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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
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I looked at RHEL pricing but damn hell no.
The rest is even more outdated than Debian, so just use Debian.
In general stable Desktops are not enjoyable. You will basically not want to read Linux News anymore as you wont be getting any of that.
Its good for enterprises, where policies dont need to change etc. Also in combination with Flatpak and EPEL it may work somehow, but its just worse than using some normal Distro I heard.
@Pantherina
There is a free subscription for RHEL for individuals.
And I think it's less of an issue nowadays with old packages since we have extra layers such as podman containers over distrobox, flatpak, snap, Nix etc.
Then you can have a solid base OS with less solid layers on top where things are allowed to break but don't mess with the rest of the system. I use Fedora Kinoite as my base for this exact reason.
Interesting, didnt know that.
Snaps are only somewhat secure on Ubuntu, at least to my state of knowledge. Only on Ubuntu do they have the Apparmor profiles to isolate apps.
I think Fedora Atomic is just better for most cases. KDE got their stuff together mostly (I will not want to use a stable version until 6.3 or something) and the rest of Fedora never breaks for me.
Rocky 9 as my daily driver on both desktop and laptop, yeah. Ever since starting my current job a couple years ago, where we use RHEL everywhere from servers to desktops I just started switching my entire homelab to Rocky.
Personally it's perfectly fine. Not as flashy or glamorous as Pop OS (which is definitely a fun choice) but I like the stability. I need my computer to be secure and also just work so I can use it to do what I need or want to do.
Still have Steam, Discord, FF, Thunderbird, YTMDA, etc all running just fine on it, though I normally stream from my Windows PC when I'm using it for gaming.
As a sysadmin and developer, I prefer Linux as my daily to Windows (hey, this was a surprise to me, anyway), and from that list I prefer Rocky over others currently. Maybe one day that'll change, but I don't see me moving any time soon.
Sort of, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I started on OpenSUSE Leap but had issues getting things like GPU and Steam working. Red Hat was also a non-starter because of the lack of gaming functionality.
TW works great for gaming and the enterprise features I care about (like domain joining) work out of the box. Its certainly harder to set up than something more geared towards home use (typically one of the various the downstreams of Debian or Arch) but that doesn't bother me.
Sort of
Not even close
Fedora Rawhide (?) == Opensuse TW
Fedora == Opensuse leap
RHEL == Suse enterprise
The higher ones are a testing ground for the one below, until you get to the actual product, the enterprise distros. They have completely different priorities
Red Hat was also a non-starter because of the lack of gaming functionality.
Unless you're running bleeding edge hardware, you can install the drivers just fine. Enterprise users also need GPUs. Flatpak solves steam in most cases.
Opensuse Leap is built from SUSE Linux Enterprise and then additional packages added (those packages from Opensuse are also available to SUSE), it is not very comparable to Fedora and is more like Rocky Linux. SLE doesn’t have an upstream distribution in the same way Fedora is to RHEL.
@Shareni Not sure this comparison is correct
Fedora rather corresponds to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or Debian Testing
Fedora Rawhide is very experimental, OpenSUSE once had a testing version, couldn’t find it now on the download page
Yeah, I learned more about their lifecycles due to this thread.
I think you're correct as far as usability is concerned, but they've got a lot of similarities:
The comparison really breaks with leap and sel. While fedora is directly upstream of rhel, both sel and leap are downstream from TW, and leap also has sel packages and so it's also downstream from it. But I think my point still sort of stands because it seems like they mainly implemented that to get additional testing for sel packages.
Usability and stability wise, a better comparison would be: fedora:tw -> centos:leap -> rhel:sel
RHEL at work.
Not having Kate or Okular is a pain.
Need to download cmake for certain cases.
Subscription Manager is a pain.
Air gap means I can't make do with snaps.
I would also gripe about not having KDE, but that would be unfair and off topic in this case.
@ulterno
For which cases did you need cake for example?
My base OS is Fedora Kinoite and I'm considering have AlmaLinux in a podman container for some applications and tools. Replacing it every year because fedora is eol is too often in my opinion.
Hasn't Kate been replaced by an upgraded Kwrite or is Kate still maintained?
For which cases did you need cake for example?
Since you asked, I don't usually need cake, since I don't do parties, but I might occasionally buy a piece and eat it.
Hasn’t Kate been replaced by an upgraded Kwrite or is Kate still maintained?
kate and kwrite are both maintained and usable side by side on the same system.
In terms of features... kwrite : kate :: notepad : notepad++. Kinda... kwrite is still much more featurefull than notepad.
They have KDE Frameworks dependencies, which makes it non-trivial to install on RHEL when you can only access the local base and EPEL repo.
Yeah, basically your DE will be the default of the distro. I've never had good luck with KDE above Centos 7. But I'm good with Gnome. I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's not worth my time and effort personally.
It doesn't make any sense.
Why staying on old package for unnecessary stability (that stability is for highly "mission critical" things).
Have. I like btrfs, you only get that with Oracle and they have philosophical issues, but also random brokenness with things like selinux policies.
Old packages aren’t really an issue for me, but missing packages that haven’t been put into EPEL can be a pain. Depends what you want to accomplish or need.
I feel similarly about Fedora’s quick EOL, which was how I got onto an enterprise desktop distro too. The paper cuts are why I ended up switching to Mint.
You can use btrfs with any distro. It's just easier to install on some than others. Ubuntu and Mint will automatically create subvolumes for root and home if you install on a btrfs partition. With Debian, you have to manually create and mount all of the subvolumes before starting the installation.
You can't really use it with redhat. You can swap the kernel and install the user space tools, but then you won't get support from redhat.
I used Rocky 9 at home for a while. I think I had an emergency with a disk and had to install fedora because it's all I had. I also use Rocky 8 workstations at work without any problem.
I could easily slip back to Rocky over Fedora no problem. But I don't game or do anything except serve ipa.
Edit: and yes these were/are my daily driver desktops.
@zenharbinger @anders i have weird issues with almalinux on older (like intel v1) hardware which i didn't with fedora/rocky/etc which makes me think some unredhats are doing their kernels differently
fwiw
I've done the other way around
@possiblylinux127
What do you mean with other way around?
Pop OS, Debian and Linux Mint in production
Rhel is fine. No reason not to try it, they’re letting you register sixteen systems for free.
I'm curious if it's easy to use for this purpose or if the older packages are a pain.
I'm currently running MX + nix unstable. Debian's not enterprise, but it's close enough.
There are some things that are pretty hard to handle. For example large DEs like KDE, or Nvidia proprietary drivers. I wouldn't even try to handle them through nix.
Besides that, you'll also have to deal with the issues the other PM might have. For example flatpak and outdated system libraries (flatpak doesn't provide them). Nix doesn't have that issue because it provides everything, but it uses more disk space, and you have to deal with nix docs.
In the end it really depends on your needs, and only trying it out will tell you for sure. If you're a gamer with the newest hardware, you're probably not going to have fun. If you need it for work, it'll be great if you can deal with an external PM. If you need it as a media device, slap on a few flatpaks and it's perfect.
For me, this approach is far better than using a rolling distro, and I might try out RHEL at some point just out of curiosity. Unlike Arch, Debian will always boot, but I still have the newest docker instead of the one that was deprecated 3 months ago and won't be updated for at least a year. Also, home-maanger makes it a breeze to make a list of packages and have them installed wherever and whenever.
Also, Centos is gone, stream is upstream so it's a testing ground for RHEL instead of a RHEL repack. I wouldn't go with the bootleg RHELs, that's just asking for trouble if they haven't switched to upstream as well.
@Shareni
With bootleg RHELs you mean Alma and Rocky?
Yeah. They used to be RHEL derivatives, but now they're either upstream (Alma) or a mix of legally dubious sources and upstream (Rocky).
They can't be as stable, and 16 free RHEL licences is more than enough for personal or small business use.
Even on servers, "stable" distros suck.
It's less bad these days thanks to Docker but when Docker was even a few years old, guess which servers still had no support for it....
Fedora is probably the closest you can practically get.