I’ve been using Debian-based distros most of my adult Linux life, but I read recently that KDE has a better experience on Fedora than Kubuntu, so I want to try it out.
I already know that I won’t be able to use apt, but what other differences should I expect with fedora?
The do not have an LTS release? What is upgrading like? When should you upgrade if you want stability?
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you have an excellent path as you can truly appreciate fedora only if you’ve been through ubuntu’s abuse i.e. the snap crap. my contention is that fedora should never be the first distro, but the next step, after you’ve figured out what’s what with ubuntu or mint.
KDE don’t got “closer relations” with fedora, it’s just that you’ll get new shit sooner. and fedora is the antithesis of LTS.
the only issue hindering normal, everyday use is rectified by following the step-by-step instructions from rpmfusion (codecs and GPU drivers).
Consider a Universal Blue image instead.
Chromebook easy Fedora out of the box experience. Batteries, Bells and Whistles included.
Easy peasy rollbacks and upgrades.
No more needing to manually add RPM Fusion just to get working hardware acceleration for Media in Firefox or to install Steam. Or extra steps for Nvidia drivers.
I started on Fedora KDE 32 eventually migrated to Fedora Kinoite 38 and have been a happy Bazzite enjoyer ever since. 🎮🐧🥹
Baked in #Distrobox, #Homebrew and #Bazzar Make installing and exporting
.rpmor.debfiles painless. Integrated Homebrew and Flatpak installers for installing apps.And super useful and convenient #ujust commands you won’t find on Fedora.
Can even Fork/Make your own Image, or checkout some Community images.
George made a Project Bluefin LTS image. Or you can also be more bleeding edge with
testingbranches.Developer Experience images are also available.
💯 this.
I’ve tried Fedora multiple times and to be honest I’ve always found it to be a pain in the ass. The out of the box experience is also severely lacking for the average user who just wants a modern operating system with all the apps and codecs pre installed and ready to go.
These days, any laptop or desktop machine in my house gets Bluefin, while gaming/media devices get Bazzite.
not this. you need to reboot every time to get new shit. that’s antithetical to how I’ve used desktopS (plural, yo) since the early aughts. my shit gets suspended in the evening and woken in the morning with all apps and windows how I left them. rebooting and breaking my flow makes this thing is a non-starter.
My set of recommendations:
RPMFusion is recommended to add to your system. It’s the best way to use Steam, certain drivers (nvidia, v4l2loopback, etc.) as needed.
SELinux is present, but the default policy sets are unlikely to impede your usage. The SELinux applet (seapplet) is a useful tool for diagnosing on the very rare chance you’re finding permission denied somewhere that cannot otherwise be explained.
If you pull most of your software as flatpaks from Flathub already, your day-to-day experience won’t be much different from Debian.
Fedora’s equivalent to LTS releases would be the downstream LTS releases provided by Redhat, RockyLinux, AlmaLinux, and others. They don’t have the same package sets as base fedora, and may need extra repositories to get some of the less essential, but ‘core’ software back. Ultimately not much of a reason to run them on a desktop workstation for personal use.
Upgrading is pretty seamless. It’s as easy as graphical updates now or otherwise using the system upgrade module in dnf. I generally have the policy of waiting 2-4 weeks for any minor bugs that made it into a new release to settle. I have been expediting my upgrades for the past few releases in order to catch bugs before friends and family upgrade their machines and haven’t found any large problems regardless.
Fedora doesn’t inherently expect a system to upgrade forever without maintenance, with 5 years being a typical target for things that may break. With that said, it is good to read the release notes before upgrading to the next edition, as there can rarely be something (like the recent recommendation and changed default for a larger /boot partition) that may require maintenance on a long-term system before upgrading. That said, you do have time to hold off on upgrading the distro, as the general lifetime of each release is ~13 months, giving 1 month overlap into a release two releases ahead. For instance, Fedora 43 will still be maintained up to a month into Fedora 45’s release.
I usually wait for a month or two before upgrading to the latest version, but haven’t had any troubles.
First thing I do is enable rpm nonfree per this documentation
https://rpmfusion.org/ConfigurationAnd the second is to switch to ffmpeg and add some HAC as per this documentation
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/MultimediaIf you run an newer Nvidia card you might wanna grab some drivers too, see
https://github.com/devangshekhawat/Fedora-43-Post-Install-Guide?tab=readme-ov-file#nvidia-driversIt uses DNF which has its own set of features compared to APT. In general I think DNF is much better although it does have more overhead.
You also could look into Fedora Atomic https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/
Atomic desktops use overlays instead of packages which means you get a much cleaner system at the expense of some flexibility.
switched to fedora coming from windows and ubuntu. I update when I feel like it (every one to two weeks). It is largely rock solid and the only times i had Trouble was because of xone, which I installed via the source and then forgot to remove/update for quite a while.
dnf and apt are quite alike, took only a short while to adjust and now i like it as much if not more.
The KDE Plasma experience is very nice. I can fully recommend Fedora
Thank you for your recommendation and sharing your experience with dnf!
Why would KDE work better on Fedora than any other distro?
I saw this in a video comparing Linux distros, I assume that reason is that KDE developers might work more closely with fedora developers to get their updated packages in the repositories and get them tested before the releases are made. And what I’ve heard, Ubuntu does that more closely with GNOME and fedora does that more closely with KDE, but I don’t really know anything.
KDE Neon is being used as playground for KDE, not Fedora. They update daily there: https://kde.org/distributions/
This might change when they are done developing KDE Linux: https://community.kde.org/KDE_Linux
KDE Neon is basically dead and only has one developer. It has also has numerous problems in the past making it unstable. KDE has an official distro (KDE Linux) now that they actually use as a test bed, though it is in alpha last I heard.
Fedora has amazing support for KDE in my experience. Fedora or openSUSE.
Nice new programmer socks that fits with your new fedora hat.
Should I buy a Red (fedora) Hat just in case? Or is red hat never worth it?
Better in what way? What are you unsatisfied with?
I use KDE on Debian and I have zero complaints.
The main things I don’t like are when random stuff is broken.
This doesn’t happen that much on my Kubuntu laptop, but it did happen on Ubuntu Studio, which had a combination of Wayland and NVIDIA drivers.
In my upcoming project I plan to use the KDE big screen interface, so I would prefer to get the most up-to-date and most tested packages, so unfortunately that leaves out Debian.
Most up-to-date and most tested are opposites.
Exactly. That’s why I’m not using Debian in this situation. I’m thinking that fedora will strike a better balance for what I’m trying to achieve.
I don’t want the most bleeding edge KDE neon rolling release distribution because that’s hardly tested at all.
You might have to learn about working the SELinux, since Fedora uses it. There are some things, like enabling custom systemd units, that require steps that aren’t needed on Debian to comply with the extra security settings.
I have Fedora KDE on a few mini-pc’s as well as a Framework 13 laptop, I love it. I used to use various Debian-based distros for many years before this as well.
I love Fedora’s up-to-date packages and kernel. It’s not quite a rolling release like Arch but it’s far better than the older than dirt Debian stuff. Yes, I know why Debian is the way it is, but I have discovered that I like being more current than that these days.
There is no LTS release, Fedora aims for two major releases a year. It’s pretty seamless since underlying packages and kernel are already current.
Give it a whirl, you will enjoy it :)
I did a similar change years ago, the Fedora KDE. I’ve been maintaining a script of things I install on a fresh install.
Helped me get better writing bash. But feel free to use it.
Lack of some multimedia and bluetooth codecs out of the box. You will need a third party repo for those (or flatpak browser/video player)
A lot of parts are more integrated with each other on fedora and rhel (compared to debian and ubuntu). IIRC fedora now defaults for offline updates. It comes with SELinux enabled by default.
Have you been running KDE on Kubuntu? Or are you wanting to try KDE?
I still am running KDE on Kubuntu on my laptop. I had Ubuntu Studio which uses KDE Plasma on my desktop, but I recently downgraded to the long-term support release of Ubuntu with GNOME because it seemed to be better supported on my hardware, and supported for longer than the kubuntu 24.04 LTS.
I recently got one of those beelink mini PCs to try hooking up to my TV and using KDE’s Plasma Bigscreen feature. So I would like to really prioritize that for this system and try to have an up-to-date well-supported KDE.
I heard on some video that KDE pairs really well with fedora, so that’s what I wanted to try.
