Fedora, Arch, or EndeavourOS?

Hi, I was here and asked about a few distros already, so here’s a quick summary of my situation:

I’m thinking about what distro to put onto my new Laptop, which will be used for University, Work, and just general daily usage. I am currently using EndeavourOS on my main PC and have been decently satisfied, but I want to experiment more. I’ve already asked if Arch was fine for this situation, to which the answer was a general “Yes, but keep x in mind” and I’ve asked about NixOS, where the answer was generally a no.

I’ve been looking around a bit more, and now I’m kind of curious about Fedora, specifically the KDE spin (or i3, I haven’t quite decided). It seems to be cutting edge, compared to Arch’s (and by extension EndeavourOS’s) bleeding edge, and I’m wondering what you all think of it. From what I can gather it has basically all traits which people used to enjoy in Ubuntu, before Canonical dropped the ball on that. While it’s not rolling release, the stability improvements and user experience compared to something like Arch, or even a more comfortable fork like EndeavourOS, seem quite decent, but in your experience, does that make up for the lack of the AUR and reduced applicability of the Arch Wiki?

I’m curious to hear about your experiences and recommendations!

**Edit:**I feel like I need to clarify, I know about the difference between EndeavourOS and Arch, I mostly just brought it up as a note that I am somewhat familiar with arch-based systems, and as a question of if it’d be stupid to just go with raw Arch, as EndeavourOS is basically the same, but with a more comfortable installer. I should have specified that more clearly in the first place, my apologies.

Para_lyzed,

I have been using Fedora Workstation for years now, and I plan to switch to the KDE spin when Fedora 40 is released. I will absolutely never miss the rolling release model, and Fedora has been stable enough that I basically never have any issues. You get updates quickly, but even with the speed it manages to be very stable, at least compared to bleeding edge distros like Arch. There are still MANY things you can use the Arch wiki for in Fedora, so it’s still my first place to check for most things. But there are also forums for Fedora, and lots of community members that have answered questions in those forums, just not to the extent of something like Ubuntu. It is mainstream enough that you can find most things with Linux releases packaged for it, so I haven’t had an issue with compatibility, either. It’s overall a very solid choice, and I would recommend it.

Secret300,

Fedora has been what I’ve been using for years. I used arch before for about a year and I still love it but I’ve just been fuckin with fedora

iopq,

NixOS is actually the best for an experience. For the basic stuff it’s easy enough, just put more programs into the system packages list to install some stuff

When you need to have older versions of packages while still having newest versions of others is where it really shines

thayer, (edited )

My vote is Fedora. It offers fresh yet stable packaging, and a polished experience that you can rely on. You can then use flatpaks for even newer apps, or opt to run Arch in a container with distrobox/toolbox and play with as many cutting edge apps as you want, all as if they were installed on the host.

Finally, if you like what you see in Fedora, consider trying Fedora Silverblue, Kinoite, or any of their other immutable distros.

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Fedora, Arch, or EndeavourOS? >>>> Debian + GNOME + Flatpak.

Eeyore_Syndrome, (edited )
@Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works avatar

Also consider Universal Blue Kinoite or Bazzite:

Think Fedora Kinoite, but with extra goodness.

Miss the AUR? Just spin up an Arch Distrobox with ujust distrobox-arch and export whatever you want. just and distrobox are pretty amazing.

Can also do the same with Ubuntu/Debian distroboxes.

Atomic Fedora is amazing.

Have an Nvidia card?

Images also available for Framework and Surface as well.

Wanna make your own IMG?

Wanna focus more on work/development?

dendarion,

I recently started using Fedora 39 KDE Spin as my main driver. It mostly just works out of the box. You’ll need to add some repos to get media support etc. but that is just a quick Google-search away.

I have been using Debian for a long time for my home server and to be honest, and it never once failed me. In my experience, Debian on a server is just rock solid. When I made the switch from Win11 (I don’t like a snooping AI in Notepad) to Debian (stable) I wasn’t that happy. Apps were outdated, Wayland was f**king things up, etc. So I switched to Debian testing (trixie) and installed KDE the manual way. That way I hoped to get a really ‘clean’ system, leaving some of the standard apps (that I wouldn’t be using anyway) behind. Although Debian testing seemed really stable, the ‘manual way’ left me with some quirks that left me unhappy. For a reason I can’t remember, I decided to try out Fedora 39. And I have to say, it has been great. Up to date apps, no unexpected errors or crashes, etc.

indigomirage, (edited )

I’m really enjoying Fedora (just switched from Ubuntu and previously Debian). More current than Debian, doesn’t have Ubuntu’s canonical baggage, and more stable than Arch (nothing wrong with Arch, it’s just more bleeding edge than I want for anything other than experimenting. YMMV. And Arch documentation is fantastic - I use it to help unravel issues/find solutions on other distros after a bit of translation and sanity checks).

Fedora is well inside the Gnome camp but it’s basically unaltered so you feel freer to tweak and make it your own. (you can obviously run any environment you want).

Not sure if Red Hat’s nonsense will infect Fedora down the road but I can switch it up if I feel like it later. (for a server, I’d just do Debian or possibly Ubuntu.)

Unfortunately, my main machine remains Windows with WSL. Too many things (of what I need) just won’t run on Linux…

Hellmo_Luciferrari,

Disclaimer: I am by no means a Linux expert, but figured I could give my 2 cents.

I recently installed Fedora on one of my machines that I mainly use for web browsing, file downloading, and general office like activities. And I don’t have much experience with it yet. I specifically went the KDE route, as I am a huge fan of what KDE has to offer. That being said, for the most part everything “just works.” Sorry I don’t have much more to say about Fedora, but I will report back as I use it more.

The distro I have used for a few years now that I quite enjoy is Arch. What drew me to Arch was the fact that it is bleeding edge. That being said, as with anything bleeding edge, you should have backups and other contingency plans for failure. That should be done for all systems, but doubly so with things that are bleeding edge I would argue. Arch has been quite stable for me, but I would say that it is more tailored to someone who is looking to tinker. On my desktop, I unfortunately still run windows due to some proprietary hardware and software that I have yet to figure out how to get working within Arch. The biggest issue I have had with Arch over the few years that I have been using it comes down to the Nvidia graphics card I use in my desktop. I know not everyone has had the same issues I have had with Nvidia, but getting wayland working on it, as well as just general multi-monitor issues, have sort of taken the wind out of my sails for linux on my desktop computer.

Here are a few resources I would recommend checking out to help you make your decision [distrochooser.de](Distro Chooser) - Distro Chooser asks questions about what you are looking for and the like to help you pick a distro to try. [linux-hardware.org](Linux Hardware) - This is Linux Hardware website and is quite handy for looking into getting drivers,and checking to see if there are known bugs for specific hardware you are trying to use on a Linux system.

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Fedora has lots of weird bugs in my experience, but some people seem to love it.

Dirk,
@Dirk@lemmy.ml avatar

Nothing beats the Arch wiki, to be honest. One of the best and broadest collections of useful information around the web. And since Arch is not-too-modified in relation to upstream, all of the information is usable for most a lot of other distributions, too.

And yes: I’m using Arch, btw.

To be more specific: I’m running Arch with Hyprland (a tiling compositor for Wayland) on my DELL XPS 13 without any issues, running Arch with Openbox (X11) on my main computer since over a decade without any major issues (device is used for gaming, multimedia, video and image editing and screen recording), and on all devices I serve something from.

Since I run Arch as a server (had it as communication server, as DHCP/DNS server, as VPN endpoint on a Raspberry Pi, and as a gaming server, currently on my main server it’s used as host for a Docker setup), I can tell you, you don’t need to worry about any real issues regarding stability and performance. Arch is way less bleeding edge as non-Arch users think. Just update regularly every 2-3 weeks at least, and check the news before doing so.

I’m curious to hear about your experiences and recommendations!

It boils down to what effort you want to put into it.

If university and work usage is mainly running productivity stuff like some type of text processing or using web-based applications you likely won’t ever have any issues. If you’re constantly switching environments, need to run specific apps (maybe even 32-bit software), constantly use different video outputs, tons of different BT devices, etc. … well … Arch is of course capable of everything the bigger distributions have to offer by default (all the nice “magic” stuff that happens automatically in the background), you just need to set everything up by yourself.

I might be biased towards Arch, but maybe just try if it fits your intended purpose and if you’re willing to set up everything at least once before using it.

sharkfucker420,
@sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml avatar

I love my arch linux :)

ULS, (edited )

Arch and endeavor are the same aside from endeavors simplified installation and some apps. Both let you utilize AUR.

Fedora is good. I used it when I used to use gnome (I could use one more use of the word use). Switched to endeavor when I started using KDE.

I like having AUR. I haven’t had any update issues.

I’m sticking with endeavor for now. Fedora might be more ready out of the box though if you need regular use apps.

Use.

TooLazyDidntName,

Ive never used arch for more than a week, I was an ubuntu user for the longest time before switching to fedora a few months ago. Ive never been happier with an OS. I’m using the KDE spin

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