End of last year, I’ve quit Ubuntu, after more than 7 years, to find out what was the best GNOME 3 Linux distribution. I’ve selected three major distributions: Ubuntu 11.10, Opensuse 12.1 and Fedora 16. I spent more than a month with each. Here’s what I’ve found and learned.
What I’m expecting from a distribution
Before asking yourself what is your distribution of choice, maybe you should start by clarifying what you really expect from a distribution. In fact, the list is quite short for me:
- I expect a good GNOME 3 experience, as close as possible from upstream.
- I want an easy way to install/manage software.
- I want all the software easily available and upgradable. This includes proprietary codecs, flash plugin, games, etc.
- I want the latest versions of those software and quickly after they are released.
- Be easily installable.
- Good default: the less I’ve to do when reinstalling, the better.
- Other than that, stay out of my way. No specific configuration tool. GNOME should handle that.
But that’s not all. Being a Linux evangelist, I install Linux for a lot of people. Which add completely different requirements.
- There should be a stable version with a long support time so I upgrade those people as rarely as possible.
- The stable version should be stable and as trouble free as possible. This include incremental upgrade and they should be prevented to make a complete distribution upgrade (because it is never trouble free).
- The stable version should be smart enough to update important things like hardware drivers, major versions of Firefox, etc.
- The installation should come with a selection of pretty wallpaper, good default, most needed software. (the less I’ve to do when installing, the less I forget something which may block them as soon as I leave the room).
- Installation process have to look sweet and requires the minimal input from me. I will be installing it when drinking tea with them.
Ubuntu 11.10
Ubuntu has the easiest and most efficient installation tool. Installing is a breeze: boot, answer very few questions, handle your complex partitioning scheme if you want, click install, wait. You are done. It’s hard to think of an easiest way to install a distribution.
When it comes to handle software, Ubuntu is at his best: very graphical applications manager or synaptic and apt-get for those who prefer being efficient. Ubuntu packages most of the software I need. For more exotic or experimental stuffs, there is the concept of PPA, a small repository maintained by the developers themselves. This is a two-edged sword as I often end with tenth of PPA, conflicting with each other.
It has good default with video and music sample and pretty wallpapers.
Ubuntu has a good version scheme. A “normal” version, released every six months, which is perfect for my use, and a “long term support” version, released every two years. That would be perfect, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, this has a price.
I had lot of problems with GNOME 3 under Ubuntu, including regular freezes and annoying bugs. This could be acceptable but there’s a communication problem between Ubuntu and upstream GNOME. Ubuntu developers keep telling you that the bug is upstream, GNOME developers reject bug as being specific to Ubuntu. In the end, you have to live with those bugs. It is true that Ubuntu patches GNOME a lot. Having a regular GNOME 3 experience under Ubuntu requires a lot of boring tweaking (replacing ligthdm by gdm, removing overlay scrollbar,…).
This is of course a problem when I install Ubuntu for someone else. Should I heavily modify his/her installation or make him/her use something I’m not comfortable with (Unity)?
Ubuntu also reveal its dark side when it comes to upgrading. As a rule of thumb, I reinstall Ubuntu every six months. Upgrading Ubuntu is a recipe for disaster and not making a clean reinstall will be paid, sooner or later.
This is to the point where nearly everybody I know has a bad experience with upgrade. As a consequence, all my “non-geek” friends don’t upgrade. Not at all. They don’t understand the difference between simple upgrade and major upgrade. Even after I explain it, they either go through the big dist-upgrade (and break something) or dismiss any upgrade completely.
Opensuse 12.1
Let’s forget the time I’ve lost to found an installable image of OpenSuse GNOME and switch to installation process itself.
To my great displeasure, I discovered that my keyboard layout (which is shipped by default with X.org) was not supported during installation, making everything even more complicated.
Once you have a working OpenSuse, it doesn’t get better: installing a software is *always* a pain, whatever the software is. Each software seems to have its own channel that you have to figure out (when it’s packaged at all), to add then to install. The architecture of packages management is so complicated that it it was still a major pain after six weeks of intensive usage. And whatever you want to do, zypper will first wait for twenty seconds doing nothing. At the end of a stressful day, it made me on the verge of smashing the computer through the window. The only positive aspect is zypper command line UI. Seriously, it is the best interface I’ve ever seen for package management: everything is logical and under one command, not like the cryptic apt-get I’ve learned to love.
As soon as it comes to administer your system, be warned that Yast will always get in your way. Through its interface inherited from the Windows NT4 era, Yast offers you something ugly that mess up with everything done through GNOME administration tools. Installing a printer with a proprietary driver, which is plug/accept the license that automatically popped up/print under Ubuntu, took me one half day. Somewhat, it reminded me of the 2002-2003 era, where everything was a real challenge under Linux.
Not everything is bad: the GNOME3 experience is way better than under Ubuntu although I had some severe bugs with Evolution. It is not pure GNOME as it’s mixed up with a lot of Qt/KDE stuffs but might be okayish. Also, OpenSuse offers a lot development packages that don’t exist anywhere else, which is sometimes interesting.
Fedora 16
The installation went fine even if it was not as easy as Ubuntu. No seamless encryption of my /home partition was offered and, once again, by keyboard layout was not available. Which means that it is impossible to have good support for my keyboard in console and in GDM. You might say that I could tweak that manually after installation. No! It will be reset after each upgrade[1].
But let’s forget about that.
Fedora is probably the most popular distribution amongst GNOME developers. And, indeed, you could call it GNOME OS.
The GNOME experience is wonderful. Also, a lot of packages are available. If you want all the usual non-free stuffs (flash, DVD, non-free repository), my advice is to use a small tool called FedoraUtils. In fact, that kind of tools was very popular in the early days of Ubuntu. But, at some point, Canonical understood that if people develop those tools, it is because there’s a need to adapt the default installation.
Fedora didn’t yet. The most infamous example is SELinux. By default, nothing will work on your Fedora. The first thing to do is to disable SELinux. Every single Fedora howto starts with “disable SELinux”. Security is important but failing to realize that SELinux is not a good security model for casual laptop users shows how Fedora doesn’t care about them.
While the overall Fedora experience is enjoyable, it has very rough edges. Why is yum updating the cache at each request, making it a painful experience? Why is a root account required by default? Using Fedora will require you to use the command line from time to time or to fix something that was broken by a small upgrade. Don’t expect exotic hardware or some rare proprietary software to work out of the box.
If you are afraid or making your hands dirty or are uncomfortable with playing with the console, don’t even think about using Fedora. You are simply not the targeted user.
For very conservative users, CentOS might be an option. I was tempted to try it for my parents and my non-geeks users.
Conclusion
What I’ve learned during this experience is that Ubuntu is now the de-facto Linux standard. If a software is told to support Linux, it often means “Ubuntu support”. This is kinda sad for diversity but I don’t complain: the situation is thousand times better than what it was ten years ago, where Windows was the only choice.
I would say that Fedora is now the only truly popular GNOME distribution, meaning that you will have the latest GNOME quickly, by default and not tainted with any distribution specific thing. If you are a GNOME fanatic and have the technical skills, you should probably use it. On the other hand, I would say that Fedora cannot be used by non-technical persons if they don’t have very regular support.
It is also very surprising that no popular GNOME 3 Ubuntu distribution has taken-off, if you exclude Linux Mint, which is far from offering a vanilla GNOME 3 experience and not something I’m interested in. I’m also sure that many readers will point out ArchLinux and Debian as alternatives but they are simply too far from my needs (easy to install, good default, nearly nothing to do after installation, etc). It should be noted that I’m comparing distributions against my own needs, I don’t make any judgement to those who simply have different needs/vision of what they want from a distribution.
After writing this comparison, initially envisioned as a Fedora praise, I was frightened when I realized that removing my “good GNOME 3 experience” from my distribution expectations list makes Ubuntu wins in every single other point.
This experience refreshed my vision and leads me to the terrible question: do I have any logical reason to have that GNOME3 requirement? Should I put my GNOME loyalty in question?
Note
[1] It raises the question: X.org has done a great job including a variety of keyboard layouts to cover many use cases. Fedora and OpenSuse both considered that they were more intelligent and unilaterally decided to only allow their users to use a subset of the layouts offered by X.org. It’s not like it could save place on the installation disk or whatever: the layout are there, shipped with X.org! They are simply not selectable during installation. And each time I complain, I receive the “you are using an exotic thing”. Like Fedora or OpenSuse were so mainstream they could afford that…
The The Quest for the Best GNOME 3 distribution by Lionel Dricot, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Belgium License.
Have you tried Debian recently? I installed it (wheezy) last week on a laptop. The graphical install is quite easy. I checked graphical desktop environment and laptop tools in the list of software to install, and a reboot later I had a perfectly working GNOME 3 desktop, with wifi, frequency saving, and everything else. Add debian-multimedia repositories and you have your proprietary codecs and stuff. It’s far from the potato experience back in the days.
Plus, it’s easy to create a small APT repository with dummy packages so you can install your usual bunch of software on a fresh system in one command.
Just commenting on a few openSUSE points you raised — some other points you raised are things we’re aware of and are being worked on already
> Let’s forget the time I’ve lost to found an
> installable image of OpenSuse GNOME
Interesting. It’s three clicks away from the openSUSE front page (click on “Get it”, click on “Live GNOME”, click on “Download GNOME” button). I’d love to know how you looked for it, so we can improve the clarity of the pages and makes this more findable.
> And whatever you want to do, zypper will
> first wait for twenty seconds doing nothing.
Hrm, weird; that sounds like a bug. Or maybe your list of repos was set to be refreshed on each run? Because it’s clearly not supposed to be that way.
> It is not pure GNOME as it’s mixed up with a lot
> of Qt/KDE stuffs but might be okayish.
Did you install openSUSE from the DVD or the livecd? I assume DVD, because qt is not even on the GNOME livecd, so it can’t be mixed up like that
I always recommend installing from the livecd, fwiw. We’ll need to look closer at the DVD install to avoid problems like this, though.
I installed Debian Wheezy last month and I agree with Simon: everything worked out of the box without the need to touch the terminal!
@Vincent Untz : the installable image was broken at the time I tried. You told me yourself you knew it was broken. It costs me nearly one full week-end to figure out it was not my fault and then install from the DVD image.
For the zypper stuffs, I saw the problem on two different install from two different media. And I was told it was really really slow.
Debian doesn’t meet the criteria: “having recent software quickly after they are release upstream”
Hey, I also did the same question some months ago and my needs is also very close to your need including the evangelist part.
After lots of distro including your choices and also Debian and Arch, I am just using Fedora 16 but… not the default one, Fedora include a easy way to create your “custom live” and and end up creating a set of scripts that make a custo Fedora with all codecs, flash, some aditional software that me, my family and some friends use most of time. Now I am really happy with it.
You can see my customization script at:
Also, a friend mine is a lawyer and he is using this custom Fedora in two office (about 7 peoples) with great sucess.
Btw, what is your keyborad model?
I’ve quit ubuntu for 18 months now, having used it from 2005.
Now I’m very much pleased with Debian Wheezy. No upgrade problems as it was in ubuntu. Beautiful gnome 3.2, very stable, added some extensions from extensions.gnome.org to import some extra features (shutdown-button, alternative tab, etc.) .
My kids though have an AMD-athlon processor with integrated graphics: the result is gnome3 in fallback-mode… Using the fglrx-driver gives a regular gnome3 but makes it crash sometimes.
Just install Arch.
Ah, just forgot to say that like in openSUSE, on Fedora live cd is a better choice.
The zypper and yum, both always try by default refresh repository data but it can be disabled. I asked people lots of time why this by default and always same answer: “Casual users dont need to care about update before upgrade” – I dont agree but I can live with that.
Do u really want the most up to date software, or something stable and usable. Just use debian, and u can brag to everyone how well your system works and how little time u spent setting it up.
Is the Debian testing version “sure” enough ? The word “testing” scares me a bit =/
Currently on Ubuntu 11.10 + Gnome3 but with a crappy graphics card, I have some freezes that drive me crazy sometimes. I wonder if Debian could offer a better stability ? (maybe not, it’s the drivers which are in cause here)
On a different note, ploum, could you consider increasing a bit the font size on your blog ? It’s so small… and serif font familey doesn’t help.
You should also consider Sabayon, a gentoo-based distro with recent packages and a Gnome 3 flavor.
“Fedora didn’t yet. The most infamous example is SELinux. By default, nothing will work on your Fedora. The first thing to do is to disable SELinux.”
Care to elaborate a little?
Yes, unfortunately some proprietary software doesn’t care about security.
VMWare for example: http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/529…
@AkaiKen :
Depends what “sure” means… Debian testing works very well most of the time, but you have to be ready to deal with little glitch and breakage in case of problem.
For better stability, probably not (specially if it is a proprietary driver which cause your problem), but maybe, just because of different versions of kernel/Xorg.
Oh and testing was quite painful with proprietary ati/nvidia drivers last time I tried that (but that is long ago).
my choice:
.
Family/friends box: debian stable + selection of backports, mozilla.debian.net, debian multimedia. That is quite solid, up to date softwares where that matters for them (last release of iceweasel/firefox, recent libreoffice) I think the biggest problem is iceweasel because that has a strange name hardly pronounceable (in french) and the icon is ugly
My box: Debian testing, fairly up to date in general, works very well most of the time. Not perfect but my experience with fedora was worse. YMMV.
If you want to question your loyalty to GNOME, my advise is KDE+Compiz.
After having passed hours to remove all unecessary stuff, I’ve a desktop with way less buttons, effects and useless stuff than GNOME3 itself.
I just keep what I need.
Of course it heavyly breaks you requirement nr 6 (and the requirements for “other peoples”), but since the configurations are in your home, you don’t have to redo the configuration work each time you reinstall.
How do you say “dépouillé” in English ??
Well KDE+Compiz allows you to have the most “dépouillé” desktop, but it has the price to know eactly what you need, what you like and remove all the remaining (KDE and Compiz allow you to remove stuff, unlike GNOME3 as far as I understood).
By the way you didn’t mention “coherence of the design from one application to the other” in you requirements list. If you require that, forget about my comment
@plop : “sure” means “can I use it at work”. I’m ok with little glitches (this is what I have here with Ubuntu Oneiric, not really painful, just annoying), define “breakages” ?
@Ploum : Ah, the livecd could have been broken if you were using Factory; this happens from time to time, indeed.
Re zypper’s speed: don’t know who told you zypper is really really slow, but that’s not true. It’s really fast, on the contrary. But if you have it set to autorefresh your repos on each run, then it can be slow while it gets the new metadata.
“Nothing will work”
Uhm… I have selinux enabled on all my systems at present…including my wife’s home desktop, her laptop and her work computer. All running Fedora 16 right now. using the G3 desktop as primary. and we are both getting everything we need done day to day. She has yet to complain to be about something “not working” that required me to disable or even tweak selinux.
So please be more specific as to what is not working for you so it can be confirmed and possibly corrected with policy or packaging changes.
Arch Linux is a minimalist (dépouillé, peut-etre) Linux distribution. I run it because its packages for GNOME 3 are unchanged from upstream – it’s pure GNOME 3.
Installation isn’t very easy, but you only need to do it once, and the installation of the GNOME 3 packages gives you everything you would want – power management, NetworkManager, etc.
(Votre anglais est magnifique. Je n’ai parler pas francais dupuis…dix ans maintenant, alors pardonnez mon francais terrible!)
@AkaiKen : I use it at work.
But for example one year ago or so I had to lost 1 hour to investigate and workaround a intermittent crash caused by the nouveau driver on my work machine (no major problem since, as far as I remember). I can afford that kind of things, not everybody can I guess.
By breakage I mean temporary regression that are inherent to constantly updating software (oh, new versions of foo segfault when I use this not very exposed feature now), they are rare (really), but you have to be able to deal with them quickly (install fixed version from unstable, self compile fixed version, knowing another way to do that particular things, …) in “production” environment.
Try Debian Testing
I use it regulary and there are only a few problems from time to time. If you know how to deal with this, it should be the perfect distribution for you.
(Although I wouldn’t suggest installing it for new Linux users)
Despite being a little dissatisfied with the latest Ubuntu decisions, every time I try another distro I come back to Ubuntu in a few days.
On the other hand, using Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 11.10 is not so bad as you depicted. I had to switch the session, install Cantarell font, install Gnome Tweak to change the theme and it was done.
The only problem I had was with ATI drivers, but the same thing occurs with every other distro. As soon as I installed the latest driver from http://www.amd.com, everything worked fine. There you can download a script that creates deb files to upgrade your system.
Was there a fedora bug filed on that keyboard layout issue at some point? I’m afraid there isn’t enough information from the blog post for me to hunt this specific complaint down and read on archived discussion of it. If you could give me a ticket starting point the particulars that would be great.
-jef
After using Ubuntu since 2005, I unloaded it at the GNOME docs hackfest a year ago because it was easier to get a working GNOME 3 booting the Official Live DVD. Soon after that I installed it to my hard drive, and have been a very happy openSUSE user since. I’d also recommend taking a look at Mageia, which I installed for the early package of Boxes and now dual boot on my laptop. It also provides a nice GNOME 3 experience.
@Jef Spaleta : Just want to echo what Jef said. I use Fedora 16 and used Fedora 15 before that. I have had no problem with SELinux and have never had to remove it or tweak it. I find Fedora very easy to use and I consider myself non technical ie. I don’t work in IT.
@John :
I’m just looking for specificity with regard to encountered technical defects. I comment only on my experience to counter the overreach in the statement being made.
The implication is something didn’t work for this user and he’s mad about it. But sadly the author hasn’t given enough detail for me to even try to reproduce any selinux related issue he personally experienced. Nor has he referenced an existing bug report.
If there is a lingering problem with the default policy or with Fedora project provided packaging for something with distribute we need to know about the details of it so it can be addressed.
There is nothing in this blog post that provides a reasonable starting point to start to address any observed technical deficiency in Fedora. And that’s sort of sad, as its a wasted opportunity to his distro comparison and drive some constructive changes and get things fixed.
-jef
I didn’t read all the comments to see if someone mentioned this already. Ubuntu Gnome Shell Remix is excellent. Pure Gnome 3 with all the benefits of Ubuntu. I love Gnome and want to continue using it. I wouldn’t say I have a hatred of Unity. I just want to stick with Gnome. So I have been using this for months and love it.
http://ubuntu-gs-remix.sourceforge….
@Anonymous : Just use this script to configure and install most of things in arch, and it will be easier then you can even imagine. Here is: urlhttps://github.com/helmuthdu/aui/url
Put down apt-get and switch to aptitude. If you liked having everything under one command-line app with zypper, aptitude brings the same to Ubuntu. Coupled with improved handling of orphaned dpkgs (so if you remove an app that is the only dependency of another library, that library will be recommended for removal too), aptitude is a one-stop package handler.
during the installation the Fedora 16 or 17, to change the keyboard layout can be use a “left shift + right shift”
Like Jef, I was a bit surprised at your SELinux remarks, and the fact they don’t seem to be backed up with any specific examples.
Does SELinux occasionally cause problems with rather unusual use cases that aren’t shown up in Beta and final validation testing? Sure. But it seems like a huge exaggeration to say “By default, nothing will work on your Fedora. The first thing to do is to disable SELinux.” – that’s just going way too far. I run with SELinux enabled on all my machines and have never seen it result in ‘nothing working’ on any production release. Even in pre-releases it’s very, very rare.
I think your overall conclusion is fairly accurate, but the SELinux stuff just seems strangely over-the-top. There are still some people who disable SELinux almost as an instinctive reaction, but I think for those who came to Fedora relatively recently, it’s hard to understand what the fuss is about.
>The most infamous example is SELinux. By default, nothing will work on your Fedora.
I would probably have said something similar 2-3 years ago. But since the last few releases SELinux works really well here and stays in the background for all daily tasks.
> Why is yum updating the cache at each request, making it a painful experience?
You can change this in the config settings of yum. You just have to set “metadata_expire” to “never” and call “yum makecache”
I also looked for a some time for a good GNOME3 distribution. I was a long time Debian stable user. But I really wanted to use GNOME3. Testing/Unstable was no option for me because I want a quite stable distribution while it is still up-to-date with a complete GNOME3 (Debian testing/unstable often provides a mix of different GNOME versions). Fedora does this really good and provides a really nice GNOME experience.
I already played from time to time with Fedora and made it my main OS on the desktop since Fedora 16 and never looked back.
When I install GNU/Linux for other people I choose Ubuntu LTS. Because of the advantages you already mentioned. But here I use the KDE desktop because I didn’t like Unity, GNOME3 is a really poor experience in Ubuntu and my experience shows that KDE4 is a really nice desktop for most users coming from Windows. Regarding the danger of upgrading to non-LTS version, I prevent this by just setting the dist-upgrade policy to only LTS versions.
those are the reasons why i switch to XFCE/Xubuntu
ArchLinux perfectly meet point 1,2,3,4,6,7 of your personal needs. Well point 6 is only if you like upstream Gnome defaults.
It does however completely fails at point 5, and all the evangelist needs. So it raises the question : do you really need to use the same distribution that you install to people ?
Been through this, there are two options:
1) You want blending edge upstream technologie and have time to fix your system from time to time -> Fedora
2) You want something that works but is not completely upstream -> Linux Mint with mimimal configuration. Gives you all the standard and power of Ubuntu and still a full and working GNOME3
Most of the GNOME Hackers and Module Maintainers are running Fedora that’s why the GNOME integration there is so great, is just a matter of looking at the commit stats to have an idea on which distro to use: http://blogs.gnome.org/commitdigest… . most of the people on the top 10 contributors are Fedora users and probably None of them are running Ubuntu. Is not a secret that Ubuntu does not care about GNOME and I don’t think it would be a surprise if they drop GNOME at all in the future.
@Jeff Spaleta : I can partly help Ploum answer regarding the keyboard layout problem: he’s using a French “BEPO” Dvorak keyboard layout. I personally use a French Canadian Dvorak keyboard layout. We have the same problem: Fedora (like OpenSUSE) uses two different “databases” for keyboard layouts: the X.org one and some other “kbd” one that should not even exist in the first place.
See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bu… for an example (this is my meta bug report on the issue for the FR CA Dvorak layout). Many languages are affected by this, not just “those crazy dvorak hippies”.
Just adding an anecdote about SELinux: I’ve seen it prevent Empathy from starting. I’ve seen it block the boot process or X.org/GDM from starting. And I think I’ve seen it preventing me from SSH’ing into my desktop machine with my SSH key (not sure about that one, my memory is fuzzy).
That was not 3 years ago, that was in Fedora 15.
I can understand the need for SELinux in a server environment or when you’re really a security fanatic, but for most people who just want to use their computer without worrying about “is this a normal bug, or is this caused by SELinux again?” or seeing warnings all the time, I personally recommend disabling it entirely. It makes my life easier.
@Carajo : Then, I think it doesn’t meet the criteria “Good default: the less I’ve to do when reinstalling, the better.”
~~An arch lover
@Kiddo :
thanks for the ticket reference it should be enough to get up to speed with.
-jef
Looking at your requirements, I would recommend having a look to mageia 2 when it’s released (it’s in beta now, but unsurprisingly stable, at least by fedora standards
).
Unless you want to install on a macbook pro.
The only requirement that mageia lacks is LTS (something is in the works, too).
@Jeff Spaleta : I think a blog post is not a good place to describe all your specific bugs. I’ve already reported a handful of them in the bugzilla, where they belongs. I’ve even tried to point dev attention to some (like the keyboard one). And when I make a general criticism on my blog then, suddendly, people are interested.
As for SELinux, it simply prevented me to access my /home partition. Then, I had problems with it on Empathy and with a proprietary software. But worst of all: I don’t see any remote way on how SELinux could improve the security of my own laptop (where only my /home folder is important). When I’ve succeeded into having SELinux working well, I still managed to get warnings asking me if I want to allow this and this. This is not something that should happen on an end-user system.
But I don’t want you to concentrate on specific issues. This is more general than this. If Fedora target are geeks, those are mostly fine and only minor issue. If Fedora want to target a wider audience, there’s a whole global philosophy to think about.
Make no mistake, I like Fedora and I’m still happy to use it.
Hello! I have very similar requirements as yours so I am very interested by your feedback.
After using Ubuntu for years I have switched Linux Mint 11 and now to Fedora 16.
I was in a way “forced” to change because of my graphic card was badly handled by Ubuntu & Mint 12 and not having 3D enabled today is a huge handicap with latest gnome.
About Fedora 16 I like:
- Gnome 3 is beautiful and has tons of good ideas
- installation was easy, some minor tweaks where required
- everything is working… almost… fine
I dislike:
- more bugs than I was used to (nautilus, totem crash very often for unclear reasons, some refresh glitches etc…)
- the system becomes slow when I use several applications (or unclear reasons) or have too much firefox tab – nothing huge so it is quite disturbing
- yum is slow – when used to synaptic every other system is! but I can live with this, I do not install software that often
- this is Gnome 3 but lack of option is a little extreme
The last Ubuntu version with Gnome 2 and some compiz was exactly what I need – fast, efficient with nice eyecandy… I am nearly nostalgic!
Fedora is doing the job correctly for now so I will stick to it for now and try to understand where the issues are coming from (hopefully a single issue than can be solved!)
Like many peoples suggests, a very good alternative to OpenSUSE, Fedora and Ubuntu it’s Debian. Ubuntu was my distribution of choice for the last 6 years, I always like the stability of the LTS version for my family and friends. For my self I’ve test from time to time the non-LTS version. Since Unity is in place, I don’t appreciate this distribution anymore. And, the GNOME 3 experience is far from perfect….
Like many people suggest, I try Debian Testing, I was very afraid with the ‘testing’ version because I don’t want a system I need to fix every day. After some reading, I’ve come to realize the testing version is not broken at all. In fact, Ubuntu take most of it package from Debian testing. Switching from Ubuntu to Debian was not a big step. It almost the same system, It use the same tools : apt-get, dpkg, synaptic, etc.
Still, it’s not perfect. I got minor issues to setup my WiFi (something related to non-free driver), same with my nvidia card. But for those basic problems, the Debian wiki is a REALLY good place to start looking. Compare to Ubuntu Wiki where the documentation is all mess-up with all the different solutions to the same problem for different version of Ubuntu.
So according to you’re requirement :
> 1. I expect a good GNOME 3 experience, as close as possible from upstream.
The version of GNOME 3 in Debian testing seams to be vanilla, but this is something I can’t verify.
> 2. I want an easy way to install/manage software.
> 3. I want all the software easily available and upgradable.
I think Debian is missing this. There is an app called “Add/Remove Software”, but you need to know exactly what you are looking for. Otherwise you won’t find any thing. Debian should consider to ship Deepin as default. In my case, I used Synaptic package manager.
> 3. This includes proprietary codecs, flash plugin, games, etc.
Here you be satisfy. With Ubuntu you need to add medibuntu repository to get some of the non-free packages. With Debian, the debian-multimedia repository contains them all and even more. I really like to have XBMC in this repo. Event beta version and RC are available.
> 4. I want the latest versions of those software and quickly after they are released.
Debian testing correspond to you’re need. I have the latest version of mostly anything, and this, from the default repository. No more PPAs !
> 5. Be easily installable.
The installation step is very similar to Ubuntu. Still I never manage to install Debian on a USB key, but I after sometime I think to problem was the USB key is self.
> 6. Good default: the less I’ve to do when reinstalling, the better.
The default in Debian is quite OK for me. Like in any other OS, I still need to install applications I’m use to: http://pastebin.com/Nty4VCS6.
> 7. Other than that, stay out of my way. No specific configuration tool. GNOME should handle that.
Compare to Unity, GNOME 3 really get out of you’re way.
> 1. There should be a stable version with a long support time so I upgrade those people as rarely as possible.
Since Debian testing is a rolling release, this requirement doesn’t make sense. If the user upgrade his system regularly, it’s always up-to-date. As for the support, it really depend what you mean. If you talk about business support, I don’t know if Debian provide any.
> 2. The stable version should be stable and as trouble free as possible. This include incremental upgrade and they should be prevented to make a complete distribution upgrade (because it is never trouble free).
Non-applicable with a rolling release model.
> 3. The stable version should be smart enough to update important things like hardware drivers, major versions of Firefox, etc.
Unclear. My nvidia driver get updated, Google-chrome too. Is there any distro not upgrading those ?!
> 4. The installation should come with a selection of pretty wallpaper, good default, most needed software. (the less I’ve to do when installing, the less I forget something which may block them as soon as I leave the room).
Debian come with default application like Ubuntu, but they didn’t make the same choice. The default browser is Epiphany, the default media player is Rhythmbox, etc. But those are the default provided by GNOME 3. Since you want a Vanilla GNOME 3 you should be satisfy
So you’re requirement is satisfy since all required application are there, but some may not meet you’re own choice.
> 5. Installation process have to look sweet and requires the minimal input from me. I will be installing it when drinking tea with them.
Ubuntu is clearly better on this requirement. Debian installation on the right way tough.
I hear you loud and clear. I think you’ve actually been far too generous. All of the available distros are extremely poor. We know how to make something not just better but great. What is stopping us? Time to take a chance because what we got just ain’t working.
Jon
@Jeff Spaleta : thanks for taking a look! If you happen to find something more than what I had listed on that bug report’s description, or some situation update/clear roadmap to solve this issue, feel free to drop a me a line to nekohayo at gmail.
However silly it may seem, this is one of those issues that kept me off Fedora (and on Ubuntu) for a long time, until I decided to overlook/endure this and use switch to Fedora 15 nonetheless (for ideological reasons).
I suspect that many people are not as hardcore as I am (ie: accepting to cope with the inability to select the correct keyboard layout for the system/gdm/etc).
- kiddo
@Ploum :
If you want to make a general argument, then you are certainly free to do so, but I won’t be debating the merits of any general statement you make. If you don’t value selinux, I’m not going to try to make you value it. But what I do want to do is to understand _specific_ problems that you are having. I am Mr. specificity.. because I care about getting the technical defects fixed.
“Generally” speaking, when you mention a defect in the future a simple references to tickets you have filed with details would be fantastic. If you have filed some.. just cite them as footnotes to the article. It fits well within your existing writing style.
Now on to your /home directory issue. Was this a pre-existing /home directory created by an installer from a different linux distribution? This is the only situation I am aware of that leads to the symptom you described.
Sadly I’d need more information to start to understand the empathy issue. Just telling me you had a problem with empathy doesn’t help me understand how to reproduce it. And reproduction is the starting point really for a meaning conversation about a technical defect of this nature. I can’t even drive the issue forward in your place if I can’t reproduce it myself.
@Kiddo :
Why are you calling this issue silly? I haven’t seen anyone of merit call it silly so far in my dive into the archived record. In fact there’s been very little in the way of discussion about the merits of the problem at all really. I’ve yet to find evidence that an installer code contributor has looked into this problem to any extent.
Yes, several reports about the defect have been filed… but very little discussion that would indicate someone with the skills and the access to fix it have been thinking through the issues and trying to provide a fix. I can’t for example find a discussion thread on the issue in the anaconda-devel list. The list most likely to get a constructive discussion that leads to a technical implementation to fix this.
What I was able to find that seems to be related, tagentially is this:
So far based on the discussion I’ve seen I have no idea what the Anaconda team feels about the lack of mappings. For all I know they’d be open to someone walking in and taking ownership of the problem and generating a fix. There has been a renewed interest in redesigning the anaconda experience. You might even be able to work with the designers who are helping the anaconda team and make keyboard layout selection more robust that way.
@Kiddo :
If any of those things were selinux related, then there should be an avc message in your logs, or at least I would hope. I would absolutely love to be able to see the specific log entries which correlate with the any of the defects you attribute to selinux. Especially that remote login ssh one. That’d be fascinating to see.
@Jeff Spaleta : I agree with you that, in retrospect, I should have filled the bugs. But when you just start with something, you usually don’t fill bugs as it might be your fault. Also, everybody told me to disable SELinux (which I refused first because I wanted to learn that stuff and to understand why it was there by default before giving up).
You are right for the /home bug: it was my /home folder from previously.
@Jon McCann : I’m really curious. If you had the time, what would you do to improve the situation? You are the master of suspens
@Jeff Spaleta : surely you can agree that the duplication of keyboard layouts into two separate databases is silly, or at least is a silly “situation”. Or did you refer about my statement that the issue might “seem silly”? By that I simply meant that, judging from actions (rather than words), the issue seems to be very low priority for the anaconda maintainers. If it was a high priority, the two databases would have been gone for a long time now. Or at least we would have seen much more responsiveness on bug reports such as these.
I’m not trying to flame anyone here (I’m a Fedora fan if that wasn’t clear already). I was just providing some background to the problem that Ploum pointed out and that you requested clarification for.
I am aware that this is probably due to old architectural limitations, I am aware that Anaconda is ten years old and is about to be redesigned for the first time ever, and I don’t have time to fix this myself (unless Redhat hires me to do so or something). One could argue that it’s part of their job, you know… that is if they don’t want Anaconda’s UX to look like a dinosaur compared to Ubiquity (since the past 5 years or so).
@Ploum :
The best starting point for learning the selinux stuff is to use a system with all the
partitions have been created with an SElinux aware installer.. in order to get the context labels on all files correct. Until you are comfortable with verifying that in a more direct fashion with the cmdline tools.
Easiest way is to start with a fresh install of Fedora and let the install create all the partitions that Fedora will be using. Don’t reuse partitions across OS boundaries initially to avoid complications when files are created by an OS that is not SElinux enabled.
It can be done, but you do have to understand things well enough to take care to check the files are relabelled each time you cross the OS boot boundary.
I’ve been going through this same debate for nearly the last year since Unity was released. Last fall I tried to install Fedora & Debian an ran into issues and ended up back with Ubuntu 11.10 w/ GNOME 3. It works for my purposes, but I have to say I’ve been very surprised that there is not yet an official GNOME spinoff of Ubuntu as there is for KDE, XFCE, etc. I’ll likely give the unofficial GNOME Shell remix a try when 12.04 is released with it.
I love mint, but after Gnome 3 i wish they kept it stock. Their implementation is not needed anymore, and its somewhat buggy (ie, hitting alt-tab often freeze the ui). I installed Arch on my netbook with gnome 3.2 and its really nice to experience a clean gnome install. I will be going away from mint most likely. Just keep in mind that unless you have a LOT of track time with Linux, you do not want arch (stck with ubuntu().
@Jon McCann : Really happy to hear someone from GNOME saying this! It’s such a great platform, I just wish there was a distro that did it justice. If GNOME can offer an end to end solution we might even see it appearing on more devices. I currently use GNOME on Ubuntu, but I wish there was a solution I could recommend to people.
@Jeff Spaleta : What’s bitten me a couple times with selinux is doing fedora upgrades and immediately getting piles of AVCs. In the worst case this prevented me from booting since selinux was in enforcing mode and the AVC was in one of the system daemons.
Ultimately the cause of these issues was file contexts not set correctly. The first time was F12 to F14 upgrade using preupgrade. The second time was F14 to F16 upgrade with the Live CD but keeping some of my partitions.
The way to fix it was to run autorelabel. Now, why don’t the upgraders (preupgrade or anaconda or whatever) do “touch /.autorelabel” before the final reboot? Surely non-technical users would never figure that out. My guess is that autorelabel is incredibly slow and gives no indication when the process might be complete, so inflicting that by default would be painful. The way I deal with it now is either to do my first boot with selinux permissive and fix things up with some restorecons or somehow make sure that autorelabel runs on the first boot.
What do you think?
@Dan Nicholson :
My understanding is that the symptoms you describe with preupgrade can happen if you do not install all the upgdates before preupgrade.
For example for the F12 to F14 jump:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Comm…
And yes, generally speaking, relabelling is the big hammer solution for file contexts. I full relabel would probably solve Ploum’s frustration as well when using a pre-existing /home. And yes relabelling takes a noticable amount of time to perform. Making a relabel a automagic part of the upgrade and install process would certainly fix the issue at a performance cost. But it would need discussion on how to integrate. Ideally if a need for a relabel could be detected and you were given a chance to confirm it..would be best. I would imagine there are situations out there were an admin does not want the autolabel magic to fire.
After Unity became the default desktop environment for Ubuntu I started to look elsewhere. The problem was what you found – in everything but the desktop environment, Ubuntu does far better than it’s competitors. It’s easy to install proprietary drivers, there’s no SELinux-caused inconveniences to deal with, there’s a wealth of software packages and a large community. After tinkering with Fedora, OpenSuSE, Linux Mint… I settled on Kubuntu.
I like KDE a lot. That said, if there was a “Gubuntu”, I might try it out and see. It’s too bad Canonical dismissed the concept of such a distro though.
@Julien : Canonical has not rejected a GNOME Shell Remix. Here’s Canonical Desktop Team member Sebastien Bacher saying the idea is “really cool”. It just takes people & time to do it.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/u…
@mart-e : Hmm, last night a kernel update and new fglrx-modules. Changed back to fglrx: until now no crashes (2-3 hours) , annoyances (as split screen) have gone. Cross my fingers so I don’t have to switch to arch
On my main computer I have a multiboot with the 3 distributions you describe + Debian and Arch. I spend most of my time on Ubuntu and only use the rest for testing purposes because Ubuntu is what’s working the best for my daily usage (python development, gaming, general usage).
I’m also a big Gnome fan but I can’t get used to Gnome Shell so I’m really happy I have an alternative with Unity. It’s not really Gnome Shell, I have a problem with but the window manager mutter, I just can’t switch from the oh so powerful compiz (and not being able to have workspaces in a grid is really a problem for me). I wasn’t a big Unity fan at first and I was using a compiz + gnome-panel desktop but with Ubuntu 12.04, it’s really easy to make Unity really quiet. I’m still able to use Synapse + Docky and Unity will stay out of my way.
One disturbing thing is that Compiz is becoming more and more unsupported on other distros, I still haven’t figured how to use it in Debian testing/sid and the Fedora team have suggested to completely remove it from Fedora 17. The only other distro with nice compiz support is Arch.
That said, it’s not because I don’t use Gnome Shell that I don’t consired myself a Gnome user, I still like Gnome software and I like GTK. I think it’s good for the Gnome project to have alternative desktop environments like Unity or Openbox, that way the project is less likely to become too dependent on Gnome Shell / mutter.
Almost exactly how I feel about ubuntu, OpenSuse and Fedora, apart from I prefer Ubuntu with a tweaked Gnome Classic desktop. I’ve tried Unity and Gnome3 but hated them both. I’ve actually upgraded Ubuntu quite a few times and often it works without a problem, but usually works best if you haven’t tweaked the default install too much. I actually upgraded a friends PC from Ubuntu 8.10 through 9.0.4 > 9.10 > 10.0.4 and it went nigh-on perfectly.
Screenshot http://is.gd/nQ9rr5
I’m having the same issues.
Currently I’m running Fedora 16, but had crashes here and there. Oh, and SELinux was driving me crazy as well. I’ve set it to permissive mode, but still, it gives me warnings which I don’t really understand. I’m not Average Joe, but not a nerd either. Somewhere between, with the desire to use some functional, nearly-up-to-date software.
I always do my installations using netinst. Fedora is a no brainer, just like Debian and Ubuntu.
But openSUSE is a bit bloated if I want to customize. And I don’t like Yast, especially the update manager. I can do an update both in the Online Updates and the software installer. Which update does what? PackageKit does this in a much saner way. I don’t know if it’s possible to ditch the update and install app in Yast and use PackageKit exclusively. Will it handle everything without a glitch? And what about the lang packages? Why are they there? Will they get installed automatically if I’m using my system in Hungarian, and want to replace some apps? However, the idea behind Tumbleweed sounds really good.
I’ve tried Debian Testing, but GDM is still at 3.0.4, and when the system wanted to update ca. 200 packages in one week, I was quite speechless. That’s not suitable for production machines. Debian really should consider the CUT release.
As for Fedora, it’s still the quasi-official GNOME distribution, with the tightest integration. But the occasional crashes in current release, even around the time close to the upcoming next release, are disappointing. A constantly usable, somewhat rolling release would be nice as well.
Btw a dealbreaker for me is the official support for third-party apps, like Google software, Dropbox, etc. Only Fedora, openSUSE, Debian and Ubuntu has official repositories for them.
I didn’t mention Mandriva/Mageia. Has a Control Center, just as annoying as Yast. And looks even more out of place.
linux mint is not so bad an experience, Gnome-wise. It doesn’t have the ubuntu flaws you listed (apocalyptic upgrade, and so on…).
it is generally acknowledged as the most user-friendly distribution for beginners. As a Linux evangelist myself, I install LM 12 XFCE and Gnome all the time, without any complaints or regular maintenance.
And even if Cinnamon is not an actual Gnome 3 experience, since it is a GS fork, it does show promise…
@Toby Haynes : The greatest advantage aptitude has over apt-get is the “aptitude search” command. It shows if the matches for your search are installed or not. I cannot understand how anybody can live without this feature.