When I had no (useful) Internet where I was living a few years ago I would save a list of packages to download from Synaptic to a drive and then when I was somewhere I could I would download them, then when I got home I could plug in the drive and update/install them.
Two more things that came to mind. If you want to use another desktop environment than gnome (default), you should be aware of spins: fedoraproject.org/spins/
Spins work against the same repositories, they just come with other sets of packages preinstalled.
Also, you said you’re using amd gpu. Fedora has the drivers for that out of the box. But due to fedora’s strict FOSS policy, some hardware acceleration features are stripped out of the amd driver. I mentioned you can get the unstripped drivers from rpmfusion. That is detailed here: rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia
Those packages work together with the drivers from the official repos. They can get out of sync. That never happened to me, yet. But if an update mentions some conflict with mesa-*, just don’t do that update until that conflict disappears. If you ever run into the issue you can also undo the last update with the dnf history commands.
Alternatively, you can use you phone to USB-tether? Or if you’re on NixOS or Guix, where binaries stop working, you can build a custom ISO image with the necessarily tools already available.
You don’t have to use an LTS version if you don’t want to stick to it… Also Fedora is on a yearly upgrade cycle too, just so you know, it’s not a rolling distro. You can actually upgrade sooner on Ubuntu because it’s on a 6-month upgrade cycle.
Fedora is on a six monthly cycle just like non-LTS Ubuntu; neither distro is on a yearly release cycle. The previous release is just supported for an extra six months, for one year of support per release for Fedora.
Fedora itself isn’t rolling but the kernel and mesa packages do roll between releases, and it is more bleeding edge than Ubuntu generally.
My daily driver right now is an old Lenovo Ideapad (50-70 I think) with EndeavourOS, I have a few other assorted Thinkpads and Ideapads running mainly EOS or Arch, and home servers running Arch. I use Arch btw.
The “backup” laptops are flexible though, I distro-hop on them fairly often. Older Lenovos are usually great for Linux compatibility.
They don’t require an account (username/password) for you to use. You pay them for an account number and use Mullvad VPN by inputting it.
They were about to be raided but they managed to get out of that with their lawyers.
It’s also very easy to use on Linux because there’s a GUI, which is great. CLI seems overkill for an app that needs to be turned on and off (i.e. NordVPNJ my old VPN).
I honestly think CLI control is essential in any app. Because this is the most rudimentary and accessible way for other apps and scripts to interact with the apps features and control over the system.
OpenSUSE for most of my systems. It has been going for 7 years with no upgrade issues, and nVidia hosts an OpenSUSE version of their proprietary drivers, so you get good GPU support. YAST2 GUI, btrfs snapshot, and rollbacks mean if you break something you are up and running by picking another boot snapshot. On an older laptop from 2010 i gound NixOS was the best choice out of all the distros
Honestly, if you like Ubuntu but dislike Snaps, Linux Mint might be a better choice than Fedora if you’re not as comfortable with Linux. Mint is basically “Ubuntu without all Canonical’s garbage.”
I agree with this, Fedora is pretty boring. It’s polished and well thought out. Just wait a few weeks before upgrading to new versions, but that goes for pretty much everyone besides Debian stable.
Do not use Mint. Ubuntu uses GNOME which is modern and secure. Mint will need a year or so to get Wayland support, and it will always be behind on security updates. Just run unsnap, install the apps and Gnome tweaks you want I would say.
I guess, but Canonical keeps trying to stand out against the crowd with one thing or another. Mir, Snap, etc. Unless you buy into their supposed vision, why bother?
My preferred daily has been opensuse tumble weed on my self built desktop and Lenovo laptops. I had been using Leap on a couple old MacBooks (one air, and one mbp). I tried nixos about 6 months ago and I’ve migrated several of my machines over to nix. Opensuse and nix are without question my top two.
Servers, I run Debian server, Ubuntu server, and rocky.
Linux Mint Debian Edition is what I’m using on my Mac Mini. Before that it was the Ubuntu Linux Mint.
I have a 2015 MacBook Pro they was running opensuse Leap but it won’t boot or charge now. I need to take it to an Apple repair shop for troubleshooting.
If I were looking for a new laptop I’d look at some of the recent ThinkPad’s like the X1. Or I’d like for a good deal on a new AMD Ryzen 5 or 7 equipped laptop .
But if you’re just going to watch YouTube, you could easily get a Celeron based 13 inch laptop from the past 2 years and is should work fine for that.
Don’t move to Fedora. They are Red Hat and recently shat all over Free Software principles and broke the GPL by making Red Hat Enterprise CLOSED SOURCE.
They are dead to the Linux and Free Software world. You’ll be going from bad to worse.
I HIGHLY recommend Linux Mint Debian Edition 6. It’s based directly on Debian (one of the oldest distros ever and the best), is Free Software loving and 100% Community. No Greedy Corp Inc in sight.
It runs the excellent Cinnamon desktop and the Mint team have set up all the apps etc perfectly. And because it’s Debian it’s super reliable and has massive amounts of apps etc .
It’s basically the opposite. Fedora is the community based upstream, and some of it reaches RHEL, but Fedora isn’t Red Hat.
What Red Hat did was limit who they distribute the source code to to paid customers, and add provisions to their TOS to give them the right to end their paid contract with you if you redistribute it. You aren’t prevented from doing so, but choosing to do so prevents you from getting future versions, which you were only entitled to through said contract. They also still open-source to CentOS Stream, just upstream of RHEL.
Now, do I think it was a good move by RH, no. Was it legal, probably, yes, but IANAL, eventual courts will tell. Did it go against the “spirit” of the GPL, maybe, yes. But is RHEL closed-source? No, it’s objectively not. Please, don’t spread misinformation.
Read. Then read again. Then read again until you get it.
From gnu.org “What is free software?”
“Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.
You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
As you can see Free Software (and the GPL) says that the end user has the right to FREELY USE AND REDISTRIBUTE the software, AS IS.
In other words, I could get a copy of RHEL and without making a single change, could redistribute it or even sell it.
Yet Red Hat calls this “freeloading”. Yet that is PRECISELY what Free Software is about!
Rocky Linux, Alma Linux etc were well within their rights to rebrand and redistribute RHEL bug for bug to others. Red Hat had no right to shut them out. Yes they could have made them a customer and charged them for it, but they didn’t do that. And if I’m not mistaken they made the binaries available, not the source code. Meaning that Rocky and Alma would need to spend weeks compiling the code before they could even make it ready for distribution.
Now, someone could become a client of Red Hat, get the code and then host it on a server for anyone to download. But I have a feeling Red Hat would drop them as soon as they found out.
Basically RH now have a closed source mentality.
As for Fedora, stop being so naive. Were you born yesterday? I’m an IT Pro and I can tell your if my company set up a working group full of full time employees to work on a “community” distro which then gets directly absorbed into it company and used in our enterprise products, that working group is to all intents and purposes a part of my company since I’m freaking paying their salaries, and they are working on my freaking product!
The last time the project leader measured it, only about 40% of Fedora contributors were known to be Red Hat employees. So while it’s a big chunk, it’s not a majority.
Imagine working on big parts of the Linux desktop and projects just use your source code and build exact clones off your Distro, while all the developers you pay need the income to keep contributing to awesome modern software.
It is difficult but businesses are asked if Linux Desktop needs money, not hobby users.
They shouldn’t have used Linux in that case because according to GNU, the FSF and Richard Stallman, if you use Free Software under the GPL you are agreeing to the following:
“Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.
You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
As you can see, they are required by the principles of free software to let others distribute it, when without changing a single line of code… Don’t go calling us freeloaders when were practicing Free Software principles.
You better hope that Cinnamon migrates to Wayland before Red Hat stops supporting Xorg. Despite the deeply researched and evidence based opinion above, Red Hat is the the primary contributor to many of the technologies propping up Mint. Xorg is MIT licensed of course and Red Hat has no obligation to share their changes for Xorg with Mint but they do. Most of the original software Red Hat writes is released under the GPL and used by every other distro. The very first program that Debian runs when it boots was written and is maintained by Red Hat. Fedora was founded by Red Hat to explicitly be community based and they pay the salaries of many of the prominent contributors. Regardless of what you think of Red Hat’s behaviour, I am embarrassed for anybody that honestly believes Red Hat is closed source, even without the all caps.
Can you read? Have a read of what Richard Stallman says Free Software is:
“Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.
You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
Read carefully. Several times if you don’t get it at first. Then go cry in a corner for being a jackass
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