What made you chose Fedora?

[defkewl]

I'm not starting a flame here since I use Fedora too.

Related to this thread .

I have a simple question:
What made you chose Fedora?

Well from my point of view Fedora is a great learning tool although I wouldn't use it under critical system.

What about you?

[dutch_fedora]

Why Fedora? In simplest form I chose it because it has the most written documentation, i.e. books. Ok a stupid reason but even a blind pig.... I have tried other distros as well and have to say I am sticking with Fedora for a couple of reasons. First, the forums are better for support, this is the case because the distro is so widely used and the mentality of the users; secondly it is a front line release ( not a rebuild of another distro ) something about that appeals to me; third is I love red hats... kidding, is that it is so stable and easy to install. FC is a bit more on the edge than Xandros or Linspire but that is another reason I like it. It keeps me on my toes, and the older FC releases are so well worked out they have few problems. My FC 2 load on my laptop is as stable as a rock; and my FC 3 on my desktop is right there as well. The Users/Developers really do an excellent job of tightening up each release pretty quick.

As for critical systems, yes I would use it myself on critical systems and working hard to get FC @ the core of my work system everyday. The only thing keeping me from it is some software that is important to my work and is not ported out to anything expcet M$, argh! As this changes, which I think it will; I will be wholly on Linux and FC. My M$ machine is so unstable it kills me, so anything under Linux us better ha!

Finally its just nice knowing that I am not feeding the fat belly of Bill Gates and his happy hordes. Maybe they will actually go to work and start building something better rather than run around to every news office they can find to tell them that M$ is better than Linux.... I think the proof is in the Longhorn. When will he see its not about being better with what you have, but building better with what you are doing.... That is why Linux succeeds.

[jgionet]

I have a simple question:
What made you chose Fedora?

1. sick and tired of M$. (well not completly. I still rely on it for a bunch of stuff which I'm still having issues with in Linux)
2. needed a new challenge/change.
3. Given Redhats reputation I decided to give Fedora a whirl. (FC3 was the first FC I tried) I did try other flavours of Linux in the past and wasn't completly convinced Linux was for me at the time. Linux is slowy getting better as far as being "new user/newbie" friendly. More manufactors just need to realize Linux is picking up and they have to release Linux drivers sooner than later. (this is my main dislike for using linux.. it's not the OS itself.. it's the support for devices diretly from the manufactor. ATI/NVIDIA are doing a great job so far )
4. This forum of course. Without it I'm sure I'd eventually find my answers however coming here since day one has been the greatest. Without this forum I'm sure I would have given up switch back the M$$ side
5. freedom

[solidsnake]

1. It's completely free, with no software omitted (unlike Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, etc)
2. The Red Hat legacy
3. Support

[defkewl]

About stability which is a hot issue. Some people wouldn't use Fedora under critical environment since most people tend to think that Fedora is just RedHat experiments for their RedHat EL.

[dutch_fedora]

Well yes it is a working environment for Red Hat commercial products. This means that there is more leading edge stuff in it that may or may not make it into the Commercial product. They release and release often but that does not mean you have to use the latest release ( I don't ). The FC2 is VERY stable, actually has been implemented into Red Hat EL 4. Some newer apps and changes do get added into the FC series but these changes are small and incremental. Rarely does this result in serious system problems. Much less likely than the notorious M$ updates.

Take a cost based release like SuSe 9.2. They have had some serious problems with their server apps and updates that I have seen in the forums that I take part in. This isn't to say that SuSe is bad, just that all OS and distros have some update problems on occasion. What is important is the fix, its continued value, and the speed at which it is brought to you. In linux it is much faster than M$ (how long was it to get XP SP2? Felt like a Star Wars release... all ad's and very disappointing once it came out) FC has wonderful forums and tons of users so the fixes fly at you once the problems rear their ugly heads... so why not FC?

Enjoy

[ianmac]

Of the distros I have tried, Fedora requires less configuration to get it "network ready". I came to Fedora from Mandrakelinux 10.1 PowerPack and, although it has lots of nice configuration gui's, it requires a TON of tweaking to get it ready for internet use. 80% of those tweaks required in Mandrakelinux are the defaults for a Fedora Core 3 system.

Here is what I found:
Mandrakelinux required 40 minutes for a full install and an hour for configuring - and I was never able to write bash scripts tp handle 100% of the configurations. I also hated the way external drives were handled in Mandrakelinux.

Fedora Core 3 requires about 18 minutes for a full install and another 5 to 10 minutes for configurations. I have a few bash scripts that handle 99% of the configuration, so I can set them to run and go have lunch. When lunch is done, I return to my box and it is ready to start surfing the net. I have also found that Fedora is much easier to learn, probably because Red Hat has been around for a while and knows what they are doing. The only complaint/problem I have had with Fedora is that yum does not work, but I have overcome this by using SmartPM

Oh, and I like the ease of setup with things like xine in fedora.. and my sound works too.

Fedora ROCKS!

[defkewl]

I just can't stand the slowness of Fedora. Aaargh. Is it because of SELinux? When my fedora boots, it took such a long time just to start SELinux. But after I turned it of it's still slow. But overall it is quite easy though. A great distro for learning companion.

[ianmac]

I have never used SELinux, so I cannot comment on it. My FC3 system is somewhat faster than other distros I have tried.

[Solo.Dev]

As a previously dedicated user of Mandrake (now it has another name, due to the Mandrake/Conectivia merger), i used to use only that distro, but when i tried to install all forms of MDK 9 and higher, i found out something awful... They broke there own OS.

So i went out one day, and by chance picked up a copy of WideOpen, a magazine that had Fedora Core 1 with it, and i swapped over that day. never have looked back. Heck, i just convinced my roomate to go over to it, and he loves it, except that his wireless card is not linux supported, even though it has RedHat 8.0 drivers.

[haplo]

I started with Mandrake in 1999 (better than Redhat until RH8) but got tired of having to get a new version of Distro to get latest release of whatever packages.

I switched to Debian for a year using unstable but had to switch to redhat when unstable broke samba.
I enjoyed Fedora since Core 1 (except core 2 which was worhless until alot of updates came out) it is much more cutting edge with the community working on it then redhat. So far Core 3 has been the best yet.

I just need a good financial package to get rid of Windows (dont like gnucash or kmymoney)

[RedFedora]

Why Fedora?
Honestly, I was using RedHat anyway and liked it. I decided
to stick with this distro rather than learn another. So, mostly
comfort and laziness.

[Nighthawk4]

I tried a variety of Distros.

I really liked Mandrake in the past, but I found the latest version very flaky. It refused to install. I tried the DVD version and the CD version. Both failed to install. The first one could not find a Kernel to install and the second could not find one of the CDs.

Debian failed to find one of the disks part way through the install. I think it switched over from the DVD Player to the DVD Writer by mistake, although it had found all of the disks when it verified them in the first place. Also, it did not recognise either my NIC or my Modem, which made updates impossible.

SuSE was OK, even if it does default to KDE. I installed Gnome instead and it seemed fine - except for problems with the Dialup connection, which were resolved eventually.

I tried a few others, including some Live Disk versions, of which the best was Knoppix.

I tried some of these on a spare hard disk, after installing FC3 - just for comparison. Therefore, I admit that when I encountered problems as above, I spent a fair amount of time trying to resolve them and then wiped the disk and started again with a different Distro. I feel sure that - if I had been forced to stick with any of the others - the problems could have been resolved.

However, when I tried FC3, it detected all of my hardware, installed without problems and worked, more or less right away. I had a few problems with updating the nVidia drivers and a few more with playing CDs and DVDs - all of which were resolved quite quickly, thanks to people on this Forum. The only remaining issues are with USB drives and my iPod - which might be related to each other and to a Kernel issue with USB drivers.

Most important of all, I wanted to play Neverwinter Nights on Linux - which works fine. I can also play DVDs (eventually), which play with a better picture than on my other box (XP Pro). I have sound working fine, my Modem worked fine and now my ADSL Router works fine (which is even better of course).

There are still a few minor niggles, but I wanted a machine which would allow me to do a specific list of tasks, without needing Windows. Apart from the iPod, I can do that. In time, I might be able to fix the iPod problems, but that is not too vital for now.

So to summarise - basically, I use FC3 because it works. The other Distros, in one way or another, did not.

[Artik]

I wanted to try RedHat because that was in University installed and I liked it. So I pic-up Fedora. When I tryed to move to Debian I've found some problems with SW installation... (I think I just don't know all these apt/sysnaptic tools well)

Finally what is best - simple installation:
1. Mark setup you need. Gnome, KDE, etc. and you have all you need.

I really want to try to migrate to Debian 3.1 Sarge (I like it) but due to problems with CD Reader I don't take a chances for reinstallation

[fc_jeff]

After Red Hat was my first Linux distro, and after having been around the pike once or twice trying various distros, I've come back to Fedora Core. Here are the reasons (in no particular order):

1. Came with my latest Linux book
2. Tons of books/documentation for FC/RH
3. Stable. Very stable
4. Anaconda installer is great
5. Kudzu hd detector/autoconfigure works great and is reliable
6. Bluecurve theme - unifies Gnome and KDE
7. Great Gnome distro. Gnome is in all it's glory
8. Great GUI config tools
9. Even with great GUI config tools, they don't get in the way when you dig into command line and config files.
10. Great software selection with 4 CDs
11. Tons more software from yum/apt repositories - almost as much as Debian, and more commercial software available
12. Choice of RPM dependancy resolving package tools in yum and apt4rpm. Both are great.
13. Great as both a desktop OS and a Server OS
14. Great development tools
15. RHEL the #1 Enterprise OS. Playing with Fedora Core (same but with more recent software) gives user marketable skills in IT job market
16. Relatively fast. More fully optimized distros like Slack, Gentoo, Vector, or Yoper faster. But FC is plenty fast.
17. 0 $$ as in free!!! - free as in beer!!
18. RHEL and FC totally open source software - free as in speech!!
19. Great, helpful, large community - FedoraForums is great.
20. Good for newbies and gurus alike