UBUNTU VS FEDORA

Jonni Bidwell wants to know everything – and he means everything – about the two most popular Gnome-based distros…

- Jonni Bidwell

Fedora and Ubuntu are both highly regarded distros, but have different approaches in a number of areas. If you were to believe the first few Google results comparing them, you’d conclude that Ubuntu is more suited to beginners, that Fedora features new technology first, and that both have large companies backing them. But these listicle summaries rarely tell the full story, so to celebrate the release of new versions of each we thought it’d be a fine time to really put these OSes to the test.

We’ll look at software availability, gaming prowess as well as some technical points about how each is put together. The flagship releases of both distros run Gnome and both use the Wayland desktop protocol, so there’s not much to compare there. The interim Ubuntu releases are supported for nine months, whereas Fedora is supported for only seven. If these two months matter to you, you’ve already got some use out of this feature. But if you want to know more about how in-place upgrades work for both, then you’ll have to read a little further.

We’ll also look at each specimen’s server offerings. Ubuntu’s cloud-init tool makes it easy to set up a new server, and Fedora’s Cockpit tool will have you administrating like a pro in no time. If you’re into IoT then Ubuntu Core with its Snap-powered modularity will get your embedded projects up and running. Fedora’s CoreOS Linux is ideal if you want to run container-based workloads. And there’s also Fedora Silverblue, powered by OSTree atomic updates.

Okay, time to pit Orange against Blue in a fight to the, urm, kernel panic.

What makes them great, again?

Here at Linux Format Towers we’re always recommending both Ubuntu and Fedora, but sometimes we forget why…