this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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I’m in the market to find a new distro that is similar enough to Fedora that switching won’t be as laborious as I’ve had it before. I keep hearing POP!_os is a good choice but I’m going to as the community what they think is good.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personally, I use Debian, but it's a different approach from Fedora. My suggestion for you is to try OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It's a rolling release, which means bleeding edge software as Fedora, it's RPM based and it's easy to rollback in case of an update breaks something. As I said, not my type of distro (I want 0 breaks), but I used OpenSUSE once while distro hopping and it's a good distro.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This sounds like what I’m looking for. What is their support for steam, blender, AMD CPU/GPU support, and do they use flatpak, or is it more of an APK setup?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

My computer is a Ryzen with AMD GPU as well. Drivers are embedded on kernel, so any distro should fit. Flatpak works fine too, but of course, you will need to install it and add Flathub - simple, but needed ( https://flathub.org/setup/openSUSE ). Steam runs fine, if I remember well. Blender I don't know, I never used.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

openSUSE does support FlatPak, just follow the Wiki entry. There is also a wiki entry about Steam Blender is in the repositories. Also keep in mind that they stance about multimedia codecs is the same as Fedora. Please consusult this wiki entry for more information. I have to say that openSUSE Tumbleweed is a fantastic distro. It is rolling release, but it is also using OpenQA to make sure nothing breaks during updates. Hope this helps.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you're going for a similar Fedora-like experience, with it being a rolling release that is still stable, then OpenSuse Tumbleweed is definitely you're best bet.

Now, if the rolling release nature is something you're less attached to, then some good options would be Pop!_OS (especially if you have an Nvidia card), another Ubuntu-spin like Kubuntu perhaps or even KDE Neon, and maybe Debian 12. Though for the last one, although it's a fantastic distro, it looks nice, new, and shiny now, but in 6-12 months when you're not even half way through the Debian upgrade cycle and still on old software, will that bother you? If the answer is yes, then look elsewhere. Otherwise, Debian 12 may be a good choice for you as well.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

As a long time Fedora user, I've been using openSUSE Tumbleweed exclusively the past few months and it has been fantastic. KDE is their flagship desktop but I believe they also provide a vanilla Gnome experience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Solus just came out with a new image and they are 100% rolling, 100% community driven. I've happily used Solus for many years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Solus interests me, but it was pretty much dead for a good while until very recently. I still think it's best to wait another 6-12 months to ensure that they succeed in regularly keeping everything updated before recommending it to people.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I'm going to throw my hat in the ring for Pop_OS. The company that maintains it is focused almost exclusively on desktop use so it excels at this better than many other distros that have kind of a split focus on all the things. Their power manager is the best in terms of laptop battery management if you're using a laptop. The distro is also flatpak focused. There's even a utility in startup apps by default called "Flatpak Transition" which checks for deprecated deb packages and lets you know if there's a Flatpak that satisfies it.

Updates seem to come fast but not as fast as a full rolling release. No major changes lately because, as others note, they're working on a HUGE change to the distro to make their own DE. Rumors are circling this might come with a re-base of the distro off Ubuntu. Unfounded as far as I know but it would make a lot of sense.

I've been running Pop on my desktop and laptop exclusively for going on a couple years now. Rock solid.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Suck it up and learn Debian and why .deb > .rpm.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I recently moved from Linux mint to opensuse tumbleweed and I've been VERY happy. Super stable. Even through multiple dist-upgrades.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I would recommend the following in descending order:

  1. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
  2. Linux Mint
  3. Debian Testing
  4. Debian Stable

I think you'll be right at home on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I personally recommend against using Debian Testing for anything other than testing the next Debian release. It gets slower security updates, and breakages get fixed slower than just using Sid directly. Since Sid has its own securirt team and since it moves faster, breakages are fixed sooner. Even in the official documentation Debian doesn't not suggest using Testing for the same reasons.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't understand recommending an another company distro to user who is happy with using Fedora but want to change it just because it is a company distro. (They both are actually community projects but let's ignore it for the purpose of this discussion)

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Any specific reason why you’d like to move away from Fedora? It’s an amazing distro, all things considered.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don’t get me wrong. I love Fedora, but with the things they’ve done recently, I really don’t think what I want from an OS and RH wants are the same anymore. I’d prefer to separate from them while I have the opportunity before I’m invested to the point of staying because it’s too hard to migrate.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think if you want meaningful recommendations, you have to say:

  • why you want to get away from Fedora
  • what you liked about Fedora that kept you there until now
  • what you hope you'd get from a new distro
  • any nonstarters that would keep you away from a distro

Without knowing those things, it's just going to be people proselytizing their favorite distros rather than suggesting one that will fit what you're looking for.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Since I can’t edit my post (not sure why, just can’t) this parent post should help people.

My leaving Fedora and by extension RH, mostly is about not supporting in any meaningful capacity any associated with RH. My hope is to find something similar to Fedora, I’m getting a lot of recommendations about OpenSUSE tumbleweed and endeavorOS. Since my setup is AMD CPU/GPU it seems while not the perfect choice POP!_OS isn’t for me. I think as long as the distro supports vanilla Gnome or as close as possible would be great.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I may be misreading this, but POP!_OS will work more than fine on an AMD CPU/GPU, as will any modern Linux distro. However, for people that Nvidia's proprietary drivers, POP!_OS also has pretty good integration out of the box that sets them apart from other distros (likely because the developer, System76, also makes laptops with Nvidia GPUs).

That being said, I've been on EndeavourOS for the past year and a half and I really like it so far. It's basically just arch but with a GUI installer and some extra theming/add-ons, which personally has worked great for me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I plan to move to EndeavourOS, because I cannot be bothered to install Arch and wanted something (b)leading edge, but community based. Already installed on my laptop, looking good so far.

Kind of unfortunate that there are no true community driven rpm distros :(

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Literally any Debian distribution with the exact same window manager service you were using in Fedora would be essentially as if you never switched away at all.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Can also vouch for Pop_OS .Can't tell how much having recovery partition added saved me from reinstalling os again :)

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[–] 4L3moNemo 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

That's your chance to turn away from rpm/RHEL distros and run without looking back. As last 20 years history shows, that branch of linux OS is either dying off on hands, leaving you without suport, either makes migration path complicated by a need to change distro. Like it was with centos +5..10 years, oh no ... -> maybe fedora -> oh no ... -> whatever whocares rpm pop/rocky/alma name it ... Thats it, beat it, no more this shit.

deb or any other kind linux is a way to go.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

You should start with :

  • which DE you use ?
  • what release model you want ?
  • immutable or not ?
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I've been using Pop! for years, having been a user of Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint previously. It pretty much just works as far as I can tell. Are there specific things you're looking for?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Still fedora based

Hence the question mark. OP gave no reasons as to why not Fedora.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm wondering if Universal Blue will be impacted if Redhat pulls a CoreOS move on Fedora. If not, that'd be quite a seamless switch.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Pop OS is not a bad choice. Only thing about it is the version of Gnome it has is a little old and it will stay that way until they come out with their own Rust-based DE.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, the current gnome outclass PopOs since they are working on Cosmic, the rust DE.

Their blog talk about cosmic a lot. Imho, it will be released the next month as beta public. Then they will release it next year.

https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-de-tiling-redesign-and-libcosmic-rebasing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

What's the time line on that?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I just installed Endeavour, and so far I like it because I didn't need to do anything tedious to get my wifi card.working

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Seems like we're looking for the same thing, it's a a shame.

I used Debian before, and I'm likely going back. Since Debian 12 uses the 6.1 Kernel, it's new enough for me.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

In a similar situation. I've been looking at open suse tumble weed and endeavourOS.

Installed pop on my wife's computer last week and I'm pretty impressed, I'm not the biggest gnome fan though so I don't think it would be for me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Without saying why you are leaving Fedora, it's not really possible to advise you... whatever we recommend may have the same mystery issue you are trying to escape.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Im guessing its related to recent Red Hat antics.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I like Manjaro Gnome. I changed the maui shell for the gnome shell and everything is looking great, and as close to vanilla gnome as possible (which is what I liked from Fedora :P) is not the same package system, but is very neat ;)

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