I’ve been utilizing Fedora as my go-to server operating system for over a decade, starting around Fedora 13 and consistently progressing through the subsequent major releases. Throughout this journey, Fedora has proven to be a reliable choice, offering several noteworthy advantages.
One of the standout features of Fedora, reminiscent of its desktop counterpart, is the availability of up-to-date and cutting-edge packages. With the backing of Red Hat, compatibility with a range of software, including SystemD and FirewallD, enhances its appeal for server applications.
However, it’s crucial to consider Fedora’s rapid release cycle, with a new version emerging approximately every six months and a 13-month support window for each release. While this frequent update schedule ensures access to the latest features, it can pose challenges for server environments where uptime is critical, and system administrators may find it demanding to keep up with the pace while managing compliance, audits, and other business processes.
Despite these considerations, my personal experience with Fedora as a server has been exceptionally positive. The OS has demonstrated robust performance across diverse environments, seamlessly adapting to various setups, from bare metal and virtual machines to containers. The flexibility extends from smaller hardware configurations like the Raspberry Pi to more substantial servers with 40+ vCPUs and 1.5TB RAM.
SELinux, a crucial component for security, seamlessly integrates with most applications, but I have encountered some challenges with WINE headless server programs, particularly for hosting Windows-based game servers not originally designed for Linux. Additionally, compatibility with Debian-based Crypto wallets proved to be a stumbling block, requiring the use of a Debian VM for compilation and subsequent transfer to Fedora.
In terms of server redundancy and monitoring, I rely on three Fedora servers equipped with essential software such as Nginx, Grafana, Prometheus, Influxdb, and fping. Wireguard and Samba facilitate automated file transfers between another set of servers, contributing to an efficient setup.
Automation plays a significant role in my server management, with Ansible and Bash scripts streamlining tasks such as package installations, configuration adjustments, and firewall rule setups. Each Fedora server is configured for self-startup to ensure uninterrupted operation in case of power failure or manual reboots.
I’ve successfully integrated an LSI/Intel server RAID card into one of my Fedora servers, and the third-party RPM package for monitoring (storcli64) installed seamlessly. LSI card driver support is built into the Linux kernel, contributing to a hassle-free experience.
The only notable limitation I’ve encountered pertains to desktop gaming, a domain where I’m exploring transitioning to Fedora. For gaming servers requiring Steam/SteamCMD and Windows DLLs, alternative solutions might be more suitable, unless willing to navigate potential challenges with WINE and SELinux adjustments.
In conclusion, the suitability of Fedora as a server hinges on your specific use case. For web or Internet of Things servers, it stands out as an excellent choice. However, if your requirements involve gaming servers with Steam dependencies, alternative options may warrant consideration. As I’ve explored various Linux and *BSD systems over the years, Fedora has proven its versatility, offering a compelling solution for a range of server applications.
Yes, both are well known and (even if sometimes some people says they have lemons, for both bands) pretty solid, mine is 14 months old and runs 8h/day as my work PC
I think a lot of these must share a bunch of components. I really like my TRIGKEY, especially the Ryzen 5 ($270). Everything worked OOTB with Linux (I didn’t even boot into Windows before wiping it), the fan never ran unless under load, and it was super easy to open and upgrade. I also got the Ryzen 7; the wifi module doesn’t have a supported driver (under Linux), the hardware is harder to access, and it runs significantly hotter - so I recommend the Ryzen 5.
I had a beelink ser5, and without giving you the bench marks, I can tell you that many games that were unplayable on cinnamon or kde, did work in openbox. I would log out and back into that DE just to play games.
Just my observation. I have upgraded my PC so I haven’t needed to repeat that with my new one.
Frankly, that’s the reason – the original reason, and the most important – to use Free Software. With very few exceptions, the origin story of every Free Software project was somebody getting fed up with a piece of proprietary software either abusing them or just not doing what they wanted it to do. In fact, the entire Free Software movement itself was invented in the first place because Richard Stallman got fed up with Xerox’s bullshit back in the day!
So yeah, there you go: that’s the only reason you need, and you already knew it.
Yeah I fucking love that font. Better than Noto Mono because in Inconsolata the zeros have a cross through them and therefore it’s easier to distinguish them from the letter O.
The only downside is that it hasn’t been updated since 2015-12-04 and thus only has “the base ASCII set and … the Latin 1, 2, and 9 complements”. So it works for most English-speaking purposes, but runs into problems if you try to use certain symbols used outside of that context, like other languages or some special characters. I don’t run into it often enough to be too much of a problem, but it is there.
Like I said, I don’t really run into it enough to need another piece of software installed on my computer, but that is definitely something I need to keep in the back of my mind. It seems delightful! ^_____^ Thank you!
Seems unreasonably slow to me that xterm would take a second to start. My two computers running kernel 6.7 are slow than the machine in the test, both have BTRFS on LUKS.
I tried a cold start of xterm on my older thinkpad with an NVMe drive at ~0.3s.
A cold start on my desktop (also NVMe), 0.08s.
I’m unable to reproduce. I wonder if he might’ve had a fresh install with some background operations grinding on, or some indexing going on.
Yeah; my somewhat up-to-date thinkbook with NVMe drive cold boots to Cinnamon desktop in under 8 seconds, terminal window opens in the blink of an eye. BTRFS is not without its problems, but they’re more along the lines of specific RAID configs not being what you’d wish for; I’ve never heard a complaint about speed before, and I’ve never had that problem myself.
It would be best to try every single one separately, otherwise you’ll have dozens of programs that do the exact same thing, like file explorers.
That said, with Fedora you can list available desktop environments using the default package manager, dnf. In a terminal use the dnf group list command to list all available desktop environments:
dnf group list --available *desktop
Install the required desktop environment using the dnf install command. Ensure to prefix with the @ sign, for example:
Thought fully switching a desktop environment up to your login screen and all is a little more complicated and can end up bricking your system if you don’t know what your doing. For those cases, you also would need to swap the system identity. Not entirely sure what was the command right…
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