Hi,
i am really puzzled over OpenSuse vs. Fedora Core.
What is the difference and is one better than the other. Well, i guess you can’t say that really, but is there an advantage over one or the other?
The most thing i hear is that Fedora supposed to be cutting edge. What ever that means.
But from what i understand they belong to the same family, meaning they use RPM packaging.
Besides technicalities, i read that Fedora gets released very often, meaning the cycles are very short.
I never tried Fedora (ah, i think i did but it did not went anywhere), but perhaps some other users did and can tell about it.
I am merely curious.
Why not download a FEDORA live CD and find out what it’s like.
Fedora and openSUSE are similar in that their parent companies (Red Hat and Novell) use the respective afore mentioned OS’s partly as a testing ground for their commercial brands.
Both OS’s are .rpm based.
I have to crash now…
I always had trouble when i installed Fedora. Also it has bad KDE implementation and ugly Gnome by default 
Also Fedora is more unstable than openSUSE from what i have experienced.
They’re all good. I am not a pro but in my expereince w/ fedora I have to roll-up my sleeve to the end while in opensuse just halfway down.
I’m a big Fedora fan ! If it were not for some specific aspects of openSUSE that I prefer, I would be using Fedora.
In my view Fedora tends to be more cutting edge than openSUSE. The Fedora packagers are more willing to apply a patch that may not have been as fully tested, while the SuSE-GmbH packagers prefer to see more testing in a patch (for example confirmation that a kernel patch has been submitted to the linus git tree). With Fedora thus being more cutting edge, it is a 2 sided sword for Fedora. Sometimes Fedora will work better than other distro’s for given hardware, and sometimes Fedora has a massive regression when a patch does not work out.
I has been said that Fedora tends to spend more emphasis on tuning the Gnome desktop, while it has also been said that SuSE-GmbH spends more time on tuning the KDE desktop. … My view is I like both Gnome and KDE on both openSUSE and Fedora (aside from a few dislikes wrt Pulse audio immaturity in Gnome on both distros).
I find both Forums good. I find the #suse IRC chat channel more friendly than the #fedora chat channel. But thats a subjective assessment, and overall both communities are good.
I’ve been using SuSE/openSUSE for so long, I can now find things MUCH quicker in openSUSE and on the web sites supporting openSUSE. I find this more difficult in Fedora, NOT because the information is not there (for it IS there) but because of my lack of familiarity.
I have my reasons for liking openSUSE posted here: User : Oldcpu - openSUSE
… but the bottom line is try caf4926’s suggestion. Burn some liveCDs (gnome & kde) from both distro’s and take them for a spin.
Agree!
I tend to go with openSUSE for that reason. Also at home, when you speak of linux the people in the house think of openSUSE.
On Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:49:13 +0000, yester64 wrote:
> Hi,
> i am really puzzled over OpenSuse vs. Fedora Core. What is the
> difference and is one better than the other. Well, i guess you can’t say
> that really, but is there an advantage over one or the other?
Depends on what you’re looking for, really.
In some ways, asking this question here (or in the Fedora forums) is
kinda like going to a Ford dealer and asking which is better, a Ford or a
Toyota? I’d lay odds on that question that a Ford dealer is going to
tell you a Ford is better.
> The most thing i hear is that Fedora supposed to be cutting edge. What
> ever that means.
> But from what i understand they belong to the same family, meaning they
> use RPM packaging.
> Besides technicalities, i read that Fedora gets released very often,
> meaning the cycles are very short.
> I never tried Fedora (ah, i think i did but it did not went anywhere),
> but perhaps some other users did and can tell about it. I am merely
> curious.
Shorter release cycles can mean that stability is affected (though
myself, I’ve not read a lot about stability problems with Fedora
itself). I used to run RedHat back before the Fedora project came into
play, and while it took me some getting used to, I now prefer YaST (which
is the openSUSE administrative interface) over the system that RedHat
used back in the pre-Fedora days.
openSUSE also has a fantastic infrastructure behind it - with the build
service, SUSE Studio, and other aspects (not to mention these forums and
other communications infrastructure elements, from IRC to the mailing
lists), there are always options to get help in the way that works for
you.
I see the openSUSE community as a very strong community as well
(obviously or I wouldn’t be a participant myself <g>); I can’t compare to
the Fedora community because I don’t participate there - but I always see
a diversity of opinions and a strong willingness on most of the
community’s part to work with new users.
Jim
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Jim Henderson wrote:
> I see the openSUSE community as a very strong community as well
> (obviously or I wouldn’t be a participant myself <g>);
Ditto
> I can’t compare to
> the Fedora community because I don’t participate there - but I always see
> a diversity of opinions and a strong willingness on most of the
> community’s part to work with new users.
It would be good if we would have more time on our hands to transform
willingness to real quality support.
As it is now, helpers and other contributors often run into burnout which
brings more problems then it solves. Here is excellent article that Freenode
staff wrote for their users:
http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml
Majority of that is either directly applicable, or transferable to our
communications.
–
Regards Rajko,
Thats definitely a good article, loaded with good advice.
On more occasions than I care to admit, I suffer from a form of burn out, and my tact drops way below an acceptable level, and I often have to go back to a thread, apologize in a subsequent post, or work doubly hard in subsequent posts to undo the possible damage I have done by being less than tactful in an earlier post. … Possibly the saving grace is my having to look myself in the mirror in the morning, which puts a bit of balance and forced re-evaluation into my perspective.
… Still, I think that article is good, and one just needs to keep it in mind when posting, … although sometimes its easier said than done. Thanks again for the link.
I have Fedora on a PPC machine at work because it’s the closest thing to RHEL available that supports PPC. More so for my colleagues sake than for myself. I can say that Fedora is more aggressive at issuing updates; I often see dozens in a week. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. It means that you are more up to date, but it also means that the users are more guinea-pig like than in openSUSE. Sometimes I bemoan the fact that an important fix languishes in openSUSE factory.
Unfortunately Fedora, like openSUSE, has abandoned official support of PPC (understandably, for lack of numbers), so I may have to go to Ubuntu or Debian on the machine when F12 goes out of support. Or maybe the machine will die before then and save me the trouble.
I really like PPC machines. For a long time i harbored the idea to have a ppc machine for daily use.
Well, just a general reply.
Yes, its true that it is kinda arkward to ask this question, but i hear a lot of fedora. Now i downloaded the live disc and on the weekend i will play a little with it.
Not really planing to switch and i am not the kind of guy who runs a couple of distro at the same time.
Right now i am pretty happy with OpenSuse. Although the switch from Ubuntu to OpenSuse was kinda hard. Hard in the meaning, that there are no .DEBs anymore. I still love the community from Ubuntu.
Anyway, i think i want it to know what the fuzz is of Fedora. One thing that concerns me always is, do i get my dvd movies playing. Stuff like that.
And yes, that was the other thing. Cutting edge. Such a buzz word. What is cutting edge? I assume that all other distros are more conservative.
My only experience with Fedora was in the year 2003 (not sure what release that was) and i had some real problems getting connected with my notebook (dell). Since then i never touched it again. But that was the time i had no plan whatsover with linux. Now my experience is a little higher…aehem.
On Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:20:26 +0000, Rajko M. wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> I see the openSUSE community as a very strong community as well
>> (obviously or I wouldn’t be a participant myself <g>);
>
> Ditto
>
>> I can’t compare to
>> the Fedora community because I don’t participate there - but I always
>> see a diversity of opinions and a strong willingness on most of the
>> community’s part to work with new users.
>
> It would be good if we would have more time on our hands to transform
> willingness to real quality support.
I think to successfully do that, there needs to be something in place
that recognises not just quantity of contribution, but quality. More
than just the thread/post rating stuff.
> As it is now, helpers and other contributors often run into burnout
> which brings more problems then it solves. Here is excellent article
> that Freenode staff wrote for their users:
> http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml
>
> Majority of that is either directly applicable, or transferable to our
> communications.
Burnout is always a concern; in all the time that I’ve done online
support, I’ve probably burned out a dozen times (that’s over now nearly
20 years, though - my burnout rate isn’t as rapid as others I’ve worked
with, but I know some who don’t ever seem to, either, and I think that
comes from maintaining quality rather than quantity of posts).
Another thing that contributes to burnout, though (and it may be in the
info you linked - I’m going to review that link tomorrow) is that it can
become quite discouraging to participate in a product support forum
because by and large, only those who have problems come in and ask for
help. When things are working properly, nobody tends to show up and say
“hey, things are working GREAT here, just wanted to let you know!”. That
can lead to burnout caused by frustration with the product because it
feels like nothing ever works (even though it often does).
I’ve had to remind myself that the people asking for help NEED help
(otherwise they wouldn’t ask), and I find that helps me personally combat
burnout when I’m providing assistance.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Of course this (playing DVD movies) can be made to work on Fedora. For the same reason that it does not ‘work out of the box’ on openSUSE, it won’t work on Fedora. But just like openSUSE, add the appropriate Fedora repository, install the needed app, and it will work.
These sort of questions (does function-X work or does function-Y work) are really best asked on a Fedora support forum, not on an openSUSE support forum. Don’t get me wrong, I AM a BIG Fedora fan, but those type of support questions which are really distribution specific (as EVERY distribution handles this different) belong on their respective distribution forum.
I thought I explained that. But I guess my explanation was not understood.
Here are some hypothetical examples I have made up:
Case-1:
Lets say you have program-A that has an annoying bug. And user X produces what they think is a fix for this, called ‘Fix-A’. But it is complicated, and not many users have tested ‘Fix-A’ to see if it works. ‘Fix-A’ MAY may make things work. ‘Fix-A’ may make things much worse. The developer of program-A (which is upstream in Linux terminology) has thus NOT included ‘Fix-A’ into their software, and hence the Distribution packagers (which are downstream from the developer) have not yet obtained ‘Fix-A’ in their versions of program-A and hence their users do NOT have ‘Fix-A’. However some ‘cutting edge’ distributions will go ahead and apply ‘Fix-A’ to their packaged versions of ‘program-A’, even though it is not yet put in place by the developer. Thus the users of the ‘cutting edge’ distro get ‘Fix-A’ (which may make things better, or it may make things worse).
Case-2:
Lets say you have program-B that has an annoying bug. And user X produces what they think is a fix for this, called ‘Fix-B’. It is also a large and very complicated fix, but it appears to work, and the developer of program-B (which is upstream in Linux terminology) likes the Fix, and they have NOW included ‘Fix-B’ into a new version of Program-B. Now Fix-B may or may not have had lots of testing. The Distribution packagers (which are downstream from the developer) have looked at the new version of Program-B with Fix-B, they consider it far too extensive for their current Linux distribution version as the side effects may not be fully known (even though the developer accepted the change), and thus they decided they will NOT update ‘Fix-B’ in their versions of program-B in their current Linux distribution version, but rather it will be in the NEXT release of their Linux distribution. However some ‘cutting edge’ distributions will go ahead and apply ‘Fix-B’ to their packaged versions of ‘program-B’, because they want their users to get the fix immediately (even though there are risks involved).
Case-3:
Lets say Developer-C has created a brand new driver-C that they believe is superior than other drivers. However it has not been fully tested. Some users testing it say it is worse. Other users say driver-C is far better and is stable? Who to believe? Is more testing needed ? Clearly driver-C will eventually be better than the current driver, but there is debate … is driver-C ready today?? Hence downstream, the Linux distributions do NOT include driver-C as default, as they are concerned that it may not be stable. But some ‘cutting edge’ distributions will go ahead and apply ‘Driver-C’ as default to their packaged distribution, because they want their users to get the new ‘Driver-C’ immediately (despite the ‘jury still being out’ on the maturity of the Driver).
No, not all other distros are more conservative. Sidux is pretty cutting edge, using the unstable branch of Debian.
… my apologies to both Sidux and Fedora fans if I misrepresented my ‘cutting edge’ view above. … I tried to state the way I see this and I am a fan of both distributions (although I do prefer openSUSE).
I agree! main clause " Also it has bad KDE implementation and ugly Gnome by default"
Got to say, i have no time right now to experiment. So i will stay with OpenSuse for now. Everything works for me.
But this was good information for me. Now i am little more educated at least.