A lot of people in the Linux community seem to be conflicted with using Fedora after various Red Hat drama and the whole telemetry proposal. I see that it is still one of the foremost recommended distros on privacyguides, is this still accurate? Should I choose Fedora (KDE would be my choice) when switching from Windows 11?
PG still recommends fedora to my knowledge, so its probably fine.
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The big scary proposal people were upset about can be read here I believe. In the linux community, any telemetry is seen as satan incarnate and Fedora was proposing opt-out telemetry (which would be opt-out before even finishing the install)
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I suppose those are basically my thoughts. As long as the underlying open source software is robust and audited for privacy concerns, things should be fine. There arent really any other concerns other than the telemetry, thing right?
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- Yes it is still a good choice
- The “Red Hat Drama” is largely unrelated to Fedora (also, it is pretty overblown and misunderstood by most people voicing opinions on social media who tend to be repeating second and third hand misimpressions, and/or presenting very black/white hot takes and hyperbole because it generates clicks, views, and upvotes).
- Telemetry has not been introduced in Fedora, but if it is the proposal is to clearly present users with a choice to opt in/out during install and for all telemetry to be privacy respecting and anonymized, transparent, and optional. Telemetry is not inherently bad so long as it is (1) privacy respecting, (2) transparent (3) clearly optional (4) for legitimate development purposes. In fact if you trust the developers Telemetry is good in most cases, as it helps improve the app and your experience.
- Any major linux distro is a big improvement with respect to privacy and control over your system and your data compared to Windows 11.
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To ease any concerns you may have about this, the telemetry proposal that @pinkandwhite linked applies only to the GNOME variant of Fedora (aka “Fedora Workstation”). It does not apply to the KDE variant of Fedora. See the following comment by the person who proposed it: F40 Change Request: Privacy-preserving Telemetry for Fedora Workstation (System-Wide) - #118 by catanzaro - Fedora Discussion
KDE already has an implementation of telemetry that is OPT-IN. That is, it is disabled by default. KDE lets you know about the existence of this feature in its welcome wizard that greets you after you boot into the desktop for the first time:
It also lets you modify the setting at any time through its System Settings:
If you’re interested, here is the link to their privacy policy that is featured in the above photos (hyperlinked in the blue “our privacy policy here.” text): KDE Software Privacy Policy - KDE Community
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As for your original question…
I think that Fedora with KDE is a great choice. It’s what I’m using for my primary laptop.
Fedora, along with Ubuntu, is probably the most supported Linux distribution in terms of software compatibility. That is to say, for the vast majority[1] of programs that you want to install on your system, you will be able to install it on Fedora one way or another. That is at least my experience after using Fedora for a year and a half.
Edit: there are some exceptions, like software that controls mouse DPI and RGB. Even then, there are often alternative, open-source programs that try to replicate these features. ↩︎
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Most, if not all, Linux is better than Microsoft.
The thing is Linux devs and users like to bicker online because we are very opinionated and we like to think others are doing it wrong.
In reality, a lot of us are socially inept and would rather like to vent out frustrations online since time immemorial.
Things are a bit improving as is the temperament of the first Linux dev himself, Linus Torvalds he seems relatively chill these days and mellow down. Less nerd rage.
There are also people like the FSF founder, Richard Stallman. Eccentric and very opinionated. Still no chill.
But I like to think that most of us are like Wendell from Level1Techs (For when LTT’s Linus or GN’s Steve needs tech support - basically the tech support of tech support people). Friendly, smart, a little bit eccentric but well meaning.
Anyway, I wanted tell you OP that Linux is better than Windows (despite the limitation). Mostly Fedora gets things right because it is well funded. People might have opinion otherwise but it has fewer papercuts, boring even. (By boring, it means it breaks less).
If you dont drink the KoolAid like most of us linux users have (by that I mean you have not decided to fall in line and join the cult of your favorite distro), Ubuntu is actually a bit ok because it is also well funded. It also breaks less, despite the number of tech support you see. I think its because this is the distro that people move out from and tries an extreme use case due to the newly discovered amount of freedom you get when working under the hood of the os.
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I actually think ubuntu and rhel did way more than any distro for the linux ecosystem.
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I agree (I might include Debian in that group as well).
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Definitely.
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I think their (RedHat) salaried kernel devs is the entire 20% of the current active linux kernel maintainers according OSSP
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Regarding the telemetry proposal, it was withdrawn a while ago in response to the feedback from the community.
Keep in mind that anyone can propose a change, the proposals are posted publicly explicitly for community feedback, the change owner potentially integrates feedback they receive, and then it goes to the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee for approval (who are all elected by the community).
If you use Fedora and care about the direction of the project, they are open for folks to contribute with feedback.
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Fedora is the devil 
so no. Stick with tumbleweed same same imo
Do you have any concrete reason for why someone should no choose Fedora? I like Tumbleweed and OpenSUSE, but I don’t like the rolling release model. If OpenSUSE Slowroll becomes a viable alternative, I might try that out, but Fedora seems like the best sweet-spot distro for me atm. People have given compelling reasons to choose it in this thread.
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Here’s some links
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/14k8jmw/can_someone_explain_what_happened_with_red_hat/?rdt=52420
My understanding is fedora uses redhat code. Redhat code is now subscription only. So basically I assume eventually fedora will get screwed. 
I’m loving thumbleweed as a second laptop. So far it does what I need it to do.
But my main laptop is Linux mint xfce. I need shit to work and not have to do a lot homework every time I need something new. There is a lot more data out there for Debian/Ubuntu.
As a preamble to my reply, I will reiterate the accurate assessment by @xe3 of the outcry surrounding the news from Red Hat:
The “Red Hat Drama” is largely unrelated to Fedora (also, it is pretty overblown and misunderstood by most people voicing opinions on social media who tend to be repeating second and third hand misimpressions, and/or presenting very black/white hot takes and hyperbole because it generates clicks, views, and upvotes).
Here is Ben Cotton, former Fedora Program Manager, responding to a thread voicing concerns regarding Red Hat’s relationship with Fedora:
I’m not particularly inclined to feel favorably toward Red Hat, but I
don’t see what the availability of RHEL srpms has to do with Fedora.
We’re upstream of RHEL.
Here is Neal Gompa, Fedora contributor probably best known for his work on the KDE spin, responding to an accusation that “[RHEL] production releases […] are less open”:
Actually, this is not true either. Since December 2020, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux has added a number of avenues in which you can freely[1]
get it:
- Individuals (16 entitlements, prod use permitted):
No-cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux Individual Developer Subscription: FAQs | Red Hat Developer- Teams (mucho entitlements for companies, no prod): https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2022/05/10/access-rhel-developer-t…
- OSS projects running their own infra (mucho entitlements, prod use permitted): https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/extending-no-cost-red-hat-enterprise-linux…
emphasis mine ↩︎
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Good reply.
But for me, each to their own, the water is murky, why wait to get screwed? Just best to move on now and learn another distro IMO. That’s what I have done with tumbleweed.
Also we all need to stop using fedora to send a message. Just like the reddit BS and people moved to Lemmy.
PG needs to remove Fedorq IMO.
If you truly think for some reason PG should stop recommending Fedora, you should definitely open a thread on that topic. But you will almost certainly get the same reasoning based on fact that goes against the vibes-based anti-Fedora argument common online
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