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Sorry Arch (EndeavourOS), it's not working out any more and hello Fedora

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There comes a time when everyone has to sit and think about what they use on their PC, especially if you're on Linux. For me, Arch Linux (via EndeavourOS) just wasn't working out any more and so I've moved to Fedora.

While I was reasonably happy with Arch Linux, it's just not stable enough for me personally. It's a very subjective thing of course, and highly dependent on what hardware you use — along with how often you update. For me, it just messed things up a bit too often, and last night was the final straw.

I updated either that day, or the day before, and just before a livestream was due to start, my SteelSeries headset no longer worked. No matter what I tried, following guide after guide about PipeWire, nothing helped. Just this weird and very quiet electrical static noise whenever I tried piping audio to it. Eventually it worked again by some downgrading, plus random hotplugging and testing it on a Windows machine for a sanity check and it started somewhat working again. My Microphone was another issue, at the same time it decided to be ridiculously quiet for no apparent reason I could see so there were wider problems. I had enough, I had work to do and after hours of hair-pulling — hello from Fedora.

Fedora's KDE Spin

Thankfully, with the likes of Flathub / Flatpak packages and how far along apps like Discover have come along for installing packages and setting things up, there's not a whole lot to learn. It's been a very long time since I used Fedora, and it was one of my first Linux distributions I tried sticking with back when it was "Fedora Core" and wow — it's always surprising to see how far we've come as a platform for doing anything.

Fedora does come with some of its own issues, like NVIDIA drivers being a nuisance to install, which they definitely should improve. If other distributions can do one-click or one-line installs, I'm sure they could do it too. However, it's just another point towards me swapping to AMD when prices settle, or perhaps Intel when Arc properly launches for desktop. I also need to figure out why Dropbox won't load on startup, some little things like that.

Anyway, are you really a Linux nerd if you don't distro-hop at least once a year? Jokes aside, I look forward to seeing why people keep recommending Fedora nowadays as a stable distribution, let's see how long it takes me to break it.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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scaine Apr 10, 2022
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Quoting: GuestFurthermore, snap and flatpak are also a serious security risk

What?

Sure, the Snap/Lemmings vulnerability is an exceptional (and hard to implement, and local only) priv escalation, but I'm curious how you're arguing that container solutions for packaging are a "serious security risk".
michaldybczak Apr 10, 2022
Quoting: sudoer
Quoting: michaldybczakManjaro unstable aka Arch stable, this was a whole another thing. The OS can break pretty fast and hard. There were quite damaging updates along the way. Fixes came in matter of hours, but I was too late, I updated to packages that were broken and that were crutial for the OS to function.

That's plain wrong, I've tested Manjaro in the past and its "unstable" is not Arch stable, Manjaro unstable contains Manjaro's own in-house developed unstable packages, their own kernels, modules, overlay packages there, so if things break for you in Manjaro unstable, this does not mean that the same is happening in Arch stable, nor that they are comparable.

Sure, Manjaro has some own packages, but every time I got breakages on Manjaro unstable, it was directly because of Arch packages. As said before, those were fixed incredibly fast, but I had the poor luck to update with the broken packages. Few hours later and I would be fine.

What I wrote comes from my own experience. Besides, you are uncessarily nitpicking on details. We are not discussing here the structure of Manajro and Arch packages, but in general, the stability of a distro, and based on my examples, I was proving a point, that Manjaro has more flexibility and stability than Arch. Manjaro has its overlays so Manjaro unstable isn't 1 to 1 Arch unstable, agreed, but that's beside the point. Manjaro unstable is the closest to Arch stable as possible and there is a VAST DIFFERENCE between Manjaro unstable and Manjaro testing. So if someone wants to be on Arch based distro, Manjaro is a good option. No need to go to Fedora.

I personally had only bad experiences with all RPM distros, so I keep away from them. I always thought that expression "dependency hell" is only a historical one, till I tried RPM distros. It was pure chaos and the distros were breaking almost right away during installing normal program packages that I'm used to use. Pacman feels more robust to such craziness. Maybe Fedora is different and better then Open Suse in that front, but I prefer Arch simplicity: only newest packages + AUR. No versions, added repos, no repo complications. Sure, Arch has its issues as well, but those are easy to manage if one is familiar with them.
tuubi Apr 10, 2022
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Quoting: michaldybczakI personally had only bad experiences with all RPM distros, so I keep away from them. I always thought that expression "dependency hell" is only a historical one, till I tried RPM distros.

Late-nineties' Red Hat and Mandrake scarred me for life!

Seriously. I know it's irrational, but that's the main reason I've shied away from distros like Fedora and Suse for the last couple of decades. My phone uses RPM packages though...
const Apr 10, 2022
I wonder if we will still discuss the stability of distributions based on own experience in a decade :D

This own experience depends on so many variables like timing, what you customized, what software and drivers you actually use, hardware... it's ridiculuous. In the end, every edge case will find distributions that are better and worse and it won't be the same. There simply is no best distribution for now.


Last edited by const on 10 April 2022 at 8:36 am UTC
Tuxee Apr 10, 2022
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: TuxeeAh I see. I am lying. Interesting approach.
There is technically no reason why snaps could be faster than deb. Maybe if the snap package has better optimization which isn't a fair comparison.

Oops. Sorry. I forgot to pick a comparison which sustains your worldview. Of course it is because of different compiler flags and/or optimizations. I am shouting it out for you: IT IS JUST THAT THE RUNNING SNAP APPLICATION DOESN'T SHOW A SEVERELY IMPACTED PERFORMANCE. THAT'S ALL. (And it is not just Firefox - my Zoom meetings over the Zoom snap client don't exhibit any "horrendous" performance issues, either.
Let that sink in. Ok? Or do I have to inform Micheal of Phoronix to leave out Clear Linux from all his benchmarks because it's obviously so well optimized that a comparison with other distros makes them look bad and is "not fair"?
And to re-iterate another point: You get a handful snap packages with a default Ubuntu install (the store, now Firefox, the daemon itself, and some library snaps) and still hundreds of deb packages.
Quoting: GuestFurthermore, snap and flatpak are also a serious security risk.
Care to elaborate? Just never get your hands on a Steam Deck - it's pretty much flatpak only
Quoting: Guesthttps://thenewstack.io/oh-snap-security-holes-found-in-linux-packaging-system/
And did you read the rather short article? I must assume you stopped at the headline because that's of course much more convenient and only rattling for snap aficionados. These are "normal" vulnerabilities, not something inherent to the container/sandbox concept of snap or flatpak.

QuoteBut, before getting worked up at Canonical, take a closer look. While discovering the snap vulnerabilities, Qualsys also found security problems you’ll find in all Linux distributions. These are CVE-2021-3996 and CVE-2021-3995 in util-linux (libmount and umount); CVE-2021-3998 and CVE-2021-3999 in the glibc (realpath() and getcwd()), and CVE-2021-3997 in systemd (systemd-tmpfiles).

QuoteCanonical has released a patch that fixes both security holes. The patch is available in the following supported Ubuntu releases: 21.10; 20.04, and 18.04. A simple system update will fix this nicely.
Narvarth Apr 10, 2022
Quoting: PierreLucDaoustIt felt like a downgrade, but a leaved Manjaro for Mint a few months ago. I had anxiety attacks everytime I read «kernel» and/or «Nvidia» in the updates. Mint was the winner of the day.

That's why I switched from Debian (after 10 years) to Mint. Debian was systematically breaking with nvidia update. I had to use bash scripts to get back my drivers, or even with the terminal (for ex, change the actual gcc version, which didn't match the one used to compile the nvidia drivers, etc.).

Mint is really a relaxing distro, even though I use it for "advanced use".
gbudny Apr 10, 2022
Fedora always had issues with NVIDIA drivers, and I don't think they are going to change it:

https://mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc2.html

It's not a terrible operating system, but it's less stable and more problematic even than Debian testing. I think there are more stable versions of Red Hat than Fedora.
pepoluan Apr 10, 2022
I now use KDE Neon. It seems to be a very good balance between cutting edge desktop thingies, but stable underlying system.
stephenseiber420 Apr 10, 2022
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: mohammedziad
QuoteFedora does come with some of its own issues, like NVIDIA drivers being a nuisance to install, which they definitely should improve. If other distributions can do one-click or one-line installs, I'm sure they could do it too.
I like to install the NVIDIA driver using this it is still not an official support from fedora but it is the fastest way on fedora also note that the devs says that it's Only tested on 9XX/10XX/20XX/30XX series discrete NVIDIA cards.
Huh, so it's like the one I used for Arch, wish it showed up in my Googling <_<
i am curious as to what you were using for arch linux
Purple Library Guy Apr 10, 2022
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Narvarth
Quoting: PierreLucDaoustIt felt like a downgrade, but a leaved Manjaro for Mint a few months ago. I had anxiety attacks everytime I read «kernel» and/or «Nvidia» in the updates. Mint was the winner of the day.

That's why I switched from Debian (after 10 years) to Mint. Debian was systematically breaking with nvidia update. I had to use bash scripts to get back my drivers, or even with the terminal (for ex, change the actual gcc version, which didn't match the one used to compile the nvidia drivers, etc.).
Mint is really a relaxing distro, even though I use it for "advanced use".

The problem with Debian is that it currently doesn't have enough maintainers left to support the releases throughout their lifecycle. So a lot of security fixes come very late in Debian. And there are also some other problems with Debian at the moment: https://unixsheikh.com/articles/the-delusions-of-debian.html

The browsers in Debian Stable are also very outdated versions, while in FreeBSD, for example, which is a more stable system than Debian, you always have the latest browser versions of Firefox and Chromium.

If you really seriously want good stability, then FreeBSD is currently better than just about all Linux distros: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2022/01/24/why-were-migrating-many-of-our-servers-from-linux-to-freebsd/
It is difficult to describe the degree to which I don't give a damn about FreeBSD.
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