Old hat: Fedora 21 beta late than never... and could be best ever

The last solid version of Fedora was 16. Starting with Fedora 17 and continuing through Fedora 20 the project tossed a large number of new internals into their version of Linux. By early in Fedora 20's life it was clear those new parts didn't fit together too well. In short Fedora 20 was a pig. The Fedora project has taken over a year so far to clean up their act. If it takes longer so be it. I put Fedora 21 Alpha on a test system and was encouraged. I just finished replacing it with F 21 Beta (XfCE). First impressions: (1. The installer is still a mess and needs work. (2. The internals seem to fit better. Even with all the debugging code that must still be in there is seems more responsive than 20. If it takes the Project longer to put out a final release - fine. Then we can see how it all works.

While I generally don't agree with some of BFM's opinions of Fedoras 16 through 20 -- I think they were all fine, though Anaconda tends to now have bit of a learning curve where it once didn't -- I do agree when BFM says it's best to release when ready as opposed to some artificial deadline like six months. Fedora 20 was "late," but they had a really good product, and I expect the same for Fedora 21 when it's finally released.

Every Fedora release is a beta testing platform for RHEL. Anyone using Fedora productively is either naive or doesn't really care about their own data or enjoys being an unpaid beta tester for Redhat.

@linux4567:

That's a little harsh to say,... Don't you think?!?!. Just because you use Fedora (and I don't) doesn't mean the OS phones home with your info (while Ubuntu, I believe, does)...

Here's a list of objections that the FSF has about various distributions:

http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html

If Fedora phoned home, I'm sure that fact would hit this list...

As for being an unpaid beta tester,... Maybe,... But you could also use CentOS or Scientific Linux (which are source "clones" of RHEL) and be a RHEL moocher...

> Every Fedora release is a beta testing platform for RHEL.

Actually, I agree with that sentiment. I stopped using Red Hat after Red Hat 9, when they stopped releasing a supported version for the home user. And the release of Fedora did nothing to change my mind.

I understand exactly why Red Hat did what they did. It even makes sense from a business standpoint. But I'm a home user, not an enterprise. And if Red Hat has no use for the home user, then this home user has no use for Red Hat.

@JaseP: calm down, you misunderstood my post. By "doesn't really care about their own data " I was referring to the fact that due to it's beta testing experimental nature Fedora is an unstable distro, so the risk of losing data is much higher than with a stable production distro.

I was in no way implying that Fedora 'calls home'.

Fedora seems to suffer increasingly from Poettering-Kruger syndrome.

In my experience, when I have new hardware, Fedora provides the best chance of getting the most things working the quickest. I did this in 2010 with a Lenovo (NOT Thinkpad) laptop, but I eventually moved to Debian with Liquorix kernels when video crapped out in Fedora 14.

This time around, I have a 2013 HP Pavilion g6 laptop, and Fedora has been pretty great from the F18 through F20 cycles -- and F20 has been a LONG one, for sure. Advances in the kernel and video stack have been so rapid, and Fedora gets that stuff WAY before Debian and Ubuntu. Arch is another great choice for new hardware, but I'm not an Arch person, I guess ...

@Steven_Rosenber:

Really?!?! I've experienced the exact opposite. Fedora has failed to get newer/quirkier hardware working for me, in the past... It was always Ubuntu or Debian derivatives that provided the best hardware support. Specifically, wireless cards, touch screens and USB input devices always seemed to work better out-of-box with Debian based distros,... at least in my experience.

Fedora may get the source code earlier for the devices... But it always seemed like device detection and automatic driver installation worked better with apt-get distos. If you don't mind manually installing SRPMs, then I suppose you could have better luck with Fedora.

Linux is more YMMV than most things, for sure.