9 replies to this topic

[Mr.Techie456]

I'm getting a new Macbook Pro, and thinking of installing a Linux OS on there as a virtual machine. So I'm trying to either pick Ubuntu, or Fedora. Leave you're vote, and a comment telling me why you like either OS.

[Alessandro17]

Where is an option for "other"?  

Some of my favourites:

1)PCLinuxOS (great!)
2)Mandriva
3)OpenSUSE
4)Debian

In that order.

[Mr.Techie456]

There is no other option. You have to pick either one of the options I set up.

[Alessandro17]

Then try both and make up your mind for yourself.

[Mr.Techie456]

I have before, and its hard to pick. So I wanted to know which one is better. Based on other peoples expierience using either OS.

[Detosx]

If you can find graphics drivers that sit happy with your graphics card, my vote goes to the previously boring Ubuntu, based on its new aesthetics - it is at least vaguely Mac-like in some ways. It boots very quickly and, after updating, crashes much less than before updating! No lock ups since the last update so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Graphics drivers aside, using the default driver, I am liking it. Specifically I would like it even more if I could get ATI's latest Catalyst driver to play nice with my ATI 4770; when dragging windows I get slow screen redraw resulting in jaggies.

Fedora, if I remember correctly, is a distro that doesn't tend to be slap bang up to date, looks a little utilitarian but, thanks to Redhat, has a big following with industry professionals working and seeking work in the field. Also, Fedora is noted as being strong on security features.

But as Alessandro17 says, why not try them. Download the isos of each and boot up from the CDs to see what you think.

[Detosx]

For the sake of completeness...

I have been having a few eccentricities with Ubuntu when using web browsers. Everything seems to work on the latest build of Opera but using Firefox and Chrome I can't get prices to show in order of cheapness on froogle and Youtube often gives me problems when trying to expand to full screen or change from 360 to 720; clicking on the buttons either does nothing or takes a heck of a lot of clicks. Opera 10.6 seems to work without problems, so far. Whether this is directly a fault within Ubuntu I don't know. I quite like Opera so it's no loss, really.

[Alessandro17]

I don't like either. Ubuntu could be the clear winner, it is a desktop OS, if it wasn't buggy as hell.
Fedora isn't really a desktop OS, it is the test bed for RHEL, and Red Hat doesn' believe in desktop Linux.
You don't get proprietary drivers, proprietary plug-ins, you are limited in the choice of file systems, you need to disable SELinux if you want to use Fedora as a desktop OS, there is a limited choice of software...

[000dom000]

Ubuntu will always win this type of thing mainly because of the sheer number of people who use it.

[oldtopman]

Ooh yay I get to write two reviews!!!

Ubuntu is so-so, slow, and Gnome based. Because of that I installed Xubuntu which is XFCE based. Xubuntu is full-featured and fast. It uses all of the stuff found in ubuntu. Xubuntu tends to be a very good linux distro although the constant way of it changing the apps that do stuff continually breaks stuff and you find yourself fixing your OS every 6 months. Because this is not Ubuntu but Xubuntu, there are absolutely no upgrades every 6 months. Just a 3 hour download and then broken stuff.

Ubuntu was first released in October 2010
Advantages:

Very large communtiy with loads of knowledge.
Been around for a while.
Based off of Debian.
Package type popular.
Stays fairly up to date.
GRUB2

Disadvantages:

Too slow to run on old hardware...
...and the faster distros are dragged to every release date when nothing changes.
Often, many things are changed between releases sometimes causing problems with drivers.
Rumor is that Ubuntu adds too many lines to the linux kernel (believe at your own risk)...
...but it certainly adds almost nothing to open source software in general (this may or may not be bad depending on your point of view).
Too easy to use

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Fedora is a Gnome based OS. All the software is cutting edge (which is either good or bad depending on your point of view). Because I boot so many OS's, One of my favorite boot managers is Chameleon. Chameleon only has to detect one of my linux distros, and since it is grub2 then it has all of the other OS's. Fedora uses GRUB. You can install GRUB2 but I cannot get that to work.

Fedora is a special case. It was first released November 2003. Fedora is almost just a rebrand of RedHat which was first released May 1995. It died in March 2003. The Red Hat Linux and Fedora linuxes merged on September 2003.
Advantages:

Fairly large and very knowledgeable community
Been around a lot longer than Ubuntu.
Popular package type, almost always offered alongside the Ubuntu one.
Is it's own linux, not based off of anything.
Stays very up to date
Updates are very streamlined and easy.
Very stable OS, in fact you get distros based on distros based on distros based on Red Hat/Fedora (Fedora>Mandriva>PCLinuxOS>Karoshi)
Supported until one month after two releases are released...
You tend to learn a bunch about linux using this distro. ( may be bad, see included pic)

Disadvantages:

...which ends up a little over a year.
Fedora seems efficent enough to run quickly on most systems, but the livecd installer limits it to P4's and greater.

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