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Fedora 25 Now Available -- Makes It Easier To Switch From Windows 10 Or Mac (betanews.com)
Reader BrianFagioli writes: After the release of both alpha and beta versions, Fedora 25 is officially here and ready for production machines. If you aren't familiar with the popular Linux-based operating system, please know that it is the distribution of choice for the founder of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds. One of the most endearing qualities of Fedora is its focus on only offering truly free open source software. Also, you can always count on a very modern version of the Linux kernel being available. Despite having very up-to-date packages, it is always very stable too. My favorite aspect, however, is the commitment to the GNOME desktop environment; other DEs are available, though. The team says, "Fedora 25 Workstation now makes it easier to for Windows and OS X users to get started, with Fedora Media Writer serving as the default download for those operating systems. This tool helps users find and download the current Fedora release and write it to removable media, like a USB stick, allowing potential Fedora users to 'test drive' the operating system from that media environment. Fedora can then be installed to their systems with the same process".
Fedora 25 marks the first release of a mainstream distro to switch to Wayland as the default display server (it will set X11 if it's detected that you're using incompatible drivers such as the nvidia drivers for example). I'm surprised there's no front page story about this on /.
Hell, there's not even token a mention of it in this summary.
Just uninstalled Ubuntu 16.04 here after about three weeks & installed Win 10. The file manager in Ubuntu would constantly cease to function. If you clicked on the icon the background would pulse with changing color as if it were launching then, after about 20 seconds, the pulsing would stop. That's it - no response, error message, crash report - nothing. And it's not just a file manager, it also handles auto mounting of flash drives, external hard drives, etc..
There were also crashes of something in the background with the crash report icon appearing in the dock. But the freezing file manager was finally intolerable. I might have had more patience or tried to diagnose if this hadn't been a long term support release. I had to reboot Ubuntu 16.04 more than my time with Win 8, 8.1, & 10 combined.
If this is the best LTS release Ubuntu can come up with I'd advise using anything else.
Fedora is usually one or two releases ahead of Ubuntu. Fedora is usually quick to fix issues with their shipped software and doesn't necessarily wait for the next distro release to release a new version of a specific package or to add new packages. Fedora ships with (usually, depending on release schedules) the latest versions of GNOME and GNOME software.
Ubuntu supports some things that Fedora can't/won't because of patents/copyright. Ubuntu is Debian-based, so if you're more familiar with that family of distros, you'll be more comfortable in Ubuntu.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
Both will give you KDE (again, Fedora's version may be newer), MATE, LXDE, Gnome, etc... You can set either up however you'd like, and the default repos largely contain the same stuff.
Personally, I run Fedora since my work uses RHEL and that keeps me in the same mindset. I tend to bounce between Linux Mint and Fedora, and have found the only real difference for me comes down to some obscure libraries on (very rare) occasions. Folks complain that Fedora is unstable, and that's generally true for the first few weeks after release. I've had the same problem with Ubuntu, though... so YMMV
All the patents regarding mp3 decoding expired, but there's still one covering encoding, and that's why only playback is enabled for now.
Just uninstalled Ubuntu 16.04 here after about three weeks & installed Win 10. The file manager in Ubuntu would constantly cease to function.
I'm not a big fan of 16.04 either. On two machines I work with the ethernet port randomly stops functioning every so often and until I unplug/replug the cable, similar deal with pulseaudio, systemd refused to boot the machine because one of the network shares in fstab had a syntax error, and there was a clusterfuck the one time I tried to install an ATI graphics card. However the file manager... You could just install a different desktop environment (I'm guessing you were using Unity?) and that problem would go away. I might try uninstalling systemd, TBH. I reckon half of my problems come from there.
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