 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 969, 23 May 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 21st issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Over the past week or so we've seen the release of new versions of Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and several clones of Red Hat's distribution. This sudden splash of releases continues to form ripples as we begin this week with a look at Fedora 36 Workstation. Read on to learn what Jeff Siegel thought of this latest release. Then, in our News section, we continue the focus on Fedora as Fedora Magazine publishes tips on how to upgrade Fedora's Silverblue edition. We also learn that Fedora 34 is nearing the end of its supported life. Meanwhile, in another corner of the Linux ecosystem, the Proxmox team has pushed updates to the project's Backup Server edition, offering new features and off-line recovery options. We also report on Canonical looking to improve the state of gaming on Ubuntu while HP plans to ship laptops with Pop!_OS installed on them. In place of a Questions and Answers column this week we shift our focus to a community project which is resurrecting the Unity desktop environment. Unity was the flagship desktop for Ubuntu for several years until Canonical stopped developing it, but now a small team is trying to breathe new life into the desktop. We share early impressions of the new version of Unity. What do you think of Unity making a comeback? Is it a desktop you want to see grow and evolve or some which doesn't hold any appeal? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. We're pleased to share the details of last week's releases and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jeff Siegel) |
Fedora 36
The first rule of criticism is never to judge something before you taste it or listen to it or whatever. This applies whether you're reviewing restaurants or music or Linux distributions; an open mind is all - otherwise, what's the point?
But Fedora 36? It has rarely been more difficult for me to keep an open mind, and the more I worked with it, the crankier I got.
Know, first, that the distro was released three weeks late, missing two new release dates in the process. That's so late that it was launched just a week before Fedora 34 hit end of life. If I ran my freelance writing business like that, I'd be working as a greeter at Walmart. This is Fedora, which is affiliated with Red Hat, a company owned by IBM, and not a three-person volunteer effort making time to code around jobs and families and all the rest. Where's the professionalism one expects from one of Linux's most important and respected distros?
Know, second, that the delays didn't seem to do much to make Fedora 36 that much better or more interesting. Yes, Wayland is the default display protocol, and it worked seamlessly, as did PipeWire for sound. I wouldn't even have known either was there unless I was looking for problems.
Otherwise, Fedora 36 is adequate at best, and certainly not the very pleasant surprise that was Fedora 34. And I had high hopes, given how well Fedora 34 worked. But there are still a variety of nicks and scrapes, the distro equivalent of a broken shoelace - it works, certainly, but you get awfully tired of having to knot the lace every time it breaks.
Getting started
Fedora 36 will be supported for a year (more or less). System requirements are a 2GHz dual core processor, 2GB of memory, and 15GB of hard drive. Recommended: a 2GHz quad cord processor, 4GB of memory, and 20GB of hard drive.
The distro comes with GNOME 42 as the desktop, system-wide dark mode, new fonts, a new screenshot and screen recording tool, and Linux kernel 5.17. There are also a variety of changes aimed at Fedora's core audience of coders and system administrators - tool chain updates and a reconfigured RPM structure among them. Still, that so many are making such a big fuss about system-wide dark mode and the font change speaks to how little else is new or interesting.
Fedora 36 -- Launching a GNOME session
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Default software includes the Firefox web browser, version 100; the GNOME video player, called Videos; the Rhythmbox music player; the Cheese webcam tool; GNOME Contacts and Calendar apps; GNOME's Document Viewer for PDFs; and Fedora's Boxes virtual machine manager. LibreOffice handles office chores (though Draw and Base don't come installed), while GNOME's Terminal and Text Editor handle their respective chores. There isn't, again, an email app, and more - aggravatingly, much more - about that later, as well as the default GNOME Software Center.
The less said about running Fedora 36 on VirtualBox the better. It took nearly 10 minutes to install, and crashed the first time I tried to open Firefox. I finally got it working, but it was slow and laggy. Trying to update the software was so problematic that I moved on to installation on a laptop using the dreaded Anaconda installer.
Fedora 36 -- Installing Fedora in VirtualBox
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May I quote DistroWatch guru Jesse Smith here? "Trying to navigate Anaconda is always a slow pain compared to most other graphical installers. It feels as though it was designed by a drunk committee."
In this case, that meant going through three distinct screens to overwrite Xubuntu on my HP laptop - and all I was trying to do was a typical installation, without encrypting the disk or setting up new partitions. But I had to click here and go there, all the while trying to understand why the box in the upper left corner - even though everything else for clicking was in the lower right corner - was the one that would select the disk for overwriting and installing. Contrast that with Ubuntu's Ubiquity installer, which is linear and sensible and doesn't require a hard think that makes you question why you're bothering with this.
Working with GNOME
A new installation brings up the GNOME 42 desktop, which is a new version of the GNOME Shell desktop, and with all that means. Adding extensions like GNOME Tweaks and Dash to Dock (labeled Dash to Dock for Cosmic for v. 42) make it less counter-intuitive, but it still involves using the upper left corner of the screen when those of us who are right-handed feel more comfortable working with the right side of the screen. The search bar at the top of the window under the title bar does seem improved from my Fedora 34 test -- type in "word," and it finds LibreOffice Writer, for example.
The system identified my Canon MX-922 printer, and scanning and printing worked as they were supposed to work. So too did Wi-Fi, and the wireless connection was so solid that I didn't notice it again. Battery life was actually amazing - even at about two-thirds on the icon, I still had about five hours left for a machine I bought used a couple of years ago.
On the other hand, even though I was able to add my Nextcloud account at setup, I was distressed to learn that I had to use a GNOME extension to add it to the top panel. Clicking on Files, the file explorer, to access Nextcloud was just another broken shoelace. The new screenshot tool is clunky, with the user interface covering up the screen where you want to take the picture. And the lace broke again when I tried to play a couple of videos and found out that the H.264 codec wasn't installed.
Which brings us to the GNOME Software Center. Linux's trials and tribulations with software center apps are as well documented as they are much debated. The software center in Fedora 36 is another example of how buggy these things remain, and the problems have nothing to do with its reliance on Flatpaks instead of Ubuntu's Snaps or DNF vs. APT. Frankly, I don't care which system developers use; just make one of them work. (And I can't shake the sneaking suspicion that both Flatpaks and Snaps, regardless of security and sandboxing, are an attempt to bring Apple's hyper-controlled software ecosystem to Linux.)
Fedora 36 -- Trying to find Thunderbird in the software centre
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Case in point: Trying to install Thunderbird. It didn't show up when I searched the software center, even though it was supposed to be there. I was able to install it using DNF, and then it showed up in the software center as installed. But when I tried to uninstall it from the software center, no luck. I got a prompt saying it was uninstalling, and then nothing happened. After I uninstalled it using DNF, it showed up in the software center as grayed out.
The Flatpak experience was a touch less irritating, but only a touch. Maybe I'm missing something, but if the Flatpak repository is enabled in the software center and Flatpak is installed, why is it necessary to install the Flatpak runtime environment to install Flatpaks? I can see this, sort of, if Fedora's intended audience is grade school children and we have to stop them from adding apps willy nilly. But coders and system administrators? If they can't be trusted, who can? And, of course, I had to use the command line to install Thunderbird since the Flatpak version wasn't in the software center, either. Though there were three versions of Chrome, plus Chromium.
Updates, updates, updates
The software center was close to useless for updates. If I hadn't been testing the distro for this review, I would have used DNF for updates even though I much prefer using a GUI. First, even when the computer had been restarted, the software center showed all updates were current. Sometimes, if I let it sit, it would eventually connect to whatever it connects to and tell me there were updates. And sometimes not.
Fedora 36 -- Checking for package updates
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Or, after I learned to think like a drunken committee, I would click the reload button in the upper left corner and it would reload and let me know if there were updates.
And whoever designed the software updates screen that displays after a reboot was joking, right? It looks almost exactly like the Windows screen after an installation reboot, complete with "Do not turn off your computer" and spinning wheel.
Fedora 36 -- Applying software updates
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Boot times are stunningly slow. How does 20 to 25 seconds sound, every time, and another 5 or 6 second after signing in? I spent about 15 minutes rebooting the HP, reboot after reboot, assuming I was somehow doing something wrong. How could a post-modern distro from Fedora take so long to boot? But it came up 20 to 25 seconds every time.
So yes, I was cranky, cranky, cranky after a week or so of using Fedora 36. No, it won't be my daily driver, and I do wonder how others - who depend on Fedora to make a living - will be able to use it without being cranky, either. There's a theory that pops up every so often among some of us who use Linux that the idea of constant distro and software updates has little do with improvements, and is more about reminding the world about the product. Call it the Google approach, what with more than 100 versions of Chrome in 14 years - or a new instance of Chrome every seven weeks or so. I'd much prefer quality over quantity. Maybe Fedora 37 will offer that.
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Hardware used for this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP EliteBook Folio 9480m laptop with the following specifications:
- Processor: Intel Core i5-4310u, 2.6GHz
- Storage: 240 GB SSD
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Networking: Intel Wireless 7260 802.11ac dual band Wi-Fi+Bluetooth
- Display: Intel Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics
When he is not testing out new versions of Linux distributions, Jeff Siegel can be found writing about all things related to wine at Wine Curmudgeon.
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Visitor supplied rating
Fedora has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.3/10 from 352 review(s).
Have you used Fedora? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Upgrading Fedora Silverblue, Fedora 34 nears its end of life, Proxmox offers new backup features, Canonical seeking to improve gaming on Ubuntu, HP plans to ship laptops with Pop!_OS
Last week the release announcements section of DistroWatch belonged to Red Hat and its associated distributions (such as Fedora) and its many clones. Now that this new wave of versions has been published, some people may be looking to upgrade. Fedora Magazine has published step-by-step instructions which guide users through upgrading Fedora's Silverblue branch from previous versions to version 36. "Fedora Silverblue is an operating system for your desktop built on Fedora Linux. It's excellent for daily use, development, and container-based workflows. It offers numerous advantages such as being able to roll back in case of any problems. If you want to update or rebase to Fedora Linux 36 on your Fedora Silverblue system (these instructions are similar for Fedora Kinoite), this article tells you how. It not only shows you what to do, but also how to revert things if something unforeseen happens."
Meanwhile Tomas Hrcka has announced Fedora 34 will reach the end of its supported life on June 7th, less than a month after the launch of Fedora 36. "Fedora 34 will go end of life for updates and support on 2022-06-07 No further updates, including security updates, will be available for Fedora 34 after the said date. All the updates of Fedora 34 being pushed to stable will be stopped as well."
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The Proxmox distribution is a Debian-based server project which is available in a number of specialized editions. The distribution's "Backup Server" edition is getting some new features, including a read-only maintenance mode for the safer recovery of data. "We have a new namespace feature which allows you to simplify backup management from multiple sources on-premises, remotely, and in the cloud, by organizing backups into 'namespaces' within a single datastore. The new 'read-only' and 'offline' maintenance modes allow for safer maintenance work on a datastore." The project's announcement offers additional details.
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Canonical is seeking to hire a new developer to help improve the state of gaming on Ubuntu. With the help of Valve and projects like Proton many previously inaccessible games now run on Linux, often through compatibility layers. Canonical is hoping to improve game performance and expand the number of games available to Ubuntu users. "We want to make the widest selection of games 'Just Work' on Ubuntu, and we are creating a team to focus on performance, compatibility and user experience for gamers. We want to create a platform that makes it easy for players to find the games they want, use the devices they own and share those experiences with friends."
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People who like the Pop!_OS distribution will be happy to hear HP plans to sell laptop computers with Pop!_OS pre-installed. As Beta News reports: "Rumors have been swirling lately that HP was planning to release a laptop running the Pop!_OS operating system. Today, System76's CEO Carl Richell shared on Twitter that this is absolutely happening -- a 14-inch developer-focused notebook called "Dev One." While this is good news for the Linux community overall, it is quite curious. After all, System76 doesn't just maintain the Pop!_OS operating system, it sells computers running the distribution too. In other words, HP and System76 are competitors in the hardware business." Information and pricing for the new Dev One laptop can be found on this HP web page.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Software Review (by Jesse Smith) |
A return to Unity
Unity was the name given to Canonical's custom desktop environment which it developed for the Ubuntu distribution. Unity turned out to be an ironic name because every chapter of the desktop's life was marred in controversy and debate. Canonical decided to create Unity, it seems, in the wake of the GNOME developers dropping GNOME 2 and starting the new (and itself controversial) GNOME Shell desktop.
With a community as large as Ubuntu's was at the time there was no way forward that didn't result in a lot of people being unhappy. People who loved the classic GNOME 2 desktop (which was later carried on as MATE) wanted Canonical to continue supporting the GNOME 2 desktop, despite it being abandoned for a time upstream. People who loved GNOME 3 wanted Canonical to adopt the new GNOME Shell, despite early problems with the new desktop environment. The company instead decided to forge their own way, for a time anyway, and created Unity 7 for desktop machines and Unity 8 for mobile devices with the intention of making it a convergent interface in the future.
Eventually, of course, Canonical stopped working on both Unity 7 & 8 and shifted its focus to shipping a highly customized GNOME Shell desktop, a move which reignited debates on which desktop was the best for the popular Linux distribution.
Unity of the past
Unity, by the way, received mixed reviews all on its own. Even when it wasn't being compared to the classic MATE desktop or the new GNOME Shell desktop, Unity still did things differently. Unity 7 started as a 2-D desktop which later transitioned to a 3-D desktop, causing all sorts of performance issues in virtual machines and on workstations with limited support for 3-D visual effects, often due to driver issues.
Ubuntu 14.10 -- Running the Unity desktop with its dash in 2014
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The Unity desktop was also embroiled in the on-line search scandal in which Canonical, for a time, defaulted to sending searches for local files to commercial partners like Amazon. This resulted in many people labelling the search options (called scopes) in Unity as spyware.
To make matters more interesting, Unity also used a global file menu for a time (which didn't always mesh well with non-Unity applications), introduced thin scroll bars, placed the desktop dock on the left side of the screen, and moved window control buttons from the upper-right corner of windows to the upper-left.
It was an experimental time at Canonical.
What essentially ended up happening was Canonical, for a few years, had an unusual desktop environment that was trying a few experimental things and didn't really look like anything else on the market at the time. This meant there was a learning curve involved in getting settled into the desktop and it was an alien experience for a lot of people. As a result, many people didn't like the Unity desktop.
I, on the other hand, made an effort to spend a full month with Unity to see if I could get used to its 3-D, left-oriented style. As I noted in that review from ten years ago, the first few days were difficult. By the middle of the first week I was starting to get comfortable with the way Unity behaved. By the end of the week I was sold on Unity as a concept. The unified messaging system, the intuitive way items could be moved around, and the HUD for searching menus were all welcome features. I also found, after a time, Unity had a, well, unified approach. The desktop had an overall design, a natural flow which comes from being designed from the top down. This was in contrast to many open source desktops which often evolve over time, often picking up quirks and ideas from a wide range of people.
Ubuntu 14.10 -- Running the Unity desktop and its settings panel in 2014
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Anyway, I became and remained a fan of the Unity 7 desktop on my workstation and, a few years later, became a fan of Unity 8 running on my phone.
However, Unity never really got adopted widely outside of Ubuntu and, when Canonical decided to cease development in favour of running GNOME as their default desktop, Unity was tossed onto the rubbish heap of history. Until, that is, this year a third-party developer picked up Unity and decided to fix some issues, releasing a new version of the desktop: Unity 7.6
Some of the changes in the fresh release of Unity 7.6 are cosmetic. The desktop has a flatter appearance and it looks like the default theme is closer to blue than the purple and orange Canonical used. The project's announcement also says Unity should use slightly less RAM now and the trash system uses the Nemo file manager in place of Nautilus.
Unity 7.6 -- The new flat style and settings panel
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Trying out the new Unity
I decided to try Unity on a modern version of Ubuntu, specifically Unity 22.04. I already had the distribution installed and so set about following the instructions on the Unity project website to add the proper package repository (PPA) and install the Unity package. The install went cleanly and I signed out of GNOME and was able to select Unity as my new session option.
Unfortunately I was unable to get signed into Unity. The first time I logged into the Unity environment the system showed me a blank, blue screen for a few seconds and then kicked me back to the login screen. I tried signing in again. This time I was greeted with a generic error window which said "Oh no! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. All extensions have been disabled as a precaution." I was then kicked back to the login screen.
I suspected the Unity desktop was not playing well with GNOME, Ubuntu's current default desktop. The two have some shared heritage and I thought they might have conflicting libraries. I decided to give Unity a fresh start.
A fresh start
I decided to install Lubuntu, mostly because it is relatively small and light while still having the same package base as Ubuntu. Plus Lubuntu ships with a Qt-based desktop while Unity and GNOME (and many other Ubuntu community editions) use GTK-based desktops. This seemed to me to be one of the easiest ways to test the new desktop without worrying about conflicting libraries and other resources.
After setting up Lubuntu, which looks fantastic by the way (I'm tempted to review it on its own), I then enabled the Unity PPA and installed Unity 7.6. The installation went smoothly and I was able to sign into the Unity desktop. Once I was logged into Unity some serious pros and cons started to show themselves.
Pros
On the positive side of things Unity feels faster compared with how I found it in the past. A large part of this is probably due to my computer being ten years younger than the last time I tried Unity. But I found Unity has gone from being about average in performance (akin to Cinnamon or GNOME 3) to snappy (closer in performance to Xfce). Memory consumption seems to be about the same as before, once I factored in the underlying operating system. Unity's memory usage running on Lubuntu was about 680MB, putting it on the heavier side of mid-range. When I last tried Unity the memory consumption was around 480MB, but the operating system underneath was a lighter then too, so Unity has remained pretty much the same in terms of memory consumption.
I like the layout. I know some people question why they'd want almost everything, such as the panel, left-aligned. It takes some time to get used to it. But what I've found is that Unity's layout greatly reduces mouse movement. Almost everything I ever want to access in a Unity session is in the upper-left quadrant of the screen. This is in contrast to most other desktops where there is a lot of movement across the entire screen.
The settings panel seems to work fairly well, or at least the modules I tried functioned as expected.
I like the way the dock behaves with its quick access to programs and the ability to quickly pin or dismiss applications.
Cons
I noticed three key problems while using the new version of Unity. The first was the dash (the area which replaces an application menu in Unity) failed to show me anything on any search scope. Whether I was trying to see application launchers, local documents, or software packages the dash was always empty. At first I thought this might be an issue of the desktop having trouble identifying applications which had originally been associated with the LXQt environment, but the dock has launchers on it for tools like LibreOffice. In other words, the dock can see and launch pre-installed programs but the dash cannot. This problem bled into other areas too. For example, right-clicking on the desktop and selecting the option to open a terminal does nothing because Unity can't find its terminal and there is no way to select a different terminal in the preferred applications section of the settings panel.
Unity 7.6 -- Trying to find launchers in the dash
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The second issue I ran into is probably related to video drivers. Often times when a window or menu is closed, it remains on the screen. This means when the dash is closed or a window is minimized it sometimes remains drawn on the screen, leaving a ghost of itself behind. Over time other elements are drawn over top of it and this can leave the desktop in a weird state where it's cluttered with elements of past work. I'm not sure, but I think this issue might be related to the fact I cannot disable desktop effects. In the Appearance settings module there is a toggle between "Low" and "High" visual effects and the only accepted setting is "High".
Unity 7.6 -- The desktop becoming cluttered with old elements
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The third and final issue was each time I tried to logout of Unity the desktop would hang. It wouldn't keep running and it wouldn't sign me out. The elements on the screen would disappear, leaving me with just the background and then nothing would happen. In contrast, if I powered off the computer from within Unity the desktop would shut down with seemingly no problems.
Something that was mentioned in the Unity release announcement was Unity now uses a flatter theme. This is accurate, Unity's icons and elements are flatter. I wasn't sure whether to put this in the pro or con list because I, personally, dislike the flat look. I find it's less descriptive, harder to tell when something is a button and when it is a label, and harder to determine the purpose of some icons. However, some people like the minimal look as they find it less cluttered and more consistent with the way mobile interfaces are designed these days. So I'll mention the flat look, which seems to be applied consistently, and let people decide whether this is a step forward or backward.
Conclusions
While I'm happy to see some development work going into Unity, it feels like a project barely holding on thanks to life support. Some basic stuff works (and looks good). I like the dock, the HUD, and the way the desktop is organized. However, with the dash not working and Unity having trouble clearing the screen there are pretty big gaps in functionality happening. Even on Ubuntu/Lubuntu itself, Unity's native home, the desktop feels like it's missing key pieces.
I'd like to see Unity grow and continue to evolve. I'd like to see it ported to other distributions. The style and layout feel very efficient to me. However, I suspect this will be difficult considering how much custom work Canonical did ten years ago that did not make it into upstream libraries. Porting Unity and patching it to be more tidy and work with others desktops is likely to be a big undertaking.
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| Released Last Week |
Kali Linux 2022.2
Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools. The prject has published a new version, Kali Linux 2022.2, which features the GNOME 42 desktop, along with KDE Plasma 5.24 as an alternative user interface. "Like for every (almost) half-year, there is a new version bump for the GNOME desktop environment. Kali 2022.2 brings the new version, GNOME 42, which is a more polished experienced following the work previously introduced in versions 40 and 41. The shell theme now includes a more modern look, removing the arrows from the pop-up menus and using more rounded edges. In addition, we've upgraded and tweaked the dash-to-dock extension, making it integrate better with the new look and fixing some bugs." Additional information, a list of new features, and screenshots of the light and dark themes can be found in the project's release announcement.
Kali linux 2022.2 -- Exploring the application menu
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FreeBSD 13.1
Glen Barber has announced the release of FreeBSD 13.1, the second stable build in the project's 13 branch: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE. This is the second release of the stable/13 branch. Some of the highlights: OpenSSH has been updated to version v8.8p1; OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1o; the use of FIDO/U2F hardware authenticators has been enabled in ssh, using the new public key types ecdsa-sk and ed25519-sk, along with corresponding certificate types; the ice(4) driver has been updated to 1.34.2-k, adding firmware logging and initial DCB support; the iwlwifi(4) driver along with a LinuxKPI 802.11 compatibility layer was added to supplement iwm(4) for newer Intel Wireless chipsets; ZFS has been upgraded to OpenZFS release 2.1.4; EC2 images are now built by default to boot using UEFI instead of legacy BIOS." See the release announcement and in the detailed release notes for further information.
Rocky Linux 8.6
Louis Abel has announced the release of Rocky Linux 8.6, the new stable version of the project's community clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux: "We are pleased to announce the general availability of Rocky Linux 8.6. This release is available for the x86_64 and aarch64 architectures. Highlights: PHP 8.0 provides bug fixes and enhancements, namely to the use of structured metadata syntax, newly named arguments that are order-independent, and improved performance for Just-In-Time compilation; Perl 5.32 provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements, including support for Unicode version 13, a new experimental infix operator, and faster feature checks; high availability (HA) cluster system role - this role helps create and manage secure, stable HA clusters; enhanced network system role - this role helps users create secure connections (including over Wi-Fi) along with robust firewall rules...." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and upgrade instructions.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0
Red Hat has announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0, the latest major version of the IBM-owned distribution. Among the big ticket items in this release is an effort to confirm the integrity of the operating system with digital signatures and hashes: "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 also introduces integrity measurement architecture (IMA) digital hashes and signatures. With integrity measurement architecture, users can verify the integrity of the operating system with digital signatures and hashes. This helps to detect rogue infrastructure modifications, making it easier to limit the potential for systems to be compromised. Further supporting enterprise choice in architectures and environments across the open hybrid cloud, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 will be available on IBM Cloud and also complements the key security features and capabilities of IBM Power Systems and IBM Z systems. Pairing the security-focused hardware capabilities of IBM's architectures with the security enhancements in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 delivers the innovation, strength and security capabilities that many organizations need in hybrid cloud computing."
Oracle Linux 8.6
Simon Coter has announced the release of version 8.6 of Oracle Linux, an enterprise-class Linux distribution supported by Oracle and built from source packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL): "Oracle is pleased to announce the availability of the Oracle Linux 8 update 6 for the 64-bit Intel, 64-bit AMD (x86_64) and 64-bit Arm (aarch64) platforms. This release includes the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) Release 6 Update 3 on the installation image, along with the Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) for the x86_64 platform. Oracle Linux 8 Update 6 introduces support for drop-in configuration files to OpenSSH servers, Policy-Based Decryption (PBD) for automated unlocking of LUKS-encrypted drives and delivers many enhancements, including: modulesync - this command is used to ensure the presence of modular metadata and facilitate the module installation when modular metadata is not available; lsvpd updated to version 1.7.13; the net-snmp-cert gencert utility has been updated to generate certificates by using SHA512 encryption algorithm...." See the release announcement and the detailed release notes for further information.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,725
- Total data uploaded: 42.0TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
What do you think of Unity being worked on again?
This week we looked at the resurrection of Unity, a desktop originally created by Canonical for the Ubuntu distribution. Community volunteers are now working on developing new versions of the desktop. What do you think of this renewed effort to keep Unity working? Are you looking forward to running Unity? Let us know about your experiences with Unity, past and present, in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on buying a phone to run various Linux-based operating systems in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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What do you think of Unity returning?
| I previously liked it and will use it: | 197 (12%) |
| I did like it and will not use it: | 225 (14%) |
| I did not like it but will try it: | 93 (6%) |
| I did not like it and will not try it: | 577 (35%) |
| Have not used Unity before and will try it: | 93 (6%) |
| Have not used Unity before and will not try it: | 472 (28%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 30 May 2022. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Unity (by Bob on 2022-05-23 00:31:17 GMT from United States)
I would like to see Unity return.
But then again, I am one of the few people that actually LIKED Windows 8.
2 • desktops (by DB on 2022-05-23 00:46:21 GMT from United States)
to each their own, but I never liked Unity and Gnome 3 still sucks, for me. But if we all liked the same things, think of how boring this world would be. For me it's XFCE, since KDE switched to 5 and went down hill.
3 • Fedora (by Pumpino on 2022-05-23 01:10:46 GMT from Australia)
Ditching Fedora was the best thing I did. It's always been 10 seconds slower to boot for me than other distros, and the GUI software updater has been screwed up for a number of releases. It's never fixed.
I ended up ditching CentOS on my VPS, too. My main desktop distro is now Manjaro (XFCE) and I use Ubuntu on my VPS. Two excellent decisions.
4 • Reviewers don't like Gnome-based distros? Try KDE (by eco2geek on 2022-05-23 01:20:35 GMT from United States)
So, Jesse Smith smacked down Ubuntu 22.04 LTS in Distrowatch Weekly 966:
"I think the launch of Ubuntu 22.04 is a clear sign Canonical is much more interested in
publishing releases on a set schedule than producing something worthwhile. [...] It's a
platform I would recommend avoiding."
-- even though it's a long-term support release that's going to be supported for 5 years. And now your reviewer of Fedora 36 found themselves "cranky, cranky, cranky after a week or so of using" it.
So that's two major Gnome-based distros that you guys didn't like. Could you please review a major KDE-based distro and see if it fares any better?
5 • Fedora 36 (by krell on 2022-05-23 01:24:26 GMT from Tajikistan)
Still not a fan of Gnome. Try the Mate spin, 5 second boot up and works flawlessly.
No Wayland yet though. For e its whats underneath the hood that counts.
6 • Fedora (by S SHARMA on 2022-05-23 01:27:02 GMT from United States)
I gave up on it nearly 15+ years back -- I wonder why it is still in top 10 on DW.
7 • Fedora (by Brad on 2022-05-23 01:29:34 GMT from United States)
Cheese? Videos?? Rhythmbox??? Adding extensions like GNOME Tweaks and Dash to Dock (just to make the experience better)???? GNOME Software Center?????
These reasons, and others, were why I left Ubuntu, my introduction to the Linux world. After a short stint with Mint, I finally settled on Manjaro, because "it just worked" (I'm stealing a tag line from Ubuntu - that's not an official tag line for Manjaro).
Full disclosure - I've had my problems with Manjaro from time to time, but the tremendous Arch Wiki (and even the Manjaro Wiki) always came to the rescue.
8 • @ Jesse - What about Ubuntu Unity? (by Dave on 2022-05-23 01:55:14 GMT from United States)
I’m wondering why you didn’t just test Ubuntu Unity, given that it’s specifically optimized for the latest version of the Unity DE. https://ubuntuunity.org/
Unity was my favorite Linux DE, and the made the best use of screen space—especially on smaller laptops—of any DE on any platform, though KDE (when set up with the bar on top and a global menu) and macOS come close. I agree with you regarding the (almost) “everything in the upper left corner being highly efficient once you get your muscle memory accustomed to it. By contrast, everything seems haphazardly scattered around the screen on Windows and Windows clones like Cinnamon.
9 • Unity (by Jesse on 2022-05-23 01:57:55 GMT from Canada)
@8: "I’m wondering why you didn’t just test Ubuntu Unity, given that it’s specifically optimized for the latest version of the Unity DE."
Because 1. running Ubuntu Unity should provide the same experience as running Ubuntu with Unity installed. 2. People shouldn't need to switch distributions just to switch desktops. And 3. My past experiences with Unity were mostly on Ubuntu so it made sense to stick with Ubuntu for an apples-to-apples comparison.
10 • Outstanding "Software Review". (by R. Cain on 2022-05-23 02:17:28 GMT from United States)
From Jesse Smith's "Software Review"---
“...this year a third-party developer picked up Unity and decided to fix some issues, releasing a new version of the desktop: Unity 7.6..."
The "third-party developer" is a two-man team; simply read the web-site.
From a reading of what what was written of his experiences, the statement, "“Once I was logged into Unity some serious pros and cons started to show themselves”
should have read
"Once I was logged into Unity some pros and SOME SERIOUS CONS started to show themselves..."
Finally, and very charitably...
"Porting Unity and patching it to be more tidy and work with others desktops is likely to be a big undertaking.“
Thank you for all your hard work in providing us a very thorough and unmistakably clear review.
Keep up the very good work.
11 • Unity (by penguinx86 on 2022-05-23 02:42:17 GMT from United States)
Nope, not gonna use Unity ever again. I hate the dock on the left side of the screen.
12 • Fedora, Gnome, etc. (by nobody important on 2022-05-23 03:06:54 GMT from United States)
It's been a while since I've paid attention to release cycles - I use a rolling release - but I've found myself reading about and actually trying new distros lately, including Fedora (though I did the Plasma spin, which works fine). My baseline opinions include the following:
- Gnome is awful. Always has been, always will be. I didn't even like Gnome 2. For my purposes, it's all garbage. Unity too, but I digress.
- Fedora is unnecessarily complex and unwieldy to set up, though once done it's ok. For the year it's supported, then you're doing the same damn thing all over again.
- Snaps and flatpaks are also garbage. My one and only foray into this stuff was installing the kpat solitaire collection on a RHEL clone some time ago as a sort of test. It was going to eat like a GB of space. For a package that's typically 4-8MB in it's non-ridiculous form. Yeah, no thanks. Whatever problem this stuff solves I don't have.
All that said, I sort of like the Fedora KDE spin. At least it acts like any other Plasma install for the most part. Haven't noticed any unusual lagging or long boot times. The biggest issue is the lack of a decent GUI package manager, though that dnf-dragora thing seems improved (only crashed once so far!).
I've said it for years now: if, when Gnome went nuts and decided to emulate the Mac badly, Linux had embraced KDE in a big way, it would have at least had a chance to pull in swaths of frustrated Windows refugees. Ever show Gnome to a Windows user? Yeah... Opportunity lost, permanently. It's extremely frustrating to me that so many of the major distros STILL default to Gnome.
13 • Unity and Fedora (by fenglengshun on 2022-05-23 03:18:19 GMT from Indonesia)
I tried Unity for a bit, and it was interesting. Kinda buggy from my testing on virt-manager/qemu, but I can see why people liked it. That said, everything that it does can be replicated on KDE now, and Garuda by default comes close to it OOTB. I only needed to add plasma-hud for the appmenu search hud, and I have a very efficient layout together with better stability and support.
Fedora being very late was the main reason for me to switch away from it. I think if you're a developer or don't use weird apps then Fedora is still very good, both stable and cutting-edge on the long run, but it is frustrating when I found an app that have neither flatpak nor .rpm/copr option.
In the end, I switched to Pop!_OS 22.04 which came out surprisingly fast... and was sufficiently impressed by how useable their GNOME was out of the box (I only needed a few small tweaks extensions as opposed to the big extensions like dash-to-panel, etc. and a lot of the tweaks are natively in system settings), how good Pop!_Shop feels now (I just clicked install, install, install and have no problems even when some like Lutris have long dependencies, though it did took a while, and Auto Update works perfectly I have no need to think about updates at all, plus I see that Steam is now Flatpak by default), and how fast everything feels (I had the same experience of being surprised by how fast the boot time was after using Fedora for the last six months).
Fedora is like... cool, I guess, but I think system76's focus on that desktop experience is showing to me. Most of all, I like that they default to x11 - Wayland is cool and all, but I *need* TeamViewer and Zoom to work, and I have no patience for figuring things out to make it work on Wayland so I still prefer x11 for now.
14 • Why I don't care for Unity... (by Bobbie Sellers on 2022-05-23 03:41:24 GMT from United States)
Unity is designed to be fool proof for newcomers to Linux computing.
I have been around for a while since the Commodore 64 and that was hard.
There were significant errors in the manual.
I used to use the Amiga and even now my Virtual Desktop resembles the Amiga.
On the Amiga I had a programmable dual panel file manager. I thoroughly
explored the File System and got a good understanding of the working of
the system,
When I knew I would have to change due to Amiga/Commodore's Bankruptcy I
solicited advice from other more knowledgeable Amiga Users and the very best
recommendation of Mandriva.
Mandriva use Red Hat sources then and once I found it had two excellent dual
panel file managers I was able to crawl around the File Tree.and find the files
that the various manuals I consulted talked about.
When I tried Ubuntu I found it impenetrable, When I tried to help people with
it I was barely able to do so but did but Canonical hates root and partitions
apparently so does not include the concepts in any tutorials. You know
the Amiga had no memory protection and was essentially designed before
the Web was. I was able to run in essentially root mode all the time.
Presently using PC-LInuxOS a collateral descendant of Mandriva.and
have the latest KDE and kernel 5.17.9.
bliss - brought to you by the power and ease of PCLinuxOS,
the Perfect Computer Linux Operating System.
and a minor case of hypergraphia
15 • Friends Don't Let Friends Use Unity (Gnome, or Fedora) (by dave on 2022-05-23 03:52:15 GMT from United States)
Nope. Disliked Unity from the start. Gave it a shot for a few days when they released Ubuntu 11.04 or whatever version it was. I forced myself to learn Gimp around 2005, so I could complete my divorce from Photoshop, but I failed to see any reason to force myself to get used to Unity when there were more appropriate desktops available. Have been a happy on-again-off-again Xfce user since then.
Fedora? No, thank you. If we lived in a nightmare zone where Fedora was the only Linux distribution, I would simply use Windows, or throw my computer in the trash and go live in the woods.
16 • Unity - ugh! (by Andy Figueroa on 2022-05-23 04:33:38 GMT from United States)
So many electrons wasted on Unity. It was the least usable GUI I ever had to use nearly 30 years.
17 • Why? (by Gerard Lally on 2022-05-23 04:44:55 GMT from Ireland)
Life is short. In a world where we have Slackware, OpenSUSE, the BSDs and Xfce, why do people waste precious time on technology designed to fail, or to remain forever unstable? Fedora, Ubuntu, Gnome, Unity, Snaps -- I simply cannot for the life of me understand why anybody bothers with any of them. Quite obviously the corporate world behind these and other brainless software projects in the Linux universe has a definition of stability and usability quite different than what the normal person has.
18 • Unity - great! (by mcellius on 2022-05-23 05:21:53 GMT from United States)
I got fed up with Windows in the Spring of 2011 and decided to check out Linux (I knew little about it and had never even heard of Ubuntu). As I read about it I decided to try Ubuntu 11.04 which was just out, and it came with Unity.
I liked it and found it very usable. Over the years I also tried other distributions - probably 40-50 different ones - and every other desktop environment, but mostly stuck with Ubuntu and Unity. I found it easy to use all of the DEs - Gnome 2 and every succeeding Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE, Budgie, Elementary, LXDE, etc., - I guess I'm adaptable - but still preferred Unity.
I really liked the taskbar on the left, and also the window control buttons on the left. I still use Ubuntu (now 22.04 with Gnome), and I still have the taskbar and the window control buttons on the left (so it looks quite a bit like Unity and I find it very efficient for me), but I miss the HUD.
Gnome annoys me as the developers seem to want to reduce the ability of users to control their own desktops, but fortunately a few extensions - including those included in Ubuntu - allow me to keep using the desktop as I like it. I think KDE is fantastic (although overkill for me) and still really like Mate. I can see why people like Cinnamon, but it isn't for me. XFCE is great in some uses, too.
I understand that everyone has their preferences - so do I - but I don't understand the "wars" between fans of particular DEs. If you don't like a particular DE, just move on to one you like. Why try to trash another one just because it isn't the one you prefer?
19 • @17 (by Microlinux on 2022-05-23 05:29:46 GMT from France)
Amen to that. I just had the exact same thought.
20 • This is not about users (by Gerard Lally on 2022-05-23 05:50:35 GMT from Ireland)
@18 -- this is not about users and their preferences. It's about the corporate takeover of Linux and ancillary projects. It's about how Linux and ancillary projects are steered in a direction that is not to the benefit of users. It's about figuring out who benefits when Linux and ancillary projects go backwards, to the extent that the Linux desktops now are nearly all less usable and less user-friendly than the Linux desktop was 20 years ago
21 • Fedora 36 (by Leopard on 2022-05-23 06:19:41 GMT from United States)
Wow, your review of Fedora 36 cam across a bit harsh and seems biased. I do not want to start a flame war but perhaps we could have a less biased review.
22 • Fedora 36 (by dan on 2022-05-23 06:32:25 GMT from Germany)
Gosh, this review of Fedora is so bad.
From the opening - seriously, 3 weeks delay is a problem since when? Fedora 35 is still supported for a while, Fedora 34 going EOL is not a big deal if you keep up to date, heck Ubuntu non-LTS is so much worse than this. And yes, Fedora compares to Ubuntu non-LTS, while the governance is more akin to Debian being a community project. So again, Fedora does an amazing work.
The rest is a teenage-level complain about GNOME 42, which is really not fair. I used KDE since KDE 1, and recently moved to GNOME as it is so much more polished and less buggy, so I believe I am not much biased about this.
Honestly wondering if I want to read the next weekly. After years of following distrowatch, this bias against Fedora and GNOME is really sad.
23 • Left panel fan (by Kleer Kut on 2022-05-23 07:19:20 GMT from United States)
I had issues with Unity when I tried it years ago, but I'd give it a shot again. There is also Lomiri (Unity 8) which might be interesting in the future, especially when paired with a more mature Pinephone. I also disliked a few quirks about KDE at the time, and now it works well enough for me to daily drive with a left panel.
Lubuntu has been my favorite for a while, and anyone who went through the stagnation of Lubuntu with LXDE would probably be surprised how much has changed. A left panel works exactly the way I want it there, and an additional auto-hiding panel in the center as a launcher works great for me. I've tried other DE's and add on panels with varying results. Tint2 seemed the most robust, but a steep learning curve compared to LXDE/LXQt where it's very simple to add and modify panels as you see fit.
On a different note, one thing I miss greatly is the Ubuntu Podcast. When people would go around bashing changes made by Canonical and adding their wild speculation as to their reasoning, the podcast would bring up some really interesting points. One that sticks in my head was about trying to drop 32 bit libraries where Canonical was paying people to maintain them mostly so Valve could profit from it. Another was about open sourcing the Snap store. They brought up how much money and effort went into open sourcing Launchpad because people demanded it and no one ever picked it up to run with it. They were (are) willing to put money into doing such things if there is genuine interest from people willing to take the reigns, not just caving in to random internet drive-by's of people shaking their fists.
It's perfectly fine if some people hate all things Ubuntu, but the wild speculation about why they do the things they do seems to be so far off base. I personally don't believe snaps are "an attempt to bring Apple's hyper-controlled software ecosystem to Linux." as this was discussed before the podcast shut down. Things are certainly worse since Wimpy, Popey, and the gang moved on, but Linux as a whole would be unimaginably worse without Canonical. I hope they don't get needlessly 'cancelled' and driven away.
24 • Desktop Environments (by pat on 2022-05-23 07:36:14 GMT from United States)
I would never own a computer without a GUI. I think all of the Linux projects are wonderful and show great creativity. I appreciate all of them and am always fascinated by them and what they can do. All you developers and testers are doing much to advance humanity so just keep up the good work and ignore the critics. You are loved. I presently use MATE but also like LXQT a lot.
25 • Fedora (by robin on 2022-05-23 08:19:24 GMT from Singapore)
The review of fedora was a bit biased. Cursory research on fedora will review the following information
* it is known fedora cannot ship H.254 codec because of licensing, but it is very easy to add
* it is known that fedora has a new installer in the works
* it is known that fedora ships a vanilla gnome experience that means indicators on the panel are only supported via extensions
* it is known that the saner safer default for updates involves a reboot. fedora supporting is good
* it is known that any package manager has to collect package metadata before it can list applications that includes software center, even being aware of the presence of updates. gnome-software takes longer because it many sources but once the metadata is there it works flawlessly
* the tested and default virtualization software for gnome is gnome-boxes and the releases are optimized to work flawlessly in that environment compare to Virtual Box.
* boot times depend on a large number of factors. personal experience has then at 5s on an SSD
* just basic understanding of flatpak tells you there is no universal runtime for flatpaks there are many different runtimes. preinstalling any or all is a bad idea.
26 • Fedora 36 review (by rudi on 2022-05-23 09:24:21 GMT from Germany)
This review is based on a bad experience....
I use Fedora as a daily driver for more than 20 years and I upgraded several machines to 36 and had no issues yet. Boot time is quick, not slower than ubuntu, mint, manjaro or other distros. It runs on old Laptop hardware, up to date AMD Ryzen Desktop and even on Thin Clients with low resources.
Anaconda installer is a pain - bad to interact without mouse (keyboard only) and you have to know which partitions are needed.
After installation you need the rpmfsuion repository and dnf at the cli - thats it. After 10 minutes the daily driver is ready and runs flawless...
I prefer LXDE/LXQT/XFCE as desktop - Gnome was never a choice for me.
27 • Fedora - rock solid as always (by far2fish on 2022-05-23 09:28:14 GMT from Denmark)
I am a bit surprised to hear how many issues the reviewer ran into when testing Fedora 36. I have been running Fedora since it was called Fedora Core, and the only version I can remember as unstable was 15. Every version prior and after that has been running rock solid for me.
Fedora 36 is no exception.
I have to admit I never install Fedora on launch day. Like all other software, launch day software might contain a lot of bugs. I usually wait a week until I install, and hope the major flaws discovered have been fixed.
With Fedora 36 I also made another exception. Instead of continuing upgrading Fedora workstation with GNOME, I made a clean install with the KDE spin. No issues discovered at all.
28 • Unity (by Kazlu on 2022-05-23 10:02:08 GMT from France)
I have never liked Unity because of its resource usage, and also a bit because of the difficulty/impossibility to customize it. I tried using it but in the end Unity is what pushed me in the arms of Xfce back in 2012.
However, I liked some of its concepts. I definitely recognize it is doing things differently than other DEs around and it's a good thing for its users that people are keeping it alive.
29 • Fedora (by how-to-review on 2022-05-23 10:02:38 GMT from Portugal)
Fast, easy, and cheap method to have your work done and collect a fee: go to previous reviews, select the good and the bad and write something. On this, only the bad counted. As others mentioned: Biased and worthless, reading this was a waste of time.
30 • Unity (by James on 2022-05-23 10:38:50 GMT from United States)
In my opinion two good things came from the Unity desktop, the Mate and Cinnamon desktops.
31 • snappy (by grindstone on 2022-05-23 11:12:11 GMT from United States)
Just when I think things can't possibly get more resource-intensive and less-functional, the world proves me wrong again. In a world where what xfce has become is called snappy, we have no hope. Fedora is useful to demonstrate the upper bounds of tolerance for absurd desktop performance and to get more testing than not releasing it, but I can't think of any other reasons for existence.
+1 to #30, too.
32 • Unity & Fedora (by RetiredIT on 2022-05-23 11:27:44 GMT from United States)
Unity - The beginning of Ubuntu's and Canonical's downfall. Then I went to Mint and now using MX and testing other MORE reliable distros. For all practical purposes Ubuntu is history!
Fedora - After more ridiculous moves by Red Hat and the downfall of CentOS, why does Fedora even exist? It's simply not needed in the overcrowded field of Linux distros.
33 • None of those Fedora Problems Happening Here (by joncr on 2022-05-23 11:33:59 GMT from United States)
This Fedora 36 review is like a Dedoimedo review, i.e., it's as if the reviewer used an entirely different product than the one I'm using. *None* of the issues the review frets about exist on Workstation here. (Icons in the left corner of Anaconda and elsewhere are, by now, hackneyed things to complain about.) The reviewers problems with Virtualbox are irrelevant re: Fedora. Try again when Oracle gets around ot updating it. Software works, updates work, it's petty to whine that the barebones notice shown when Software reboots to install updates reminds the review of Windows. Dash to Dockfor Cosmic is *not* the general release of the extension, as the word "Cosmic" and the word "fork" in the description at the extensions site indicate. It's for pop_os. Dash to Dock for Gnome 42 has not been released.
Unity: I never had a use for HUD and Scopes. It's interesting that someone has revived Unity and released a remix (Unity is, and has been, in Ubuntu's repos all along) but I still have no reason it use it.
34 • Barrage of negativity (by Beep on 2022-05-23 11:44:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
Gosh, the Fedora review was a barrage of negativity. Fair enough if you don't like a distro, and by all means explain why you personally dislike it. But maybe also keep an open mind, like you suggested in your opening paragraph, and spend a little bit of time looking into what makes Fedora unique and why some people do appreciate the distro. You know, it's supposed to be a "review" rather than an opinion piece. It's not all about how a distro compares with your idea of the perfect distro.
35 • Fedora 36 (by must on 2022-05-23 11:51:50 GMT from France)
I have no problem with Fedora 36 here.
On one of my Pc , I do upgrade-in-place since Fedora 31 and no issue.
On my laptop, a clean install : no issue everything works out of box.
And finaly for testing, I installed fedora 36 on acer-switch10 (a tablet with intel atom z37xx and only 2 gigs of ram : Gnome is usable on this touch screen but little slow ( it is only 2gigs I said..) but XFCE works : touch screen, wifi, touchpad and even a webcam.
36 • Fedora 36 (by Nereo on 2022-05-23 11:55:38 GMT from Italy)
As for Fedora, I prefer KDE to Gnome: I have an 8-year-old computer and KDE is much more responsive than Gnome. As for installing programs in Fedora, it is always advisable to use the command line both to enable rpmfusion and to install programs. The CLI is also always preferable for upgrades. The only GUI I use is DNFdragora: a bit slow, but it works; it would deserve more attention from the Fedora Project.
37 • @8 (by kc1di on 2022-05-23 11:59:30 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the link. Look pretty good.
38 • Fedora not so bad (by Appalachian on 2022-05-23 12:19:10 GMT from United States)
I tried out Fedora 36 back in the final beta releases. It ran pretty well for me and after a day or two with Gnome I adjusted to how it works. I would've put it onto my laptop and kept it, but the Wi-Fi where I work has some non-standard settings, and I just could not get Fedora to join the network. It's a shame, because I have no issues with that same Wi-Fi when running Debian or its offspring, nor does Arch or any of its offspring have any issues here.
39 • Unity (by mr.sj on 2022-05-23 13:18:54 GMT from Germany)
@8 and 9
At first I also thought it would make sense to test Unity 7.6 via installing Ubuntu Unity Remix 22.04 (so currently Unity 7.5.1 is upgraded to 7.6 via a PPA). But now I understand Jesse Smith's decision to install the package on Ubuntu. The bugs described prove that there is still some work to be done. Apart from that, Ubuntu Unity Remix 22.04 runs very stable and gives me an excellent workflow. Only the themeing apart from Yaru-Unity dark is not yet optimal and the updater GUI tools (Gnome Software and Ubuntu Software) are not as good as the classic Terminal commands (sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade).
40 • Fedora 36 - Phantom Menace (by Linux Revolution on 2022-05-23 13:39:31 GMT from United States)
In 20 years of using Linux, my daily drivers have been deb based distros. I've tried to like and use fedora in the past but the fringe quirks always steered me away. I'll freely admit my bias toward deb based distros. However with Fedora 36 release, there's no denying this is an excellent distro.
This *menacing" review of Fedora 36 are a *phantom* in my experience.
- Thunderbird IS there in the Software Center along with Bird Tray.
- Fedora comes up in 5 seconds or less.
- Flatpak appears to work fine. However if you're looking for more mainstream type apps, you'll want to add FlatHub which is a "3rd party repo" and has nothing to do with Fedora.
- I still don't like the reboots to install updates though.
- I don't know why ANYONE who uses Linux desktops, prefer Virtual Box over KVM/qemu/Virt-Manager. May Jesse should use KVM/qemu/Virt-Manager for better distro support perhaps?
With all this said, Jesse is not a normal reviewer. Dude digs deep and finds quirky sh!t in distros that daily drivers won't find, run into, or experience IMO. Although I disagree with harshness of this review, I do appreciate the levels of depth Jesse provides in all of his reviews.
41 • Unity and Distros...? (by Becky on 2022-05-23 13:47:04 GMT from New Zealand)
I guess the last thing unity provides is 'unity'...?
I've tended to find that most of the DE's tend to follow either the Windows style or the Mac style - with some exceptions. Given I've used them all - and my main machines are Macs....I like the LH experience - and have Cinnamon, on my linux machines, set to work like my Macs....
It's 'horses for courses' though - use what works for you - and if something else works better... switch to that. Me - I have very fond memories of the Z80, asm and Wordstar.... Far as linux goes - I've tried the various Fedora's...and I still use Mint or sometimes PCLinuxOS... I have this thing about being able to remaster a new install disk with the apps I actually need rather than someone elses ideas of what's needed - like leaving out parts of LibreOffice!
42 • Desktop (by wally on 2022-05-23 13:53:01 GMT from United States)
Mate forever
43 • Fedora and GNOME (by Summer on 2022-05-23 13:56:33 GMT from United States)
Reviews of Fedora are too often just reviews of GNOME. The community spins with different desktop environments really show that Fedora is powerful no matter what you put on top, so why not choose a spin with your preferred desktop and try again?
44 • H.254 codec on Fedora? (by wantoknow on 2022-05-23 14:27:12 GMT from United States)
Speaking of H.254 codecs, how do you get them on Fedora?
I find that some videos from Rumble, bitchute do not play on Fedora using Firefox. I would like to know how to enable them? Other than this, Fedora 36 works very well and I have no complaints. I can use GNOME, KDE, xfce I do not mind any of the desktops. I run GNOME, but can use any desktop I have used LXDE on old computers. As long as it works, I have no complaints.
45 • Fedora review (by Jesse on 2022-05-23 14:33:16 GMT from Canada)
@40: I wasn't the author of this week's review. Perhaps you should direct comments and questions about the review process to the author?
46 • Unity (by stefan on 2022-05-23 14:52:01 GMT from United States)
Unity is merely a modified Gnome 3 or 4. I haven't liked Gnome since 2.
47 • Old Guy (by Russell E. Jenney on 2022-05-23 14:54:09 GMT from United States)
Back in the day of paper tape and punch cards, early Unix systems were my forte. I bought an early Sun Sparc system with Common Desktop Environment (CDE), and sailed merrily along. My NeXT system had NeXTStep 3.3 and I used both to a relatively large degree of competency. Now, on all my machines I run Debian with AfterStep 2.2 or SparkyLinux with NsCDE. None of the "newer" desktops with their current set of "Windows 95-type desktops, can really compete for efficiency with the older style of desktops. You can keep your Gnome and MATES and Unity and LXQT/LXDE/XFCE desktops - for me, the old guys are just as good and in many ways much better!
48 • Of unity and what works... (by tom joad on 2022-05-23 15:01:50 GMT from Germany)
My first reaction was I cringed. Really. That Unity is being worked or reworked or whatever is not good news for most anyone in Linux Land.
I am in the group who used it and will not ever bother with it again. The original just didn't work for me. I doubt a reworked Unity is anything I will use. For me Mate and Cinnamon are going away vastly superior.
I did note that the my group, used and will not use again, and the 'never have, never will' used totals 67% of the respondents at the time of this writing. That is two to one thumbs down. That is the death knell of the project me thinks and my hope as well.
Let Unity sleep quietly.
49 • Fedora (by gatorpearl on 2022-05-23 15:11:42 GMT from United States)
@44: If I'm not mistaken, what you want is the RPM Fusion repos.
As for my thoughts about the Fedora review... Right now, because of HW issues that I haven't had time to look into just yet (new laptop), the one distro that works for me almost flawlessly is Fedora with GNOME, and it works for me just fine, I'm not exactly sure why this reviewer is this cranky, it's almost as if someone gave him a Windows computer and told him "this is Fedora dude, trust me". Fedora has always had my back, it's the OS that made me ditch Windows for good and made me like using my computers again after hating Win10 and dreading Win11.
50 • Fedora, Ubuntu, and Gnome (by Tim on 2022-05-23 15:13:11 GMT from United States)
Over the years I have used most major Linux distros and desktops. The distros have included Gentoo, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, PCLinux, OpenSuse, Arch, Manjaro, Linux Mint, Antix, and many others. The desktops have included KDE, XFCE, Gnome, OpenBox, Awsome, I3, Fluxbox, Enlightenment, Mate, and many others. I have now settled on Fedora and Ubuntu. I have Ubuntu 22.04 on my work laptop primarily because that laptop has an Nvidia card and Ubuntu works on it without my having to do any configuration. I have Fedora on all my home computers, none of which have NVidia cards. I doubt I will install Ubuntu on anything else due to its insistence on using snaps. At least Fedora isn't as insistent on using flatpacks.
I use Gnome 42 on both distros. I gave Ubuntu's tweaked Gnome desktop a one day trial, but found it didn't fit my workflow, so I installed the vanilla gnome desktop environment on it. Ubuntu's use of snaps make it impossible to install extensions directly from the extensions.gnome.org website. Extension zip files have to be downloaded, and unzipped into the appropriate directory. You can install an extensions management package that allows you to configure and upgrade extensions, but you can't install new ones through that interface. This is an incredibly stupid set up. Fedora at least allows you to directly install extensions from the website.
I find Gnome 42 out of the box to not be that usable, however Gnome extensions can transform the barely usable Gnome interface into one that, at least for me, no other desktop environment or window manager can match. In fact, I have even found the switch to horizontal layouts of workspaces to be more efficient for my workflow.
For me the key innovation of Gnome 3 and later is the implementation of dynamic desktops. That feature, combined with an alt tab extension that dynamically orders apps and windows by most recent, a max to new workspace extension, and tiling extension has allowed me to be able to switch quickly between apps and windows without having to worry about resizing windows, grouping windows, or managing desktops. My workflow could best be described as everything is like browser tabs/windows that automatically get ordered by when they were last viewed.
I'm not sure what paradigm the Gnome developers are working out of. Maybe the are all simply drunk, but I think the core of the paradigm is the dynamic workspace. That's why I keep using Fedora. I have found Gnome 42, with the addition of some critical extensions, to be the best fit for my workflow of any desktop I have ever used. If the whole dynamic workspace thing doesn't make sense to you, then Gnome is probably not going to provide a great user experience.
Even for me, though, I worry about what the Gnome developers are going to do next. They have shown they have no problems with making changes that break things. I get the hate many have thrown at the Gnome desktop. All too often, Gnome development goals seem to have been about ensuring as few people as possible actually use gnome.
51 • Fedora 36 review (by Otis on 2022-05-23 15:36:38 GMT from United States)
I'm glad the reviewer started right off using the term, "cranky" to characterize the feelings elicited while installing and trying to run Fedora, because the entire review had that marbled through it like blood in a snot ball. :oD
I'm in total agreement about the disappointment(s) and frustration(s) around that distro, and yes I still download and install and attempt to run the damned thing about every other release, walking away once again with the same self-loathing at having been drawn into it via a notion of it's "importance" in the long long list of linux distros. Pedigree stuff, you know.
It's a big mess of too many conflicting notions thrown together. The name "Edsel" comes to mind.
52 • Fedora (by Robert on 2022-05-23 15:55:13 GMT from United States)
I don't use Fedora and have no incentive to white-knight for it. I still think the review came across as overly negative.
Yes it was delayed, and yes that's disappointing. But being a large organization has never meant immunity from delays. And If you don't like F34 being eol so soon after F36 launch, remember you could have upgraded to F35 in the meantime. 34 and 36 aren't consecutive releases after all.
The installer is dated and was never that good in the first place, but "dreaded?" It isn't THAT bad. Still. he new installer can't come soon enough.
Gnome being trash is nothing new. Fair point criticizing them for making it the flagship desktop though .
I can understand complaints on how much space flatpak consumes, but being surprised that you needed to download a runtime shows a lack in understanding the technology.
I understand not being happy about codecs not being installed by default. But again, Fedora (as well as opensuse for that matter) being averse to encumbered codecs is very well known at this point.
53 • Fedora "review" (by Fred on 2022-05-23 16:10:17 GMT from Bulgaria)
The "review" of Fedora 36 is clearly biased. If Distrowatch wishes to remain trustworthy you have to uphold basic standards with what you publish.
I installed Fedora 36 Xfce Beta on a relatives PC when it was released. It has been continuously updated and running without flaws. I am myself not using Fedora as my daily driver but it remains an appealing alternative for future consideration.
54 • @5 • Fedora 36 (by krell from (VPNed?) Tajikistan) (by Nameless on 2022-05-23 16:10:35 GMT from Japan)
Amazing nonsense ... unless you're using Chrome OS.
Why is it always people who can't even spell 'RAM', talking about the 'resources usage' or people who can't even spell 'boot', talking about 'boot-times'?
Fedora 35 Mate:
[fedora@fedora ~]$ sudo systemd-analyze time
[sudo] Password for fedora:
Startup finished in 2.159s (kernel) + 4.971s (initrd) + 17.228s (userspace) = 24.360s
graphical.target reached after 17.184s in userspace
Fedora 36 Workstation (Gnome 42):
[fedora@fedora ~]$ sudo systemd-analyze time
[sudo] Password for fedora:
Startup finished in 2.447s (kernel) + 2.499s (initrd) + 18.830s (userspace) = 23.777s
graphical.target reached after 18.798s in userspace
Both as VirtualBox VMs.
Try for yourself.
sudo systemd-analyze time
sudo systemd-analyze blame
If you wanna be the winner of the 'fastest boot-time ever' contest, you can even print a nice graphic chart:
sudo systemd-analyze plot >> boot-time-chart.svg
The Mate is good only as a 'way-back machine'. Go back in the past and use the worse Windows 2000 version. Even the Windows made it with only one (unnecessary) panel at the bottom, instead of two -- one at the top and the one at the bottom.
Fedora Workstation brings the 'better Mate' out of the box -- just choose the 'Classic' at the login-screen, and you'll get the better looking and the more sophisticated version of Mate ...
55 • "Workflow" (by Nameless on 2022-05-23 16:15:22 GMT from Japan)
It is always the user who has to learn and adapt to his/hers tools/environment. Productivity does not consist of keeping some old workflows and tweaking the PC until it does it the old way. It is about learning on how the GUI works and tweaking one's own mind. The user is not supposed to tweak the PC just because it can be done, but to learn how the system works and adjust itself accordingly.
For example, minimizing apps to show desktop and then pulling some application window back is not really quicker or slower than changing between two virtual desktops and the quickest way still leads over the keyboard shortcuts.
However, the real productivity-killer in Linux are its applications. None of the Open Source applications are in absolutely any way match for their closed-source counterparts, and ironically, even those very same Open Source applications work much better under Windows.
It's not only the sum of functions that matters, but more, how do they function, if at all, and how different applications work in conjunction with each other.
Gnome is actually very Mac-like and not a single Mac user ever complained about Macs being user-unfriendly ...
56 • @45 - Fedora 36 - Phantom Menace (by Linux Revolution on 2022-05-23 16:17:00 GMT from United States)
My bad Jesse. Point taken. You normally do objective review. :)
57 • @54 mate (by krell on 2022-05-23 16:55:36 GMT from Tajikistan)
Well I seek to Amaze! and yes iI really am in Tajikistan,
Appreciate the tips and will check out Workstation as well as getting Mate to work on Void linux
which works quite well and I may go back to. KDE seems too bloated for me.
My appreciation for Fedora comes from frustrations downgrading java packages on Ubuntu.
Easy to do in Fedora.
58 • Fedora review (by Jesse on 2022-05-23 16:59:43 GMT from Canada)
@53: "The "review" of Fedora 36 is clearly biased. If Distrowatch wishes to remain trustworthy you have to uphold basic standards with what you publish."
I don't think you, or the other people claiming "bias" here, understand what that word means. The term bias means someone has a preconceived notion or idea, something that prevents them from being objective in their evaluation. This would imply Jeff Siegel has a preconceived dislike for Fedora and his review was clouded by it.
This is obviously not the case.
Just go back and read Jeff's previous thoughts on Fedora, like his review of Fedora 34 a year ago. He praised it, maybe more than it deserved.
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20210517#fedora
He clearly isn't biased against Fedora saying things like "In the end, I was surprised at how comfortable I felt with Fedora 34. I didn't find it as easy to use as Ubuntu's version of the GNOME desktop, but it was far easier to use than I thought it would be."
Some people here clearly didn't like the review or had different experienced. Which is fine - different people using different hardware are going to get different results. But don't throw around terms like bias without understanding what they mean, that just undermines any critique or debate of the review.
Personally, having given Fedora a try, I think Jeff's take was quite reasonable and reflects my own experience with the distro. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Just look at the user-submitted reviews page for Fedora. Half report good experiences, but the other half say Fedora 36 was a terrible experience. Do you really think they're all wrong or biased? https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ratings&distro=fedora
59 • Fedora white knights arrive (by Andy Prough on 2022-05-23 17:55:48 GMT from Switzerland)
It's pretty funny to see what time IBM sent out the memo to all the Fedora white knights to flood the comments with complaints that the review was "BIASED" and "not fair" and "overly negative". After comment #21, it's just one after another after another saying basically the same thing.
The fact is, Fedora has gotten bad reviews and done poorly in benchmark tests for years and years and years. IBM thinks that they can get better reviews while they keep pumping out the same old bloated, slow jumble of packages with the bloated default Gnome desktop and the ancient and nasty Anaconda installer. Maybe IBM should complain more about reviewer "BIAS" - that will probably solve all their problems.
60 • Biased Fedora 36 review (by Otis on 2022-05-23 18:25:03 GMT from United States)
I honestly can't detect "bias" in that review. I do detect frustration in Mr. Siegel's remarks, as he plugged along in efforts to experience some semblance of smoothness with that distro. But right from the git-go it was a rocky road, so he reported that.
What does one do while reviewing an install step-by-step and then encountering stumbling blocks instead of (expected) stepping stones? Sugar coat the experience so as not to offend fans of that distro? THAT would be dishonest and also would degrade the solid reputation of this site.
61 • Fedora review (by registered-jack on 2022-05-23 19:54:38 GMT from France)
Poorly written, ill-informed, biased and oddly punctuated, Jeff's long winded rant quite beggared belief. So much for my favorite and much anticipated Monday morning read. Out of curiosity I checked out his blog at the wine curmudgeon only to find much of the same pretentious I know best bad attitude. Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee
Curmudgeon btw: Noun. "A crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man."
Come back Jesse, all is forgiven.
62 • Different users will get different results (by eco2geek on 2022-05-23 20:03:22 GMT from United States)
Like Jesse said in comment @58 different people will get different results. It doesn't mean the review is "biased".
I'm not a Gnome fan, but I was shocked when Jessie reviewed Ubuntu 22.04 and concluded that it should be avoided. Ubuntu's LTS releases have been nothing but stable on my old computer, and this one's no different.
Likewise, I'm currently running Fedora 36 off of a USB stick for the second day in a row, and it's solid. Usually Wayland doesn't get along with my Nvidia card, but in this case there hasn't been a glitch. (Other than that it informed me that I couldn't restart the window manager using the "Alt+F2, r" key combination because it was running Wayland.)
Upthread someone said they're working on a replacement for Anaconda. I sure hope so. That thing is needlessly complicated.
63 • Gnome and .. huh? (by Otis on 2022-05-23 20:17:48 GMT from United States)
@62 .. and some others.. well, I'm not a Gnome "fan" either, but it's worked into AlmaLinux so well (a *gasp* RedHat re-work/sibling/whatever) that I can attest to its value, even while preferring XFCE. Gnome needs to be tweaked about the same amount as XFCE or Plasma to get to my comfort zone, albeit in quite different ways. I use AlmaLinux as a sort of reminder that things I have trouble with (Fedora/RedHat) can be done well with an approach that seems more suitable to me.
@61 (registered-jack) man you're so obvious in your trollng nature it's laughable; to criticize what you say is "odd punctuation" or the name and spiel of the reviewer's (respected) website about wine. You came in here to post that?
64 • @59 (by Panther on 2022-05-23 20:28:48 GMT from United States)
So now we descend into name calling. I use Fedora and have for quite some time but I can tell a biased review when I see one. I am not starting a flame war nor am I in any way connected to IBM.
I think others here have fairly pointed out the obvious biases and I am not going to debate them, however, I would respectfully point out :
1. Most (all) of the complaints with the review are known issues. As far as I know the installer is just as clunky in F36 as it has always been, we know that.
2. Gnome is not for everyone. The review should have been less about if gnome is good or bad but more about the advantages / disadvantages on gnome. It is very vanilla on Fedora a feature some users, such as Arch, appreciate. Other users might prefer a few more customisation out of the box, but such customisation is both easy and personal. I customised the gnome environment in the way I wanted within 5 minutes down to colors, background, and even mouse cursor.
If you do not like gnome, use a spin, there are other options, but as a general trend in Fedora, as with other distros, such as Arch, they are very vanilla out of the box.
Even better I would go as far to say as Desktop / desktop customizations should be a minimal part of the review , liked / disliked, etc, but almost everyone customizes the desktop or changes so this is a minimal part of the review.
3. IMO, updates to a Fedora system are best done with the command line. This is a long standing issue and not new to F36. Other systems are similar, such as Arch, so I really do not understand why this is anything more than a sentence, such as, as with other editions of Fedora, the command line is preferred for Fedora. This site gives a pass to other distros, such as Arch, that have the same issue.
4. Flatpacks or getting packages outside the "official" repositories is nothing new or unique to Fedora. You give a pass to other distors (ubuntu -> PPA , Arch -> AUR, flatpack, snap, etc) so Fedora should be given the same pass / fail. We all know there are additional repos for Fedora, RPM Fusion and Copr, sorry if the reviews do not know the system, but again it is the same as any other distro.
5. Slow boot times ? Really ? There are so many variables here, I am not sure this even belongs in a review, I certainly would not choose a distro based on boot time.
At the end of the day, nothing in the review here in Fedora is actually new information, all these issues are well known and existed in Fedora 34. Fedora deserves the same pass here as any other distro. You could make the same complaints about Debian / Ubuntu, when are they going to adapt Wayland so we can all move beyond Xorg. Wayland vs Xorg is an old argument, but regardless, it is the way Linux is moving and Debian and Ubuntu have be slow to adapt, Ubuntu even offering an alternate which failed.
Point is, all distros have a weakness and it is not really a review if all you do is state the weaknesses. Some of the comments here are snarky at best. @32 for example. One could say Why does Ubuntu exist, and all it's derivatives, it should all be Debian. These are immature attempts to start flame wars and not open minded distro reviews.
A review should indicate how did it work on Hardware ? Did everything work out of the box? How is the Nvidia driver ? The review here did not mention any of this.
Every distro has strengths and advantages. This review failed to mention any of these or even why one would use Fedora.
Fedora, despite the observations on the reviewer here, is, in my experience, secure (selinux, which is never mentioned in Fedora reviews), stable, and bleeding edge of Linux without some of the hassles that go with Arch or Gentoo. It is one of the distos I would add to the list that new users might consider and at the end of the day it is no more difficult to work around the minor inconveniences mentioned in the review than the inconveniences in other distros (you only run the installer once, and although clunky it works as you were able to install, you only configure and install the 3rd party repos / flatpack once, etc).
For example, the Arch installer is not the most new user friendly, but you only install Arch once and once you are done you know how the system works, so why does Arch get a pass but not Fedora?
65 • Fedora review review (by Titus_Groan on 2022-05-23 20:42:06 GMT from New Zealand)
" I moved on to installation on a laptop using the dreaded Anaconda installer....was the one that would select the disk for overwriting and installing"
not sure the issue here.
I recently installed Fedora(36) SOAS. onto an HDD.
I admit never to have installed a Fedora spin before, so followed the on-line instructions.
Did the installer do it job - yes.
Did it create any extraneous partitions - no (see Mint installer).
Was it difficult - no more so than using the Ubuntu clan installers - yes, I am unfamiliar with Ubiquity and Calamares installers too - they do the job, but are NOT intuitive, and get things wrong. (keyboard / language / timezone)
Familiarity breeds contempt, much!
Gnome is Gnome, you either like if or not, same with any DE, from the review I get a "not like" vibe.
Fedora is Fedora, same as Debian is Debian. You know about their view on patent encumbered software (or should do) - deal with it in a professional manner instead of whining, I.E: add the necessary repository.
That you had issues with Gnome Software is a QA issue, and I would expect to be addressed by an update at some time, same as any software.
I trust you raised a bug report, as, if the developers are unaware of a bug /issue, they are unlikely to address it.
66 • Unity (by bittermann on 2022-05-23 21:30:33 GMT from United States)
Did not like Unity much. Gnome 2 was better but do not like Gnome 3 much either. Thank goodness Cinnamon desktop came along. For a minimalistic desktop I prefer Xfce.I prefer my desktop environment not get in the way of what I'm doing vs. glitchy desktop environments.
67 • GNOME 2 the best desktop ever. (by gimli on 2022-05-23 22:08:22 GMT from Moldova)
GNOME 2 was the best!
It had everything, and was finished, but GNOME devs were bored, so they tried to reinvent things and created a disaster GNOME Shell.
Same thing happened to KDE. KDE 3 was very good, but KDE devs were bored so that they created KDE Plasma, another disaster.
So I now use MATE, which is very good, and which probably will gonna switch to wayland much faster than XFCE.
68 • Biased or not? (by TheWolf on 2022-05-23 22:58:18 GMT from United States)
I think not. Jeff did a reasonable job. I think he was frustrated with the release and it showed. If Jeff showed any bias, it was due to the fact that Fedora 34 was a nice release and now, with 36, it really isn't.
I gave it a spin myself and I didn't last long running it. So, I give him kudos for lasting a week on it.
Good job, Jeff. Don't let the naysayers get you down.
69 • GNOME (by Brad on 2022-05-23 23:10:35 GMT from United States)
Wow - so many comments - a nerve has been struck!
To be clear, my issue was much more with GNOME than Fedora - I imagine that KDE (my desktop of choice) would work pretty darn well with Fedora.
Why don't I make the leap? I prefer Rolling-Release to Fixed, and the ability to easily use the kernels of my choice. I suppose I could compile my own kernels in Fedora, but if I wanted to go that far, I'd choose Gentoo...
70 • Fedora review (by Fred on 2022-05-23 23:51:15 GMT from Bulgaria)
Well then we can agree to disagree. Personally I would like to see you Jesse back as reviewer. I have clear memories of a time when reviews was authoritative, dignified and balanced. The latest one I really disliked.
@58:
"I don't think you, or the other people claiming "bias" here, understand what that word means. The term bias means someone has a preconceived notion or idea, something that prevents them from being objective in their evaluation. This would imply Jeff Siegel has a preconceived dislike for Fedora and his review was clouded by it.
This is obviously not the case.
Just go back and read Jeff's previous thoughts on Fedora, like his review of Fedora 34 a year ago. He praised it, maybe more than it deserved.
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20210517#fedora
He clearly isn't biased against Fedora saying things like "In the end, I was surprised at how comfortable I felt with Fedora 34. I didn't find it as easy to use as Ubuntu's version of the GNOME desktop, but it was far easier to use than I thought it would be."
Some people here clearly didn't like the review or had different experienced. Which is fine - different people using different hardware are going to get different results. But don't throw around terms like bias without understanding what they mean, that just undermines any critique or debate of the review.
Personally, having given Fedora a try, I think Jeff's take was quite reasonable and reflects my own experience with the distro. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Just look at the user-submitted reviews page for Fedora. Half report good experiences, but the other half say Fedora 36 was a terrible experience. Do you really think they're all wrong or biased? https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ratings&distro=fedora"
71 • What's the point in these reviews? (by user on 2022-05-24 00:41:06 GMT from Sweden)
Everebody expects that using Fedora is not always going to be a smooth experience. It's a distro for testing new software and technologies so I think Fedora reviews should focus on changes since the previous release like a system-wide dark mode and major new features of updated core packages (and maybe include benchmarks). Glad to know that Wayland and Pipewire are working flawlessly for the reviewer, I hope that they continue to improve.
Surprised that nobody comments on Canonical's efforts to improve gaming experience, it's potentially more important than a couple of rather minor releases of Fedora and Unity 7.
72 • @70 Bias (by Panther on 2022-05-24 01:03:49 GMT from United States)
I think we all know the definition of Bias. All the Fedora users here have stated they feel the review is off or inaccurate in some way. Regardless of the verbiage, until I see a (confirmed) Fedora user weigh in I will take the opinions of non-fedora users with a grain of salt.
I did read the previous review and I am not certain of the relevance. Just because the author did a higher quality review in the past does not in any way indicate they are not biased or that they did a quality review presently.
The fact remains that people who use Fedora have the right and to some extent responsibility to correct obvious errors when we see them and to point out solutions without the flame wars, insults, name calling, etc
I highly suggest others unfamiliar with Fedora to get a second opinion from someone who is familiar with Fedora and can help make a more educated decision on the merits of running or not running Fedora. Someone who for example might be knowledgeable and experienced with the known, common, and simple to fix solutions.
All of the problems in the review are easily fixed, if they are problems at all. I can get Fedora up and running as fast and easily (post install) as Gentoo, Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, or Suse as I am familiar with these distros and their spin offs. That does not mean any one of these distros are for everyone, they all have strengths and weaknesses.
There really needs to be a standard method of reviewing a distro. Which window manager did you try? Did you like the default settings or did you change them? How did it run on your hardware ? How was the default software ? Although you might prefer an alternate, did the default choices work ? What bugs did you find? Are they known bugs and if not did you report them?
The review, as it stands, makes as much sense as Installing Ubuntu and then complaining that Ubuntu does not run Wayland. We all know the history of Ubuntu in this regard and it is an unrealistic expectation. Running Arch, but unfamiliar with the Arch Wiki and AUR, of course in this circumstance you will be frustrated.
If you are going to take a distro for a spin at least do due diligence.
73 • Unity, and Fedora free-for-all (by Dr. Hu on 2022-05-24 03:05:17 GMT from Philippines)
Goodness! Way to bring the comments section to life! I'll try adding my penny's worth.
Unity: I fail to see the rationale behind testing Unity by adding it to Ubuntu Gnome and then to Lubuntu when that was not satisfactory. If I want to run KDE on Ubuntu, I don't add it to Gnome, nor do I download Lubuntu and add KDE. I either install Kubuntu or neon. So I downloaded Ubuntu Unity and used it for about three months with none of the glitches mentioned. It worked as advertised. I watched a YouTube video showing off Unity, and was impressed with how fast and how much the user could get done with minimal motion. If it were the only DE available to me, I'd have no complaints. That said, it will not be my DE. My computer use is casual these days, I have no need for speed or time and motion efficiency, and I'm comfortable with the way I set up my desktops. But for anyone interested, definitely recommended.
Fedora: Don't know what Jeff Siegel is cranky about. Maybe it's his involvement with Wine. Trying to use Wine tended to make me cranky, until I gave up and just used Windows when I need. His review was so out-there that t prompted me to install Fedora and see what the squawking was all about. Damp squib. Had no issues worth mentioning. Anaconda is odd, but it's not hieroglyphics, install time was no more than usual, boot time is fine.
Couple of things:
First thing after installing any new distro, I update/upgrade on the command line, be it apt, pacman, yum, dnf or whatever. The most reliable GUI front end is Synaptic and it's not fail-safe, the rest pretty much suck at updating. Update download was 1 GB, but once done and rebooted everything was honky-dory, including Gnome Software.
H.264 is available if you opt for the non-free repos at install. It's not a hidden option. H.264 is then available from Gnome software, or dnf cli. Some other things mentioned in the review are Gnome issues, not Fedora's.
Yes, hardware can make a difference, so here's mine: Intel 10 gen i3, intel integrated graphics, 16 GB RAM. Both Unity and Fedora were installed on VBox and on my desktop PC and worked well on both.
74 • @67 Definitely agree! (by JRT on 2022-05-24 03:22:26 GMT from United States)
You have it right, gimli, about how much better the older versions were than their successors.
75 • fedora 36 (by Bob on 2022-05-24 06:14:43 GMT from Germany)
fedora 36 is the most unstable and buggy fedora in recent years....
76 • Bias (by dragonmouth on 2022-05-24 12:46:19 GMT from United States)
So, unless one believes that Fedora (or any other product, for that matter) is The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, one MUST BE biased or a hater. NO dissenting opinions allowed! Verrrry Interestink
77 • KISS should return (by JJ on 2022-05-24 14:06:16 GMT from Brazil)
In the past decade we saw an amazing growth in several parts of linux that, perhaps, does not needed.
Systemd, pulseaudio, unity/ubuntu, just to name a few.
For sure that things must evolve, but some are going in weird directions.
MX linux, Slackware and Gentoo are much simple to handle than other distros. KISS principle was/is fundamental. Software in general should follow this rule.
Ubuntu is lost. Fedora with its release schedule is odd. Systemd is too big and it is controlling too much things (and dont want a flame war….). Xorg is outdated and wayland, atm, is not mature to replace xorg (in general). And the list could goes on and on.
78 • Fedora 36 using Mate Desktop (by Avelinus on 2022-05-24 10:43:25 GMT from Portugal)
Hello everyone.
Since Fedora 23 I left Ubuntu and Zorin. However, it's been two years since I bought my Asus Tuf with AMD Ryzen 4800H and tested them again. I am currently using Fedora 36, Zorin 16 and Mageia 8. Fedora keeps taking a while to boot. Maybe due to my mistake, or a conflict with the Nvidia 1650 graphics card it takes almost a minute if not longer to boot and get open. I am impressed by the speed announced by some of my colleagues on the panel discussion.
However, Fedora, once opened, is much more efficient. Apps like Libreoffice, Mscore open instantly and not in Zorin 16 and Mageia 8. They take a while to open.
I'm still a Fedora fan using hibrid Fedora 36 Mate desktop. I install apps from different desktops.
Cheers.
79 • what makes a distro? (by Matt on 2022-05-24 15:20:37 GMT from United States)
The main parts of a distro are the package management system, installer, initial settings and package selection provided by the installer, and any custom software. The desktop environment can be changed by the user. The package selection can be changed by the user. The initial settings can be changed by the user.
Maybe I am missing something, but the distros are all essentially the same. Is Fedora running MATE really much different than Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, or Void running MATE? Is the systemd boot time going to be significantly different for Fedora versus Debian when using the same kernel, same drivers, and similar services? Will libreoffice open up faster and use less memory on one distro versus another running the same desktop environment on the same hardware?
There are a number of different respins of Arch that all use the calamares installer. There doesn't appear to be any compelling reason to use one over another. There are respins of Debian that still use the Debian repositories for packages. Once you install set it up the way you want, any distribution that uses Debian repositories and apt becomes the same in terms of daily use and administration.
I haven't used Fedora in years, but if it uses Gnome, then I suspect any distribution that uses the same version of Gnome will have similar performance. Many of the distro reviews are focused on things that aren't really unique to any particular distro.
80 • Re: 4 • Reviewers don't like Gnome-based distros? (by daily linux user on 2022-05-24 17:21:40 GMT from United States)
I too have been shocked by how poorly these two distros, Ubuntu and Fedora have been performing.
With Fedora 's kernel crashing often, I've been wondering if it's Linux thing, and maybe Linus is getting sloppy.
81 • Unity lenses (by Torsten on 2022-05-24 19:20:34 GMT from Germany)
I've installed Unity on Xubuntu 22.04 and I had the same issue with the HUD. It couldn't find any apps or files. So I added the unity-lense-applications etc. via Synaptic and everthing works fine now. I think, the better way to test Unity is indeed Ubuntu Unity ... But I've got the impression: Unity is a kind of outdated and it could never make it to mainstream again. But there so many alternatives in the Linux world, and that's what I like for more than 20 years now. E16, Afterstep, Windowmaker ... etc. I always come back to them for some time.
82 • Fedora (by penguinx86 on 2022-05-24 21:08:18 GMT from United States)
I tried Fedora and Gnome 40 for on my laptop a while. Not bad, until an update killed my wifi. So I wiped the drive and switched back to Linux Mint Xfce instead. Unlike many other distros, my wifi always works with Linux Mint.
83 • Gaming on Ubuntu (by Twitchy on 2022-05-24 21:51:19 GMT from United States)
Improving game performance on Ubuntu starts with improving video card support.
It used be (about a decade ago), that if you had any questions about your hardware working with Linux, Ubuntu was the way to go. Not only did they have standard nonfree drivers, but they went out of their way to purchase third party drivers (eg, with Conextant).
However, over the years, I've seen the opposite trend occurring. Both Ubuntu and other distros have dropped or proposed dropping support for huge swathes of hardware (eg, Ubuntu with 32 bit support, Fedora and legacy BIOS).
Why is this happening? I'm guessing it's the current top-heavy model of commercialized Linux. Paid developers sit in their cushy filter bubbles, and only test on their advanced, expensive computers. The majority of computer users probably have more video card variety than just "AMD or NVIDIA" as one distro put it. (In fact, Ubuntu MATE recently cut out their nonfree NVIDIA video card support, claiming it took up too much space on their LiveDVD image, leaving only AMD video card users supported, from the LiveDVD .)
84 • @79 what makes a distro (by krell on 2022-05-25 01:41:48 GMT from Tajikistan)
Yes you are indeed missing something as there are often subtle differences which may become important depnding on your workflow. For example, Fedora has OOM protection on by default so memory leaks - and there are always some - never bring the system to annoying freeze state where you have to reboot. Ubuntu you would have to manually fiddle with this.
Libraries that can be easily installed(openjdk 8) in fedora cause massive problems in Ubuntu which may affect you if you are using older java apps. Performance due to latest versions of lernels and libraries.
After a fresh install u may not notice this at all but after weeks of use, you might.
85 • Unity had promise (by Ralph on 2022-05-25 04:13:28 GMT from United States)
I think Unity is severely underrated and underappreciated, sure its main menu wasnt so great but I liked its layout and concepts.
Its too bad Ubuntu gave it up for Gnome Shell, they should have kept it going.
Improve it, optimize it.
86 • Review authors. (by Antony on 2022-05-25 08:51:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
It is surprising how often people fail to notice who the author of a particular review is. Even though Jesse is takes care of the vast majority of reviews, It is not uncommon to see guest reviews. But anyway, it's pretty hard to miss who the actual author is.
87 • Fedora review (by Simon on 2022-05-25 09:00:00 GMT from New Zealand)
34 said it: "barrage of negativity". As is so often the case, the guest reviewers make me aware of how good Jesse's reviews usually are. Jesse's reviews make a note of the annoyances, but usually describe them patiently and with some respect for the developers' efforts. This angry-from-the-outset dismissal of the Fedora project's efforts was a bit unpleasant to read.
Personally I detest GNOME and have no interest at all in short-support distros like Fedora that force you (if you want to stay secure) to upgrade your OS regularly whether you want to or not, so Fedora's one of my least favourite distros, and probably the only major distro I haven't even bothered trying in the last ten years or so...but still, I don't like to see a project attacked rather than reviewed. No more angry rants please.
88 • "angry from the outset dismissal.." (by Otis on 2022-05-25 13:12:43 GMT from United States)
@87 Thinking back to my feelings and thoughts when first reading Jeff Siegel's take on Fedora, I recall a similar response as you state, the "angry from the outset" thing, which he himself stated in his way using the aforementioned "cranky" as what was elicited in him, as he had previously dealt with the Fedora quagmire.
But none of that invalidates the review at all. It's a review and has the reviewer's own measures and weights and sensitivities woven through it, same as Jesse's reviews do. As you point out, Jesse takes his approach almost template-like for each and every review, causing some of us to just read the first paragraph about the distro's mission then scrolling quickly down to "conclusions." We might later go up and read more of the review if interest is piqued, and maybe not. One thing for sure about Mr. Sielgel's Fedora 36 review, I did not just scroll to the end for a quick condensed conclusion about the distro, and neither did you.
89 • Reviews (by Tad Strange on 2022-05-25 13:57:59 GMT from Canada)
While I can understand why you folks limit your reviews to the flagship release, wouldn't it be perhaps more useful to just choose a version that you yourselves would be more comfortable with, even if it's a community effort, re-spin, unofficial, or whatever vernacular is used?
That way you won't be confronted with the bias of using something that you dislike, while trying to give an honest review of the system as a whole.
I know what I like, and what I don't like, and I don't think that I myself could give a fair review of something that I don't like from the moment the desktop loads.
Interestingly the KDE system settings has an option for "offline updates", which results in the same experience that you get with the Fedora update-on-reboot, if enabled on another system.
90 • troubleshoot glibc (by Blue.Z.Lab on 2022-05-25 17:54:06 GMT from Romania)
I wonder what glibc is. I tried to use a bash script to run it as an executable on Zorin Linux OS ( up to date release of os) and it said that glibc version is old. I think it is too complicated to make a simple bash program to run on up to date Linux packages. Next error I got in Zorin OS was Wine uninstall not complete due to ":i386" glibc broken status.
91 • "GNOME is the Mac done badly" (by Jeff Rollin on 2022-05-25 18:01:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've thought this myself (assuming that GNOME people actually tried to emulate the Mac OS interface, which I've only ever heard from people who don't seem to be affiliated to the GNOME project) for years.
The reason why people don't hate the Mac interface (as opposed to hating Apple, for either good or bad reasons) is because they've always put effort into making it easy to use. There are certainly certain elements of the Mac interface that people who use it on a daily basis hate (the redesign of Safari that was supposed to come along with Big Sur was mostly junked, for example, and personally I dislike the fact they went for GNOME-style title bars* in recent versions), but it's a simple, intuitive and pleasant-to-use interface. Sorry GNOME fans, but GNOME3 is ugly and counterintuitive - yes, it may work well as a tablet interface or if you're content to use only the keyboard to navigate, but nobody does use it for the former, and I'm certainly not content to do the latter.
*if anything, the influence of GNOME is more apparent on recent versions of macOS, than the opposite.
92 • Not true (by Bob on 2022-05-25 19:13:33 GMT from United States)
"you folks limit your reviews to the flagship release"
Jesse recently started reviewing distros that are still in the waiting list. Also, as far as I can tell, every DE has been covered, unless you would like reviews on some of the minor DEs like jwm, ice, etc.
Every KDE, Xfce built by different hands are always going to have something different, be it bad or good.
If you would like to see some "no holds barred" reviews, check out Dedoimedo.
93 • Ubuntu Unity (by NoComment on 2022-05-25 20:16:19 GMT from Japan)
Not sure if we should be happy or sad for another "Diversity OS"...
I recently started a live session of Ubuntu Unity, and it didn't go well. At all.
Upon start, the shortcuts image showed up. I pressed a PrtSc, but the window with screenshots closed and the empty desktop was recorded and saved under images. Very helpful.
I deleted the useless image, but the start menu still showed the image preview in the history, without any obvious way to remove it. Later, many previews were missing...
Then I created a text file and double-clicked on it. It opened in LibreOffice Writer per default, instead in the text editor. Pluma.
BTW, there was whole set of nonsense: Crappy Nemo instead of Nautilus, Pluma in place of Gedit, Atril ... Don't want Unity Mate. Don't.
LibreOffice comes in the same dark-mode as the Ubuntu Unity itself, and it shows the wrong default icon set, namely the standard Elementary, which is useless in combination with dark themes. Many of its icons are hardly recognizable. If the preset had at least been the included Breeze-Dark...
But the kids just won't learn and understand that the dark themes are no-go as a default and that dark icons on the dark background aren't cool... except in their dark cellars.
Next I wanted to exchange that dark theme in the system settings, but be aware -- once you change it, there is no more way back. You get some ancient Adwaita version which looked dated even in 1999 and the old Ubuntu standard, Ambiance and Radiance, plus the high-contrast theme, but none of those is the new Ubuntu Unity's default dark theme... So, don't touch that Theme Button in Appearance, which is an empty field, without the text - no theme is set as default, and there is no way to set nothing, once you changed it.
The default icon theme is a mix-and-match of different styles and sizes, the OS calls itself Ubuntu instead of Ubuntu Unity...
After that, I decided to shut down the Insult OS that looks, feels and functions like it was created by some 12-year-old.
Thanks, but no thanks.
The only positive thing on Ubuntu Unity 22.04 was a default wallpaper.
94 • @91 • "GNOME is the Mac done badly" (by Jeff Rollin from United Kingdom) (by NoComment on 2022-05-25 20:24:51 GMT from Japan)
I am very sorry to say that it is you, not your OS GUI...
The Gnome interface is by far the most efficient GUI ever made until this day -- it is a better Mac, so to say.
The only problem is, that it is a Linux GUI.
Will say, even the most efficient GUI on a crap BSD, Linux, Mac (-BSD) helps no further.
Without usable software, one always ends up on Windows. Sad, but truth.
Gnome 42 on Windows would be a real Dream-Team...
95 • @92--Too late...almost. (by R. Cain on 2022-05-25 20:58:25 GMT from United States)
"...If you would like to see some "no holds barred" reviews, check out Dedoimedo."
...except, regarding Linux distros, it is too late.
Dedoimedo has decided to quit doing serious, no-holds-barred reviews of Linux distros because of the sad shape that the Linux distroscape has fallen into (no QA; no testing; "move fast and break thing; insane regressions...), starting about five years ago (
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/best-distro-2016-2020.html https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-year-of-dissatisfaction.html ).
Even you dedoimedo-haters will be happy to know that he's still providing plenty of fodder for whatever your dedoimedo-inclinations are, bashing and otherwise. To wit:
#############################################################
Gnome 40 - The Anti-Desktop Desktop
Updated: March 29, 2021
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gnome-40.html
"...After all, for me, Gnome 3 has never delivered. It's always been sub-optimal, introducing complication and confusion into the classic desktop formula through a strange paradigm of would-be visual minimalism and touch-like inefficiency. More mouse clicks = not fun...
Gnome 40 is Gnome. Simple. [NOT “Simple DE”, but “Simple as that!”] A desktop environment that caters to a weird "minimalistic" model that introduces touch-like inefficiency into the world of classic computing. The naming conventions falsely raises expectations, but it's a standard release, with a few new options, a few small visual changes, and some tweaks behind the scenes. You can't really decouple most of the experience from Fedora.
I wasn't impressed really. Scaling, fonts, overall ergonomics are all off - and slowly getting worse as time goes by. Just setting up the framework to use extensions - so you can have basic desktop functionality present in 100% of all other desktop setups in the world - is frustrating. A total waste of time. I need a dozen steps just to be able to see my application shortcuts all the time. Why bother? However, there's one advantage to Gnome - IT'S A GOOD INDICATOR OF WHERE THE FUTURE OF LINUX LIES. So a decade from now, the Linux desktop will gently, gracefully make itself completely irrelevant to everyday computing. But hey. I'm on my happy pills."
96 • Guilty (by Friar Tux on 2022-05-25 21:32:06 GMT from Canada)
@88 (Otis) "... causing some of us to just read the first paragraph about the distro's mission then scrolling quickly down to "conclusions." "
**GUILTY!! **
And, as you say, if my interest is piqued I DO go back for a more detailed read.
As for Fedora and GNOME... haven't bothered with them in years. Before that, Fedora never worked properly for me. And GNOME, well, I was a GNOME 2 fan, then switched to KDE until THAT went screwy, after which I discovered Cinnamon and it was love at first sight. So far, Cinnamon has been my longest running DE.
@95 (R. Cain) "So a decade from now, the Linux desktop will gently, gracefully make itself completely irrelevant to everyday computing." - I don't think that will happen. Sure, a few DE's and distros may take that route, but as long as you have people like us old Linux geezers around, you'll have practical, usable distros on the menu. But, time will tell. Could be someone will come up with a distro the could put MSWindows, Apple, AND Linus/BSD to shame. Time will tell.
97 • fedpra 36 review (by jc on 2022-05-26 01:56:00 GMT from United States)
The review seems reasonable. It just doesn't pull punches. If fedora developers can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. I will not iterate the shortcomings nor sing the praises of fedora 36. I tried it many years ago (pre-systemd), found it unsuitable for my use. I have no plans to use any systemd distro as a "daily driver." And that's all there is to say.
98 • REVIEW-ERS ARE SUBJECTIVE (by Cris from Romania on 2022-05-26 06:21:26 GMT from Germany)
I USED FEDORA 28 WITH GNOME 3, WAS PROMISSING,
no man ever walks the earth with the same manners, views.
i am stuck with debian distro's and systemd and Mate ever .
i like that there is diversity , unity, gnome3, etc
was lxde or openbox(the greatest DE or WM or what you would call it) perfect? when it was launched?
was it? ..fedora is built for its core users! , as DEBIAN with its derivatives, ubuntu or arch and derivatives..
we should not trash or pick the FREE options we have.
how about instead of that, we just stick with wat we like, and let others be.
i miss CrunchBang
be human!
99 • HP POPS (by JSmith on 2022-05-26 09:05:37 GMT from Australia)
"HP plans to sell laptop computers with Pop!_OS pre-installed" - unfortunately "US ONLY" is mentioned, as per their website.
Anyway, that encourages me to go for lenovo instead.
100 • Fedora, again (by gatorpearl on 2022-05-26 16:23:44 GMT from United States)
@64 (Panther): I understand where you're coming from, and this is coming from a person who defended Fedora further above on the comments section, but I think that beyond the 'additional repos you have to add yourself from the start' issue that in many cases is out of the distro publishers' control, most of the other issues can be boiled down to:
"If it's a known issue, why hasn't it been addressed yet?"
Especially considering that you mention they're issues going so far as Fedora 34. One would think that if they're issues that are well known, and as old as they are, and enough people are complaining, then surely they should go up a few spots in priority, right? This is not an issue of "the vision the team has for their distro/DE", it's an issue of disregarding lots of complaints from users that probably do want to see the distro getting better and more robust. After that it's just a matter of how much you care.
I have an audio issue with Fedora on my current hardware, and F36 did not bring a resolution for it out of the box. I would be pretty... cranky (heh) if I was on the mindset of "why the hell is this still going on, it was even reported as a bug by more users than just myself!", but honestly? I tried other distros on my current hardware, and the problem is the same if not worse altogether. Hell, I had audio problems with it even on Windows 10! TBH I don't really care much - I know it's an issue with my current hardware, my former machine could run any and all distros I threw at it completely flawlessly (sadly it died... RIP). But Fedora 36 on GNOME has a workaround I can use, so I use it. Pretty simple stuff.
The rest of the issues mentioned I have indeed encountered them, but I still get a much smoother and friendlier experience from Fedora (to this day) than what I get from Windows, and the new features in F36 and GNOME 42 are to my liking. And it keeps the handy audio workaround, so why would I complain? But yeah it's understandable if other people do have complaints about the distro. I just... I dunno. I expect a bit more professionalism from a reviewer, or at least I expect to read someone that isn't overinflating stuff that could be considered nitpicks (...or well, stuff that's part of the territory for reasons that are already well known, not 'errors' that 'need to be addressed'.)
101 • @100 (gatorpearl) (by Panther on 2022-05-27 01:49:17 GMT from United States)
I agree with everything you said. There is no need to distro bash or nitpick. Bugs, flaws, etc need to be managed in the proper way, starting with reporting, and if you are irritated by a particular bug, rather than complaining, contribute. A well written bug report is contributing including follow up information or debugging as needed.
As I said, the way Fedor a36 was reviewed was inappropriately worded at best, not an appropriate way of handling bugs, and even unprofessional at worst.
Again, Debian has long standing bugs as well, one going back to 2007, the packages is orphaned and unmaintained, but regardless the package is still in the Debian repos. Thus, despite known bugs, this package, and may other long standing bugs, are then passed to Ubuntu and all the Debian and Ubuntu clones / spins / remasters whatever you want to call them. There is a longer list of bugs between 2011 and 2019, does that mean we should distro bash and do a review of Debian highlighting all the unpatched bugs, and then continue with the same through ubuntu and all the spins? Of course not, that is not what reviews are for, that is what bug reports are for.
https://udd.debian.org/bugs/?release=any&merged=ign&fnewerval=7&flastmodval=7&rc=1&cdeferred=1&sortby=id&sorto=asc&format=html#results
I am disappointed with the quality of the Fedora review (above) and the subsequent distro bashing, trolling, and name calling that ensued. Most of it is trolling here is by users stating they do not like Fedora and/or Gnome, they freely admit they have not tried it in years, yet somehow they know the review is accurate.
There is simply no distro that works on all hardware all the time and some problems are difficult to resolve and developers need to prioritise. Don't forget, the vast majority of Fedora developers and package maintainers, as with many distros, are volunteers.
102 • Inscrutable Fedora (by Dr.Hu on 2022-05-27 03:39:20 GMT from Philippines)
Four days running Fedora 36 without a hiccup. I'd happily keep on using it were I not more of a Debian/Ubuntu type. Perhaps the idea behind vanilla Gnome is to keep office minions using future Red Hat from screwing around with the desktop, and just using the apps provided in the dash. But to think it's not configurable is flat wrong. Anyone with a little knowledge and with minimal effort can change it to their liking. A couple of extensions and a few minutes give you these:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/164785504@N08/with/52102305779/
103 • Reviewers are not bug reporters (by Andy Prough on 2022-05-27 06:31:51 GMT from United States)
I've seen this comment that a few Fedora fans are making here about "the proper way to deal with distro errors is to write a bug report, not a review". This thinking would entirely defeat the purpose of reviews, which is to point out the perceived pros and cons of a distro and compare it to others. Their job is NOT to fix the problems they find. I've seen what developers of good distros do - they pay attention to reviews, try to recreate the problems that are written up, and try to fix any resulting bugs themselves. If Fedora desires to be seen as a quality distro, they should do the same with this review.
104 • Fedora 36 Bug Report (by Otis on 2022-05-27 13:43:09 GMT from United States)
@101 (Panther) I'd like to thank Distrowatch for providing weekly Bug Reports of various Linux Distributions. This latest one, by Jeff Siegel on Fedora 36, was particularly engaging and even had qualities of an actual review (as have many other Weekly Bug Reports here), in that rather than a list of encountered bugs it was written in an engaging prose style reminiscent of reviews we see all over the electronic interwebs.
Clever stuff. Keep up the good work on The Distrowatch Weekly Linux Distro Bug Report.
105 • Great discussion (mostly) (by David on 2022-05-27 13:48:21 GMT from United States)
OPINION: Well, this has been the most consequential Comments section of Distrowatch in a very long time, focusing on distros for a change, with attention to Fedora 36. It has reminded me of days past when I used to anticipate the latest Distrowatch and devour it. Rather than a poll forum on "which color to you like best: red, blue, green, yellow, or orange? Let us know your choice and the reasons for it in the Comments," this one has had only a few instances of pettiness instead of an entire stream. Thank you, Jeff, for your review, even if I wished for a review of the KDE "spin" instead of fidgety GNOME that (IMO) requires far too much manipulation with add-ons to make it usable. See? I can be cranky, too.
106 • @102 (by Dr.Hu) & @105 (by David) (by JustSaying on 2022-05-27 16:17:59 GMT from United States)
Your first image shows the real issue pretty well.
Whoever ever configures Fedora like on that first image, has a serious problem, but is highly probable unable to notice it. Unfortunately, there are (too) many such people.
The background:
The humans are supposed to be intelligent and flexible, and as such, they should be able to learn and adapt themselves -- to the products they use, to their environment ...
Whoever needs to reconfigure Fedora to be able to use it, just proves that some people are simple "creatures of habits", incapable to adapt.
Those who reconfigure Fedora as on your first image are actually the biggest Windows fans ever, which is a paradox in itself, as they run away from Windows to Linux, just to reconfigure it in a Windows way.
The same goes for the second image too, with that Mac-like preconfiguration.
107 • @103 (by Andy Prough) (by JustSaying on 2022-05-27 16:22:37 GMT from United States)
First of all, Fedora (+ RHEL) IS a quality-distribution; that said, the only one beside the Ubuntu.
Second, Fedora team does pay attention to reviews and is fixing bugs. Completely bug-free OS never existed and will never exist.
Gnome team also listens to their users, but one can't listen to each and every single user's opinion.
If one wishes more sun, and another one more rain ...
Not every review is worth reading. Just as is the case with every other text, article, journalistic writing ... And not every opinion is worth to be heard, not every thought to be told ...
There are reviewers and reviewers. Some are paid, some are just complaining and nitpicking, some are simply incapable, some are trying to write really well-written reviews and stay as objective as possible ... That's how it is and that'll never change.
People are people, and they will always stay people. And the reviewers are also only people. Some people are more intelligent or capable then the others, some are more flexible or objective then the others ...
108 • 'Review' (by NitPicking on 2022-05-27 17:00:59 GMT from United States)
1. Fedora released too late (... like almost every other OS with a set release date.)
2. 10-minutes installation time (+ in VM!) (... which depends on many things and is perfectly normal.)
3. Slow and buggy (VM!) (... like EVERY other modern OS with a lot of animations.)
4. Dreaded Anaconda installer (... which is probably the simplest to use installer of all.)
5. Adding extensions ... still involves using the upper left corner of the screen when those of us who are right-handed feel more comfortable working with the right side of the screen. (how about not adding extensions?)
6. Nextcloud ... I had to use a GNOME extension to add it to the top panel. (Don't know about Nextcloud, but Google Drive mounts automatically in Nautilus, and it stays there. One can unmount it just the same way as a USB-drive. No need for any extensions.)
7. H.264 codec wasn't installed (Because proprietary codec.)
8. Thunderbird ... didn't show up (... a bug-free OS? Never saw one since 1979.)
9. If the Flatpak repository is enabled in the software center and Flatpak is installed, why is it necessary to install the Flatpak runtime environment to install Flatpaks? (Because if a user does not install any Flatpak App, it doesn't need the runtime neither. Runtimes take a lot of space.)
10. The software center was close to useless for updates. (Exact opposite is the case and it also even handles upgrades perfectly.)
11. Even when the computer had been restarted, the software center showed all updates were current. Sometimes, if I let it sit, it would eventually connect to whatever it connects to and tell me there were updates. (That's how it works -- it checks for the updates a couple of minutes after user loged-in. It's called 'delayed start', and that's how it has to be and is in every other OS. In Ubuntu or Mint, one can set up the delay manually.)
12. It looks almost exactly like the Windows screen (... is the proof of a well-done, professional work.)
13. Boot times are stunningly slow. ... 20 to 25 seconds (... which depends on many things and is generally perfectly normal.)
Kinda interesting to see how some 'reviewers' are nitpicking on some more or less irrelevant details of one distribution, but same time, they don't notice the real functionality problems in some others.
I don't remember that someone ever mentioned how the all Xfce-based distributions can't scale the icons on the taskbar properly -- just as one example. That IS a problem, and is much more important then 'released too late'.
109 • @103 (Andy Prough) and @104 (Otis) (by Panther on 2022-05-27 18:23:43 GMT from United States)
Your comments are so, how to say this as polite as possible, out of touch with how bug fixes work it is hard to know where to start.
1. While some maintainers, Fedora, Gnome, KDE, etc, may or may not pay attention to reviews, using reviews as an alternate to bug reports is a fallacy and such claims only show your lack of understanding how and why bug reporting works.
2. Every developer I have ever interacted will will tell you if there is no bug report the problem does not exist. While this is an extreme response and not completely reflective of reality, it is not far from the truth. If you want to understand why read:
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
This is why every major distro not only maintains a bug reporting system but has documentation on how and why to use such a system:
https://wiki.debian.org/HowtoUseBTS
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bug_reporting_guidelines
I could include more such links but I think you get the point. Many distros have graphical and/or automated bug reporting tools.
Again that is not to say developers do not use other means or ignore feedback , as outlined briefly by @107 (JustSaying), however bug reporting is the gold standard for reporting issues.
In addition the links I gave you review not only how and why of bug reporting, the Ubuntu link in particular, has a short section on "Determine if the bug is really a bug" and a lengthy section on "Bug reporting etiquette".
If you want solutions, this is simply how it is done. Distro reviews and opinions on the merits of say Gnome vs KDE, while not completely ignored, are far from the standard of how all the major distros work, Fedora included.
The exception here would be "features" or design elements (colors, buttons, workflow, panel configuration, etc) and these are typically decided by a group, and if you are interested you can almost always participate in such discussions (assuming you are reasonably well behaved) on mailing lists or such but not every opinion of every user can or will be implemented and complaining about such choices without participating comes down to nitpicking, trolling, etc.
I could not find any distribution that suggests filing a distro review was a method of fixing problems or features so, if you want solutions, follow the guidelines, they are there for a reason. Otherwise you are ignorant at best and trolling at worst and you will almost never find a solution to actual bugs.
3. Every major distro has various support from wiki pages to man pages to IRC to forums and these resources should be used when reviewing a distro otherwise the quality of the review suffers to the point of useless at best to trolling at worst.
Certainly one would not install Arch or Gentoo or any major distro without doing some research and Fedora is no exception. While you may be more familiar with other distros, such as Debian or Ubuntu, not all of that knowledge translates and you gained that knowledge over time using the distro and various support channels.
Certainly "reviewing" Debian or Ubuntu and writing a review complaining about the core features of the distro is pointless. It would be like installing Debian or ubuntu or slackware and complaining about their lack of modern features such as wayland or systemd or using apparmor rather than selinux. When doing a review the question is how do the choices the distro made work.
Fedora has the advantage, or disadvantage, of pushing the development on major features in Linux. I would note NOT EVERY feature in Fedora is adapted in the greater community, selinux for example, many of the features are the way of the future. Gnome is one such example, systemd, and wayland are others. Ubuntu is good for new users as they make many things easy, but they also introduce their own set of ideas and unfortunately many are never adapted by the greater community. Not that they are never used mind you but they tend to fade away more often than similar efforts in Fedora. Examples, past and present, include everything from upstart to unity to snaps to MIR. So while you might enjoy such things, they are often unique to Ubuntu but in the long run such Ubuntu specific features tend to fade into obscurity or footnotes or failed ideas.
Now you can argue you do not like wayland, the fact of the matter is Xorg is going to be slowly phased out and Fedora has been one of the distros on the leading edge while Debian and Ubuntu lag. Ubuntu, rather than customising gnome or working with wayland attempted MIR and Unity and such projects ultimately failed, although there is some community support for such efforts, such support is not even close to the support for wayland. hardware manufactures for example will not support MIR while the will work with Wayland.
Personal opinions aside, even Debian acknowledges Wayland is the way of the future:
"Why is Wayland necessary?
Wayland allows better isolation between processes: one window cannot access resources from, or inject keystrokes into, another window.
Wayland also has the potential to be faster, by reducing the amount of code between the processes and the hardware, by delegating lots of things to the processes themselves.
See also the Wayland FAQ for more information."
https://wiki.debian.org/Wayland#Why_is_Wayland_necessary.3F
Fedora enabled wayland by default in F22 released May 26, 2015
Debian enabled wayland by default in Debian 10 released July 6, 2019
That is a 4 year delay
So if you want to be on the leading edge and are willing to learn new things and contribute by all means use Fedora, but recognise it for what it is.
If you want to put your head in the sand and ignore what is coming and prefer something that you think will work, go for Debian or Ubuntu, but have no illusions that many of the features ubuntu introduces are in any way mainstream or long lived, MIR and Upstart being prime examples, however there is a long list, and the list for abandoned Ubuntu projects is much longer than the list for Fedora. One would wonder would it not be better for the community in general if Ubuntu was more willing to be more flexible? Think of all the improvements in wayland that Ubuntu could have issued if it did not waste all the time on MIR ? Certainly something to consider when advise someone uses Ubuntu and derivatives.
I deeply apologise if this post in any way comes across in any way as condescending or arrogant that is not my intention. I suppose my major points is:
The review of F36 here is sub par.
110 • Configuring Fedora, @106 (by Dr.Hu on 2022-05-28 00:00:32 GMT from Philippines)
"The humans are supposed to be intelligent and flexible, and as such, they should be able to learn and adapt themselves -- to the products they use, to their environment ..." Dumb animals adapt to their environment. Humans adapt their environment to suit them. That's intelligence.
"Those who reconfigure Fedora as on your first image are actually the biggest Windows fans ever, which is a paradox in itself, as they run away from Windows to Linux, just to reconfigure it in a Windows way. The same goes for the second image too, with that Mac-like preconfiguration." Configuration is on Gnome, not necessarily Fedora, and Gnome provides the tools for such configuration. This a great part of why I like and use Linux. It's not: "Use what we gave you." It's: DO what you wish to make it better for you.
Number of Comments: 110
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