impossible to do this. Fedora and Debian are completely different distros, so benchmarking two package installs isn't fair -- the package you are installing might be configured completely differently or have more dependencies on one distro than the other, so it's just not a fair test.
Nevertheless, yum does feel slower, and anyone who uses both daily like I do would tend to agree.
Does Portage do full dependency resolution? That's what kills package managers (see my posting above yours).
I don't see why HN has to switch to feelings all of a sudden, just for this article. Benchmarks are what count.
> so it's just not a fair test.
There are statistical methods for counteracting that, but I don't see the point. It would be non-impossible to construct a test where you tested the overhead of the package management system.
