Reasons for choosing Fedora over Debian

[Digimer]

On 04/16/2011 09:14 PM, Nikolaus Rath wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have been using Ubuntu for a couple of years, and I am increasingly
> unhappy with it. I dislike the Ubuntu One integration, I think upstart
> is irritating, and I am sick of my bug reports vegetating forever in
> Launchpad. Therefore I want to switch distributions, and I have already
> narrowed it down to either Debian unstable or Fedora (but a release, not
> rawhide).
> 
> Unfortunately I have a hard time deciding between the two, because I am
> very much biased by the fact that I have already used Debian in the past
> and a lot of experience with it. So I invariably come up with random
> nice Debian features which then turn out not to exist in Fedora. But on
> the other hand, all the nice Fedora features that Debian can't offer are
> unknown to me.
> 
> Hence, to allow me to make a good decision, I would be very happy to
> hear about your favorite Fedora feature that I would totally miss if I
> went with Debian.
> 
> 
> Just to be clear: I am *not* interested in starting a Debian vs Fedora
> thread here. So am only asking for your pro-fedora points, so there
> shouldn't even be the possibility of a flamewar :-).
> 
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
>    -Nikolaus

Having used all three extensively, I'd argue for Fedora (I switched
shortly after Ubuntu 10.10 came out). All of the distributions are good,
and it really just comes down to what benefits you want and what
annoyances you can live with.

Debian unstable is still a server-oriented OS, so you will be missing a
lot of modern toys. Fedora is to RHEL/CentOS as Ubuntu is to Debian;
Desktop-focused vs Server-focused, respectively.

Some key differences between Ubuntu and Fedora;

Fedora is more security-focused where Ubuntu is more usability focused.
Your first user in Fedora will not have sudo setup. You will need to
setup sudo yourself or use su as needed. Likewise, Fedora will ask you
for the *root* user's password every time elevated credentials are
needed. This is safer, but can feel more intrusive.

If you're a developer, Fedora uses RPM which I find much easier to work
with than .deb packages. This is really personal preference though.

Fedora 15 *just* went gold, and will use Gnome 3. Whether this is a plus
to you are not will largely depend on your computer.

Beyond these, I can't think of a whole lot of differences. I actually
brought over Ubuntu's default theme to my Fedora box, so I guess I'd
have to say that I like the look of Ubuntu more. :P

They're all good distros. Try it out and see if it suits you.

-- 
Digimer
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