Fedora vs. Ubuntu...

[pixel]

With the understanding that this is a total long shot: Has anyone switched from RHEL/Fedora to Ubuntu recently?

I started with RH based distros ~10 years ago, and managed a RHEL server and a few Fedora workstations for a few years for work, so Fedora felt like a natural choice for me when I decided to go linux only on my home desktop. I've been mostly happy with it, I'm very comfortable with yum and the RH way of doing things.

I did try Ubuntu briefly a few years ago and did run Debian on a desktop for a while ~2003, and while they were fine in that I didn't have big problems, I always felt like things were just a little different and in the end I went back to RH because it was good enough and familiar.

So here's the thing, I'm pondering switching to Ubuntu for both my primary desktop and my (2 year old now) Eee netbook. I don't really want to have 2 incompatible distros to work with and part of the motivation is that Ubuntu still maintains a netbook remix/spin but I'm fairly sure Fedora has dropped theirs (I can't find it.) It also seems like there are more packages available for Ubuntu or that they're more readily available.

Has anyone made this sort of switch? What did you feel you gained? Did you feel like you lost anything? Any gotchas that you encountered?

Anyone on the Ubuntu side of the fence have a good compelling reason to switch? I'm honestly not unhappy with Fedora just trying to see if the grass is greener on the other side.

And for the sake of some pretty: Have a few recent desktop screenshots...
GNOME on Fedora 12. (Bar on the bottom is an old version of Docky/Do)

Window-y goodness...

Comments

[kerravonsen]

Reasons I like Ubuntu:
* A HUGE number of packages come standard; no dependency hell to get extra packages working
* It Just Works
* The six-monthly releases are a good balance between going mad with continual updates, and being frustrated with really old versions of programs

As for differences between the two; I use CentOS (RedHat clone) at work and Ubuntu at home. Mostly very similar to work with, just a few things that keep tripping me up when switching between one and the other.

Area	RedHat	Ubuntu
Package manager	yum, install with "yum install", configured in /etc/yum*, add repos in /etc/yum.repos.d	apt, install with "apt-get install", configured in /etc/apt/*, add repos in /etc/apt/sources.list.d
Apache	Config in /etc/httpd, restart with /etc/init.d/httpd restart	Config in /etc/apache2, restart with /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

[pixel]

I've not had much (if any) issue with dependency hell on recent (fedora9+) versions of Fedora, but I believe there are more packages available for Ubuntu.
ItJustWorks has been better and better on Fedora, my new laser printer install was a breeze (something I've not seen on Linux EVER) and I regularly put stuff on both my Blackberry and my Kindle without problem. The only thing that requires fiddling with is my Nvidia graphics card, and that's one time at install.
Fedora is on 6mo releases now too. But I've seen that lots of times the things I get out of the fedora repos are pretty old, like I get ruby 1.8.6 unless I install it by hand and I've been loathe to do that if I don't absolutely have to.

I'm pretty sure yum vs apt is a non-issue other than re-training the fingers.
I don't currently play with apache much, but again it's just a re-train thing. Do you use things like 'service httpd restart'? Is that available in Ubuntu?

[kerravonsen]

Do you use things like 'service httpd restart'? Is that available in Ubuntu?
It is available; I simply don't use it because old habits are hard to break.

[pixel]

Eh, so I didn't intend that comment to come off as snippy as it might have. Sorry :( Its just the more I dig the more it seems that both distros have matured into very similar platforms and there are some lingering misconceptions about Fedora because it's less popular.

I think I am going to try out Ubuntu, if only for the adventure and the better package availability.