Hello everyone, I've recently been curious to try Fedora Linux. I've been using Linux Mint for a while now, and while I really enjoy Mint, I think it's time to finally give something else a try. I want to go to a different distribution that will allow me to customize it more and have better support for GNOME and KDE.

Any information I should know before trying it out?

  • thetaT [none/use name]
    ·
    6 months ago

    I also would not recommend "trying atomic desktop first". The fact is, as a newbie, you're going to run into issues and problems and need to look things up, which means running commands. And a majority of guides are either for Debian/Ubuntu or Fedora/CentOS/Red Hat, and the normal Fedora commands just don't work on Atomic Desktops. If you want to install anything other than a sandboxed GUI app, you're going to have to deal with rpm-ostree, which is a major hit-or-miss. Setting up Tailscale was a major chore, and I ended up having to set up a Docker (Podman) container for it.

    My problem with these sorts of atomic desktops is that they remove the traditional packaging solutions, which, let's be honest, is justified. But the solutions they are replaced with are either incomplete (Flatpak) or nonexistent (how do I set up system daemons? CLI apps?).

    TL;DR Atomic Desktops are more " hassle" than "stable", just use Fedora Workstation.

    • hello_hello [comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Setting up Tailscale was a major chore, and I ended up having to set up a Docker (Podman) container for it.

      Universal blue has images with tailscale included in their bluefin isos. Distrobox with rootful containers can install daemons. Rpm-ostree is not recommended to be used at all unless it is your last case option. Nix can be installed on atomic systems (using the determinate systems installer) as well as with home-manager support meaning that you don't even have to use flatpak at all for your apps and can use any home-manager service you want.

      You can use GitHub's ghcr service to serve custom images to yourself using blue build that include all the packages you want.

      But the solutions they are replaced with are either incomplete (Flatpak)

      Explain?

      nonexistent (how do I set up system daemons? CLI apps?).

      Cli apps can be installed using Nix or Distrobox (a frontend to podman/docker/lily). System daemons can be installed in user mode, through a nix derivation, or layering if you really need to.

      Yes you are not going to be able to compile a program from git and install it on your system's root binaries, but that's a feature not a bug.