I am trying out Fedora for multiple unrelated reasons (use RHEL at work, new config, it might be more optimized) and I noticed a number of concerning caveats, even in mind with the fact that I already use RHEL:
- Software support seems lacking. I have a growing number of software neither the repo, nor rpmfusion has. In any other case I would need to use copr for installing community maintained packages. However copr feels relatively abandoned and unreliable. That mainly comes down to packages being undiscriminately displayed without download stats or upvote status (unless you look them up one by one). Also a large part of packages are incompatible because they were made specifically for Fedora 38 with no 39 fixup in sight. Rpmfusion is weirdly empty, I expected it to have majority of the stuff I need so I dont inevitably have to rely on copr. I already had to download executables from upstream.
- Install Groups. They are not getting listed properly! It only lists the most basic meta groups. This is combined with the lack of actually being able to search for groups and you got yourself a lot of random groups you wont find unless you start looking it up online.
- Xorg wiki page. Ex fucking cuse me?! Did I mistype something, because I clearly remember trying to use one of the most popular and allegedly well put together distros. At this point why even have a wiki page?
- base-x group contains everything needed for running Xorg. I will actually eat my hat if you can tell me I can find that info without stackoverflow. Cant search for the group, nothing is documented about it.
I would agree with the sentiment that I could technically write the documentation and package all the things I need in copr, but Im having serious doubts if this “platform” developed by the same guys who dont document it is actually worth the hassle.
I guess the positive thing to say about it is that it performed better for gaming than my Arch install, and I had done zero optimisations on it yet.
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I think you are suffering culture-shock. The type of user and as a result the overall community around Fedora are far different than Arch’s, which I think might explain some of the pain points you have discovered. Not giving Fedora a pass here, they could do better (especially the missing Xorg issue), but to me it seems rather clear that your expectations and the way you started with Fedora are at odds with the majority of its users.
The AUR and the ArchWiki are phenomenal, and I don’t think any distro including Fedora can compete.
[Edit] I’d like to add one thing: I think the community around a distro really determine the quality of the experience with that distro at the edges. I daily drive Fedora because I like that there is an organization behind updates and stability. However I think that has a chilling effect on community contributions, so while you get a stable core, you miss out things only a passionate and active community can provide.
Software support seems lacking.
Compared to the AUR, the offering of any other distro will feel lacking (besides this one). Consider an Arch-distrobox for access to the AUR or install the Nix package manager on Fedora through Determinate Systems’ installer.
Xorg wiki page.
Fedora’s Wiki leaves a lot to desire in general, especially if you’ve come from the ArchWiki. On that note, I would argue only ArchWiki and Gentoo’s Wiki are excellent showcases of how the Wiki of a distro should look like.
Furthermore, Fedora has been the first to enable Wayland by default (since 2016 in fact). Therefore, I don’t find it that surprising that Fedora didn’t think it’s worth putting man-hours to the documentation of a project for which its sunset was in sight.
With your logic Xorg documentation should have already existed and would have needed negligible refresh.
Page history indicates it hasnt chabged since 2009!
Wayland released in 2008, so it makes sense for them to stop putting any effort soon after.
The Xorg page was initially created (imported to perhaps a new wiki) in 2008 24 May in almost its current form. Wayland released Sept 30.
Wayland was barely competitive for a decade after that.
Moved from Fedora to (based on) Arch with much the same sentiment.
“The Copr is like the AUR, but better!” Um. . . . No.
I use Fedora on my workstation and somehow have trouble with packages. E.g., there is no OpenVPN 3, which I need for enterprise network. Huh, Fedora 39 doesn’t even have it in EPEL. So sad.
