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by sekh60 1229 days ago
RHEL and derivatives have long been the standard in the Ops world for their stability. Rocky Linux and Alma linux are the main two community editions, they are both supported by pretty good communities, so it's hard to pick one.

Seems Ubuntu was largely popular with devs and the masses due to it's ease of use back in the day. Never understood why more didn't just go with Fedora back then.
5 comments
ascar 1229 days ago
My last dip into alternative distros (~2 years ago) for my dev desktop was quickly over by various problems/missing settings for display, audio and network. Not saying it wouldn't have worked (one was even ubuntu based), but I had to go and configure desktop stuff on the CLI, including having to figure out how. I rather not.

I'm absolutely fine running something else on a server though and my docker images are usually alpine based. But for desktop Ubuntu is the closest to "looks decent and just works"

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angry_moose 1229 days ago
How's Rocky coming along?

I used to be a RHEL admin and was just more comfortable over there, but after the whole CentOS mess I ended up running Ubuntu LTS at home instead - I just wanted a "set it and forget it" machine so I didn't go with Fedora.

I'm currently regretting that decision, as I'm really not looking forward to devoting another weekend to rebuilding again.

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fanatic2pope 1229 days ago
I don't know about Rocky, but I updated all my CentOS systems (about a dozen desktops and a file server) to Stream and they work fine. The changeover has been pretty much a non-event.
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sekh60 1229 days ago
I just rebuilt one my ceph nodes with Rocky 9. Seems they are pretty closely tracking RHEL. I think Alma is a little quicker with patches, but both are fast.
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grey_earthling 1229 days ago
> Never understood why more didn't just go with Fedora back then.

For me at least: back then Fedora didn't have a supported non-terminal way to upgrade to a newer major version. (Whereas now upgrading Fedora is more polished and simpler than Ubuntu.)

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vetinari 1229 days ago
Fedora, while very nice, goes too fast. Basically as fast, as the non-LTS ubuntu releases. Ubuntu has the LTS option, for Fedora, that LTS option was CentOS and today Rocky/Alma.
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TingPing 1229 days ago
Fedora is supported for 1 year. Ubuntu non-LTS is supported for 9 months.

Subjectively Fedora has a far more robust updater and just higher quality releases in general IME.

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vetinari 1229 days ago
9mo vs 1y is not a much of practical difference.

With the rest, I agree. I run fedora on my desktop, but I would not use it for my parents, for example. Even with LTS, they were complaining that it changes all the time.

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oriettaxx 1229 days ago
what about centos stream?
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vetinari 1229 days ago
If it works for you, why not. Just be aware, that the point releases did have breaking ABI changes, and now they can happen randomly, without waiting for point release.

Since I used the old, non-stream centos, the changes left some bitter taste. Enough to prefer alma.

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ibz 1229 days ago
Better marketing, I suppose. Many people really think Linux = Ubuntu.
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