Fedora or openSUSE or Ubuntu

[MetalheadGautham]

Alright so here's the situation. I was a "normal" desktop linux power user for quite a few years, starting 2007. Moving through Ubuntu, Debian and Sidux I settled with ArchLinux that's served me well.

Problem is now I am a developer and this distro is definitely not the most comfortable OS for earning my bread and butter. It has all apps needed to make a perfect normal standard desktop, but I need latest, patched and well-supported releases of software like JBoss, mod_python, android SDK, etc that is not present in ArchLinux unless I go through the hassles of going through AUR and finding that random things are broken or don't work.

Choice has come down to Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE. I'm passing over Ubuntu because of how painful it is to manage when some things go wrong and also because it has no decent desktop (KDE gets stepmotherly treatment while Unity/Gnome3 suck equally). RPM distros have added advantage that most servers deploy RHEL or CentOS.

So which is better ? Novell's openSUSE or RedHat's Fedora ?? Need replies from people who have used these distros for the purposes I have mentioned. And I'm willing to reconsider Ubuntu if its usable for my purpose.

I want a distro where everything just works and there should be repositories for everything. Should be easy to install non-free software, drivers and the like (especially the broadcom-wl driver package that I need for WiFi to work). And it should have an active community of users who use it as a productivity/development environment.

I wanna spend less time messing with the distro and more time coding if you know what I mean.

 

[Prime_Coder]

It would be hard to find a distro where everything 'just works'. If I were to choose between OpenSUSE and Fedora, I would go for Fedora, sure!

 

[Minion]

Open SUSE

 

[nims11]

Fedora is an excellent platform for development purpose. It is stable and has very good developer community.

 

[Anish]

openSUSE
and BTW, You can choose based on your requirements from the image below.
And I personally suggest to go with openSUSE, as it has good software manager and also it has a good community support where problems are answered quickly.
*tuxradar.com/files/dw11/distro_stats_lg.png

 

[MetalheadGautham]

How is openSUSE community ? Posted a thread in fedoraforum.org for installation help and took a whole day for a single reply to arrive. Ubuntu on the other hand has a community where all threads are replied to almost instantly.

 

[skeletor]

First thing you do when you install Fedora is, enable RPMFusion repo.

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck *download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm *download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'

For broadcom-wl driver,

su -c 'yum install akmod-wl'

Delta RPMs ftw. Updates are really small for Fedora and OpenSUSE. I like Linux Mint Debian Edition since it is a rolling release distro. But not many people are using it.

Stick with Fedora and GNOME 3 Shell. Don't use KDE in Fedora. No distro gets KDE right except for Arch/Chakra, PCLinuxOS and Mandriva. I'd never use KDE with Fedora. Last time when I did that, it was a horror.

Secondary thoughts: GNOME 3.4 Shell is the best thing which has happened to Linux desktop since KDE 4.2. Surely worth a shot especially on a laptop. Dynamic workflow/workspace management is everything I had dreamt of.

 

[krishnandu.sarkar]

Yes, that's right. Fedora is considered to be most perfect for Development.

As ico said, just enable RPMFusion repo and everything will be smooth after that

Well, as far I have experienced, fedoraforum is not that active, better use IRC's. Like I used for Fedora, Qt and C++ when I was trying out Qt. All were active and you'll almost get instant reply.

 

[MetalheadGautham]

First thing you do when you install Fedora is, enable RPMFusion repo.

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck *download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm *download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'

For broadcom-wl driver,

su -c 'yum install akmod-wl'

Delta RPMs ftw. Updates are really small for Fedora and OpenSUSE. I like Linux Mint Debian Edition since it is a rolling release distro. But not many people are using it.

Stick with Fedora and GNOME 3 Shell. Don't use KDE in Fedora. No distro gets KDE right except for Arch/Chakra, PCLinuxOS and Mandriva. I'd never use KDE with Fedora. Last time when I did that, it was a horror.

Secondary thoughts: GNOME 3.4 Shell is the best thing which has happened to Linux desktop since KDE 4.2. Surely worth a shot especially on a laptop. Dynamic workflow/workspace management is everything I had dreamt of.

Bang on target about Delta RPMs. That was the thing that attracted me to Fedora in the first place

And openSUSE I was mainly attracted to Tumbleweed.

Back to akmod-wl, it works but need to reboot. Cannot do a network installation over WiFi. All niggles in Fedora need me to reboot to fix, which can't be done on Live USB (OR CAN IT ?)

Yes, that's right. Fedora is considered to be most perfect for Development.

As ico said, just enable RPMFusion repo and everything will be smooth after that

Well, as far I have experienced, fedoraforum is not that active, better use IRC's. Like I used for Fedora, Qt and C++ when I was trying out Qt. All were active and you'll almost get instant reply.

One more thing why I wanted to start off with Fedora. Most of the clients I deal with run CentOS or RHEL servers.

Anyway, back to Fedora vs openSUSE, any idea which one has more s/w in repositories ? Official and unofficial combined.

 

[krishnandu.sarkar]

I don't have much experience / knowledge in OpenSUSE, because I never tried it seriously. Don't know for what reason, I didn't liked it...!! Even I don't like it now too

But for Fedora I can say they, it's software repo is huge, and unofficially max vendors supports fedora. The common way to distribute is .rpm instead of .deb / something. People may disagree here, that's why I said, max vendors who don't maintain repo, just distribute their packages use .rpm (Supporting Fedora)

Well, like in our company, we develop hardware in keil boards, they support Fedora. Also in our Embedded System Designs, the vendors supports Fedora. So peoples who were used to some other distro, shifted to Fedora like I did.

I was used to Ubuntu, and I needed to shift to fedora after joining the company.

Now it may seem not good or not ok to some members, but when you are working, and your vendors are not supporting something and you need to work to get your salary, you can't debate there

 

[MetalheadGautham]

I don't have much experience / knowledge in OpenSUSE, because I never tried it seriously. Don't know for what reason, I didn't liked it...!! Even I don't like it now too

But for Fedora I can say they, it's software repo is huge, and unofficially max vendors supports fedora. The common way to distribute is .rpm instead of .deb / something. People may disagree here, that's why I said, max vendors who don't maintain repo, just distribute their packages use .rpm (Supporting Fedora)

Well, like in our company, we develop hardware in keil boards, they support Fedora. Also in our Embedded System Designs, the vendors supports Fedora. So peoples who were used to some other distro, shifted to Fedora like I did.

I was used to Ubuntu, and I needed to shift to fedora after joining the company.

Now it may seem not good or not ok to some members, but when you are working, and your vendors are not supporting something and you need to work to get your salary, you can't debate there

ROFL that is exactly why I need to switch from Arch. Majority of Arch users are the type who would run it in a Pentium 4 PC with minimal installations, love commandline and proudly proclaim that it feels a lot faster than Core2 Duo Desktops running Vista. When I installed it in my Desktop I was 100% in the same category

But on my laptop, finding that PyPE is not in repos and that the version in AUR is buggy, or that I need to spend 2 hours to install JBOSS, Android SDK I should install from AUR, and most of the tools I use for embedded programming with my AVR board are not easily available on ArchLinux is all indicating I need to use this weekend to make the switch

BTW back to Fedora, how easy/hard is it to upgrade between versions ? I have become lazy because of "sudo pacman -Syu" and rolling release.

 

[krishnandu.sarkar]

Well, that's a tricky question. Check out Upgrading - FedoraProject

It's easy if done through pre-upgrade. But sometimes it brokes things.

So the recommended way / fedora way is to upgrade from DVD.

 

[skeletor]

Back to akmod-wl, it works but need to reboot. Cannot do a network installation over WiFi. All niggles in Fedora need me to reboot to fix, which can't be done on Live USB (OR CAN IT ?)

akmod-wl will definitely require reboot.

Not sure but I think kmod-wl should work by simply installing and then "modprobe wl".

BTW back to Fedora, how easy/hard is it to upgrade between versions ? I have become lazy because of "sudo pacman -Syu" and rolling release.

Dunno about Fedora. But I've been continuously upgrading Ubuntu from version 8.10 on one system. Now at 11.10. Never faced a problem.

 

[krishnandu.sarkar]

^^Same thing in Fedora is Pre-Upgrade. It works fine as well as Ubuntu does. But sometimes it brokes

So even Fedora recommends upgrade from DVD

 

[MetalheadGautham]

^^Same thing in Fedora is Pre-Upgrade. It works fine as well as Ubuntu does. But sometimes it brokes

So even Fedora recommends upgrade from DVD

Upgrade from DVD means fresh install or is there an option to replace previously installed version in-place ?

PS: Still not installed. Useless BSNL broadband woes.

 

[prudhivisekhar]

Upgrade from DVD means not fresh install. when u boot from dvd, there will be an option for upgrading the exisitng OS.

 

[avinandan012]

There is no distro that just works . But i will still say
fedora ~ FTW.

 

[CyberKID]

My vote goes to Ubuntu!

 

[rishitells]

My vote goes to Ubuntu!

+10

Ubuntu 12.04, with fully-configured updated and essential tools + developer tools, is simply Superb. I am in love with Ubuntu now
My laptop runs much faster on Ubuntu 12.04 compared to Fedora 17.
But disliking the integration of LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. OpenOffice is still the best.

 

[kg11sgbg]

Upgrading of versions in Fedora and openSUSE works more or less fine,since they provide upgrading options in the DVD.
Though in case of the easiest,superb distro Ubuntu "UPGRADING" needs a fast "BroadBand" connection with high bandwidth.The previous version of Ubuntu must be "updated" to the latest of its tools and applications & packages.Moreover there is a chance of broken packages and applications which adds to later woes...
Ubuntu always insists on fresh installation of its newer versions.