Inexcusable Fedora caveats after Arch (rant)

I am trying out Fedora for multiple unrelated reasons (use RHEL at work, new config, it might be more optimized) and I noticed a number of concerning caveats, even in mind with the fact that I already use RHEL:

  1. Software support seems lacking. I have a growing number of software neither the repo, nor rpmfusion has. In any other case I would need to use copr for installing community maintained packages. However copr feels relatively abandoned and unreliable. That mainly comes down to packages being undiscriminately displayed without download stats or upvote status (unless you look them up one by one). Also a large part of packages are incompatible because they were made specifically for Fedora 38 with no 39 fixup in sight. Rpmfusion is weirdly empty, I expected it to have majority of the stuff I need so I dont inevitably have to rely on copr. I already had to download executables from upstream.
  2. Install Groups. They are not getting listed properly! It only lists the most basic meta groups. This is combined with the lack of actually being able to search for groups and you got yourself a lot of random groups you wont find unless you start looking it up online.
  3. Xorg wiki page. Ex fucking cuse me?! Did I mistype something, because I clearly remember trying to use one of the most popular and allegedly well put together distros. At this point why even have a wiki page?
  4. base-x group contains everything needed for running Xorg. I will actually eat my hat if you can tell me I can find that info without stackoverflow. Cant search for the group, nothing is documented about it.

I would agree with the sentiment that I could technically write the documentation and package all the things I need in copr, but Im having serious doubts if this “platform” developed by the same guys who dont document it is actually worth the hassle.

I guess the positive thing to say about it is that it performed better for gaming than my Arch install, and I had done zero optimisations on it yet.

kyoji, (edited )

I think you are suffering culture-shock. The type of user and as a result the overall community around Fedora are far different than Arch’s, which I think might explain some of the pain points you have discovered. Not giving Fedora a pass here, they could do better (especially the missing Xorg issue), but to me it seems rather clear that your expectations and the way you started with Fedora are at odds with the majority of its users.

The AUR and the ArchWiki are phenomenal, and I don’t think any distro including Fedora can compete.

[Edit] I’d like to add one thing: I think the community around a distro really determine the quality of the experience with that distro at the edges. I daily drive Fedora because I like that there is an organization behind updates and stability. However I think that has a chilling effect on community contributions, so while you get a stable core, you miss out things only a passionate and active community can provide.

astramist,
@astramist@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I use Fedora on my workstation and somehow have trouble with packages. E.g., there is no OpenVPN 3, which I need for enterprise network. Huh, Fedora 39 doesn’t even have it in EPEL. So sad.

alt,

Software support seems lacking.

Compared to the AUR, the offering of any other distro will feel lacking (besides this one). Consider an Arch-distrobox for access to the AUR or install the Nix package manager on Fedora through Determinate Systems’ installer.

Xorg wiki page.

Fedora’s Wiki leaves a lot to desire in general, especially if you’ve come from the ArchWiki. On that note, I would argue only ArchWiki and Gentoo’s Wiki are excellent showcases of how the Wiki of a distro should look like.

Furthermore, Fedora has been the first to enable Wayland by default (since 2016 in fact). Therefore, I don’t find it that surprising that Fedora didn’t think it’s worth putting man-hours to the documentation of a project for which its sunset was in sight.

Bondrewd,

With your logic Xorg documentation should have already existed and would have needed negligible refresh.

Page history indicates it hasnt chabged since 2009!

alt,

Wayland released in 2008, so it makes sense for them to stop putting any effort soon after.

Bondrewd,

The Xorg page was initially created (imported to perhaps a new wiki) in 2008 24 May in almost its current form. Wayland released Sept 30.

kogasa,
@kogasa@programming.dev avatar

Wayland was barely competitive for a decade after that.

humdrumgentleman,

Moved from Fedora to (based on) Arch with much the same sentiment.

“The Copr is like the AUR, but better!” Um. . . . No.

Grimm665,

Sorry you’re having a rough experience, I came from Arch to Fedora and found it a much easier environment to just relax into, and for me relinquishing the extreme control and maintenance Arch gave me was freeing.

That said, I never dove deep into Arch, only had to use a few AUR packages, and never built my own pkgbuilds. Fedora doesn’t have a strong competitor to this, if you’re used to doing these things in your system, you will find Fedora lacking. I haven’t had any issue finding the software I need in Fedora repos so clearly my use case is simpler and Fedora fits me better in that regard.

I haven’t had issues with install groups, but then again i don’t really use them. I guess they probably aren’t that great or else i’d use them more. Still, hasn’t been a big issue.

Idk why you have an issue with xorg, if you want Wayland Fedora supports it out of the box and was one of the first to do so, switching to it should be easy. Wayland is still missing support for key things, for example Synergy clients just flat out don’t work, so having xorg support is still valuable, at least to me.

Overall it sounds like you’re missing the power of Arch. That’s understandable, Arch is more flexible and arguably more powerful if you’re willing to spend twice the time maintaining it. Fedora has saner defaults and is set up as a more well-rounded system out of the box, but if it’s built in a way that isn’t useful to you and you feel like you have to bend it to your will, Arch is probably the better option.

Bondrewd,

Im ready for it not being as easily managable as Arch if I want to “customize”.

I didnt mean to imply it has no Arch-like documentation, I said it has NO documentation. Even wayland is arguably missing basic documentation other than a todo page and a basic short explanation.

Let me put it in perspective: You install a basic desktop. Xorg wont get installed even for a “Windows managers” group where most of the WMs are xorg based. And then I have to find how to get all the xorg packages without all the functionality that was meant to provide the needed info.

Whatever defaults or saneness it has, I just find these inexcusable faults. Im having a really hard time understanding why it would be preferred like that and I can get no answers. Neither I do for similar issues when I try something like say OpenSUSE. I kind of want to find out whether Im actually wrong.

Grimm665,

I’ll give you that, documentation compared to the Arch wiki is not as comprehensive; nothing’s as comprehensive as the Arch wiki lol

I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to accomplish:

“Let me put it in perspective: You install a basic desktop”

If i’m installing a basic Fedora desktop, i’m going to their website, downloading the default ISO, and installing the default Gnome desktop. That has xorg and wayland and display drivers and all the things you need to get it running on pretty much any hardware. If i don’t want Gnome i’ll use an ISO with a different desktop, still get wayland and xorg with the default install.

If you’re installing Fedora from the minimal install and then building the desktop (or window manager, maybe you use i3 or openbox) up from scratch like you would in Arch, you’re going about it the wrong way. You can go this route but i’m not surprised you’d run into some issues there and have to solve for missing packages (as you would in Arch too, though the Arch Wiki is much more helpful with this type of install).

Bondrewd,

I’ll give you that, documentation compared to the Arch wiki is not as comprehensive; nothing’s as comprehensive as the Arch wiki lol

I linked the wiki page, that does not adhere to the meaning to documentation in any way shape or form.

If i’m installing a basic Fedora desktop, i’m going to their website, downloading the default ISO, and installing the default Gnome desktop. That has xorg and wayland and display drivers and all the things you need to get it running on pretty much any hardware. If i don’t want Gnome i’ll use an ISO with a different desktop, still get wayland and xorg with the default install.

I installed with the netinstall image and ticked the meta group meant to be made for a collection few Window Managers you want installed. It failed to install Xorg.

If you’re installing Fedora from the minimal install and then building the desktop (or window manager, maybe you use i3 or openbox) up from scratch like you would in Arch, you’re going about it the wrong way. You can go this route but i’m not surprised you’d run into some issues there and have to solve for missing packages (as you would in Arch too, though the Arch Wiki is much more helpful with this type of install).

I didnt want to build it up from scratch, I was only missing Xorg that I expected to be installed. I didnt even understand why it would not be installed for a Group containing X11 based WM.

Even if we argue that it should not be built from ground up, not having any way of knowing that base-x contains all the Xorg packages means that the distro lacks basic debugging capabilities if something does go haywire. But I wont go further into this because it would be ridiculous to debate this. It was a thing on every single distro 30 years ago!

Grimm665,

Trust me I’m more on your side than you think, what you described should indeed work as you expected. If I selected the Window Managers group during install and it specifically installed things that need Xorg, I’d be surprised if they weren’t working on first boot because of missing Xorg. The Anaconda installer that Fedora uses has generally been very reliable for me, but I haven’t installed Fedora in that specific way, I’ve always chosen a graphical desktop and then installed other window managers or DEs on top of it, or gone with a minimal server install for headless deployments with no GUI at all.

The fact that this was hard to troubleshoot is not a good look for Fedora either, even if this is a somewhat non-standard setup. It’s bad UX that base-x is not documented or easy to find, though on the positive side, I’ve never needed to know that base-x contains all the Xorg packages because Fedora has, for me, seemed to manage this on its own without needing me to know this detail. One more implementation detail I don’t have to deal with is a positive in my book, right up until you have to deal with it, then it’s super frustrating.

Bondrewd,

I think Im starting to realize why these 10%> distros are where they are. Every time I go out to try something like OpenSUSE or Fedora it is always the same kind of issues. This 0 hour “what the hell, why cant I find a basic thing” questions that come up even well into being an advanced user.

The Debian and Arch sphere are well deserved to be having the largest share these days. I guess I made a mistake throwing off Debian every time just because I wanted something “cooler”.

Thats it. That is indeed THE main issue (or ballpark of issues) of Fedora. Like it should actually be needed to get fixed to get somewhere.

KISSmyOS,

Full agreement. I tried out Fedora and OpenSUSE, but the lack of documentation, lack of googlable answers and weird lack of some basic functionality drove me back to Debian every time.

Slackware is a notable exception: It has basically no up-to-date online documentation and googling your issues usually doesn’t help cause hardly anyone uses it.
But it ships with easy-to-understand text files that are usually right in the directory where you want to configure things, written by the main developer himself. And if you ask a question on linuxquestions.org, chances are you may get your answer from one of the dev team members.

mateomaui,

After reading this I feel like I made the right choice dual booting linux mint debian and garuda arch.

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