OpenBenchmarking.org: Ubuntu Prepares To Be Overtaken By Arch Linux

[stqn]

The reason I bought an SSD 4 years ago was because pacman was way too slow. I don?t know if the devs have improved the speed since?

[Creak]

I don't know if it's related to yaourt or pacman, but I often have to wait 5 complete seconds before yaourt asks me for my sudo password. I still haven't figured out what it's trying to do during these 5 seconds.

[alaviss]

The reason I bought an SSD 4 years ago was because pacman was way too slow. I don?t know if the devs have improved the speed since?

Apparently they improved it. I use my USB (write speed 13MB/s) as root device and pacman complete the installation of all packages (except downloading times) in just 20 mins

[ncopa]

The reason I bought an SSD 4 years ago was because pacman was way too slow. I don?t know if the devs have improved the speed since?

I doubt there ever will be any significant speed improvements in pacman. Its a consequence of the design of the database being spread over many files. They probably knew that when they designed it and are willing to pay the prize.

[ncopa]

Apparently they improved it. I use my USB (write speed 13MB/s) as root device and pacman complete the installation of all packages (except downloading times) in just 20 mins

Thats what I call dog slow. With apk-tools it would have been downloading times + around one minute, given your download speed is not more than 13MB/s.

[stqn]

Thats what I call dog slow. With apk-tools it would have been downloading times + around one minute, given your download speed is not more than 13MB/s.

Alpine Linux seems interesting but their forum is so dead it?s not encouraging? :-/ Is it usable as a "normal" desktop distro? (including gaming)

[matt_g]

So I wonder a bit, why fedora does not have more users, I tested fedora and arch and come to a point where fedora was slighty the better distro (having earlier versions of mesa 9.2 without AUR where u could compile it and fail with it most likely), which made vdpau possible with amd gpus (not all of em), and also faster access to a compiled xbmc13 version (beta or so), and had subjectively the more responsive less buggy gnome experience in fc19 or fc20 at the time I tested.
U even can use it rolling with rawhide. So I wonder why fedora gets not used so much, I guess its a image problem, archlinux has some geek coolness, other than that u can have other focuses, but fedora and arch are pretty close and also similar in many regards, so I wonder a bit why fedora gets so less acceptence.

And dont bring new releases as a problem, u can easily switch to fc21 yet or pinn some packages or use coprs etc. I used to install ubuntu next most of the time in alpha time, becuase it bored me to hell, even fc21 is pretty late (even they never gave a accept goal time where they commited to release at that point, but more a when its done aproach), it has the same kernel then the recent ubuntu release, same firefox version and even same gnome version rofl

I've used Fedora for a very long time (including before it was Fedora when it was called Redhat Linux). I like it and it too is my favorite distro so I think I can be pretty objective when I speak of it's shortcommings:

- It sucks for out of Repo packages (I mean it really sucks). RPM fusion (which would be Fedora's equivalent of Debian non free) made things better before that you had to mix and match several repos (livina, fresh RPMS and a few others I can't remember) and stuff would break all the time - especially graphics drivers like Nvidia, every kernel update (and Fedora updates Kernel pretty frequently compared to Ubuntu) my graphics drivers would break often. Nowadays (and for last 2 years) I use a laptop with intel drivers I have had zero issues so can't comment on if situation has gotten better with proprietary graphics but it used to be a nightmare (I had Nvidia cards from 2004ish to 2011ish problems persited through then).

- It is Fedora policy to promote free software or whatever so they do not advertise RPM fusion anywhere so first thing a newbie will notice when they come to Fedora is a whole bunch of nonfree stuff doesn't work including Flash, Java, Mp3's, most video codecs and used to be fonts as well). Fedora forums used to be full of same questions getting asked over and over again because of this. I think this is the big reason Ubuntu killed fedora in the mid 00's all these things 'just worked' in Ubuntu. I can understand Fedora's stance but imo it killed their chances of mainstream popularity.

- Fedora GUI for installing packages sucks and it keeps changing. I mean there must have been 4 or 5 different GUI package managers in last 10 years and none of them have been decent (YumEx was ok but seemed to have dissapeared latest version is called ' software centre' or similar, which is a rather unfortunate generic name). I keep trying the package maangers but always go back to YUM from CLI because the GUI is slow and terrible. Again in Ubuntu Synpatic "just works". A couple of months ago I wanted to install a E-book reader on my laptop so I thought I'd try out the gui and use it to search for ebook readers that were packaged I gave up after about 15 mins bercuase no matter what terms I searched for I could not find any, despite knowing there were several packaged. It was easier just to install okular from cli. If I can't use the GUI for something simple like this then I don't know how a non technical person is supposed to figure it out.

- Fedora is very Gnome centric - despite the fact it claims not to be. It has gotten better but still not perfect. I used KDE for a long time and never felt like it was treated right, it always felt like a second class citizen. I use Cinnamon currently, it has only been in last Fedora release it has felt like it worked right before that it was half broken and depended on a lot of gnome packages such as nautilus, now it uses nemo as the default file manager correctly.

-Other people do not target Fedora as a release for binary software most people assume Ubuntu. Took ages for stuff like Chrome, Steam etc to get packaged for Fedora. I don't use either at the moment but I still assume these are unoffical community supported packages still.

-It Enables SELinux by default which a lot of distros do notit mostly works nowadays but still run into bugs occasionally where the only way to fix it is to disable SELinux. I've been using SELinux for a long time I still have no clue how it works or how to troubleshoot issues with it.

Despite those issue I still think its a good distro but I understand why it is not popular.

[ncopa]

Alpine Linux seems interesting but their forum is so dead it?s not encouraging? :-/ Is it usable as a "normal" desktop distro? (including gaming)

I use it as my daily work desktop and on my private laptop. I would not recommend it if you need closed source things like nvidia/ati closed source driver, closed source games or things like adobe flash.

[stqn]

I use it as my daily work desktop and on my private laptop. I would not recommend it if you need closed source things like nvidia/ati closed source driver, closed source games or things like adobe flash.

Thanks, then I?ll have to look elsewhere.

[blackiwid]

I compared it to the success of Arch Linux, so much of the stuff u say doesnt work there better and still arch linux get many users.

But I go into it deeper:

- It sucks for out of Repo packages (I mean it really sucks). RPM fusion (which would be Fedora's equivalent of Debian non free) made things better before that you had to mix and match several repos (livina, fresh RPMS and a few others I can't remember) and stuff would break all the time - especially graphics drivers like Nvidia, every kernel update (and Fedora updates Kernel pretty frequently compared to Ubuntu) my graphics drivers would break often. Nowadays (and for last 2 years) I use a laptop with intel drivers I have had zero issues so can't comment on if situation has gotten better with proprietary graphics but it used to be a nightmare (I had Nvidia cards from 2004ish to 2011ish problems persited through then).

- It is Fedora policy to promote free software or whatever so they do not advertise RPM fusion anywhere so first thing a newbie will notice when they come to Fedora is a whole bunch of nonfree stuff doesn't work including Flash, Java, Mp3's, most video codecs and used to be fonts as well). Fedora forums used to be full of same questions getting asked over and over again because of this. I think this is the big reason Ubuntu killed fedora in the mid 00's all these things 'just worked' in Ubuntu. I can understand Fedora's stance but imo it killed their chances of mainstream popularity.

I get that many people love proprietary software and try to use it as much as possible and give companies money that take their freedom, but some out there and if its only a big minority should be happy for a distro that focus on freedom but dont go completly nuts about it like the official GNU Distros. A major distro, I mean even debian gets some success on the desktop even its so old 90-99% of the users will most likely not take it. Even the hardcore retards use most of the time ubuntu because debian is to old. Yes it may fitt the needs of some people for the biggest majoritiy its to old for desktop.

But of course archlinux advertises proprietary software, so thats shurly a thing for many people. Its good that fedora produces very high quality distro even the usercount is not that high, but I guess for many developers its the major distro they use (free software developers), so I guess it does not really matters that many did not found out that its a really great distro.

- Fedora GUI for installing packages sucks and it keeps changing. I mean there must have been 4 or 5 different GUI package managers in last 10 years and none of them have been decent (YumEx was ok but seemed to have dissapeared latest version is called ' software centre' or similar, which is a rather unfortunate generic name). I keep trying the package maangers but always go back to YUM from CLI because the GUI is slow and terrible. Again in Ubuntu Synpatic "just works". A couple of months ago I wanted to install a E-book reader on my laptop so I thought I'd try out the gui and use it to search for ebook readers that were packaged I gave up after about 15 mins bercuase no matter what terms I searched for I could not find any, despite knowing there were several packaged. It was easier just to install okular from cli. If I can't use the GUI for something simple like this then I don't know how a non technical person is supposed to figure it out.
[

I dont know what u are talking here now, gnome-software is the name and it will not change. And dont know what version of what u used, but the ubuntu software store is one of the worst, it was ok when in came out but they did not update it. its slow as hell and horrific. yes gnome software from fc20 was the first version more a test version that had some issues, but thats more or less the past now. Dont care to much, and agaain which archlinux guy does care about it, because their guis all suck too and still many migrate to archlinux.

- Fedora is very Gnome centric - despite the fact it claims not to be. It has gotten better but still not perfect. I used KDE for a long time and never felt like it was treated right, it always felt like a second class citizen. I use Cinnamon currently, it has only been in last Fedora release it has felt like it worked right before that it was half broken and depended on a lot of gnome packages such as nautilus, now it uses nemo as the default file manager correctly.

So was ubuntu before 2 years and that was one of the biggest parts why it was so popular. It was not kde
BTW I use i3wm, instead of gnome, have no real problems, most of the time I just can use the archlinux wiki 1:1 and have no problems with it.

-Other people do not target Fedora as a release for binary software most people assume Ubuntu. Took ages for stuff like Chrome, Steam etc to get packaged for Fedora. I don't use either at the moment but I still assume these are unoffical community supported packages still.

yes for proprietary software they dont target, I am happy with that if I really use 1-2 proprietary tools I want to see it, clearly notice it, have some work so I dont just accidentionaly install this spyware. And I want to see what are parts that I have to replace in future. So to ahve a top notch free system with the posibility to install some proprietary bits, I like much more than the opposite, of course if you want to make a gaming machine fedora is not so good, but for that we have steamos.

-It Enables SELinux by default which a lot of distros do notit mostly works nowadays but still run into bugs occasionally where the only way to fix it is to disable SELinux. I've been using SELinux for a long time I still have no clue how it works or how to troubleshoot issues with it.

yes, but as example I find it 100 times more easy to deactivate SELinux than having to deal a thousend times in ubuntu with deinstalling old kernels. And I know its there, when I need it, Android has as far as I know selinux included and activated now. So selinux cant be that user-unfriendly. Maybe they make that more userfriendly to use or to disable when they now have their workstation and co special versions. for proffessional servers its shurly a great software but for dekstop users it can get a bit in the way

It would be better that it would be so easy to use that u dont deactivate it. So users can profit from its features without investing much time. again if you deactivate it it costs not much time, and if you start from 0 it also does not make much problems but if you migrate from somewhere else and you are busy enough to get used to fedora, it can be to much to manage that.

Despite those issue I still think its a good distro but I understand why it is not popular.

And even if your points would be right, there are some forks of it, that target such stuff, they get not used too.

I think its more that people have fear of rpm distros, there are mythhs about it, I even wanted not use it, because I used 10 or 15 years ago all kinds of rpm based distros like suse or more mandrake, and then like u say there was no RPM Fusion.

Btw I dont see rpm fusion so much as nonfree, at least not in proprietary, as example xbmc or kodi is not proprietary still its in RPM Fusion.