Hello again everybody,

I’ve posted here before about leaving (K)Ubuntu for another distro and also picking one for my girlfriend who is going to ditch Windows because she doesn’t want Win 11 on her personal laptop.

I was going to settle on Debian stable for me and Zorin OS for my girlfriend. But after much consideration, I think I might go with Fedora after all. I don’t want Arch because it’s too bleeding edge and prone to problems and, apparently, malware if you use the AUR, which is often the only solution for some applications. Debian has old software and doesn’t support some newer hardware. Even the latest version, Trixie, is still very far behind. I realize this now.

Fedora seems to be a good middle ground with fairly cutting edge software. And, like Debian, it’s also supported by the majority of 3rd party software providers with RPM packages. I don’t like Red Hat one bit. But, I guess I should bite the bullet and just use that for practical reasons. I like that they have an official KDE desktop version now, too. I’m currently testing it out in a VM.

I haven’t used an RPM based distro since 2004, so my rpm-cli knowledge is very outdated. I know there’s DNF, which is like APT, I guess? I’ll have to get used to that. But, I’d like to mainly use KDE’s Discover Software Center for managing my software. Especially for my girlfriend who won’t like using the terminal. And I’m read about RPM fusion. It looks like it’s the equivalent of AUR in Arch. But is it safe? Can I trust that repo?

One problem I have is the installation of 3rd party, non-free codecs to play multimedia files and DVDs. (Yes I have a DVD player on my PC and I sometimes rip my DVDs to stream them on my TV.) I can’t seem to find a straightforward step-by-step solution for this. What do you guys recommend?

I also saw something about Fedora 44 breaking Steam because it doesn’t support 32-bit libraries anymore. Is that still an issue?

  • James R Kirk@startrek.websiteEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    For newbies ditching windows I like to recommend the Kinoite version of Fedora, it’s immutable and basically impossible to break, and apps are installed from the “app store” so it’s super easy for someone to understand.

    Also KDE has just gotten really amazing lately!

  • CCMan1701A@startrek.website
    4·
    7 hours ago

    I tired to use zorin recently, but went back home to bazzite. Zorin felt like a skin on Ubuntu and didn’t give me the warm fuzzies inside. I’m sure its fine, but not for me 🙂.

    • James R Kirk@startrek.websiteEnglish
      1·
      4 hours ago

      I did the exactly same for the same reason. I think Zorin is well made and great for someone who is not good with computer, but it is probably too simple for someone who is advanced enough to know what Linux is.

      These days I recommend Kinoite or Bazzite for someone looking to ditch Windows; but they’re so similar the only question is if they’re planning on gaming with a controller.

  • frongt@lemmy.zip
    11·
    16 hours ago

    prone to problems and, apparently, malware

    That’s true of any software source, and trust is a spectrum. AUR is random untrusted user-contributed software. Flatpaks are often user-contributed as well. You can always install from the author if you want to cut out the middleman.

    I haven’t used an RPM based distro since 2004, so my rpm-cli knowledge is very outdated. I know there’s DNF, which is like APT, I guess?

    dnf is a replacement for yum, but you can still use yum if you want. The only big difference is that where “apt update; apt upgrade” is two steps, you can do “dnf update” and it goes in one. And you do rpm -qa instead of dpkg -l, but otherwise it’s all about the same.

  • Gumus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    41·
    13 hours ago

    I use Nobara, it already has everything pre-installed. There’s a DNF GUI app, codecs, nVidia drivers (if you want), Steam, OBS, etc. So far it’s been a delightful experience.

      • Gumus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        51·
        11 hours ago

        While true, this sentiment seems rather paranoid to me. The project has been going strong for years. And if it were to stop, then I’d migrate to other distro. I don’t think a possibility of that eventually happening invalidates the distro in it’s current state.

        But to each their own… I wanted Fedora without the hassle and Nobara provided. If you don’t like it, don’t use it.

  • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
    8·
    17 hours ago

    Debian has old software and doesn’t support some newer hardware. Even the latest version, Trixie, is still very far behind. I realize this now.

    Debian has backports, which enable you to get select versions of newer software. Relevant to your case, you can get a newer version of the kernel, drivers, and other things relevant to hardware support.

    • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.caOPEnglish
      7·
      14 hours ago

      Yes. They’re enabled by default.

      Oh look at that! linux-image-6.19 is in there! That’s what I need for the asusctl and supergfxctl!

      Well dang, your comment made me look a little deeper into this and I found something I was looking for. Thank you!

      • MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        9 hours ago

        IMO if you want more up to date firmware just go with Linux Mint. It has all the extra hardware support that Ubuntu has over Debian but it has all the bad Ubuntu stuff removed (snaps etc).

  • Vik@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    18 hours ago

    FWIW most of us don’t like red hat and absolutely despise ibm 😅

    rpmfusion is generally safe in my experience. They have dedicated repos for FOSS, as well as nonfree ones, including steam and nvidia’s proprietary gfx drivers. I’d sooner equate fedora copr to aur rather than rpmfusion, which I think is more thoroughly scrutinised.

    You can grab the codecs directly from Discover directly from the Fedora project. This is how it looks for me on gnome: .

    You shouldn’t need to enable any third party repos, though i think the option is presented to a user as part of installation onboarding.

    I’ve never had issues with the steam rpm or flatpak on fedora. I use the former almost daily.

  • Mugita Sokio@lemmy.todayEnglish
    37·
    16 hours ago

    I wouldn’t recommend going with Fedora. IBM and RedHat are despised by many for a reason. There are three things made by them, and them alone in the upstream: systemd, Wayland, and PipeWire. PipeWire works just fine, though they’re shoving the other two down everyone’s throats, especially Wayland which is tied to systemd.

    I’d take a look at distributions that will not implement a specific user.db field that requires entering your date of birth, or anything else related to PII. Things like Garuda Linux (Arch-based), Omarchy (Arch with Hyprland, made by DHH), EndeavourOS (Arch-based), Devuan (Debian without systemd), Slackware, Zorin (Ubuntu-base with systemd), Vendefoul Wolf (Devuan with OpenRC instead of SysV), Artix (Arch without systemd), and Void are all options that said no to age verification/digital ID.