Fedora 24 rocks

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by accessgranted, Jul 27, 2016.

  1. accessgranted

    accessgranted Registered Member

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    Hi guys
    After some tweaking, I finally managed to get Fedora 24 to my liking. I was afraid to leave F23 that I loved, but I'm extremely pleased with this new version. Any other user around here?
     

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  2. AutoCascade

    AutoCascade Registered Member

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    Yeah Fedora 24 but with Cinnamon not Gnome.
     
  3. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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    I'm running the KDE spin of Fedora 24 and agree that it's a very solid distro. :thumb:
     
  4. For non Fedora users, it helps when you explain why you are so happy with it :geek:
     
  5. accessgranted

    accessgranted Registered Member

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    @ AutoCascade & summerheat: could you please post a screenshot of your Fedora 24, just as I did in my post? Thanks.
     
  6. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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    Here we go: Desktop1.png
     
  7. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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    Several reasons:
    1. Both very up-to-date packages and good stability. My impression is that their testing is more thorough than on Arch.
    2. Delta updates which save a lot of download size.
    3. Good security with all packages hardened by default and SELinux. Caveat for those of you who prefer AppArmor: It's not available on Fedora, and SELinux is much more complicated. I still don't really understand it - I would like to confine Firefox (just for fun) but don't know yet how to do it.
     
  8. Anonfame1

    Anonfame1 Registered Member

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    1) Yeah, Ive come to find that Arch (for me) is best used with applications that are inherently stable i.e. using a wm like openbox instead of a DE like KDE, or even a simple DE like XFCE instead of a more complicated one like gnome3, etc. Then you have an up-to-date rolling release setup while still having solid stability. Aside from some GTK theme breakage and a linux-grsec kernel that wouldnt boot, I havent had a problem with Arch in years.
    2) Damn really?? Nice. Didnt even know they had that...
    3) One more caveat is no easy to use grsecurity patched kernel (that I've found)- you have to compile it and thats more work in Fedora than Gentoo or Arch. That said, Arch for example doesnt have AppArmor by default either, necessitating a rebuilt kernel if you prefer it to SELinux. SELinux is the most powerful though- if you can pull off understanding it youll be set! I dont know it either atm- maybe one of these days...

    I think Fedora is prolly the best option if you want up-to-date along with a desktop environment like Gnome 3/KDE. Theyve done amazing things recently. Im more impressed with Fedora's improvements than any other distro actually. Debian is good for old stable software, Arch is good for rolling release, and Fedora is good for up-to-date release often stable. You have any experience with rawhide btw? I wonder how it compares to Arch or Debian Sid or Gentoo ~amd64...
     
  9. chrome_sturmen

    chrome_sturmen Registered Member

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    Would you folks say Fedora is a good distro for Linux beginners or are there others that are better for newbs? Thanks
     
  10. I tried a few as Windows User, I liked Xubuntu, because all the tips I could find on the internet I was able to replicate. Elementary OS has the best looks, but I did not get any response on their forum on how to set up Firejail (I used minimal distro which did not had Firejail or ApppArmor included). I found directions on how to install AppArmor, use LINK-2 on how to activate this for Chromium (both Xubuntu and Elementary OS)

    Xubuntu set up tips
    LINK-1: installing and adding Firejail Sandbox to Thunderbird and Chromium
    LINK-2: adding for fun a third AppArmor sandbox around Chromium (which I learned when playing with Elementary OS, was able to use replicate on Xubuntu to)

    Xubuntu has the application manager of Ubuntu, you can easily install/remove software in a Windows like manner.


    Elementary OS set up tips
    1. set Windows like icons

    2. add AppArmor version X.Y (replace with latest version number)
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apparmor-upload/apparmor-X.Y
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

    3. add firewall GUI (gufw)
    sudo apt-get install gufw


    Regards Kees
     
  11. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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    Well, I had, particularly related to the transmission from KDE4 to Plasma 5, though. Most of them were not really critical but annoying.
    Yes, they've been using delta updates for years. It's a great feature and very reliable (today it reduced the download size of my updates by 92.1 % :thumb: ). FYI: Arch supports delta updates, too. Unfortunately, only one server supports this feature AFAIK. I had used it and it was rather reliable. The number of packages for which deltas are offered is relatively high, among them many big packages, hence the reduction in download size is often dramatic. Building the new versions after downloading the deltas is a bit slow compared to Fedora, though, so it seems that the Fedora approach is more efficient. But it's definitely worth a try! I liked it.
    Well, I don't really see the need for a grsecurity kernel as I feel already safe enough. Besides, more and more grsecurity features are coming to the mainline kernel through the Kernel Self-Protection Project as discussed in other threads here. So I think that in the not too distant future grsecurity won't be relevant anymore except for some true paranoids :D:D:D
    No, I've never tried rawhide. But I might test it in a VM.

    BTW: Is there any SELinux expert around who could help me to make progress with that stuff?
     
  12. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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    Well, setting it up is a bit more difficult compared to, say, Ubuntu. I suggest that you read Mrk's review if Fedora 24. As Fedora comes only with free and open-source packages you will usually have to add extra repositories in order to install, e.g., needed codecs. Scripts like Fedy or Easy Life mentioned here makes that easy, though. Once that is done Fedora is rock-solid and easy to use.

    However, there is no LTS version! Quote:
    On the other hand, upgrading it from one version to another has been very easy and reliable for me.
     
  13. AutoCascade

    AutoCascade Registered Member

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    I started off using Mint Cinnamon - there are few updates and everything works out of the box, so to speak. There is a boatload of info available via Mint forums, Ubuntu forums and googling for info which can be from Mint, Ubuntu or Debian.

    I find as much as anything else its the Desktop Environment which attracts users. Looking for other distros that have Cinnamon available as a DE I found a lot - Mint, Fedora, PeppermintOS, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and a few more.

    I started trying other distros to see what I liked.

    However I soon found that using Cinnamon DE on one distro is not the same as using it on another because if its not from the ground up its lacking. You may end up liking Unity or Gnome 3 or KDE.

    .deb packages can install on Debian, Mint and Ubuntu. RPM packages install on Fedora and Suse.

    I found Fedora's Cinnamon spin is the closest to Mint Cinnamon - the Cinnamon DE is from Mint developers. Fedora is frequently updated, has many security features

    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security_Features_Matrix

    You will hear that Linux is endlessly customizable and it is however you will see people jumping around from one distro to another because they need this or that which is only available on X or doesn't work right on Y. Drivers are an issue with some distros because you may need driver X but the distro you like doesn't include those drivers because they are propriety not open source.

    When you read distro reviews keep in mind that the experience on 'that' distro is on one DE or another but not all DE plus its on their hardware and the differences can be dramatic.

    Either way there is a lot of help available here and all over the net. Its a friendly community. Once you find a desktop that you like you can bounce around and see what makes sense to you distro wise.
     
  14. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Fedora 24 is OK, but definitely not as user friendly as Ubuntu-based systems. I prefer gnome based DE, including Ubuntu Unity, because I use seahorse-nautilus plugin to enable file/directory encryption by simply right click the file/directory. http://www.upubuntu.com/2012/11/encryptdecrypt-files-from-nautilus.html

    In reality, the biggest advantage using Ubuntu/Mint/Debian is the tons of tips/answers/solutions you can find via a simple google search. As a Ubuntu user, more than 95% of all the problems I came across were solved via google search. Fedora may be fine for some users, but its user base is simply much smaller than Ubuntu/Mint/Debian.
     
  15. Anonfame1

    Anonfame1 Registered Member

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    Oh god, I feel you on KDE transitions. I got bit hard on Arch when KDE 3 ended- 4 was a joke. I see now that 4 has more features than 5, and 5 had a number of bugs when I demo'd it on a BTRFS snapshot. I had breakage once on XFCE actually- I think it was the switch from 4.4 to 4.6? I cant remember the exact versions. I run Openbox with xfce components now, so I dont have any problems. Some people dont have our issues tho..

    Fedora is a dream for a DE. A lot of releases, but easy to upgrade to the next release. Good package hardening, DEs put together nicely with some polish, good package manager, solid set of repos, etc etc.

    I think what theyve done so far is minimal compared to grsecurity/pax, but it is encouraging to see the kernel devs heading in that direction. Its better they do this now while Linux has still been relatively safe from exploits instead of damage-control after-the-fact.

    If Windows 10 or vulkan or whatever the next savior will be for "year of the linux desktop" pushes Linux up towards 10% market share, I sure hope they have pushed many more security features- if not, the malware will come.
     
  16. UnknownK

    UnknownK Registered Member

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    I was a fedora user back in the days of 17. I really liked yum. It was my daily driver. But upgrading to 18 borked my system. No Fedora since than. No chance in the future too.
     
    Last edited: Jul 31, 2016
  17. accessgranted

    accessgranted Registered Member

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    I only started using Fedora with the 20 version, which I liked and learned to tweak. Fedora 21 and 22 were nightmares that I quickly let go. Then Fedora 23 was a very smooth sailing, and Fedora 24 seems to keep up the good work for now.
     
  18. AutoCascade

    AutoCascade Registered Member

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    I found it interesting that one of the 4.7 kernel updates came from Google not Grsec, LoadPin.

    If there is really as much effort going into kernel self protection now as they've said it won't be long before the vanilla kernel is much, much stronger security wise.
     
  19. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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    I'm testing it right now. I had still an instance of Fedora 24 (KDE spin) running in a VirtualBox VM and decided to upgrade it to rawhide. However, the first two attempts didn't succeed. I cloned the VM and applied the official system upgrade method - but that resulted in endless reboots (although it had worked reliably from 22 to 23 and from 23 to 24). So I tried (successfully - yeah!) another method. This was what I did:

    Code:
    sudo dnf install fedora-repos-rawhide
    sudo dnf config-manager --set-disabled fedora updates
    sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled rawhide
    sudo dnf --releasever=rawhide distro-sync --nogpgcheck
    Note that I had used only the fedora and updates repos. With, e.g., rpmfusion I would also have had to disable that repo and install the one for rawhide.

    After a reboot I have now kernel 4.8.0rc0 running :D.

    I had some SELinux alerts which I solved by applying the provided solutions. So far, everything works as expected.
     
  20. AutoCascade

    AutoCascade Registered Member

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    Chromium stable (and up to date) is now available from the official Fedora repository complete with PPAPI flash and Widevine.
     
  21. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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    I installed it but it didn't come with PPAPI flash and Widevine. I'm a bit confused :confused:
     
  22. AutoCascade

    AutoCascade Registered Member

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    Did you install from the Fedora repository - it may not have been 100% ready.

    The new official repo Chromium download installs Chromium, Chromium libs and plugins. I had downloaded it a few days before from another repo and it was a series of 'oh snap's' it was useless.

    http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=22672

    I only spotted this a few days ago on http://chromium.woolyss.com/ Anyway it's there now and everything works right out of the box so to speak

    From woolyss:

    Fedora

    Available in the official repository since Chromium v52.

    Info: Chromium on Fedora Project wiki and Fedora cloud
     
  23. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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    I installed it from the official repo. Right now v. chromium-52.0.2743.82-9.fc24.x86_64 is installed

    And
    explicitly says that the package supports widevine and pepperflash but doesn't include them.
     
  24. AutoCascade

    AutoCascade Registered Member

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    I forgot that I used the yumex gui to install know that I think about it and the search for 'chromium' also brought up the libs and plugins. I checked them all off and they installed.

    If you installed from the terminal you wouldn't have seen those other things come up.
     
  25. summerheat

    summerheat Registered Member

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    Do you mean the freshplayerplugin package from rpmfusion? Now I have flash v. 13.1 R2 running in Firefox but still no flash in Chromium. Have you other repos enabled?
     
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