I’ve been using Debian-based distros most of my adult Linux life, but I read recently that KDE has a better experience on Fedora than Kubuntu, so I want to try it out.
I already know that I won’t be able to use apt, but what other differences should I expect with fedora?
The do not have an LTS release? What is upgrading like? When should you upgrade if you want stability?
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Have faith in flatpaks
I was using Fedora because someone recommended it, and the rolling release model broke stuff for me multiple times so I am no longer using it (liking release models specifically based on Debian more).
You may find that some multimedia format doesn’t play properly out of the box. If you’re into pirated movies, you should know that HEVC (H265) as well as EAC3 are affected.
There are workarounds, but would need some manual steps.
Better how? If you want latest updates maybe your wanna try Fedora. Personally I would go with EndeavourOS with is based on Arch Linux btw. If I want latest I would go with bleeding edge
Otherwise stick with Debian.
Hey there!
I used Mint for the last years and it is my main distro for Desktops for more than a decade with the exception of Manjaro for a couple of years. Since I wanted to try KDE, I was looking for another Distro for my new notebook.
I really like Debian based distros, because I’m very familiar with it. And I do like Ubuntu. I do not like all of Canonicals desicions, but have to admit, that they do a lot of good stuff for the linux community too.
Still, there were some reason why I did not want to use Kubuntu. I also wanted to have up to date software and kernel and therefore Debian itself was out. Time to look for a new distro.
After trying Nobara, Auroora, openSUSE Tumbleweed and PikaOS and finding some super anoying stuff in all of them, I thought I should give Fedora a try. That should have been the obvious choice in the first place, but I think I wanted something more “special”.
And what should I say? It just works. Installation and setup was easy, all my hardware was detected, I got used to dnf super quickly and I’m super happy with it. It has only been a week and therefore I have no long term experience, but my first impression is, that it is a super clean and well defined distro. I’m super positive that it will be solid choice for a daily driver.
as others have said KDE is going to work the same on Fedora as it does on your current Kubuntu system. You may be thinking “oh Fedora KDE, it must be really good on that” no that’s just how Fedora does things. I mean they have Fedora Sway and it doesn’t mean that Sway is superior on THAT version of Fedora. it just how they roll with their distro. Like say you install CachyOS as an example and during installation it presents you the option to install pretty much EVERY DE and WM in existence. Feodra simply doesn’t give you that option during install, you need to figure out which one you want to use before downloading the specific ISO for it.
So is it a better experince? it’s the same experience honestly.
I hear what you’re saying, it’s just that I’ve heard different: that kde Fedora gets a lot of testing, and up-to-date packages earlier than kubuntu. Those sound like good reasons to try it out.
I usually wait for a month or two before upgrading to the latest version, but haven’t had any troubles.
First thing I do is enable rpm nonfree per this documentation
https://rpmfusion.org/ConfigurationAnd the second is to switch to ffmpeg and add some HAC as per this documentation
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/MultimediaIf you run an newer Nvidia card you might wanna grab some drivers too, see
https://github.com/devangshekhawat/Fedora-43-Post-Install-Guide?tab=readme-ov-file#nvidia-driversConsider a Universal Blue image instead.
Chromebook easy Fedora out of the box experience. Batteries, Bells and Whistles included.
Easy peasy rollbacks and upgrades.
No more needing to manually add RPM Fusion just to get working hardware acceleration for Media in Firefox or to install Steam. Or extra steps for Nvidia drivers.
I started on Fedora KDE 32 eventually migrated to Fedora Kinoite 38 and have been a happy Bazzite enjoyer ever since. 🎮🐧🥹
Baked in #Distrobox, #Homebrew and #Bazzar Make installing and exporting
.rpmor.debfiles painless. Integrated Homebrew and Flatpak installers for installing apps.And super useful and convenient #ujust commands you won’t find on Fedora.
Can even Fork/Make your own Image, or checkout some Community images.
George made a Project Bluefin LTS image. Or you can also be more bleeding edge with
testingbranches.Developer Experience images are also available.
💯 this.
I’ve tried Fedora multiple times and to be honest I’ve always found it to be a pain in the ass. The out of the box experience is also severely lacking for the average user who just wants a modern operating system with all the apps and codecs pre installed and ready to go.
These days, any laptop or desktop machine in my house gets Bluefin, while gaming/media devices get Bazzite.
not this. you need to reboot every time to get new shit. that’s antithetical to how I’ve used desktopS (plural, yo) since the early aughts. my shit gets suspended in the evening and woken in the morning with all apps and windows how I left them. rebooting and breaking my flow makes this thing is a non-starter.
I mean, are you so desperate to get system updates that you can’t manually restart, say, every few days? You should be rebooting every time you get a kernel update, anyway.
who’s “desperate”? I don’t wanna reboot to get new package updates. that’s a stupid concept that was done with in like Windows 98 days. I don’t reboot my desktop or my phone for weeks, that’s hella comfortable and I’m not going back from that.
if the crowd pushing the immutable stack would lead with that, or at very least mention it, I’d keep shtum.
All the GUI and homebrew apps can be updated in-session; it’s just the system side of things that needs a reboot after updating. Like your smartphone, the underlying system doesn’t need updating on a daily basis.
I get it - your personal habits don’t jive with the immutable paradigm. But for the average user, I’d say it’s not a major issue.
you have an excellent path as you can truly appreciate fedora only if you’ve been through ubuntu’s abuse i.e. the snap crap. my contention is that fedora should never be the first distro, but the next step, after you’ve figured out what’s what with ubuntu or mint.
KDE don’t got “closer relations” with fedora, it’s just that you’ll get new shit sooner. and fedora is the antithesis of LTS.
the only issue hindering normal, everyday use is rectified by following the step-by-step instructions from rpmfusion (codecs and GPU drivers).
switched to fedora coming from windows and ubuntu. I update when I feel like it (every one to two weeks). It is largely rock solid and the only times i had Trouble was because of xone, which I installed via the source and then forgot to remove/update for quite a while.
dnf and apt are quite alike, took only a short while to adjust and now i like it as much if not more.
The KDE Plasma experience is very nice. I can fully recommend Fedora
Thank you for your recommendation and sharing your experience with dnf!
Better in what way? What are you unsatisfied with?
I use KDE on Debian and I have zero complaints.
The main things I don’t like are when random stuff is broken.
This doesn’t happen that much on my Kubuntu laptop, but it did happen on Ubuntu Studio, which had a combination of Wayland and NVIDIA drivers.
In my upcoming project I plan to use the KDE big screen interface, so I would prefer to get the most up-to-date and most tested packages, so unfortunately that leaves out Debian.
Most up-to-date and most tested are opposites.
Exactly. That’s why I’m not using Debian in this situation. I’m thinking that fedora will strike a better balance for what I’m trying to achieve.
I don’t want the most bleeding edge KDE neon rolling release distribution because that’s hardly tested at all.
I have Fedora KDE on a few mini-pc’s as well as a Framework 13 laptop, I love it. I used to use various Debian-based distros for many years before this as well.
I love Fedora’s up-to-date packages and kernel. It’s not quite a rolling release like Arch but it’s far better than the older than dirt Debian stuff. Yes, I know why Debian is the way it is, but I have discovered that I like being more current than that these days.
There is no LTS release, Fedora aims for two major releases a year. It’s pretty seamless since underlying packages and kernel are already current.
Give it a whirl, you will enjoy it :)
Why would KDE work better on Fedora than any other distro?
I saw this in a video comparing Linux distros, I assume that reason is that KDE developers might work more closely with fedora developers to get their updated packages in the repositories and get them tested before the releases are made. And what I’ve heard, Ubuntu does that more closely with GNOME and fedora does that more closely with KDE, but I don’t really know anything.
KDE Neon is being used as playground for KDE, not Fedora. They update daily there: https://kde.org/distributions/
This might change when they are done developing KDE Linux: https://community.kde.org/KDE_Linux
KDE Neon is basically dead and only has one developer. It has also has numerous problems in the past making it unstable. KDE has an official distro (KDE Linux) now that they actually use as a test bed, though it is in alpha last I heard.
Fedora has amazing support for KDE in my experience. Fedora or openSUSE.
My set of recommendations:
RPMFusion is recommended to add to your system. It’s the best way to use Steam, certain drivers (nvidia, v4l2loopback, etc.) as needed.
SELinux is present, but the default policy sets are unlikely to impede your usage. The SELinux applet (seapplet) is a useful tool for diagnosing on the very rare chance you’re finding permission denied somewhere that cannot otherwise be explained.
If you pull most of your software as flatpaks from Flathub already, your day-to-day experience won’t be much different from Debian.
Fedora’s equivalent to LTS releases would be the downstream LTS releases provided by Redhat, RockyLinux, AlmaLinux, and others. They don’t have the same package sets as base fedora, and may need extra repositories to get some of the less essential, but ‘core’ software back. Ultimately not much of a reason to run them on a desktop workstation for personal use.
Upgrading is pretty seamless. It’s as easy as graphical updates now or otherwise using the system upgrade module in dnf. I generally have the policy of waiting 2-4 weeks for any minor bugs that made it into a new release to settle. I have been expediting my upgrades for the past few releases in order to catch bugs before friends and family upgrade their machines and haven’t found any large problems regardless.
Fedora doesn’t inherently expect a system to upgrade forever without maintenance, with 5 years being a typical target for things that may break. With that said, it is good to read the release notes before upgrading to the next edition, as there can rarely be something (like the recent recommendation and changed default for a larger /boot partition) that may require maintenance on a long-term system before upgrading. That said, you do have time to hold off on upgrading the distro, as the general lifetime of each release is ~13 months, giving 1 month overlap into a release two releases ahead. For instance, Fedora 43 will still be maintained up to a month into Fedora 45’s release.
Here is what I’ve done so far with RPMFusion.
- Installed and configured the repositories via the graphical method on this page: https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration
- Add app metadata to Discover via the “AppStream metadata” section. I only needed the first command,
AppStream metadata. - Followed the instructions on https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia
- Installed Steam via Discover, button says “Install From Fedora Linux.” I guess this is --a flatpak-- included in one of the repositories? It is hard to tell what is going on under the hood.
- EDIT: Added Flathub (was not enabled by default). Now, flatpak results show up in Discover.
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepoMy impression of
dnfso far is that the fact that it defaults to (y/N) and asks you more often for confirmation is unfortunate, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.Just an aside, I’ve already gotten the “Oops, we’ve encountered a problem” message, but it disappeared too quickly for me to tell what it was about. Also the start menu doesn’t open any more. (EDIT: Now it works again). So that’s weird. My two monitors were working fine at first, but now I am getting, “Couldn’t apply display configuration: Position of output HDMI-A-1 is negative, that is not supported.”
So it looks like installing Fedora/RPMFusion is not without its speedbumps, but overall pretty easy!
It uses DNF which has its own set of features compared to APT. In general I think DNF is much better although it does have more overhead.
You also could look into Fedora Atomic https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/
Atomic desktops use overlays instead of packages which means you get a much cleaner system at the expense of some flexibility.
