Just switched to fedora after 4 years of archi. LUKS broke, the h264/h265 aren’t there, and it has redhat’s repo of flatpak selectioned by default rather than flathub. But hey, at least printers work OOTB!
The media codecs is bloody annoying, yes. Sure it’s only a command or two, but it really should just be a tickbox in the installer like it is on, say, Ubuntu. So big agreement there.
As for the Flatpak repo, Fedora switched to Flathub as the default a while ago. IIRC it only doesn’t if you choose to have no non-foss software during the installation (in which case of course you’d expect to not get full Flathub access!)
I think Fedora is an overall pretty great distro for beginners aside from their media codecs bone-headedness and their god-awful installer (which is getting replaced).
Fedora has better than Ubuntu/Mint hardware compatibility these days, so I’d argue it’s a reasonable recommendation, especially if the user isn’t going to need nonfree video codecs, but even if they do, adding that in Fedora is going to be easier than upgrading your Ubuntu/Mint kernel so you can use your video card that’s too new.
Well I personally think that Fedora is a bad recommendation too. It’s not just about Arch.
Just switched to fedora after 4 years of archi. LUKS broke, the h264/h265 aren’t there, and it has redhat’s repo of flatpak selectioned by default rather than flathub. But hey, at least printers work OOTB!
I’d disagree with that, mostly.
The media codecs is bloody annoying, yes. Sure it’s only a command or two, but it really should just be a tickbox in the installer like it is on, say, Ubuntu. So big agreement there.
As for the Flatpak repo, Fedora switched to Flathub as the default a while ago. IIRC it only doesn’t if you choose to have no non-foss software during the installation (in which case of course you’d expect to not get full Flathub access!)
I think Fedora is an overall pretty great distro for beginners aside from their media codecs bone-headedness and their god-awful installer (which is getting replaced).
…and the installer is garbage.
And slow repo sync but it’s not that important
Both getting fixed with Fedora 41 luckily, DNF5 by default and a new installer they’ve been working on
Good but other issues will remain and Fedora was never meant to be a noob-friendly distro in the first place.
Fedora has better than Ubuntu/Mint hardware compatibility these days, so I’d argue it’s a reasonable recommendation, especially if the user isn’t going to need nonfree video codecs, but even if they do, adding that in Fedora is going to be easier than upgrading your Ubuntu/Mint kernel so you can use your video card that’s too new.
I always just say “and google ‘what should I do after installing fedora’ and follow along except ‘fastest mirror=true’ don’t bother.”
Seems to work fine so far. 'Swhat I did.