 Ubuntu and Fedora are probably two of the most popular Linux distributions out there and for good reason they're both really good. The question is which one's better? And to answer that question you really have to know precisely what these distributions are and even then it's a very subjective choice because it really matters most what you want in a distribution and both of these distros take a slightly different point of view on what Linux can be. So what we're going to do today is try our best to compare the two most popular Linux distributions Ubuntu and Fedora. So before we jump in there's a few things you should know. So the first one is that the version of the distributions that I'm comparing really doesn't matter all that much for your information I'm using Ubuntu 22.10 which is the most recent interim release of Ubuntu and Fedora 35 which is at the moment I'm recording the most recent version of Fedora. Now I'm pretty sure within the next week or so Fedora 36 is going to come out at which case this is going to be a little bit outdated but for the most part everything I'm talking about today should stay exactly the same because we're not going to get into the nitty gritty details of what each version contains. We're not comparing versions we're comparing the overall distro experience. Another thing that you should know going in before we jump into the comparison is that the b-roll that you'll see throughout the video was recorded with these distributions in virtual machines so that may impact performance somewhat mainly because it's a virtual machine and not on hardware. So just keep that in mind if you see stutters it's not because of the distributions it's because of the virtual machine. So those things being said let's go ahead and jump in. So we're going to focus on Fedora first and then we'll go and talk about Ubuntu. So in terms of installation Fedora uses the Anaconda installer now this is a very old installer it's been around for quite a long time and it's fairly easy to use you'll see that there's about three maybe four steps during the entire installation. The one place where this differs from Ubuntu for sure is that user creation doesn't happen during install at all instead you'll create your user after the distribution has installed. You'll also notice that when you see the b-roll for Ubuntu the Anaconda installer that we're seeing now looks significantly different than pretty much any other installer that you'll see the only one that looks similar to this is openSUSA they both have this kind of weird installer the point is that is that the Anaconda installer does look different than what you'll find on many other distributions including those of Ubuntu. The only other note for the installer that I should make is that the partition portion of the installer has been known to confuse some new users so if you are having problems with that I highly recommend looking up a tutorial on how to install Fedora because it's not as confusing as it looks out of the box but it can be confusing if you've never done it before. Once you have Fedora installed you'll find that the distribution uses a package manager called DNF this is the successor to the YUM package manager which is what Fedora used many years ago and it is actually fairly good now it does have some limitations but for the most part the syntax you'll find between the Ubuntu package manager and the Fedora one they're mostly the same so if you want to install something from the terminal you can do so using sudo dnf install whatever the package name is now one thing that you should know obviously is that Fedora by default has only access to free repositories meaning that the repositories that you have access to will only have free or Libre software in them so if you want to install something like the Nvidia drivers you can only do so if you have the third party repose enabled which it does enable you to do right upon first boot so once you've booted into Fedora for the first time you'll be presented with some options one of those being enabling third party repose and that will give you access to the rpm fusion repose which have non-free binaries in them so you can install things like the Nvidia drivers or Google Chrome or whatever it is that you want to install by default Fedora comes with Flatpak enabled but it does not come with Flat Hub enabled by default so if you want to install Flat Hub things from Flat Hub you'll have to install those you'll have to enable Flat Hub on your own but by default Flatpaks are enabled it does not come with snaps installed so if you want to use snaps you'll have to install that on your own in terms of the software store it comes with the GNOME software center which is the default for the GNOME desktop environment it pulls from certain Flatpak repositories and the rpm fusion repositories if they were enabled so it does come with a broad range of software if you have the repositories enabled that you have access to you'll also notice that this version of GNOME software is actually very fast and if we compare it to Ubuntu when we get to that point the snap store which is what Ubuntu uses is not nearly as swift as the GNOME software center now you'll notice that I've mentioned GNOME several times during this video already and that's because by default GNOME is the default desktop environment for Fedora if you go to get fedora.org and you click the download links you'll get a GNOME version of Fedora because that is the default by default it is the official version of Fedora it is also the one that gets the most focus so you're going to get the newest version of GNOME if you are a GNOME person if you've used Linux before and you found that GNOME is suits your workflow the distribution that gets GNOME the fastest is almost certainly going to be fedora and that's because they're developed by similar teams they're not going to say the same teams but for the most part they're very related so if you like I said if you're interested in GNOME GNOME is the default desktop environment for fedora but that doesn't mean you're limited to GNOME if that's not to your liking. Fedora does have several different spins they have KDE, XFCE, LXQ, Mate Compus, Cinnamon, LXDE and i3 window manager and you can find those by the link in the video description by searching fedora spins fedora calls their offshoot spins so you can go and download those versions and then have those desktop environments obviously if you've chosen the default version of fedora it's very easy to install something else if you don't want to use GNOME you can install plasma you can install XFCE even after you've already installed the GNOME version if that's what you want to do in terms of hardware support fedora only supports open source drivers by default and what this means is that if you have an NVIDIA card you're going to be pretty much reliant on open source drivers now you can install NVIDIA drivers on fedora it's just not officially supported you can do so by using DNF and enabling the rpm fusion repositories which is where the NVIDIA drivers lie now there are several tutorials out there so if you need to install the NVIDIA drivers on fedora you can search for those and most of them are pretty helpful the same thing goes for other drivers that you may need so if you're on a laptop that has a wi-fi card of certain brandage you may not have good luck getting to actually work simply because by default fedora only uses open source drivers if that wi-fi card requires a proprietary driver or something that is proprietary in nature it won't be included by default you'll have to go and install that from the non-freed repositories and finally in terms of a release cycle fedora releases every six months and they do this in a very interesting way because unlike ubuntu which has a very set date it's very rare that ubuntu will push their dates back fedora tends to be much more fluid in terms of when their releases are for example this most recent release fedora 36 was supposed to be released back in april uh early april and then they pushed it back to late april and it's not early may and it's not here yet and now that's a good thing because it means that they're taking the time to make sure that their release is properly supported and they've squashed all the bugs but it definitely is something that you should know once you've installed fedora you'll have support for that version of fedora for 13 months unlike ubuntu fedora does not offer a long-term support release they just support every version that they have for 13 months and then it's done if you are interested in fedora but need something that is more supported long term you could use something like rel or something like that because those have support cycles that are much longer obviously those are more suited for enterprise uses but you will get some of the same features now moving on to ubuntu ubuntu uses the ubiquity installer as i record right now but they are in the process of revamping this installer i don't know if they'll keep the name i'm not sure about that but if you're watching this in the future you may find that the installer is a little bit different than what i'm showing on screen so just keep that in mind because they are redoing it in something called flutter which means you're going to have more animations it's going to be more frilly but in terms of functionality it will probably be exactly the same as of right now like you said they're using the ubiquity installer this has been around for a very long time it's very easy to use it does have user creation during install so unlike fedora you'll create your username and password right here in the installer and then you'll move on to creating your time zone and stuff like that right here in the installer as well once you have the distribution installed you'll find that it uses the apt package manager so if you are in a terminal you can do things like sudo apt install you can do sudo apt search in order to find things and the syntax between apt and dnf are for the most part very similar so like i said when i was talking about fedora using sudo apt install or sudo dnf install both work basically the same way now if you talk to people who know much more about these package managers than i do you'll find that which one is better really depends on which distribution you like the most personally i think that apt is probably the better way to go it does have a few more features than dnf does and i've noticed that it is faster and but that's not necessarily anything that people are going to notice or you're really only going to notice it if you install your packages through the terminal which is something that i find that i prefer to do but if you don't and you use the graphical software management tools the speeds are going to be kind of reversed but if you again if you use apt to do your updates or you to install your software at least in my opinion apt is a little bit faster in terms of a gooey software store ubuntu comes with something called the snap store now this is looks very similar to gunam software because it was actually forked from gunam software but is rewritten as a snap so you'll notice that upon first launch it is pretty slow and you'll probably see that somewhat in the the b-roll that i'm showing you but otherwise the experience is mostly the same as you'll see in fedora the only differences where these are pulling the software from so on fedora we talked about how it was pulling from select flat pack repositories and the rpm fusion repositories on ubuntu it it pulls from just the snap store by default and that means whatever you download from there is going to be a snap just something again to keep in mind and it does give you access to a very large amount of software right out of the box there's nothing you have to do out of the box to get access to just a ton of software by default ubuntu comes with snaps and snap d installed and basically what this means is that you have access to all of the applications that are stored in the snap repository also known as snapcraft.io and or the snap store if you will and say what you want about snaps and i've said plenty it is a very good repository it's very similar to flat hub in that they both have a lot of applications that are available to you the differences between ubuntu and fedora is that by default you have access to the entire snap store without doing anything on ubuntu on fedora as i said when we're talking about fedora flat hub is not enabled by default so that's something you will have to actively go and do if you want access to that repository so you could give this a win for ubuntu simply because they are giving you access to much more software by default than fedora does that being said of course you have to put up with snaps but i'm not going to go into that i'm trying to be very neutral here but it was very hard like i spent the last 10 minutes of this video actually bitching about snaps i won't include that in the video but we're just going to move on just put that out there so ubuntu comes with a highly customized version of gnom and i say this is highly customized because they've actually done a very good job of putting in features now especially if you're using something like it like ubuntu 22.04 you're going to have access to a lot of the gnom 42 features which includes a default dark mode and the new multitasking stuff and the new wallpapers and stuff but you'll also get the ubuntu added on features things like being able to move dock to the bottom making it so that it's a panel and not a dock instead of what it's normally there and a whole bunch of other features including some accent colors which is really cool now if you're using something like you'll see on screen which is ubuntu 21.10 you won't get those features so you're only going to get those features if you use something brand new so if you're comparing what you get to in most recent version of ubuntu to the most recent version of gnom in fedora you're going to get much more customization in ubuntu than you will in stock standard gnom which is what comes with fedora and that's because ubuntu and canonical which is the company behind ubuntu has put in a lot of development effort into making gnom a little bit more customizable in terms of colors in terms of theming and stuff like that so once fedora 36 hits the shelves you will notice that gnom has caught up a little bit you do get access to a dark theme at least and that does make a big difference so depending on when you're watching this the differences between these might be a little bit different than what i'm talking about but you should just know going in that as of recording right now the ubuntu version of gnom is much more customizable out of the box than the fedora version of gnom now obviously both of these because they're using gnom will allow you to do certain things for customization now you can always install gnom tweaks and do some tweaking of the gnom desktop environment how much customization really depends on what version of gnom you're actually using similar to fedora ubuntu has several different flavors and they do call them flavors i'm not going to list them all here but i'll list a few of them they have kabuntu which uses kd plasma mate which uses the mate desktop lubuntu which is lxq zubuntu which is xfce ubuntu studio which is focused on media and creation they also have ubuntu budgie and several more so if you don't like the gnom version of ubuntu which is the stock standard which is what you'll find on the download button on the main ubuntu website you can go to these flavors and download something different similar to what you could do with fedora if you do download the gnom version it's very easy to install another desktop on there if you want to and that means even if you've made a mistake by choosing gnom you can just install a different desktop on there and correct your mistake in terms of hardware support ubuntu allows for proprietary drivers to be installed via an application called software and updates and you can install particularly things like the nvidia drivers right from there and these are fully supported by ubuntu so if you have problems you can seek support through the ubuntu forums or wherever ubuntu offers support and and usually they have the most recent version of the nvidia drivers right there for you to install or whatever's compatible with the kernel that you're working with so you it's very easy to install those right after install if you need them by default it does use the open source drivers so just keep that in mind the nvidia drivers i believe do come on the iso so that is something that you might also enjoy simply because it'll make the live environment better out of the box finally in terms of release cycle ubuntu releases every six months similar to what fedora does the only difference is that every two years ubuntu will release something called an lts or a long term support release and these are supported by five years now the interim releases which are the releases that aren't lts releases are supported for nine months like i said the lts releases are supported for at least five years usually that is extended at least in terms of for enterprise uses or whatever so you may end up having to pay for that support if you want to use an lts for longer but they're supported for at least five years in terms of support both of these distributions offer fantastic support not only for enterprise users but also for the community so you can get access to forums there are discourses there are probably discords out there and irc and telegram chat groups all these things that you'll be able to find if you search for them fairly easily on their websites you'll be able to get to these resources ubuntu also has a very good wiki even if it is a little bit outdated and not nearly as good as the arch wiki but they do have a wiki as well they also have something called ask ubuntu which is a place where you can go ask ubuntu and there is a very broad community for both ubuntu and fedora that are usually pretty willing to help not only regular linux users but also new linux users so finding support shouldn't be a problem no matter which of these two distributions that you choose so which one is actually better that's the question that we're kind of left with and as i said at the beginning it's a really hard question to answer because it is is a subjective kind of thing to look at which one is better really depends on which one works better for your hardware and for the most part both of these are going to work on the same hardware you are going to have a little bit harder time getting nvidia stuff up and running on fedora than you want ubuntu doesn't mean that it's hard it just means that it's a little bit more tricky and a little bit more technical than it is on ubuntu that being said it doesn't mean that like i said it can't be done and it doesn't mean that fedora won't run fantastically on your hardware even if you can't get it and video drivers installed if they both run very well and on your hardware then it becomes a matter of which package management system you like the most if you prefer snaps then ubuntu is almost certainly the best way to go it doesn't mean you can't install snaps on fedora it's just an extra step but snaps are highly integrated into the ubuntu experience whereas it's not that way on fedora same thing is if you like flatpacks flatpacks are very integrated and work very well in fedora but they don't even exist in terms of ubuntu by default you'd have to install them so really when you're making the choice choosing which of those two package formats you like the most is really going to be how you should decide which one of these to use now like i said if you find that you like ubuntu but you don't like snaps you can always uninstall snaps and install flatpacks it's not that difficult but again it's something technical that you'd have to do on your own same thing with fedora if you find you really like fedora and it works really well on your hardware but you can't stand flatpacks you can always install snaps you can also ignore completely snaps and flatpacks and just use the default repositories by default the fedora repositories are slightly smaller than the ubuntu repositories simply because they only contain free and Libra software you have to enable the non-free repositories in order to get the full breadth of software it's not hard and you like i said you're giving that option right up front so in terms of which of these repositories like the standard repositories between ubuntu and fedora are actually bigger they're probably about the same from my experience the fedora repositories once you've enabled those third party repositories are a little bit fuller than the ubuntu ones especially for more esoteric packages things that you might use to try to install like a window manager or something so you can install things like alacrity on fedora a lot easier than you can on ubuntu i've also noticed that in fedora you have access to more software on older versions than you do on ubuntu so for example and this is just like i said a little bit esoteric but in ubuntu you can't install something like polybar unless you use the most recent versions of ubuntu it wasn't in the repositories prior to like 20.10 maybe i'm guessing and before that you'd have to build it yourself on fedora it's in the repositories and it doesn't really matter which version of fedora you're using as long as it's still supported you can still you can install something like polybar same thing with something like rophy or dmenu or something like those are in the repositories and while ubuntu has gotten better recently there are still some examples of software that is like i said more esoteric that is just not accessible unless you want to build it yourself now personally if i had to choose between these i would probably choose fedora and the reason why i would choose fedora is simply because it gets the most new features faster it's kind of a rolling release in that regard it's not really a rolling release but you do get access to brand new features things like pipe wire with wailan those things always come to fedora way sooner than they come to any other distribution so if you're more interested in that kind of bleeding edge not necessarily in terms of version but in terms of actual new features fedora is probably the one you would choose and that's probably the one that i would choose that's nothing to say that ubuntu is bad because ubuntu is actually real good now one thing i noticed that i didn't talk about earlier when i was talking about ubuntu that i should just mention briefly is that depending on what flavor of ubuntu you're installing you may see a different installer so for example kabuntu uses the calamari's installer it does not use ubiquity so just keep that in mind is that if you change to a different flavor and i think this holds true for the spins of a fedora as well the installer may be different than what you'd get on the vanilla version of it so just keep that in mind so that is it for this video if you have comments about which one of these is better you can leave those in the comment section below anything you have to say i'd love to hear it if you haven't already make sure you hit the subscribe button we're getting close to 12 000 subscribers already which is just again mind blowing so thanks to everybody who has subscribed if you haven't punched that red subscribe button i really do appreciate it you can follow me on twitter at linuxcast if you'd like to follow me on mastodon that link will be in the video description you can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linuxcast i'd like to take a moment to thank the current patrons robert sedd devon patrick fred kramer make one jex i'm jul steve cyberkin linux garic semo kb tgb keef andy uncle bonehead trydevil gary entwans mitral 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