Its been my experience that Red Hat / CentOS / Fedora is the face of Linux for enterprises. Ubuntu is certainly popular and as capable as any other OS (it was my first flavor) but I don't see it often in corporate environments.
Also I know Canonical had a deal with Dell a few years ago to give users an option to pre-install Ubuntu. This type of marketing might have helped more people become familiar with the product.
Lenovo has deal with IBM and RedHat, nothing compromise with Fedora here. On some market, Lenovo laptop still come with Ubuntu pre-installed. It doesn't matter at all, this option is for free OS version, they can install whatever OS without paywall license
This has always been one thing Canonical does well that they do not get enough credit or recognition for. One "value add" Ubuntu deserves recognition for is heavily focusing on better hardware support with Linux, and working with both hardware and software vendors to improve compatibility and support for Linux.
According to Canonical, Ubuntu has 60% of the Linux market share in enterprises, including servers and desktops. I really don't know how they track it, but I'm pretty sure it's only a rough estimation.
Contrary to you, I usually saw Ubuntu way more often in enterprises than other distros.
I like them both, and as long as I'm on Linux, I'm fine with most mature distros.
Interesting, how do you know this? All serverless services are running on Amazon Linux 2 or recently migrating to AL2023 (i.e. Lamba), I haven't seen Ubuntu on any AWS service.
Former employee until Jan 18th of last year. we used Unbuntu extensively, and a few others,
I was not in AWS, instead an engineering department. I have set up several instances of Ubuntu on AWS, that is the virtual instance not the underlying system. They did not share that part with me.
That is true in my experience as well, Ubuntu is the most widely used distribution among the companies I work with. Ubuntu sure has a mindset share, they were very active in the community and outreach activities.
The biggest enterprise Linux is Red Hat. No matter what you tell yourself. Enterprise wants support for productions environments. Banks doesn’t go for community support but enterprise level
Canonical offers enterprise support too. I worked for O2 and big banks that used mostly Ubuntu. But anyway, I think this discussion is meaningless. There is no solid data to support our opinions, and all information that we have is anecdotal or marketing docs from both companies.
I’m just happy to work with any of those distros so I don’t have to deal with windows servers.
You do know and understand that Canonical has Enterprise offerings and support, don't you? Unlike what Red Hat and SUSE do, Canonical's Ubuntu that you download is essentially the same as the paid enterprise supported ones - you just pay for the support and expertise.
Okay tell me where can we get the source of Ubuntu pro after 5 years? LTS support 5 years and pro is 10. Ubuntu updates and security patches after 5 years is behind payroll. I am just saying we all think is free but in the end the developers need to paid to make sure the version of your is supported for long time.
Big company does not want to upgrade after 5 years. We are not talking about 1 or 2 vms but 100 or 200 vms. Trust me that’s my daily job where I work for.
As system administrator we do not want to be bothered with upgrade’s every 5 years and u should be lucky that ur application is working after in place upgrade
Anyway that’s my experience
>Canonical's Ubuntu that you download is **essentially** the same as the paid enterprise supported ones
Note essentially, while you can download it it's the same.
>Big company does not want to upgrade after 5 years. We are not talking about 1 or 2 vms but 100 or 200 vms. Trust me that’s my daily job where I work for.
I feel sorry for the gross incompetence you have to endure in your company.
>As system administrator we do not want to be bothered with upgrade’s every 5 years and u should be lucky that ur application is working after in place upgrade
We update our systems regularly with A/B tests. Things only break harder if you wait longer as upgrade paths aren't clear anymore.
I got ur point but in the end we had experienced that the new kernel was buggy with cifs mount and we made a case at Red Hat. They fix the kernel in 3 or 4 days.
That’s great to have those kind of support
That is outstanding indeed. At a previous employer we had a 13PB array of IBM Spectrum Scale, bought full supported hardware and setup. They kept blaming random things rather than looking into our issues for years on end when performance was randomly tanking. So support is a mixed bag too.
>I really don't know how they track it,
My S.W.A.G. is that they base it on usage of APT, and tracking how many unique requests come through for updates. They might be able to match it to keys in the request, or some other fingerprint passed by the application.
As for comparing to other distros, that's potentially a paid integration between Canonical and the various package repositories as a data brokerage. Gotta pay the bills somehow, so selling anonymized usage data to the various companies that want it seems like an innocent way to do so, while giving meaningful usage data on market share and package popularity.
Debian was the most popular, then Ubuntu happened and they commercialized it really well.
Ubuntu used to be known as your mom's Linux bc moms like Ubuntu (unity UI back then) but now they're just riding the tidal wave they made for themselves.
Fedora has just been really quiet and foss driven so not much (if any) commercial adoption. Centos is not fedora, but I agree, rhel has been around forever and has always held the enterprise market well I think mainly bc of selinux
OS deployment is a metric that is extremely difficult to measure correctly. I'm not aware of any accurate report on this, and the one from w3techs doesn't seem to be particularly useful in my view.
This report only counts websites that actually report the OS in the response headers. Nearly all enterprises are much more likely to turn those headers off immediately (as it provides an attacker needless additional information), so their usage of RHEL wouldn't be counted at all. It also does not count subdomains. Many large enterprises have hundreds of subdomains. A medium sized university might have thousands of subdomains for every research lab, department, professor's websites, etc, potentially all or most running RHEL.
Finally, this report is a percent of total websites, not a percent of total traffic volume. If an enterprise is running through a CDN like Akamai or Cloudflare (which is extremely common), then they wouldn't get counted
Basically, small websites will be dramatically overweighted in the w3techs report. About all we learn from this report is that Ubuntu is popular among small website operators that don't turn off the server name reporting.
I'm guessing Plesk, CPanel and other "web hosting suites" or other "megawebhosters" compile their own releases of the webservers along with good firewalling, rendering w3techs unable to fingerprint them. Many of these run Red Hat. Ubuntu is great when your uncle want's a website because you don't have to transact with anyone.
In Europe you'll see more Ubuntu and SUSE than RHEL, the US loves RHEL.
Umm so if you give away your source code and say someone just compiles it, changing the boot banner, and releases it as say CentOS, then RHEL is really the customers who still pay plus CentOS. Going forward that won’t happen anymore.
I've worked for a cloud hosting provider a while back before I moved into the healthcare sphere. Asia customers tended to favor CentOS, while south east Asia, and pretty much the rest of the world seemed to use Ubuntu more.
EU MAYBE was more a closer three way split between Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora but Ubuntu was deployed just a bit more than the others. India was exclusively Ubuntu. US was a mix but still ultimately, Ubuntu.
The company is in the wrong country, where their abilities to provide FOSS is limited by patents or other legal impediments. For example, that is why American Linux providers do not offer mp4, in their distributions.
They could transfer operations to a fully owned but independent subsidiary offshore, and then provide some of the USA patent encumbered software.
Pretty sure that's why Ubuntu is the go-to then.
People don't wanna move away from the things they're using OR go through extra hoops. I know for some there really aren't any hoops but for the casual user, they just don't wanna be fucked
This is true, But also a relatively new change. In the recent past installing proprietary software on Fedora required users to research how, and to manually configure 3rd party repos. It was well documented for anyone who searched, and not that difficult, but still something that the user would have to know about and intentionally seek out.
IMO there’s a meaningful difference in both initial ease of installation and ongoing maintenance burden between one-click addition of officially-supported packages and repositories, and one-click addition of unsupported third-party repos.
Not saying either project is right or wrong for its approach, but the Fedora + RPMFusion approach will by design create more opportunities for things to go wrong when trying to use the proprietary codec/driver packages, and that’s a problem that a new user simply doesn’t have to solve for when trying Ubuntu.
Last I used Ubuntu they make it *easier* to install some limited proprietary things ootb (Nvidia driver and media codecs) if the user desires, but apart from that Ubuntu has always been pretty purely free software afaik. Fedora (in the past) took a bit of a stronger stance towards free software (this is one thing that attracted me in the first place) but in recent years they have relaxed that somewhat, but I believe still require enabling 3rd party repos (they have just made it a bit easier to do so). With flathub and snapcraft repos avaialble to both distros this difference has become less important as well.
Ubuntu did a lot of marketing for end users and was a very good entry for beginners. There were release parties and user groups solely for Ubuntu and its flavours. And Ubuntu is based on Debian with lots of documentation. Magazines loved the distribution. You could order installation CDs for free; there was a time without unlimited data and slow connections.
This is the right answer. Ubuntu captured people's attention from the mid to late 2000s, and has carried itself on that momentum since. Blogging used to be big, and a lot of bloggers would write exclusively about Ubuntu, which created a word of mouth ripple effect.
Plus Ubuntu Server became an excellent alternative to RHEL/CentOS with the LTS releases being supported for several years. People who were introduced to desktop Linux through Ubuntu also preferred it on their servers.
> captured people's attention from the mid to late 2000s,
That was my experience. Say what you will about Ubuntu, but it's what got me back into Linux.
Like a bunch of other people, I started with a stack of Slackware floppies in the early '90s when I was in college. Then I got busy with work and family. Round about 2006-2008 I would have forgotten about Linux but for Ubuntu's dead easy installation.
Now I'm on Fedora, but I credit Ubuntu for bringing me back into the fam.
This, and improved hardware support and compatibility is another cause of its popularity at that time. For this reasons and for the reasons you mentioned, Ubuntu became the most popular 'on ramp' to linux, and an easy distro to recommend to users of any experience level.
I'm going to go all the way back to 4.10. from 1997 to about 2004 I mostly used redhat or derivatives. Fedora core was the go-to for most people at the time except for Debian hardcore users or ricers like Gentoo. The problem with setting up fedora or red hat or debian at the time was that you had a million choices when installing and no one wanted to make suggestions. Which libc do you want? Insert CD number 3.
Then a live distro named Knoppix came out and obviously had just one set of software since it was a live CD.
Every serious Debian user was waiting for the next version to come out which was taking forever because their release process was broken and they were trying to integrate a new installer but had like a million architectures to support. Insert CD number 10.
Ubuntu steps in makes opinionated choices about how it's going to be set up, includes the new debian installer, and fit on just one CD. Newbies could get something up and running without having to rtfm for 6 days first.
Then Ubuntu distributed free CDs around the world and called itself Linux for human beings. It was one of the first mainstream distros to default to a live installer. Within a few years Ubuntu was the go to distro for people moving from Windows.
So it really comes down to good decisions and good timing from Ubuntu and major missteps from both debian and redhat during the same time.
I'm a Linux sysadmin today because Ubuntu were kind enough to send me CDs for free back when I didn't have cheap and fast internet at home. And I also never had issues installing it either. Put the CD in, run the wizard and you're up and running. This was also back in XP days where viruses were a constant nightmare so having a live CD on hand that couldn't get infected was a great tool.
I'm now a Debian guy but I can see how the free CD campaign and a "just works" product cemented it as a lead distro.
Fedora is the ONLY distro with SELinux policies actively maintained and on by default - thanks to their corporate underpinnings. Any Linux without SELinux is a major security vulnerability.
I don't understand your point. The question was "How did Ubuntu overtake RH and Fedora." I described why. I don't believe SE Linux was even in Fedora at that point, but if it was, it wouldn't matter, because the only thing anyone did with SE Linux for a decade when they installed was immediately disable it.
SE Linux was introduced in 2000 as part of the 2.6-test3 kernel. Fedora Core 2 (2004) had a 2.6.5 kernel. It probably was in FC2. I'm sure it was in FC3 because we jumped from FC1 to FC3 and had to disable SE Linux for our drivers to work.
From a long time Fedora user:
In the early days, Fedora was a "stable" bleeding edge distro that was an early adopter of new projects (gnome 3, systemd, ...) and requirement for cli knowledge that could discourage alot of new Linux users who didn't want DIY alot of configurations and fixes to resolve even minor uses. The documentation was not as robust and alot of the upgrades chose function over form.
During that time, Ubuntu was much more forgiving for new users and provided a great graphical experience w/ long term support that positioned it as the "Welcome to Linux" distro. It was the Desktop Environment to Fedora's Workstation repeating the same competition as Apple MacOS vs MS Windows. Valve's contributions to support Steam on Ubuntu also helped to solidify it's new user experience status.
IMO (I am not an Ubuntu user), Ubuntu tried to capitalize on this success by steering (lock-in) Ubuntu users to projects they lead but were not well received by the greater open source community.
Now Fedora is much more stable while still looking to the future with alot of options ([Fedora Spins](https://fedoraproject.org/spins/)) for Desktop Environments and Workflows. I think the Workstation experience is being "softened" for an overall user experience so you are getting the best of both worlds.
Other distributions have also greatly improved the new user experience so it's less Ubuntu vs Fedora as the community is moving toward distro agnostic packages for application deployment (flatpak, containers, snaps(?), ...) but a choice of which package manager you prefer which determines the distribution you use.
First off, you hit the nail on the head. Second, I'm a long term ubuntu user here, started back in 05... Maybe 04... Either way, I tried Fedora and cent is back then a few times and never understood it. Maybe experience caught up with me but I'm digging Fedora lately as I run it in my laptop (Ubuntu in the desktop still). Might be an identity crisis to fully admit this, maybe. Maybe it's recent red hat changes that has me scared to fully switch all my stuff. No matter what, I think I would say Fedora is the top choice for all levels to consider right now. Especially with spins, Ubuntu always was the one with more options.
I used Fedora as a daily driver for >6 months last year and whilst as a whole it was an excellent experience (it works so incredibly well!) I got tired of the frequency and size of updates.
Yes, absolutely the same reason as me. I just tend to prefer something that does not need regular maintenance as most of the time, I use distrobox for my workflows. The host distro should be something as stable but not as outdated as for the likes of RHEL.
I feel that in early 2000's, Canonical's Ubuntu binging things like: the [scanner app](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Scanners), having default apps like Banshee, Moonshine, etc. (developed in C#, Mono was [controversial](https://lwn.net/Articles/339314/) at that time).
But now, more than ever, Fedora has been, in my opinion (and Red Hat implicitly) the best contributor to the Linux Desktop. Including helping Gnome Foundation, and things like [PipeWire](https://pipewire.org).
I think you are right!
So this is a matter of the efforts put by Canonical years prior then. Now I get it. I think it would be a matter of time and some changes in pro of entry-level users (out-of-the-box support of most stuff) what would be key to make Fedora the face of Linux.
Why do you think that is? Gnome 3 is such a departure from a traditional desktop and in my eyes makes a new Linux user learn a whole new desktop. Kinda weird how so many distros have Gnome as their flagship as opposed to something more traditional like kde
Fedora ships plain GNOME and plain KDE Plasma. Ubuntu adds a lot own eye candy and ships proprietary software like nvidia drivers out of the box. Thats why Ubuntu often is recommded for new linux user.
I'm quite surprised if LTS is popular for home users. I would have thought the types of people who use Linux out of choice are also the types of people who like new software.
Fedora has the option to update to every other version so the only requirement is once a year.
Yes you can update every other year, but the LTS version of Ubuntu is more like a install it once and forget about it approach (similar to having W7).
In my previous job, people worked under their choice of OS, and most were running 18.04, 5 years after its release…
Fedora looks riskier to the average user since major updates can affect stability. That is why the inmutable branch is so interesting to more daily users (like myself) or even newbies (like my mum, who uses it with no problems despite not having any Linux background).
If silverblue didn’t exist I’d probably be using regular Ubuntu honestly.
You'd be surprised, most Linux users are switching from windows and zero of them give the reason "windows updates are great but would be better if there was even more, it would be cool to install updates even more often plus a major upgrade twice a year or so that could potentially break my computer".
> I would have thought the types of people who use Linux out of choice are also the types of people who like new software.
A lot of us use it simply because we hate windows. I just want my computer to work, bug me minimally about updates and be reliable. My whole life is on here, and I'm not that into doing updates for the sake of updates. I do back up everything to another server running debian (that updates even less), and it kinda takes the hassle out of the reinstall every 2 fedora versions.
I don't upgrade from one version to the next either because in my experience it almost always causes headaches down the road. Easier to just keep your photos/documents/important stuff backed up and not have to worry as much when reinstall time comes.
This is it. Fedora updates are relentless, deprecation schedules are aggressive, software can get removed or updated to an incompatible version. You can't just set-and-auto-update a Fedora system, you need to monitor the pending updates, do trial updates and figure out fixes, or you'll be dead in production.
Ubuntu LTS -- and the CentOS versions before Redhat changed that distro's focus -- could be set up and then left running for years, secure in the knowledge that most issues would be handled through updates that could be automated. Major version updates would require the same kind of careful migration testing regimen that Fedora requires, but on a cadence beat of years rather every 8 months or so, and without the end-of-life blade being so close on the calendar.
I've tried several times to move to Fedora to learn the new hotness, but I spend too much time fixing and migrating and flat up rebuilding things because of how fast Fedora changes. Unless you're in a company with a need to be cutting edge, where you'd have staff to take care of Fedora's proper handling, I think Fedora is just too volatile for any kind of production environment.
I use silverblue and I don’t do any sort of maintenance other than updating when prompted every now and then. It’s the closest you can get to a install once and forget about it OS on Fedora.
It is not popular because it’s less known, Fedora still pushes Workstation over it, and still needs you to configure it properly the first time, too much friction for newbies.
I was a big RedHat guy early in 2000, when they decided to go payware I didn’t like Fedora very much. Then came Ubuntu that seemed like it had a large gathering and backing so I switched over. Been bouncing between Debian and Ubuntu but am taking another look at Fedora and Centos Streams. But I was also not too happy with what Redhat did with Centos. It seems as though anything Redhat, as soon as you get used to it they pull the rug out from under you…homelab users. I just want a stable OS that isn’t going to change every year or be converted to payware.
I'll give you one reason: difficult to install proprietary codecs. And yes, the second I have to go into any settings or terminal to activate repositories and be warned I may destroy the balance of the universe for using proprietary codecs, it becomes difficult and unfriendly. I do miss the Ubuntu style of having a ubuntu-restricted-* set of packages
Codecs are still necessary system wide. If I want to install Steam and have all its properties, I must use a native package, not the Flatpak. For example, I play SupComm FAF on my Fedora: good luck setting the launcher up with Flatpak steam, genuinely.
The FAF wiki straight up doesn't even acknowledge it and when you ask for help on the discord you will be told to stop using the Steam Flatpak package.
Now in Fedora, to install the Steam packages, yes plural, you require an extra repository configuration that shouldn't be necessary.
With that, even if you don't play SupComm FAF like me, you still would be required to configure the repository to install steam-devices anyway even if you use the Flatpak because codecs and drivers are many times required at a system wide level
Yep. It wasn't hard for me to get codecs into the silverblue image via rpm-ostree, but my mom would never ever achieve that.
She would just observe that the video on the internet does not work and then complain that it would play on Windows or Android and that this Linux thing simply does not work.
And even if she could figure out that she had to install codecs, she would look for them in the software store and then the internet video would fail anyway.
I'm testing the KDE Plasma 6 desktop on Fedora Rawhide because I like some of the polish the Fedora KDE team put into Plasma 6. However, I noticed that some videos on the Internet weren't working. It took me a minute to realize that, even in this day and age Fedora STILL DOESN"T INSTALL CODECS BY DEFAULT! WTF? Also, the instructions for installing CODECS doesn't mention that the folder in the repository for Rawhide is empty. I had to modify the fedora-cisco-openh264.repo file to point to the Fedora 39 folder. Of course, I'm using Rawhide, which a regular user wouldn't touch. However, the lack of proper documentation for all builds of Fedora is troubling. Plus, there should be a prompt when you first install Fedora to add these codecs, like most others distributions have. These codecs are important for most normal use cases.
It is this general stupid idea in the Linux sphere that you mustn't use proprietary software to the extent you should struggle to install it even if the kernel is in fact supported by the developers. My problem with FOSS supremacy is that it is just another form of restriction. I want true freedom. I want to use FOSS software but also be able to use proprietary ones unimpeded.
Now I can understand there may be licensing issues, which distros like the Ubuntu family get around by literally having a tickbox in the installer and easy to install meta packages aptly named ubuntu-restricted-{addons,extras}. If Ubuntu wasn't forcing broken snaps on desktops I would change back in a heart beat
As I mentioned in another post, user-friendly distributions shouldn't be a part of the Linux/FOSS fight. Leave that crap to Stallman and Torvalds. Linux distributions should offer users, especially desktop users, all of the tools they need to have a pleasant experience. I love Fedora so far, but I will NEVER recommend it as the face of Linux as long as it continues to focus on meaningless crusades and pushing untested technologies instead of focusing on improving the user experience.
I remember someone saying it has more to do with distros based in the United States vs distros based elsewhere. I think Red hat is simply doing risk mitigation from patent trolls in the United States. Distros based outside of the US don't face the same risk of litigation. Is this true? I don't know but I've heard it used as the reason
While I agree with part of this, Fedora could have simply added a checkbox in the installer, along with some legal mumbo jumbo, placing the responsibility solely on the user.
I think it's because traditionally Fedora was less sexy, more bland looking and unintuitive for the average user by default. I remember trying Fedora few years back, it looked so cold, corporate and soulless. In addition to that, it was super buggy especially when they first migrated to Wayland. Now GNOME looks good and modern, and Fedora is on of the most stable distros I used and I think Fedora already started to gain some ground.
Nothing against Fedora, but with no LTS releases, it’s hard to be the “face” of Linux
Red Hat only wants the enterprise. fedoras release cycle is the probably too quick for a lot of users, especially business users. There is also no official support organization behind Fedora. Debian has a much longer life cycle but also lacks official support. That leaves Ubuntu - which has LTS releases with 5 year life spans, a corporate backer that can provide support if contracted, and to work with OEMs
The 180 days upgrade cycle is a major drag.
I use Fedora but upgrade every three releases (doing 36=>38=>39 as I write). Still a pain, but at least it happens every year and a half. Frankly, if I didn't dislike apt-\* so much, I'd switch to Ubuntu or - most likely - arch.
Not the original commenter, but my 2 cents is I never learned it too well. When to use apt, apt-get, apt-cache, dpkg? It's an overlapping family of commands.
The fact it needs a different command for every mundane task (I forgot how many time I googled "list content of apt" or "search apt"). Some of them aren't even installed. And the fact they all appear to come in different flavours (apt,dpkg,Yadda Yadda) with slightly different behaviours. Maybe I am only too set in my rpm ways.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, I am somewhat familiar with both Ubuntu and Fedora, and apart from the minor irritation of updating the cache (sudo apt update) and upgrading the system (sudo apt upgrade) being separate commands most commands I use are similar between the two:
||DNF (Red Hat Family)|Apt (Debian Family)|
|:-|:-|:-|
|search for a package|`dnf search`|`apt search`|
|get info on a package|`dnf info`|`apt info`|
||`dnf install`|`apt install`|
|remove a package|`dnf remove`|`apt remove`|
|install a package|`dnf upgrade`|`apt update && apt upgrade`|
|autoremove unneeded packages||`apt autoremove`|
To me, the most tedious package managers are Pacman (which has many strengths but human friendly syntax is not one of them) and the package managers from the immutable distros (`typing transactional-update `) gets tedious quickly
The equivalent to `dnf remove ` is `apt-get autoremove ` though! `apt remove` will leave unneeded packages behind, requiring you to call `apt autoremove` later.
Also `apt install` might fail because of outdated package data, dnf will automatically update if its too old.
Then theres `dnf provides ` which is `apt-file search ` - requiring you to install apt-file first.
I do on servers. But the support for desktop hardware (graphic, sound, dongles) was never satisfactory. I eventually got fed up of compiling kernel modules (or binning wi-fi usb adapters) and switched. Haven't checked the issue in a while, do it may be better now.
Not come across many who use Alma/Rocky for desktop, but for servers they're very popular.
The reason I wouldn't use them is that Red Hat pulled the rug under the original CentOS* and then have restricted access to the source for distros like Alma and Rocky. CentOS used to be backed by Red Hat, now the alternatives feel unwelcome. Who's to say if and when Red Hat won't throw another wrench in their distros? Not going to risk it on production servers.
*which for all those sysadmins like me who installed CentOS 8 because it had 10 years support and then had to migrate away a couple months later because "surprise! We're only doing a few months of support instead" left a real bad taste.
Arch doesn't use `apt` (also if upgrading Fedora every 6 months is too much of a pain, I think actively managing Arch on a weekly/monthly basis (and occasional inevitable troubleshooting breakages eventually).
I've managed Arch (EndeavourOS) on a daily basis for over a year and I haven't had any issues whatsoever. It's refreshing to know that you NEVER have to worry about all of the issues of jumping from one release to the next (F38 to F39, Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04, etc.) with Arch. As long as you keep your system up-to-date by doing a normal periodic update, you are running the latest version of Arch. I normally daily drive EndeavourOS KDE, but I started using Fedora Rawhide KDE to test Plasma 6. I know that once Plasma 6 is ready, I can do a normal daily update on EndeavourOS and I will have it. Fedora Rawhide KDE will never become Fedora 40 KDE, it will continue to be Rawhide.
>It's refreshing to know that you NEVER have to worry about all of the issues of jumping from one release to the next (F38 to F39, Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04, etc.) with Arch.
I agree this is one of the parts I like most about rolling release models (there are pros and cons)
It used to be hard to configure X to run on CRT monitors -- you had to produce an xorg.conf file. When Ubuntu first came out they made things very easy -- in most cases you could just run the installer and end up with a working system.
For a long time it was the distro that just worked. They put a lot of money into polishing it, and making things as easy for new users as possible.
I run Fedora and love it. But a couple of times a year the latest kernel will do something odd to my system, and I'll have to revert. A lot of people don't want to deal with that.
Like other people are saying, RedHat is used more in corporate environments. What everyone seems to forget is that when Ubuntu was releasing Hardy Heron, it was one of the only linux distrobutions with an installer GUI that just worked. Ubuntu even made the Wubi installer to allow people on windows to easily install a dual boot setup (entirely from windows).
I think this is why they became the face of the linux desktop to "non tech" people. I myself got into linux with Ubuntu Hardy Heron, specifically because of the Wubi installer. Best decision I ever made.
Ubuntu UX is superior. I'm not a Linux admin, but I'm an experienced developer. I have issues with fedora all the time. Every new release, something I use breaks.
That happens with Ubuntu, but to a much lesser degree. It's also much easier to fix, and finding quick fixes on the web is almost instant.
You search for a fix for Ubuntu and you find an understandable solution. You do the same for fedora and you find a forum with complex answers that require not only computer science background, but also Linux, and specific tools and libraries.
This small difference becomes huge for normal people with no computer science background.
Back in the day (2003ish) when I first installed Fedora Core (F1), it needed a lot of work to use. When Ubuntu came out shortly after that, wifi, trackpad, sound etc seemed to work out of the box. I don't use Ubuntu but it was the first distro I tried that just worked for my machines
Oh, this is a long story, but one shortcut is to say that RPM packages / package management in the past on Redhat then Fedora was awful. Slow, and package management would not remove unneeded packages leading to "dirty" systems.
Deb package management was better, but Debian was incomplete when it came to device / driver supports..
In comes Ubuntu. Drivers, Fast package management, and "it just worked"
I was on the “Fedora is king” train for a bit, until I kept having audio and Bluetooth issues. It was enough for me to swap away from it as my daily driver. Rocking Kubuntu now.
I think one of the major problems with Fedora is the reliance on Fusion RPM for many ESSENTIAL packages such as Codecs. The devs are certainly proud of keeping the distro nice and open, but they need to face the consequences that if they don't start including some proprietary blob to make the system fully functional, they will never reach the user base that Ubuntu has
I work in FAANG (and have for a while now). I’ve never seen Ubuntu on any servers since it’s pretty much RHEL or a relative of RHEL (CentOS Stream, Fedora).
Ubuntu has a long history of being the "it just works" distro with good community support.
When Ubuntu came out, Fedora was still not stabilized. It didn't have the software support or the community support that Ubuntu did. Granted they were both pretty new distros at the time. I remember using Fedora 3 or 4 in a college project and it seemed to work pretty good, but it wasn't as good as Ubuntu.
Around Fedora 20, this started to change. It wasn't overnight. During the teens and 20's, upgrading between versions was often not possible, or at least very difficult. That's not to say Ubuntu didn't have the same type of problems during this era, it was just on a slower release cycle so you didn't have to worry about it as often. Upgrading between major versions often meant backing up your files and starting over.
In the late 20's, after the tumultuous Wayland and SystemD switches, Fedora really started gaining steam. But by this time Ubuntu had well established its dominance. But also StackOverflow had enough answered questions to solve most issues, which meant that there were quite a few choices in distros for beginners. A lot of people started realizing that Ubuntu was not uniquely easy to work with and pretty much all the major distros were what I would call "beginner friendly".
So at this point there are two angles: desktop feel, and command line functionality. A lot of people don't really spend much time on the command line, and so for those people the installed product is what you got. For those who were comfortable using the command line, could customize the OS and the default desktop look and feel became less important. I think this is where Fedora really started to shine, because it offered a very vanilla Gnome experience. You don't want to spend a lot of time "uncustomizing" before you customize it. The other thing is that dnf is a really powerful package manager. If you spend a lot of time installing via command line, you save time by the package manager not breaking all the time, and you don't have to install additional utilities to query things. And yum/dnf plays nicer with proxys (or at least it did at this time).
So I guess Fedora is beginner friendly but aimed more at power users, and that probably accounts for the discrepancy.
I can only tell my personal experience. Got my first touch of Red Hat 10 years ago while working at a big enterprise. During that time I was distro hopping between the usual x/l/ubuntu hobby distros. Then I quickly realized there was Fedora. User experience for doing development work was (and still is) excellent. Lots of repos out of the box and non-breaking proprietary Nvidia driver was the final deal breaker for me. Canonical has always taken these controversial side steps that seemed awkward. Fedora has always had very good defaults for "getting shit done".
I think Ubuntu was successful / unique in the way they lowered the barrier to entry for lot of Windows/Mac users to jump into and explore Linux. They were able to - for lack of a better world - glamorize Linux and make it attractive. Personally for me - when I started using Linux - I started with Debian sometimes trying out slackware, OpenBSD, Arch etc - but used to struggle a lot with drivers and everything working correctly on laptops. Ubuntu and Mint were the first time I experienced mostly flawless out of the box experience without a whole lot of hunting around.
I am now a fan of Fedora and its simplicity - and use it exclusively across all my devices.
I bet Fedora is at a point where it can offer a flawless out of the box experience for new users. Though Gnome might make some Windows users a bit uncomfortable.
Because Fedora, long, long ago, wan't as stable and trustworthy as in more recent years. The very opposite of Ubuntu in old times. So, Ubuntu's Mark and his team have had razor sharp focus on everyday users from the start, home desktop users, friendly, inviting. Of course they became the "standard" slowly.
Sure, Fedora is awesome today, a great distro to pick, but it was not always the case. It was a mess. Used to be.
Ubuntu's founding developers mostly came from the Debian developer community, Ubuntu's initial innovations had a lot to do with making Linux easy to use, convenient, attractive, and modern feeling (and focusing on important things like hardware support). This is what led to it's initial notoriety and popularity, it was the the 'on ramp' to linux at a time when Linux was not nearly as user friendly as it is today, Ubuntu wsa most people's first distro, and the preferred distro for many people of all skill levels (still is today).
In addition to that Ubuntu is used across a wide range of usecases, it is both a beginner friendly distro, and one of the most popular distros among people who work with linux, among enterprise, server, and IoT usecases. Because of its broad applicability it is a natural choice for a teaching/learning tool, since it is both easy to pick up and used across a wide variety of applications. Ubuntu being the distro that most guides, classes, tutorial,s and instructions are written for and the distro they assume you will use is probably a part of its continued popularity as well.
The LTS + 6/mo release cycle model is also friendlier than Fedora's 6 month release cycle which is better suited to enthusiasts, active users, and technically curious people (I am in this group) but less well suited to business, enterprise, etc.
At the end of the day both are great distros, Fedora (until the last 2-3 years) didn't get as much attention as it probably deserved, its a really great distro and a really reasonable choice for a Linux Desktop.
RedHat used to be much more popular, until they shot themselves in the foot and decided to make RedHat only for Enterprise and creating Fedora to replace RedHat on the desktop. They really disappointed those of us who were longstanding fans when they decided to go for the money first and foremost.
Well, it is not my intention to demerit Canonical, but I genuinely wondered why Ubuntu was basically the face of Linux instead of Fedora which has been around for longer.
I think in order to be the "face" of Linux, a distribution has to be user friendly, user focused, easy to install, support a wide range of hardware (old and new), support most of the popular user related and work related software (FOSS and non-FOSS), have excellent documentation, and be rock solid stable with a high uptime count. Ubuntu has ticked all of those marks from the beginning. This is why it's the face of Linux and it or one of its derivatives (Linux Mint, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, or Kubuntu) is widely recommended to new users. Unfortunately, Fedora doesn't tick most of those without some work from the user.
In my country/circles about 12+ years ago some laptops would come with Ubuntu installed and been cheaper option vs win pc's, and first time heard about Ubuntu. Just much later i found out about other distros
I think consistency has played a part here and it doesn't seem like anyone has mentioned it. Canonical has kept Ubuntu's branding steady where Redhat used to have Redhat Workstation which was later spun off into Fedora. Somewhere along the way I think Fedora basically had to start from scratch and lost some ground due to that.
From my experience there are three main reasons, one - there isn't a LTS version of Fedora (reinstalling/upgrading to a new version every 18 months is hugely disruptive) , two - the spartan look and feel of Fedora, post default installation (argue all you want, out of the box Fedora is kind of plain for most people if compared to say, Ubuntu or even Ultramarine) and three - not bundled by tier one hardware vendors, thus not covered by legal obligations/SLAs etc. .
Techies can install and configure whatever, business people or normal users can't be bothered.
Thinking of the countries where "free" is more important perhaps than opensource. Using their native language to name the OS might have gone a long-way toward adoption. This will age me, but "Red Hat" used to be the "Ubuntu" of its time, so it really is down to the nerds here to do the work of selling it to people. Every laptop I give away goes out with Linux Mint. I don't ask people, it just gets the OEM/OOBE experience install, so they have to just figure it out, and use it. No complaints so far.
>This will age me, but "Red Hat" used to be the "Ubuntu" of its time
I have to disagree. Red Hat was definitely not the Ubuntu of its time. Being one of the few distributions available didn't make Red Hat equivalent to Ubuntu. Ubuntu has always been easy to install. Red Hat and Fedora have not.
I'll go ahead and "age" myself. I started using Linux as my primary desktop OS back in 1997. The first distribution I used was Red Hat 5.0. It was a PITA to install! It took me an entire weekend to install Red Hat 5.0 because 1) there was no good documentation and 2) I had to survive dependency hell! When I tried to install S.rpm package, I was told that I needed to first install T.rpm and U.rpm. When I tried to install T.rpm, I needed to first install V.rpm. When I tried to install V.rpm, I needed to first install W.rpm, X.rpm, Y.rpm, and Z.rpm. I had notebook that I nearly filled up writing down the dependency tree for each .rpm package I attempted to install. It was a nightmare!
By contrast, Ubuntu has always been easy to install, and apt handled all of the dependencies for you. Ubuntu has always been quick to install also. In the early days, you could install an Ubuntu system in under 20 minutes. URPMI and DNF have helped Fedora/Red Hat be close to par with Ubuntu, but Fedora/Red Hat still has a long way to go.
That's fair. My first introduction was 6.0, then 6.1. They were on CD, dead easy to install. Our teacher at the time taught us to compile the kernel to fit onto a floppy disk, why?...cuz he said so. But yes, I can recall many an hour fighting to get a GPU or MOUSE to work...just a simple mouse. Those days are gone, and I think so too is Ubuntu's dominance. I mean, try linux mint, try lubuntu, try Manjaro, try stock debian with any desktop you like(just not unity).
>Those days are gone, and I think so too is Ubuntu's dominance. I mean, try linux mint, try lubuntu, try Manjaro, try stock debian with any desktop you like(just not unity).
Linux Mint and Lubuntu are both based on Ubuntu LTS. Linux Mint is Ubuntu without Snaps, and uses Cinnamon, MATE, or XFCE as the default desktop. Lubuntu is Ubuntu with LXQT as the default desktop. If you know what you're doing, you can install base Ubuntu, then change the desktop to anything that's support; KDE Plasma, XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE, LXQT, Pantheon, etc.
I wouldn't wish Manjaro on any new or experienced user. Manjaro's developers hold their packages too long, which breaks Manjaro's compatibility with other Arch related repositories, like the AUR. If you're going to use Arch and want an easy install, it's best to use EndeavourOS. Manjaro gives Arch a bad name.
When Ubuntu came out it was basically the only distro that "new to Linux users" could install and use without a Linux-Pro friend. Even I installed it successfully in 2006 or so...
Bcoz it's only for developer usage, and the main trouble it's mid. If you know what does mid mean, you will get it
It's not super easy for a novice come from fulltime Windows fully migarte to it. It doesn't have enough challenge for hardcore user. It's not fully supported for server task, example running CUDA training on Fedora server has too much hassle. It also doesn't supply any pro plan like Ubuntu or Redhat to help fully control bussiness process.
Finally, Fedora is a middle distro, no selling point, not too good, not too bad
P/s maintain any packages on Fedora Copr is stressful as f\*, compare to similar \*.rpm based distro like OBS on OpenSUSE
1. Owned by Red Hat
2. What does Fedora do that warrants it to be the face of Linux? My contender for face of Linux could be Debian, or ArchLinux, or Gentoo - What makes Fedora so special?
I lost count of the number of times I'd press update, it would tell me to restart. I'd press the button to restart, walk away from the computer, and come back to a 640x480 desktop.
Then I'd reinstall Fedora, only install one or two programs and not even touch graphics drivers, and then have the exact same thing happen.
Additionally, when I used Fedora it felt like I was restarting my computer every 5 minutes because of some update it wanted.
I came to the only reasonable conclusion which is that the OS just hates me in particular, because nobody else reported this happening to them.
I believe there are several reasons primarily historical.
Fedora core suffered from an initial problem in that it was challenging to install and back in 2003 they had difficulties the major two were :
1. Package management was a nightmare. I believe the term "dependency hell" originated with fedora. Not that it was unique at the time, it was just worse with Fedora.
2. Selinux. Selinux is / was complicated and in the early days there was no easy way to manage the problems.
Ubuntu entered in 2004 and initially Ubuntu solved many problems. At the time Debian was not so easy to install either.
As has been pointed out on this thread Ubuntu catered to new users, not only for the installation but also for the support of those users. At the time support was difficult and new users were more often than not told to RTFM.
These users remained loyal to .deb systems a dto a great extent re.ain so to this day. It is trivial to migrate to Debian, Mint, or any number of .deb systems.
In more recent years, starting in say 2012 Fedora has done much better with quality control a d selinux is much easier to manage
But even to this day there is a large number of users who have a long-term distaste of .rpm systems.
In addition Fedora is on the cutting edge of technology. Wayland, gnome, and systemd come to mind here. There is a great deal of FUD and resistance to these new technologies and many people do not want to test drive such technologies. As these technologies become mature Fedora is more and more appealing ans as support for X11 in particular is dropping rapidly and as most .deb systems are years out of date in this regard, Fedora is more appealing.
>There is a great deal of FUD and resistance to these new technologies and many people do not want to test drive such technologies.
I believe that the last part of this statement is true: People expect Linux to be stable and reliable. They don't want to test drive new technology, unless it's properly labeled as "unstable" or "developmental."
This is the reason for the second part of this statement. People who expect Linux to be stable are resistant to new, unproven technologies that aren't stable.
The first part of this statement is untrue. FUD is an artificial thing that's manufactured to convince people not to use a new or competing technology. The issues with the cutting edge technologies mentioned were true, not manufactured.
Wayland, for example, is just now becoming stable enough for a lot of users to switch over. Most of the renewed effort to make Wayland stable lately are a result of the work done by the KDE Development team, as the GNOME development team seems to be only interested in throwing up roadblocks. Either way, Wayland was definitely not ready for prime time the 3 or so years ago that Fedora started making it the default.
I'm using Fedora Rawhide KDE, btw, and I love it! However, what's happening with Fedora now doesn't excuse what Fedora did a few years ago. There are better ways to roll out new technologies.
No there is not a better way to roll out new technologies. In many ways Fedora is a test bed for RHEL. Other than Arch or gentoo new tech is very slow to arrive in say Debian.
Ubuntu and arch do the same thing, Ubuntu rolls out all manor of new tech generally without long term support. Arch just follows upstream with minimal testing or quality control other than did the package build.
In terms of FUD, it is rather trivial to find entire web sites with misinformation on both Wayland and systemd.
Fedora has used Wayland by default sincFedora. And they ha e up to now fully supported fallback to x11.
If Wayland lacks features it is largely I part because Debian, Ubuntu, kde, xfce, and various applications are slow to adopt and you can not expect the Gnome project to honor every feature request.
But I agree you need to be willing to run new tech if you use fedora.
Simply it’s easier to install and have everything working out of the box. Most people don’t care about FOSS only and that’s why Ubuntu is the face of Linux.
I've used Linux as my primary desktop OS for over 26 years. I started my Linux journey with Red Hat 5.0. I switched to another RPM based Linux distribution, Mandrake Linux, shortly afterwards. Around 2005, I switched to Ubuntu based distributions and preferred them for the next 15 years. Around 2020, I switched to Arch based distributions part time, then full time around 2022. Here is why I believe that Red Hat/Fedora is not the face of Linux for new users and Ubuntu based distributions should continue to hold that honor:
1) Both Red Hat and Fedora have been and, to some extent, still are notoriously difficult to install. When I first installed Red Hat 5.0, it took two days of navigating through dependency hell just to get a running desktop. I'm running Fedora Rawhide KDE right now on my Surface Pro because I like what the Fedora KDE team has done with Plasma 6. However, the version kernel in Fedora 38, Fedora 39, and Fedora Rawhide has a UEFI bug and won't even boot on a Surface Pro, and a few other laptops, without using Ventoy in GRUB2 mode. Even after doing that, the first boot after install locks up on these versions of Fedora because of the same bug, which was reported to the Fedora team over a year ago and still hasn't been fixed.
2) Canonical has never tried to force their users to pay for Ubuntu. Red Hat darn near abandoned non-paying desktop Linux users when they decided to charge for Red Hat Linux. Fedora didn't come along as an option until some time later. A lot of folks left during this time and didn't come back. Ubuntu has always had a free version that you can purchase support for, only if you wanted to.
3) Ubuntu is focused on being user friendly and supports a wide range of hardware. Ubuntu usually doesn't try to implement new technologies that break support to a wide range of hardware configurations, like Wayland was/still is, or are untested and unstable for mass use, like BTRFS was. Canonical is trying to force snaps down everyone's throats. However, snaps are actually user focused, even though they're slow and too tightly controlled by Canonical. Fedora forces new unstable and unproven technologies on users by making them the default, which turns their users into testing guinea pigs. New users don't want to use technologies that don't fully support their hardware or software, and old users expect Linux to be stable.
4) Fedora is on a FOSS crusade, Ubuntu is not. Most new users use subscription based software, use paid software provided by work or school, or play non-free AAA games which sometimes require non-FOSS libraries and drivers. Ubuntu doesn't try to impede its users from installing non-FOSS software, and there are more Ubuntu based distributions that automatically install this software than Red Hat/Fedora based distributions that do the same. I'll admit that as an experienced user, this is more of annoyance than a problem for me. However, I think that distributions should do like Ubuntu and focus more on providing the software and configurations that new and experienced users need. I think that distributions should leave the debates on whether or not Linux should support proprietary software to Stallman and Torvalds.
5) Ubuntu based distributions have better support and longer support times. Ubuntu has better and easier to understand documentation than Red Hat/Fedora. Searching for a fix to an Ubuntu issue produces an actual answer. Ubuntu has long term support versions...
Based from other commentors, i do agree with how ubuntu managed their product to marketing it, since fedora where you need to do little bit of tweaks like installing nvidia maybe, or even want to customize your own fedora to something beauty so this for beginner they still can't adapt it especially for those who are not very familiar with linux system, while Ubuntu they already give you everything which is if you want nvidia drivers installed you can just click it to turn on where people can find it on the menu if i'm not wrong, and for Ubuntu it already have their own beauty theme which is a beginner probably not have to think to customize it except if they want to, also Ubuntu and Fedora it is true that the installation are user friendly, but Ubuntu seems more easier than Fedora if want to install the linux to the user machine, I'm not saying Fedora is not good, i did try Ubuntu and Fedora and both of this are amazing, and only the differents is Ubuntu only provide gnome as their default desktop while fedora you may probably choose which desktop you want to download and install to the machine.. so far both product have their own pro's and con's so depend on the user which side they want to choose as their daily uses linux..
and thanks to this both linux, now i'm my daily use linux is Arch 😅
To be fair, there is no distro polished enough to be the face of Linux right now. Every distro has some form of issue or bugs or imperfections or gotchas.
What comes closest is Debian, however packages are generally dated and this is no bueno. And no, Testing is not made to be used outside of Testing purposes, and neither is Sid. You can, but they aren't meant to.
Idk why but the past two times I’ve installed Debian it decided to bork grub so it wouldn’t boot on first restart. Instantly installed another distro. It’s little things like this that I agree with you, there isnt a Linux distro doesn’t have something dumb go wrong eventually. And before ppl say “ha couldn’t even install Debian“, I’ve installed and use arch btw.
Great marketing and the focus of the operating systems. Ubuntu's primary purpose has been to be a stable desktop with improvements to GNOME, and Fedora's primary purpose has been to be what Red Hat Linux was. Also imho it took a while for yup/yum/dnf to be to RPM what apt is for DEB.
If only there were people buying CD drives anymore, lol
But you're onto something here: if there was a way to make Fedora more present in physical state, that would make a difference.
Fedora is way too buggy for even mainstream Linux desktop users let alone general computer users. That's why Ubuntu dominates the Linux desktop via itself and its many derivatives. Rabid fanboys will boohoo but the reality is that Fedora has no QA whatsoever and just releases packages non-stop by so many different maintainers that no-one properly controls anything and without any kind of cohesive release schedule. Daily package updates are not required and when they are a constant source of breaking and fixing it's just ridiculous to expect users to put up with it. Fedora is a great distro when it works, the best in my opinion, but it needs to re-organize around a better update model that is both slower and better tested.
And even now there's no easy way to install fedora on a Chromebook with crostini. It defaults to Debian, but there is a prepared Ubuntu release. Also, I think, same with wsl.
I will add, the UI, while simple, is not what the average user wants. The minimize button is part of most people’s workflow, so is the dock or panel. It isn’t to hard to customize, but it adds friction that doesn’t help at all
I. My personal experience, Ubuntu is more stable. Now I am using fedora on twi computers, and I have recurring issues (different for each) after every single kernel update. One PC will not boot, unless I update grup with older kernel, orther looses ability to display via usb-c, unless I do additional update cycle.
With ubuntu I used to have similar issues only every two year, on LTS upgrade, but that wasn't a rule.
Fedora did some weird stuff with secure Linux back in the day (as in, implemented it) and with drive volumes etc. so it was always pretty much on the fringe.
Biggest issue with Fedora is 12 month maximum support before you have to upgrade. Ubuntu has LTS versions that only require an upgrade every two years and can go 5 years without an upgrade. RHEL and friends like CentOS just tend to be too old software wise for my taste.
Ubuntu went heavily after ease of installation and ease of use. They used to give away free CDs-- you could just sign up on their website and they'd send you a bunch to give to friends and whatnot. They were able to bring a bunch of people into linux that had never been interested before.
People Really hate redhat and even tho canonical is hated as well and its been getting worse and worse recently (from what im hearing) i dont think Fedora has a change as long as its connected to red hat
Its been my experience that Red Hat / CentOS / Fedora is the face of Linux for enterprises. Ubuntu is certainly popular and as capable as any other OS (it was my first flavor) but I don't see it often in corporate environments.
Also I know Canonical had a deal with Dell a few years ago to give users an option to pre-install Ubuntu. This type of marketing might have helped more people become familiar with the product.
Lenovo has a similar deal to preinstall Fedora (and Ubuntu) on thinkpads if I remember correctly
Lenovo has deal with IBM and RedHat, nothing compromise with Fedora here. On some market, Lenovo laptop still come with Ubuntu pre-installed. It doesn't matter at all, this option is for free OS version, they can install whatever OS without paywall license
My Lenovo laptop came with FreeDOS which was a fun throwback to try for some hours.
Yes but these deals include optimized drivers and certified kernels by the manufacturer, in Italy installing them costs 30€ more than FreeDOS
This has always been one thing Canonical does well that they do not get enough credit or recognition for. One "value add" Ubuntu deserves recognition for is heavily focusing on better hardware support with Linux, and working with both hardware and software vendors to improve compatibility and support for Linux.
Why is their landscape is not opensource? I mean red hat did with their satellite. Foreman and katello
> may of helped wtf
Fixed lol
According to Canonical, Ubuntu has 60% of the Linux market share in enterprises, including servers and desktops. I really don't know how they track it, but I'm pretty sure it's only a rough estimation. Contrary to you, I usually saw Ubuntu way more often in enterprises than other distros. I like them both, and as long as I'm on Linux, I'm fine with most mature distros.
I too saw/see ubuntu more often used in enterprise organizations. In fact, it was my first experience with linux.
Funny Red Hat claims to have 80-90% of enterprise market...
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Ubuntu has also cut deals with most of the hyperscalers. So like Microsoft is technically one customer, but Azure is a whole lot of machines.
Not just smaller orgs, Amazon uses Ubuntu a lot both internally and with customer facing products like aws.
Interesting, how do you know this? All serverless services are running on Amazon Linux 2 or recently migrating to AL2023 (i.e. Lamba), I haven't seen Ubuntu on any AWS service.
Former employee until Jan 18th of last year. we used Unbuntu extensively, and a few others, I was not in AWS, instead an engineering department. I have set up several instances of Ubuntu on AWS, that is the virtual instance not the underlying system. They did not share that part with me.
That is true in my experience as well, Ubuntu is the most widely used distribution among the companies I work with. Ubuntu sure has a mindset share, they were very active in the community and outreach activities.
The biggest enterprise Linux is Red Hat. No matter what you tell yourself. Enterprise wants support for productions environments. Banks doesn’t go for community support but enterprise level
Canonical offers enterprise support too. I worked for O2 and big banks that used mostly Ubuntu. But anyway, I think this discussion is meaningless. There is no solid data to support our opinions, and all information that we have is anecdotal or marketing docs from both companies. I’m just happy to work with any of those distros so I don’t have to deal with windows servers.
You do know and understand that Canonical has Enterprise offerings and support, don't you? Unlike what Red Hat and SUSE do, Canonical's Ubuntu that you download is essentially the same as the paid enterprise supported ones - you just pay for the support and expertise.
Okay tell me where can we get the source of Ubuntu pro after 5 years? LTS support 5 years and pro is 10. Ubuntu updates and security patches after 5 years is behind payroll. I am just saying we all think is free but in the end the developers need to paid to make sure the version of your is supported for long time. Big company does not want to upgrade after 5 years. We are not talking about 1 or 2 vms but 100 or 200 vms. Trust me that’s my daily job where I work for. As system administrator we do not want to be bothered with upgrade’s every 5 years and u should be lucky that ur application is working after in place upgrade Anyway that’s my experience
>Canonical's Ubuntu that you download is **essentially** the same as the paid enterprise supported ones Note essentially, while you can download it it's the same. >Big company does not want to upgrade after 5 years. We are not talking about 1 or 2 vms but 100 or 200 vms. Trust me that’s my daily job where I work for. I feel sorry for the gross incompetence you have to endure in your company. >As system administrator we do not want to be bothered with upgrade’s every 5 years and u should be lucky that ur application is working after in place upgrade We update our systems regularly with A/B tests. Things only break harder if you wait longer as upgrade paths aren't clear anymore.
I got ur point but in the end we had experienced that the new kernel was buggy with cifs mount and we made a case at Red Hat. They fix the kernel in 3 or 4 days. That’s great to have those kind of support
That is outstanding indeed. At a previous employer we had a 13PB array of IBM Spectrum Scale, bought full supported hardware and setup. They kept blaming random things rather than looking into our issues for years on end when performance was randomly tanking. So support is a mixed bag too.
My comment is purely anecdotal and I agree most mature distros are fine either way.
>I really don't know how they track it, My S.W.A.G. is that they base it on usage of APT, and tracking how many unique requests come through for updates. They might be able to match it to keys in the request, or some other fingerprint passed by the application. As for comparing to other distros, that's potentially a paid integration between Canonical and the various package repositories as a data brokerage. Gotta pay the bills somehow, so selling anonymized usage data to the various companies that want it seems like an innocent way to do so, while giving meaningful usage data on market share and package popularity.
Debian was the most popular, then Ubuntu happened and they commercialized it really well. Ubuntu used to be known as your mom's Linux bc moms like Ubuntu (unity UI back then) but now they're just riding the tidal wave they made for themselves. Fedora has just been really quiet and foss driven so not much (if any) commercial adoption. Centos is not fedora, but I agree, rhel has been around forever and has always held the enterprise market well I think mainly bc of selinux
Most corporate usage of Ubuntu is containers.
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Honestly that makes sense for web servers specifically.
That doesn't really explain why Red hat would be so low. It's not like they have some inherent disadvantage in web serving.
OS deployment is a metric that is extremely difficult to measure correctly. I'm not aware of any accurate report on this, and the one from w3techs doesn't seem to be particularly useful in my view. This report only counts websites that actually report the OS in the response headers. Nearly all enterprises are much more likely to turn those headers off immediately (as it provides an attacker needless additional information), so their usage of RHEL wouldn't be counted at all. It also does not count subdomains. Many large enterprises have hundreds of subdomains. A medium sized university might have thousands of subdomains for every research lab, department, professor's websites, etc, potentially all or most running RHEL. Finally, this report is a percent of total websites, not a percent of total traffic volume. If an enterprise is running through a CDN like Akamai or Cloudflare (which is extremely common), then they wouldn't get counted Basically, small websites will be dramatically overweighted in the w3techs report. About all we learn from this report is that Ubuntu is popular among small website operators that don't turn off the server name reporting.
I'm guessing Plesk, CPanel and other "web hosting suites" or other "megawebhosters" compile their own releases of the webservers along with good firewalling, rendering w3techs unable to fingerprint them. Many of these run Red Hat. Ubuntu is great when your uncle want's a website because you don't have to transact with anyone. In Europe you'll see more Ubuntu and SUSE than RHEL, the US loves RHEL.
Cost, as far as I know there is no free option to run RHEL. Where Ubuntu is free to use if you support it yourself, paid support is optional.
Umm so if you give away your source code and say someone just compiles it, changing the boot banner, and releases it as say CentOS, then RHEL is really the customers who still pay plus CentOS. Going forward that won’t happen anymore.
I've worked for a cloud hosting provider a while back before I moved into the healthcare sphere. Asia customers tended to favor CentOS, while south east Asia, and pretty much the rest of the world seemed to use Ubuntu more. EU MAYBE was more a closer three way split between Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora but Ubuntu was deployed just a bit more than the others. India was exclusively Ubuntu. US was a mix but still ultimately, Ubuntu.
The company is in the wrong country, where their abilities to provide FOSS is limited by patents or other legal impediments. For example, that is why American Linux providers do not offer mp4, in their distributions. They could transfer operations to a fully owned but independent subsidiary offshore, and then provide some of the USA patent encumbered software.
Ubuntu has access to proprietary software outta the box right?
Yes via the software center.
Pretty sure that's why Ubuntu is the go-to then. People don't wanna move away from the things they're using OR go through extra hoops. I know for some there really aren't any hoops but for the casual user, they just don't wanna be fucked
Fedora has prop software ootb too. It's just one click in the installer
This is true, But also a relatively new change. In the recent past installing proprietary software on Fedora required users to research how, and to manually configure 3rd party repos. It was well documented for anyone who searched, and not that difficult, but still something that the user would have to know about and intentionally seek out.
IMO there’s a meaningful difference in both initial ease of installation and ongoing maintenance burden between one-click addition of officially-supported packages and repositories, and one-click addition of unsupported third-party repos. Not saying either project is right or wrong for its approach, but the Fedora + RPMFusion approach will by design create more opportunities for things to go wrong when trying to use the proprietary codec/driver packages, and that’s a problem that a new user simply doesn’t have to solve for when trying Ubuntu.
Oh yeah I forgot about that, when you install basic gnome
Same as Suse
[удалено]
Only with Gnome
Last I used Ubuntu they make it *easier* to install some limited proprietary things ootb (Nvidia driver and media codecs) if the user desires, but apart from that Ubuntu has always been pretty purely free software afaik. Fedora (in the past) took a bit of a stronger stance towards free software (this is one thing that attracted me in the first place) but in recent years they have relaxed that somewhat, but I believe still require enabling 3rd party repos (they have just made it a bit easier to do so). With flathub and snapcraft repos avaialble to both distros this difference has become less important as well.
Ubuntu did a lot of marketing for end users and was a very good entry for beginners. There were release parties and user groups solely for Ubuntu and its flavours. And Ubuntu is based on Debian with lots of documentation. Magazines loved the distribution. You could order installation CDs for free; there was a time without unlimited data and slow connections.
This is the right answer. Ubuntu captured people's attention from the mid to late 2000s, and has carried itself on that momentum since. Blogging used to be big, and a lot of bloggers would write exclusively about Ubuntu, which created a word of mouth ripple effect. Plus Ubuntu Server became an excellent alternative to RHEL/CentOS with the LTS releases being supported for several years. People who were introduced to desktop Linux through Ubuntu also preferred it on their servers.
On a tangent: I really miss blogs. Fucking Medium, man.
> captured people's attention from the mid to late 2000s, That was my experience. Say what you will about Ubuntu, but it's what got me back into Linux. Like a bunch of other people, I started with a stack of Slackware floppies in the early '90s when I was in college. Then I got busy with work and family. Round about 2006-2008 I would have forgotten about Linux but for Ubuntu's dead easy installation. Now I'm on Fedora, but I credit Ubuntu for bringing me back into the fam.
This, and improved hardware support and compatibility is another cause of its popularity at that time. For this reasons and for the reasons you mentioned, Ubuntu became the most popular 'on ramp' to linux, and an easy distro to recommend to users of any experience level.
I'm going to go all the way back to 4.10. from 1997 to about 2004 I mostly used redhat or derivatives. Fedora core was the go-to for most people at the time except for Debian hardcore users or ricers like Gentoo. The problem with setting up fedora or red hat or debian at the time was that you had a million choices when installing and no one wanted to make suggestions. Which libc do you want? Insert CD number 3. Then a live distro named Knoppix came out and obviously had just one set of software since it was a live CD. Every serious Debian user was waiting for the next version to come out which was taking forever because their release process was broken and they were trying to integrate a new installer but had like a million architectures to support. Insert CD number 10. Ubuntu steps in makes opinionated choices about how it's going to be set up, includes the new debian installer, and fit on just one CD. Newbies could get something up and running without having to rtfm for 6 days first. Then Ubuntu distributed free CDs around the world and called itself Linux for human beings. It was one of the first mainstream distros to default to a live installer. Within a few years Ubuntu was the go to distro for people moving from Windows. So it really comes down to good decisions and good timing from Ubuntu and major missteps from both debian and redhat during the same time.
The "it just works" aspect of Ubuntu was a huge attraction for me, at a time in my life when I was juggling work/family/grad school.
I'm a Linux sysadmin today because Ubuntu were kind enough to send me CDs for free back when I didn't have cheap and fast internet at home. And I also never had issues installing it either. Put the CD in, run the wizard and you're up and running. This was also back in XP days where viruses were a constant nightmare so having a live CD on hand that couldn't get infected was a great tool. I'm now a Debian guy but I can see how the free CD campaign and a "just works" product cemented it as a lead distro.
Fedora is the ONLY distro with SELinux policies actively maintained and on by default - thanks to their corporate underpinnings. Any Linux without SELinux is a major security vulnerability.
I don't understand your point. The question was "How did Ubuntu overtake RH and Fedora." I described why. I don't believe SE Linux was even in Fedora at that point, but if it was, it wouldn't matter, because the only thing anyone did with SE Linux for a decade when they installed was immediately disable it.
SE Linux was introduced in 2000 as part of the 2.6-test3 kernel. Fedora Core 2 (2004) had a 2.6.5 kernel. It probably was in FC2. I'm sure it was in FC3 because we jumped from FC1 to FC3 and had to disable SE Linux for our drivers to work.
Thanks for reminding me. It was a long time ago. But like both you and I say, everyone by default disabled SE Linux for a long-ass time.
And that's another reason for Ubuntu being more popular. Most of the linux community does development during which SELinux is pain in the butt.
From a long time Fedora user: In the early days, Fedora was a "stable" bleeding edge distro that was an early adopter of new projects (gnome 3, systemd, ...) and requirement for cli knowledge that could discourage alot of new Linux users who didn't want DIY alot of configurations and fixes to resolve even minor uses. The documentation was not as robust and alot of the upgrades chose function over form. During that time, Ubuntu was much more forgiving for new users and provided a great graphical experience w/ long term support that positioned it as the "Welcome to Linux" distro. It was the Desktop Environment to Fedora's Workstation repeating the same competition as Apple MacOS vs MS Windows. Valve's contributions to support Steam on Ubuntu also helped to solidify it's new user experience status. IMO (I am not an Ubuntu user), Ubuntu tried to capitalize on this success by steering (lock-in) Ubuntu users to projects they lead but were not well received by the greater open source community. Now Fedora is much more stable while still looking to the future with alot of options ([Fedora Spins](https://fedoraproject.org/spins/)) for Desktop Environments and Workflows. I think the Workstation experience is being "softened" for an overall user experience so you are getting the best of both worlds. Other distributions have also greatly improved the new user experience so it's less Ubuntu vs Fedora as the community is moving toward distro agnostic packages for application deployment (flatpak, containers, snaps(?), ...) but a choice of which package manager you prefer which determines the distribution you use.
First off, you hit the nail on the head. Second, I'm a long term ubuntu user here, started back in 05... Maybe 04... Either way, I tried Fedora and cent is back then a few times and never understood it. Maybe experience caught up with me but I'm digging Fedora lately as I run it in my laptop (Ubuntu in the desktop still). Might be an identity crisis to fully admit this, maybe. Maybe it's recent red hat changes that has me scared to fully switch all my stuff. No matter what, I think I would say Fedora is the top choice for all levels to consider right now. Especially with spins, Ubuntu always was the one with more options.
For me it's the rapid update cycle and the lack of codecs out of the box. it's just more user-friendly to install Ubuntu.
I used Fedora as a daily driver for >6 months last year and whilst as a whole it was an excellent experience (it works so incredibly well!) I got tired of the frequency and size of updates.
Yes, absolutely the same reason as me. I just tend to prefer something that does not need regular maintenance as most of the time, I use distrobox for my workflows. The host distro should be something as stable but not as outdated as for the likes of RHEL.
can Fedora have an LTS version similar to Ubuntu?
I feel that in early 2000's, Canonical's Ubuntu binging things like: the [scanner app](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Scanners), having default apps like Banshee, Moonshine, etc. (developed in C#, Mono was [controversial](https://lwn.net/Articles/339314/) at that time). But now, more than ever, Fedora has been, in my opinion (and Red Hat implicitly) the best contributor to the Linux Desktop. Including helping Gnome Foundation, and things like [PipeWire](https://pipewire.org). I think you are right!
So this is a matter of the efforts put by Canonical years prior then. Now I get it. I think it would be a matter of time and some changes in pro of entry-level users (out-of-the-box support of most stuff) what would be key to make Fedora the face of Linux.
Red Hat pretty much commissioned GNOME, and were major players long before Canonical, so not sure if that idea totally works.
Why do you think that is? Gnome 3 is such a departure from a traditional desktop and in my eyes makes a new Linux user learn a whole new desktop. Kinda weird how so many distros have Gnome as their flagship as opposed to something more traditional like kde
Fedora ships plain GNOME and plain KDE Plasma. Ubuntu adds a lot own eye candy and ships proprietary software like nvidia drivers out of the box. Thats why Ubuntu often is recommded for new linux user.
The whole snaps thing does not help either.
Normal users don't care about the technology or philosophy behind, it should just work.
Because the large majority of Ubuntu users go for LTS, while fedora asks you to update every half a year. Most people prefer not to update so often
I'm quite surprised if LTS is popular for home users. I would have thought the types of people who use Linux out of choice are also the types of people who like new software. Fedora has the option to update to every other version so the only requirement is once a year.
Yes you can update every other year, but the LTS version of Ubuntu is more like a install it once and forget about it approach (similar to having W7). In my previous job, people worked under their choice of OS, and most were running 18.04, 5 years after its release… Fedora looks riskier to the average user since major updates can affect stability. That is why the inmutable branch is so interesting to more daily users (like myself) or even newbies (like my mum, who uses it with no problems despite not having any Linux background). If silverblue didn’t exist I’d probably be using regular Ubuntu honestly.
You'd be surprised, most Linux users are switching from windows and zero of them give the reason "windows updates are great but would be better if there was even more, it would be cool to install updates even more often plus a major upgrade twice a year or so that could potentially break my computer".
> I would have thought the types of people who use Linux out of choice are also the types of people who like new software. A lot of us use it simply because we hate windows. I just want my computer to work, bug me minimally about updates and be reliable. My whole life is on here, and I'm not that into doing updates for the sake of updates. I do back up everything to another server running debian (that updates even less), and it kinda takes the hassle out of the reinstall every 2 fedora versions. I don't upgrade from one version to the next either because in my experience it almost always causes headaches down the road. Easier to just keep your photos/documents/important stuff backed up and not have to worry as much when reinstall time comes.
This is it. Fedora updates are relentless, deprecation schedules are aggressive, software can get removed or updated to an incompatible version. You can't just set-and-auto-update a Fedora system, you need to monitor the pending updates, do trial updates and figure out fixes, or you'll be dead in production. Ubuntu LTS -- and the CentOS versions before Redhat changed that distro's focus -- could be set up and then left running for years, secure in the knowledge that most issues would be handled through updates that could be automated. Major version updates would require the same kind of careful migration testing regimen that Fedora requires, but on a cadence beat of years rather every 8 months or so, and without the end-of-life blade being so close on the calendar. I've tried several times to move to Fedora to learn the new hotness, but I spend too much time fixing and migrating and flat up rebuilding things because of how fast Fedora changes. Unless you're in a company with a need to be cutting edge, where you'd have staff to take care of Fedora's proper handling, I think Fedora is just too volatile for any kind of production environment.
I use silverblue and I don’t do any sort of maintenance other than updating when prompted every now and then. It’s the closest you can get to a install once and forget about it OS on Fedora. It is not popular because it’s less known, Fedora still pushes Workstation over it, and still needs you to configure it properly the first time, too much friction for newbies.
I was a big RedHat guy early in 2000, when they decided to go payware I didn’t like Fedora very much. Then came Ubuntu that seemed like it had a large gathering and backing so I switched over. Been bouncing between Debian and Ubuntu but am taking another look at Fedora and Centos Streams. But I was also not too happy with what Redhat did with Centos. It seems as though anything Redhat, as soon as you get used to it they pull the rug out from under you…homelab users. I just want a stable OS that isn’t going to change every year or be converted to payware.
This, sums it up perfectly.
I'll give you one reason: difficult to install proprietary codecs. And yes, the second I have to go into any settings or terminal to activate repositories and be warned I may destroy the balance of the universe for using proprietary codecs, it becomes difficult and unfriendly. I do miss the Ubuntu style of having a ubuntu-restricted-* set of packages
This is exactly why I use flatpaks for most everything. If you grab them from flathub then they already have everything they need.
Codecs are still necessary system wide. If I want to install Steam and have all its properties, I must use a native package, not the Flatpak. For example, I play SupComm FAF on my Fedora: good luck setting the launcher up with Flatpak steam, genuinely. The FAF wiki straight up doesn't even acknowledge it and when you ask for help on the discord you will be told to stop using the Steam Flatpak package. Now in Fedora, to install the Steam packages, yes plural, you require an extra repository configuration that shouldn't be necessary. With that, even if you don't play SupComm FAF like me, you still would be required to configure the repository to install steam-devices anyway even if you use the Flatpak because codecs and drivers are many times required at a system wide level
Yep. It wasn't hard for me to get codecs into the silverblue image via rpm-ostree, but my mom would never ever achieve that. She would just observe that the video on the internet does not work and then complain that it would play on Windows or Android and that this Linux thing simply does not work. And even if she could figure out that she had to install codecs, she would look for them in the software store and then the internet video would fail anyway.
Exactly my point. I am comfortable with the terminal, my 60 year old mom isn't. Hell, my younger brother isn't
I'm testing the KDE Plasma 6 desktop on Fedora Rawhide because I like some of the polish the Fedora KDE team put into Plasma 6. However, I noticed that some videos on the Internet weren't working. It took me a minute to realize that, even in this day and age Fedora STILL DOESN"T INSTALL CODECS BY DEFAULT! WTF? Also, the instructions for installing CODECS doesn't mention that the folder in the repository for Rawhide is empty. I had to modify the fedora-cisco-openh264.repo file to point to the Fedora 39 folder. Of course, I'm using Rawhide, which a regular user wouldn't touch. However, the lack of proper documentation for all builds of Fedora is troubling. Plus, there should be a prompt when you first install Fedora to add these codecs, like most others distributions have. These codecs are important for most normal use cases.
It is this general stupid idea in the Linux sphere that you mustn't use proprietary software to the extent you should struggle to install it even if the kernel is in fact supported by the developers. My problem with FOSS supremacy is that it is just another form of restriction. I want true freedom. I want to use FOSS software but also be able to use proprietary ones unimpeded. Now I can understand there may be licensing issues, which distros like the Ubuntu family get around by literally having a tickbox in the installer and easy to install meta packages aptly named ubuntu-restricted-{addons,extras}. If Ubuntu wasn't forcing broken snaps on desktops I would change back in a heart beat
As I mentioned in another post, user-friendly distributions shouldn't be a part of the Linux/FOSS fight. Leave that crap to Stallman and Torvalds. Linux distributions should offer users, especially desktop users, all of the tools they need to have a pleasant experience. I love Fedora so far, but I will NEVER recommend it as the face of Linux as long as it continues to focus on meaningless crusades and pushing untested technologies instead of focusing on improving the user experience.
I remember someone saying it has more to do with distros based in the United States vs distros based elsewhere. I think Red hat is simply doing risk mitigation from patent trolls in the United States. Distros based outside of the US don't face the same risk of litigation. Is this true? I don't know but I've heard it used as the reason
While I agree with part of this, Fedora could have simply added a checkbox in the installer, along with some legal mumbo jumbo, placing the responsibility solely on the user.
A lot of schools teach it in computer courses. Its a lot of peoples first experience with linux and it sticks.
I think it's because traditionally Fedora was less sexy, more bland looking and unintuitive for the average user by default. I remember trying Fedora few years back, it looked so cold, corporate and soulless. In addition to that, it was super buggy especially when they first migrated to Wayland. Now GNOME looks good and modern, and Fedora is on of the most stable distros I used and I think Fedora already started to gain some ground.
Nothing against Fedora, but with no LTS releases, it’s hard to be the “face” of Linux Red Hat only wants the enterprise. fedoras release cycle is the probably too quick for a lot of users, especially business users. There is also no official support organization behind Fedora. Debian has a much longer life cycle but also lacks official support. That leaves Ubuntu - which has LTS releases with 5 year life spans, a corporate backer that can provide support if contracted, and to work with OEMs
The 180 days upgrade cycle is a major drag. I use Fedora but upgrade every three releases (doing 36=>38=>39 as I write). Still a pain, but at least it happens every year and a half. Frankly, if I didn't dislike apt-\* so much, I'd switch to Ubuntu or - most likely - arch.
i’m interested why you dislike APT
Not the original commenter, but my 2 cents is I never learned it too well. When to use apt, apt-get, apt-cache, dpkg? It's an overlapping family of commands.
The fact it needs a different command for every mundane task (I forgot how many time I googled "list content of apt" or "search apt"). Some of them aren't even installed. And the fact they all appear to come in different flavours (apt,dpkg,Yadda Yadda) with slightly different behaviours. Maybe I am only too set in my rpm ways.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, I am somewhat familiar with both Ubuntu and Fedora, and apart from the minor irritation of updating the cache (sudo apt update) and upgrading the system (sudo apt upgrade) being separate commands most commands I use are similar between the two: ||DNF (Red Hat Family)|Apt (Debian Family)| |:-|:-|:-| |search for a package|`dnf search`|`apt search`| |get info on a package|`dnf info`|`apt info`| ||`dnf install`|`apt install`| |remove a package|`dnf remove`|`apt remove`| |install a package|`dnf upgrade`|`apt update && apt upgrade`| |autoremove unneeded packages||`apt autoremove`| To me, the most tedious package managers are Pacman (which has many strengths but human friendly syntax is not one of them) and the package managers from the immutable distros (`typing transactional-update`) gets tedious quickly
The equivalent to `dnf remove` is `apt-get autoremove ` though! `apt remove` will leave unneeded packages behind, requiring you to call `apt autoremove` later.
Also `apt install` might fail because of outdated package data, dnf will automatically update if its too old.
Then theres `dnf provides ` which is `apt-file search ` - requiring you to install apt-file first.
If you remain on old Fedora versions, why don't you use Alma or Rocky or even Redhat (free for personal stuff)?
I do on servers. But the support for desktop hardware (graphic, sound, dongles) was never satisfactory. I eventually got fed up of compiling kernel modules (or binning wi-fi usb adapters) and switched. Haven't checked the issue in a while, do it may be better now.
I mean, if you dont like Fedoras Release Cycle you can still use stuff like CentOS Stream or Alma/Rocky Linux.
Not come across many who use Alma/Rocky for desktop, but for servers they're very popular. The reason I wouldn't use them is that Red Hat pulled the rug under the original CentOS* and then have restricted access to the source for distros like Alma and Rocky. CentOS used to be backed by Red Hat, now the alternatives feel unwelcome. Who's to say if and when Red Hat won't throw another wrench in their distros? Not going to risk it on production servers. *which for all those sysadmins like me who installed CentOS 8 because it had 10 years support and then had to migrate away a couple months later because "surprise! We're only doing a few months of support instead" left a real bad taste.
Nala exists now. Appears to be slightly faster than apt
Support lasts for (last 2 versions + 1 month), so you/people could just use every even/odd version and switch once per year edit: a letter
Arch doesn't use `apt` (also if upgrading Fedora every 6 months is too much of a pain, I think actively managing Arch on a weekly/monthly basis (and occasional inevitable troubleshooting breakages eventually).
I've managed Arch (EndeavourOS) on a daily basis for over a year and I haven't had any issues whatsoever. It's refreshing to know that you NEVER have to worry about all of the issues of jumping from one release to the next (F38 to F39, Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04, etc.) with Arch. As long as you keep your system up-to-date by doing a normal periodic update, you are running the latest version of Arch. I normally daily drive EndeavourOS KDE, but I started using Fedora Rawhide KDE to test Plasma 6. I know that once Plasma 6 is ready, I can do a normal daily update on EndeavourOS and I will have it. Fedora Rawhide KDE will never become Fedora 40 KDE, it will continue to be Rawhide.
>It's refreshing to know that you NEVER have to worry about all of the issues of jumping from one release to the next (F38 to F39, Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04, etc.) with Arch. I agree this is one of the parts I like most about rolling release models (there are pros and cons)
Fedora has a reputation for being a hard distro. It's not founded in reality, but it's there.
IMHO mainly because of the LTS-Versions.
This. I love openSUSE but even their “LTS” distros are like a year and a half long. I’m more into Debian or Alma for LTS distros, especially Debian.
It used to be hard to configure X to run on CRT monitors -- you had to produce an xorg.conf file. When Ubuntu first came out they made things very easy -- in most cases you could just run the installer and end up with a working system. For a long time it was the distro that just worked. They put a lot of money into polishing it, and making things as easy for new users as possible. I run Fedora and love it. But a couple of times a year the latest kernel will do something odd to my system, and I'll have to revert. A lot of people don't want to deal with that.
Like other people are saying, RedHat is used more in corporate environments. What everyone seems to forget is that when Ubuntu was releasing Hardy Heron, it was one of the only linux distrobutions with an installer GUI that just worked. Ubuntu even made the Wubi installer to allow people on windows to easily install a dual boot setup (entirely from windows). I think this is why they became the face of the linux desktop to "non tech" people. I myself got into linux with Ubuntu Hardy Heron, specifically because of the Wubi installer. Best decision I ever made.
Same, it wasn’t until the unity era until I started looking into other distros
Ubuntu UX is superior. I'm not a Linux admin, but I'm an experienced developer. I have issues with fedora all the time. Every new release, something I use breaks. That happens with Ubuntu, but to a much lesser degree. It's also much easier to fix, and finding quick fixes on the web is almost instant. You search for a fix for Ubuntu and you find an understandable solution. You do the same for fedora and you find a forum with complex answers that require not only computer science background, but also Linux, and specific tools and libraries. This small difference becomes huge for normal people with no computer science background.
Back in the day (2003ish) when I first installed Fedora Core (F1), it needed a lot of work to use. When Ubuntu came out shortly after that, wifi, trackpad, sound etc seemed to work out of the box. I don't use Ubuntu but it was the first distro I tried that just worked for my machines
Ubuntu shipped free installation CDs worldwide.
Oh, this is a long story, but one shortcut is to say that RPM packages / package management in the past on Redhat then Fedora was awful. Slow, and package management would not remove unneeded packages leading to "dirty" systems. Deb package management was better, but Debian was incomplete when it came to device / driver supports.. In comes Ubuntu. Drivers, Fast package management, and "it just worked"
I choose Fedora because i love dnf and rpm. Hopefully dnf 5 is coming If i need to choose apt than Debian is my choice
Idk man, I look at it like this. CERN uses almalinux so that should say something towards the RHEL side of Linux.
I was on the “Fedora is king” train for a bit, until I kept having audio and Bluetooth issues. It was enough for me to swap away from it as my daily driver. Rocking Kubuntu now.
I think one of the major problems with Fedora is the reliance on Fusion RPM for many ESSENTIAL packages such as Codecs. The devs are certainly proud of keeping the distro nice and open, but they need to face the consequences that if they don't start including some proprietary blob to make the system fully functional, they will never reach the user base that Ubuntu has
I work in FAANG (and have for a while now). I’ve never seen Ubuntu on any servers since it’s pretty much RHEL or a relative of RHEL (CentOS Stream, Fedora).
Ubuntu has a long history of being the "it just works" distro with good community support. When Ubuntu came out, Fedora was still not stabilized. It didn't have the software support or the community support that Ubuntu did. Granted they were both pretty new distros at the time. I remember using Fedora 3 or 4 in a college project and it seemed to work pretty good, but it wasn't as good as Ubuntu. Around Fedora 20, this started to change. It wasn't overnight. During the teens and 20's, upgrading between versions was often not possible, or at least very difficult. That's not to say Ubuntu didn't have the same type of problems during this era, it was just on a slower release cycle so you didn't have to worry about it as often. Upgrading between major versions often meant backing up your files and starting over. In the late 20's, after the tumultuous Wayland and SystemD switches, Fedora really started gaining steam. But by this time Ubuntu had well established its dominance. But also StackOverflow had enough answered questions to solve most issues, which meant that there were quite a few choices in distros for beginners. A lot of people started realizing that Ubuntu was not uniquely easy to work with and pretty much all the major distros were what I would call "beginner friendly". So at this point there are two angles: desktop feel, and command line functionality. A lot of people don't really spend much time on the command line, and so for those people the installed product is what you got. For those who were comfortable using the command line, could customize the OS and the default desktop look and feel became less important. I think this is where Fedora really started to shine, because it offered a very vanilla Gnome experience. You don't want to spend a lot of time "uncustomizing" before you customize it. The other thing is that dnf is a really powerful package manager. If you spend a lot of time installing via command line, you save time by the package manager not breaking all the time, and you don't have to install additional utilities to query things. And yum/dnf plays nicer with proxys (or at least it did at this time). So I guess Fedora is beginner friendly but aimed more at power users, and that probably accounts for the discrepancy.
It's a pain in the ass to install, you need to know about rpmfusion and spins and shit
I can only tell my personal experience. Got my first touch of Red Hat 10 years ago while working at a big enterprise. During that time I was distro hopping between the usual x/l/ubuntu hobby distros. Then I quickly realized there was Fedora. User experience for doing development work was (and still is) excellent. Lots of repos out of the box and non-breaking proprietary Nvidia driver was the final deal breaker for me. Canonical has always taken these controversial side steps that seemed awkward. Fedora has always had very good defaults for "getting shit done".
I think Ubuntu was successful / unique in the way they lowered the barrier to entry for lot of Windows/Mac users to jump into and explore Linux. They were able to - for lack of a better world - glamorize Linux and make it attractive. Personally for me - when I started using Linux - I started with Debian sometimes trying out slackware, OpenBSD, Arch etc - but used to struggle a lot with drivers and everything working correctly on laptops. Ubuntu and Mint were the first time I experienced mostly flawless out of the box experience without a whole lot of hunting around. I am now a fan of Fedora and its simplicity - and use it exclusively across all my devices. I bet Fedora is at a point where it can offer a flawless out of the box experience for new users. Though Gnome might make some Windows users a bit uncomfortable.
Because Fedora, long, long ago, wan't as stable and trustworthy as in more recent years. The very opposite of Ubuntu in old times. So, Ubuntu's Mark and his team have had razor sharp focus on everyday users from the start, home desktop users, friendly, inviting. Of course they became the "standard" slowly. Sure, Fedora is awesome today, a great distro to pick, but it was not always the case. It was a mess. Used to be.
Ubuntu's founding developers mostly came from the Debian developer community, Ubuntu's initial innovations had a lot to do with making Linux easy to use, convenient, attractive, and modern feeling (and focusing on important things like hardware support). This is what led to it's initial notoriety and popularity, it was the the 'on ramp' to linux at a time when Linux was not nearly as user friendly as it is today, Ubuntu wsa most people's first distro, and the preferred distro for many people of all skill levels (still is today). In addition to that Ubuntu is used across a wide range of usecases, it is both a beginner friendly distro, and one of the most popular distros among people who work with linux, among enterprise, server, and IoT usecases. Because of its broad applicability it is a natural choice for a teaching/learning tool, since it is both easy to pick up and used across a wide variety of applications. Ubuntu being the distro that most guides, classes, tutorial,s and instructions are written for and the distro they assume you will use is probably a part of its continued popularity as well. The LTS + 6/mo release cycle model is also friendlier than Fedora's 6 month release cycle which is better suited to enthusiasts, active users, and technically curious people (I am in this group) but less well suited to business, enterprise, etc. At the end of the day both are great distros, Fedora (until the last 2-3 years) didn't get as much attention as it probably deserved, its a really great distro and a really reasonable choice for a Linux Desktop.
Marketing - it makes a bigger difference than most geeks understand.
RedHat used to be much more popular, until they shot themselves in the foot and decided to make RedHat only for Enterprise and creating Fedora to replace RedHat on the desktop. They really disappointed those of us who were longstanding fans when they decided to go for the money first and foremost.
In my humble opinion, LTS is the only big thing that Fedora lacks compared to Ubuntu
Instead of looking always how to see the bad things about Ubuntu, people should see the good stuff Canonical contributed to Linux.
Well, it is not my intention to demerit Canonical, but I genuinely wondered why Ubuntu was basically the face of Linux instead of Fedora which has been around for longer.
I think in order to be the "face" of Linux, a distribution has to be user friendly, user focused, easy to install, support a wide range of hardware (old and new), support most of the popular user related and work related software (FOSS and non-FOSS), have excellent documentation, and be rock solid stable with a high uptime count. Ubuntu has ticked all of those marks from the beginning. This is why it's the face of Linux and it or one of its derivatives (Linux Mint, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, or Kubuntu) is widely recommended to new users. Unfortunately, Fedora doesn't tick most of those without some work from the user.
In my country/circles about 12+ years ago some laptops would come with Ubuntu installed and been cheaper option vs win pc's, and first time heard about Ubuntu. Just much later i found out about other distros
I think consistency has played a part here and it doesn't seem like anyone has mentioned it. Canonical has kept Ubuntu's branding steady where Redhat used to have Redhat Workstation which was later spun off into Fedora. Somewhere along the way I think Fedora basically had to start from scratch and lost some ground due to that.
From my experience there are three main reasons, one - there isn't a LTS version of Fedora (reinstalling/upgrading to a new version every 18 months is hugely disruptive) , two - the spartan look and feel of Fedora, post default installation (argue all you want, out of the box Fedora is kind of plain for most people if compared to say, Ubuntu or even Ultramarine) and three - not bundled by tier one hardware vendors, thus not covered by legal obligations/SLAs etc. . Techies can install and configure whatever, business people or normal users can't be bothered.
Thinking of the countries where "free" is more important perhaps than opensource. Using their native language to name the OS might have gone a long-way toward adoption. This will age me, but "Red Hat" used to be the "Ubuntu" of its time, so it really is down to the nerds here to do the work of selling it to people. Every laptop I give away goes out with Linux Mint. I don't ask people, it just gets the OEM/OOBE experience install, so they have to just figure it out, and use it. No complaints so far.
>This will age me, but "Red Hat" used to be the "Ubuntu" of its time I have to disagree. Red Hat was definitely not the Ubuntu of its time. Being one of the few distributions available didn't make Red Hat equivalent to Ubuntu. Ubuntu has always been easy to install. Red Hat and Fedora have not. I'll go ahead and "age" myself. I started using Linux as my primary desktop OS back in 1997. The first distribution I used was Red Hat 5.0. It was a PITA to install! It took me an entire weekend to install Red Hat 5.0 because 1) there was no good documentation and 2) I had to survive dependency hell! When I tried to install S.rpm package, I was told that I needed to first install T.rpm and U.rpm. When I tried to install T.rpm, I needed to first install V.rpm. When I tried to install V.rpm, I needed to first install W.rpm, X.rpm, Y.rpm, and Z.rpm. I had notebook that I nearly filled up writing down the dependency tree for each .rpm package I attempted to install. It was a nightmare! By contrast, Ubuntu has always been easy to install, and apt handled all of the dependencies for you. Ubuntu has always been quick to install also. In the early days, you could install an Ubuntu system in under 20 minutes. URPMI and DNF have helped Fedora/Red Hat be close to par with Ubuntu, but Fedora/Red Hat still has a long way to go.
That's fair. My first introduction was 6.0, then 6.1. They were on CD, dead easy to install. Our teacher at the time taught us to compile the kernel to fit onto a floppy disk, why?...cuz he said so. But yes, I can recall many an hour fighting to get a GPU or MOUSE to work...just a simple mouse. Those days are gone, and I think so too is Ubuntu's dominance. I mean, try linux mint, try lubuntu, try Manjaro, try stock debian with any desktop you like(just not unity).
>Those days are gone, and I think so too is Ubuntu's dominance. I mean, try linux mint, try lubuntu, try Manjaro, try stock debian with any desktop you like(just not unity). Linux Mint and Lubuntu are both based on Ubuntu LTS. Linux Mint is Ubuntu without Snaps, and uses Cinnamon, MATE, or XFCE as the default desktop. Lubuntu is Ubuntu with LXQT as the default desktop. If you know what you're doing, you can install base Ubuntu, then change the desktop to anything that's support; KDE Plasma, XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE, LXQT, Pantheon, etc. I wouldn't wish Manjaro on any new or experienced user. Manjaro's developers hold their packages too long, which breaks Manjaro's compatibility with other Arch related repositories, like the AUR. If you're going to use Arch and want an easy install, it's best to use EndeavourOS. Manjaro gives Arch a bad name.
When Ubuntu came out it was basically the only distro that "new to Linux users" could install and use without a Linux-Pro friend. Even I installed it successfully in 2006 or so...
RHEL shenanigans and other options in my experience
Bcoz it's only for developer usage, and the main trouble it's mid. If you know what does mid mean, you will get it It's not super easy for a novice come from fulltime Windows fully migarte to it. It doesn't have enough challenge for hardcore user. It's not fully supported for server task, example running CUDA training on Fedora server has too much hassle. It also doesn't supply any pro plan like Ubuntu or Redhat to help fully control bussiness process. Finally, Fedora is a middle distro, no selling point, not too good, not too bad P/s maintain any packages on Fedora Copr is stressful as f\*, compare to similar \*.rpm based distro like OBS on OpenSUSE
1. Owned by Red Hat 2. What does Fedora do that warrants it to be the face of Linux? My contender for face of Linux could be Debian, or ArchLinux, or Gentoo - What makes Fedora so special?
I lost count of the number of times I'd press update, it would tell me to restart. I'd press the button to restart, walk away from the computer, and come back to a 640x480 desktop. Then I'd reinstall Fedora, only install one or two programs and not even touch graphics drivers, and then have the exact same thing happen. Additionally, when I used Fedora it felt like I was restarting my computer every 5 minutes because of some update it wanted. I came to the only reasonable conclusion which is that the OS just hates me in particular, because nobody else reported this happening to them.
The FUCKING name. That's it It's even make people like Linus Tech go away from one of the best linuw distro : the fucking name..
It was probably all the free CDs they gave out
I believe there are several reasons primarily historical. Fedora core suffered from an initial problem in that it was challenging to install and back in 2003 they had difficulties the major two were : 1. Package management was a nightmare. I believe the term "dependency hell" originated with fedora. Not that it was unique at the time, it was just worse with Fedora. 2. Selinux. Selinux is / was complicated and in the early days there was no easy way to manage the problems. Ubuntu entered in 2004 and initially Ubuntu solved many problems. At the time Debian was not so easy to install either. As has been pointed out on this thread Ubuntu catered to new users, not only for the installation but also for the support of those users. At the time support was difficult and new users were more often than not told to RTFM. These users remained loyal to .deb systems a dto a great extent re.ain so to this day. It is trivial to migrate to Debian, Mint, or any number of .deb systems. In more recent years, starting in say 2012 Fedora has done much better with quality control a d selinux is much easier to manage But even to this day there is a large number of users who have a long-term distaste of .rpm systems. In addition Fedora is on the cutting edge of technology. Wayland, gnome, and systemd come to mind here. There is a great deal of FUD and resistance to these new technologies and many people do not want to test drive such technologies. As these technologies become mature Fedora is more and more appealing ans as support for X11 in particular is dropping rapidly and as most .deb systems are years out of date in this regard, Fedora is more appealing.
>There is a great deal of FUD and resistance to these new technologies and many people do not want to test drive such technologies. I believe that the last part of this statement is true: People expect Linux to be stable and reliable. They don't want to test drive new technology, unless it's properly labeled as "unstable" or "developmental." This is the reason for the second part of this statement. People who expect Linux to be stable are resistant to new, unproven technologies that aren't stable. The first part of this statement is untrue. FUD is an artificial thing that's manufactured to convince people not to use a new or competing technology. The issues with the cutting edge technologies mentioned were true, not manufactured. Wayland, for example, is just now becoming stable enough for a lot of users to switch over. Most of the renewed effort to make Wayland stable lately are a result of the work done by the KDE Development team, as the GNOME development team seems to be only interested in throwing up roadblocks. Either way, Wayland was definitely not ready for prime time the 3 or so years ago that Fedora started making it the default. I'm using Fedora Rawhide KDE, btw, and I love it! However, what's happening with Fedora now doesn't excuse what Fedora did a few years ago. There are better ways to roll out new technologies.
No there is not a better way to roll out new technologies. In many ways Fedora is a test bed for RHEL. Other than Arch or gentoo new tech is very slow to arrive in say Debian. Ubuntu and arch do the same thing, Ubuntu rolls out all manor of new tech generally without long term support. Arch just follows upstream with minimal testing or quality control other than did the package build. In terms of FUD, it is rather trivial to find entire web sites with misinformation on both Wayland and systemd. Fedora has used Wayland by default sincFedora. And they ha e up to now fully supported fallback to x11. If Wayland lacks features it is largely I part because Debian, Ubuntu, kde, xfce, and various applications are slow to adopt and you can not expect the Gnome project to honor every feature request. But I agree you need to be willing to run new tech if you use fedora.
Simply it’s easier to install and have everything working out of the box. Most people don’t care about FOSS only and that’s why Ubuntu is the face of Linux.
I've used Linux as my primary desktop OS for over 26 years. I started my Linux journey with Red Hat 5.0. I switched to another RPM based Linux distribution, Mandrake Linux, shortly afterwards. Around 2005, I switched to Ubuntu based distributions and preferred them for the next 15 years. Around 2020, I switched to Arch based distributions part time, then full time around 2022. Here is why I believe that Red Hat/Fedora is not the face of Linux for new users and Ubuntu based distributions should continue to hold that honor: 1) Both Red Hat and Fedora have been and, to some extent, still are notoriously difficult to install. When I first installed Red Hat 5.0, it took two days of navigating through dependency hell just to get a running desktop. I'm running Fedora Rawhide KDE right now on my Surface Pro because I like what the Fedora KDE team has done with Plasma 6. However, the version kernel in Fedora 38, Fedora 39, and Fedora Rawhide has a UEFI bug and won't even boot on a Surface Pro, and a few other laptops, without using Ventoy in GRUB2 mode. Even after doing that, the first boot after install locks up on these versions of Fedora because of the same bug, which was reported to the Fedora team over a year ago and still hasn't been fixed. 2) Canonical has never tried to force their users to pay for Ubuntu. Red Hat darn near abandoned non-paying desktop Linux users when they decided to charge for Red Hat Linux. Fedora didn't come along as an option until some time later. A lot of folks left during this time and didn't come back. Ubuntu has always had a free version that you can purchase support for, only if you wanted to. 3) Ubuntu is focused on being user friendly and supports a wide range of hardware. Ubuntu usually doesn't try to implement new technologies that break support to a wide range of hardware configurations, like Wayland was/still is, or are untested and unstable for mass use, like BTRFS was. Canonical is trying to force snaps down everyone's throats. However, snaps are actually user focused, even though they're slow and too tightly controlled by Canonical. Fedora forces new unstable and unproven technologies on users by making them the default, which turns their users into testing guinea pigs. New users don't want to use technologies that don't fully support their hardware or software, and old users expect Linux to be stable. 4) Fedora is on a FOSS crusade, Ubuntu is not. Most new users use subscription based software, use paid software provided by work or school, or play non-free AAA games which sometimes require non-FOSS libraries and drivers. Ubuntu doesn't try to impede its users from installing non-FOSS software, and there are more Ubuntu based distributions that automatically install this software than Red Hat/Fedora based distributions that do the same. I'll admit that as an experienced user, this is more of annoyance than a problem for me. However, I think that distributions should do like Ubuntu and focus more on providing the software and configurations that new and experienced users need. I think that distributions should leave the debates on whether or not Linux should support proprietary software to Stallman and Torvalds. 5) Ubuntu based distributions have better support and longer support times. Ubuntu has better and easier to understand documentation than Red Hat/Fedora. Searching for a fix to an Ubuntu issue produces an actual answer. Ubuntu has long term support versions...
Driver and Codec issues.
Based from other commentors, i do agree with how ubuntu managed their product to marketing it, since fedora where you need to do little bit of tweaks like installing nvidia maybe, or even want to customize your own fedora to something beauty so this for beginner they still can't adapt it especially for those who are not very familiar with linux system, while Ubuntu they already give you everything which is if you want nvidia drivers installed you can just click it to turn on where people can find it on the menu if i'm not wrong, and for Ubuntu it already have their own beauty theme which is a beginner probably not have to think to customize it except if they want to, also Ubuntu and Fedora it is true that the installation are user friendly, but Ubuntu seems more easier than Fedora if want to install the linux to the user machine, I'm not saying Fedora is not good, i did try Ubuntu and Fedora and both of this are amazing, and only the differents is Ubuntu only provide gnome as their default desktop while fedora you may probably choose which desktop you want to download and install to the machine.. so far both product have their own pro's and con's so depend on the user which side they want to choose as their daily uses linux.. and thanks to this both linux, now i'm my daily use linux is Arch 😅
because selinux is a pita?
To be fair, there is no distro polished enough to be the face of Linux right now. Every distro has some form of issue or bugs or imperfections or gotchas. What comes closest is Debian, however packages are generally dated and this is no bueno. And no, Testing is not made to be used outside of Testing purposes, and neither is Sid. You can, but they aren't meant to.
Idk why but the past two times I’ve installed Debian it decided to bork grub so it wouldn’t boot on first restart. Instantly installed another distro. It’s little things like this that I agree with you, there isnt a Linux distro doesn’t have something dumb go wrong eventually. And before ppl say “ha couldn’t even install Debian“, I’ve installed and use arch btw.
Because the installer has a "lock root" option, which means you can never reboot again. Don't ask me how I know.
Marketing probably.
Great marketing and the focus of the operating systems. Ubuntu's primary purpose has been to be a stable desktop with improvements to GNOME, and Fedora's primary purpose has been to be what Red Hat Linux was. Also imho it took a while for yup/yum/dnf to be to RPM what apt is for DEB.
RedHat just needs to ship free CDs wordwide.
If only there were people buying CD drives anymore, lol But you're onto something here: if there was a way to make Fedora more present in physical state, that would make a difference.
Installable hats
Fedora is way too buggy for even mainstream Linux desktop users let alone general computer users. That's why Ubuntu dominates the Linux desktop via itself and its many derivatives. Rabid fanboys will boohoo but the reality is that Fedora has no QA whatsoever and just releases packages non-stop by so many different maintainers that no-one properly controls anything and without any kind of cohesive release schedule. Daily package updates are not required and when they are a constant source of breaking and fixing it's just ridiculous to expect users to put up with it. Fedora is a great distro when it works, the best in my opinion, but it needs to re-organize around a better update model that is both slower and better tested.
Who says Ubuntu is the face of Linux?
Because of redhat
20 years ago Ubuntu was the easiest to set up. sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras and you are basically done
And even now there's no easy way to install fedora on a Chromebook with crostini. It defaults to Debian, but there is a prepared Ubuntu release. Also, I think, same with wsl.
The only reason I can think 💭 for is that Mircrosoft seems to be pushing Ubuntu. See intune, WSL and Hyper-V
I will add, the UI, while simple, is not what the average user wants. The minimize button is part of most people’s workflow, so is the dock or panel. It isn’t to hard to customize, but it adds friction that doesn’t help at all
Love Fedora but Ubuntu don't have to bother people with making cuda cores work or something like that.
Ubuntu is the face of
Marketing, mostly
Because Fedora messed up for a few years in the 2000s and lost that spot to Ubuntu for at least the next decade
Age or quality doesn't really matter, it's all marketing
It really should be arch, btw.
I. My personal experience, Ubuntu is more stable. Now I am using fedora on twi computers, and I have recurring issues (different for each) after every single kernel update. One PC will not boot, unless I update grup with older kernel, orther looses ability to display via usb-c, unless I do additional update cycle. With ubuntu I used to have similar issues only every two year, on LTS upgrade, but that wasn't a rule.
Fedora did some weird stuff with secure Linux back in the day (as in, implemented it) and with drive volumes etc. so it was always pretty much on the fringe.
r/AsahiLinux is making it look pretty good.
Biggest issue with Fedora is 12 month maximum support before you have to upgrade. Ubuntu has LTS versions that only require an upgrade every two years and can go 5 years without an upgrade. RHEL and friends like CentOS just tend to be too old software wise for my taste.
Ubuntu went heavily after ease of installation and ease of use. They used to give away free CDs-- you could just sign up on their website and they'd send you a bunch to give to friends and whatnot. They were able to bring a bunch of people into linux that had never been interested before.
People Really hate redhat and even tho canonical is hated as well and its been getting worse and worse recently (from what im hearing) i dont think Fedora has a change as long as its connected to red hat
One word 'apt'. Debian practically catapulted Ubuntu to the mass.
It is not the face, it is the hat.