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".

Comments

It's a hell of a lot easier to switch now!

[tlambert]

It's a hell of a lot easier to switch now!

Good job, guys!

I was having a hell of a time switching to your software before you released it. Now that it's released, the experience is 1000X better!

(still sucks, though..)

Re:It's a hell of a lot easier to switch now!

[Joce640k]

This will finally be the year of Linux on the Desktop.

(About time, too! It's been in the pipeline for ages...)

Re:It's a hell of a lot easier to switch now!

[saloomy]

I feel like the time for the Linux Desktop has come and gone, and it is such a shame too. Linux desktops could have absolutely changed the game in terms of computer use. Why? Because of the infrastructure, and Apple IMHO is in the lead on this. I have Macs at work and home, so does my wife. We have Apple TVs, iPhones, iPads, and the whole ecosystem really does work. With the latest iteration of iOS/Mac OS, our desktops sync, our documents sync, and our settings sync. All of our setups follow us from computer to computer. As long as we stay in the walled garden, we have a fantastic computing experience. The sad part is: Linux already rules the cloud. So why couldn't it deliver the same seamless experience across all the screens that Apple as (and it seems Windows is not very far behind). The barrier used to be the application support. Now, its the infrastructure in between.

An unsecure OS has been detected. Fix now?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the prompt that should be displayed if Fedora is run from removable media on a Windows machine. If the use clicks Yes, the Windows install is nuked and replaced with Fedora. If the user clicks No, the machine waits 10 minutes and then without warning BLAMMO nukes the Windows install and replaces it with Fedora.

You know, kind of like the upgrade process from Windows 7 to Windows 10, to keep in line with what Windows users are used to.

How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[Qbertino]

Can anyone who know both Fedora and Ubuntu say how they compare to each other?
Unity aside, is there a solid reason to use Fedora over Ubuntu?
What do you like about Fedora - if you are a Fedora user?

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[brickhouse98]

Ubuntu is easier to get into in my opinion. It allows for easy install of codecs, etc. that are otherwise slightly harder to get on Fedora. If you want that same type of ease of use but on Fedora, go for Korora. Pretty stable and a decent mix of new stuff with reliability. Offers an LTS version if you want good reliability/durability. Fedora is one of the best distros for using the latest technologies, one of which is the latest Gnome DE edition to drop. It's good for previewing things that will eventually come down to RHEL and CentOS. Little harder to get stuff like flash, MP3, etc. working because it relies on RPMfusion (or United RPM if you want) which usually are slightly behind Fedora's quick release schedule. Although it's more bleeding edge than Ubuntu it is pretty stable if you ask me. I use both and they're both fine for what they are. I've moved to Fedora on my workstations simply because I like Gnome and it offers the latest Gnome and doesn't mix them like Ubuntu (3.22 Nautilus with 3.20 shell for instance.)

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[willoughby]

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.

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[kwalker]

I still install RPMfusion right after installing Fedora, but starting with F25, MP3 decoding is enabled out of the box. I'm assuming their legal counsel has reviewed the MP3 patents and decided they've expired or are no longer enforceable.

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[kwalker]

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.

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[ausekilis]

Some of the bigger differences:

• Fedora is "bleeding edge" while Ubuntu favors stability - Fedora typically has newer versions of libraries sooner than Ubuntu does. While Ubuntu packages arent as old as Debian (which it's based on), Ubuntu is typically a bit more conservative and stable.
• YUM (DNF) vs APT - Fedora uses YUM (now DNF) with RPM packages while Ubuntu uses APT and DEB packages. Functionally there isn't a lot of difference between the two, but the naming conventions for packages differ.
• RPM vs DEB - Ubuntu is a little wider spread and has a bit stronger support. If you should need some obscure package/game/library, somebody likely has a .deb file of it, while you may be stuck with a manual compile/install on Fedora.
• Repos - Ubuntu has a much larger number of third-party repos while Red Hat is slightly more consolidated (RPMFusion project).

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

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[r1348]

All the patents regarding mp3 decoding expired, but there's still one covering encoding, and that's why only playback is enabled for now.

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[Yonsy]

In my case. My work commonly is put online/offline linux servers in cloud providers. And i don't like the idea for update my laptop Linux every year for something magic/new so I use Ubuntu 16.04 LTS that have 5 year support (not 9 months like the other versions or Fedora too) and for anything new for example latests Ansible versions, I added the PPA for this projects.

Fedora is a workcamp for Redhat, they experiment in Fedora new changes and updates with Gnome and now Wayland. This is the same work that Canonical do in Ubuntu (Unity and Mir) but with one difference, Redhat give long term support ONLY to Redhat Enterprise that is a stabilized Fedora release worked by many years, yes you can use CentOS instead but any support will come from the community. Canonical is a bit more "elastic" with their support for desktop/laptop machines on my view with a LTS release every two years and PPAs for community packages (for example i deploy servers with 14.04/16.04 LTS but with nginx and mariadb deployed from their PPAs)

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[barc0001]

I haven't used any desktop Linux in a while but when I played around with them I found Ubuntu's were easier to initially set up, but Fedora was more stable. There were still bizarre integration problems with applications though, like different apps using different file manager plugins so that one application works across the whole file system no problem, but another can't browse into mount points, which means you need to move files out of that mount to use them, then put them back, etc. A small mountain of little annoyances like that eventually drove me back into the arms of Redmond.

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[umafuckit]

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.

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[clonehappy]

Your goddam hardware is obviously bad or just plain shitty. Big whoop.

Annnd this is why no one wants to run Linux.

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[willoughby]

My hardware is a Dell Optiplex 9010 - 3rd gen core I7, 16 gig of ram, CoolerMaster 500 watt PSU, GTX750Ti, Mushkin Reactor 1tb SSD. And this motherboard might as well be an engineering prototype from Intel. Every chip is Intel and even the "Dell drivers" downloaded from Dell support are just generic Intel driver packages.

But maybe you're right and this setup is just shitty hardware. But it's shitty hardware where Ubuntu 16.04 stumbles & Win 10 runs a treat. Maybe someday I'll buy some "good hardware" so I can run Ubuntu.

Re:How does Fedora compare to Ubuntu?

[Tough Love]

There were still bizarre integration problems with applications though, like different apps using different file manager plugins so that one application works across the whole file system no problem, but another can't browse into mount points, which means you need to move files out of that mount to use them, then put them back, etc.

Whaaaa? I've never heard of such a thing, and certainly never experienced it, ever. Maybe you've got a real story to tell, maybe you just made it up, or maybe your mind played tricks on you, trying to remember something annoying that happened in the distant past, I don't know. But file managers on Linux don't do that. And apps don't use "file manager plugins", they use whatever the widget toolkit (usually GTK or QT) provides. Often with customization, and therefore the possibility of bugs exists, but not browsing across mount points? Come on, you're making that up.

BTW, Dolphin (QT based) is the best file browser on Linux by far. It's worth installing even if you're running Gnome.

Wayland is also now the default

[neuro88]

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.

Re:Wayland is also now the default

[ilsaloving]

Seriously? Isn't Wayland kind of a big deal?

I mean, I can't remember anymore. It's been in development for so long that in my mind it's reached Duke Nukem status. Now I'm going to have to go google it cause I can no longer remember what was supposed to be so good about it.

Re:If I wanted Linux...

[techno-vampire]

If Steam and gaming are a major part of what you do with your computer, you're right. If you're using it for work, that doesn't matter. And, if for some reason you need access to the latest versions of various libraries, or want to help test the latest and greatest versions of various projects, you're better off with Fedora. It all depends on what you're looking for.

Re:If I wanted Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you like systemd, it's the reference platform. If you hate systemd, it is the worst distro out there. It's their fault.

Re:Linus' distro of choice?

[r1348]

He actually mentioned many times he uses Fedora as desktop/workstation distro, and in his children's laptops too.

Re:downloading was annoying though

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the link:

https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/25/Workstation/x86_64/iso/Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-25-1.3.iso

BTW, it's right there on the right side of the page, under "Other downloads".

Just clicking on that would have been a lot quicker and easier than typing up a rant, but who am I to judge someone that just needs a little hand-holding to download an ISO?

How does this make it easier to switch?

[blindseer]

When I think of an OS that makes it easy to switch from one I have used before the UI is just one of many things I consider. The article mentions some scripting languages that are supported out of the box, a few applications that are included, and how it's got a great kernel and package manager but those are really important only to software developers and the like.

What I'd think people that are switching operating systems would be concerned about are things like being able to read their existing media and files, has drivers/utilities for their peripherals (like a printer/scanner/fax MFD), can connect to their network (wired, wireless, whatever DSL/cable/satellite/dial-up modem they might have), and probably most importantly can run the programs they are used to and/or invested a lot of money into. There was a brief mention of supporting graphical hardware, and being able to play MP3 files but not much else.

For long time users of computers they will have a stockpile of older files and potentially software they'd like to access even on a new system. This computing inertia has been a big reason why Microsoft has been so successful, people can move from one version to the next and not worry too much about losing the ability to do things as they did before. This is especially true for technologies like VirtualPC and Boot Camp that allow people to run their old OS on their new computer alongside the new OS. (I realize the two technologies I mention don't do exactly the same thing but it does allow one to run an older Windows OS relatively painlessly and run some other OS with little difficulty for people that wish to do so.)

Fedora is much like any other Linux based OS I assume, so I assume it can run VirtualBox. WINE is probably available too. I assume it can at least read NTFS and HFS volumes, even if writing is not available the ability to read is huge. I assume it runs a few nice web browsers, office productivity suites, and e-mail programs too. I'd like to hear about those. I'm sure access to games is important to a lot of people so adding that would be a good idea but it won't be much of a selling point to people like me or for corporations.

I know some of this stuff because I'm a regular user of Linux, Mac, and Windows but honestly I don't know a whole lot about what a recent version of Linux might do to help me ditch one of my non-Linux OSes. I use my Mac for e-mail and web browsing, Linux for writing code, and Windows to run Office. I don't really try to do away with any one OS because I literally have a dozen computers in my basement, I have options.

If someone wants to sell me an OS as an alternative to MacOS or Windows then they will have to try harder. I believe I am not alone in this.