Back to the recent time, I have been using Ubuntu as my main desktop’s and laptop’s OS. aside from Kali Linux when working on security stuff and I got very comfortable that I decided to take the next logical step and change distro. The logical step came in the form of Fedora.
I wanted to use a somewhat different system on daily bases, thus forcing me to learn something new and it goes without saying that if you are comfortable with any Linux based system, You probably will cope with different distros, but small new things to learn go a long way.
I am not writing this to argue which is better than the other, because this is all based on the person using any distro. You can search the differences and similarities between the two and read all the comparisons on the internet (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=fedora+vs+ubuntu) , I’m Just sharing my experience.
Let’s face it, the biggest change would be Gnome Shell (if you are coming from unity) and the rpm based package manager. If You’re completely new to Gnome Shell, it would probably take you a day to feel comfortable around it, then You will be hit by the idea that you can customize it a bit to your liking. Something that haven’t really been easy with unity. Through https://extensions.gnome.org/ You can install extensions to furthermore enhance your experience with Gnome Shell. If you use any browser other than Firefox, then sadly you will have to keep Firefox installed if you want to use the previous site.
When it comes to rpm, You will just have to learn a few things to start yumming away. Actually You’ve most likely heard of the yup package manager, but it has been (or at least in the process of) replaced by DNF. I think the biggest chunk of new things I had to learn relating to packages, are managing repositories, which is simple enough.
one thing you have to learn from scratch if you haven’t used before, is SE-Linux (Security-Enhanced Linux) which is, quoting from Wikipedia:
SELinux is a set of kernel modifications and user-space tools that have been added to various Linux distributions. Its architecture strives to separate enforcement of security decisions from the security policy itself and streamlines the volume of software charged with security policy enforcement. The key concepts underlying SELinux can be traced to several earlier projects by the United States National Security Agency.
sounds big, huh? Well, Its a new thing for me and Fedora has introduced me to it. I’m still getting familiar with it, but it hasn’t affect my daily use whatsoever except this one time when I tried to play CS:GO, but it was easy to solve or for a more accurate word, workaround.
conclusion? I love Fedora now. I miss Ubuntu, but I think that Fedora works for me better at this time. I installed Fedora 23 a few months ago on my desktop machine and since have upgraded to the more recent Fedora 24 and the process was as smooth as it could have been. I always installed a fresh Ubuntu to upgrade the OS., but it always was buggy and produced more issues than I would care to solve. My laptop got a fresh Fedora 24 install and also, hasn’t complain.
For my experience, Fedora is more smooth than Ubuntu and works without any issues I can think of. Even CS:GO works better on it for hours without the random crashes I used to have on Ubuntu and yes, Steam is working fine.
What’s the next step? Arch?