Although I use it exclusively for the past 5 years, I can see at least 2 reasons why others don't:
1) 13-month support per release. i.e. no LTS support
2) Marketing. And by "marketing" I mean lack of marketing from Fedora/RedHat and too much marketing from Cannonical, which has persuaded people that Ubuntu is more stable and user-friendly for "human beings".
For #2 I can say that I find Fedora more stable(by far) and as for user-friendliness I can't see what more Ubuntu(which I've used for 2 years) has to offer.
#1 is the reason I abandoned Fedora too. Things change so quickly and break so often that it was too much effort to maintain the machines I was using it on. I replaced it with CentOS.
... which is the entire point of Fedora and EL (CentOS, Scientific Linux, RHEL) - Fedora is fast moving, EL is stable.
FWIW, I've used Fedora for my primary work system (laptop, actually) for years. Never had it seriously break unless I did something stupid, and the fix was always simple. Bugs that I hit (mostly video) would have been encountered in any distribution.
> which has persuaded people that Ubuntu is more stable and user-friendly
But it's the truth - Fedora is explicitly bleeding edge with the premise that things may be broken/inconvenient. This and the hard stance on keeping non-free Software out of the repository makes it a not very user friendly distribution.
(The last time I tried it, it bothered me way too much with SELinux too)
Yes you're right on all counts and I blame their marketing team for all, except the SELinux bit.
They're trying to be overly honest, when they say things might be broken etc. The reality is though that
it's far less broken and more stable than all the Ubuntu releases I've used. Also, at least when something is broken on Fedora you know it'll be fixed in the next update or so. But with Ubuntu? OMG, the same 10 bugs that annoyed me in the initial install, were still there after 1-2 years.
About the non-free software, they could just add a script that automagically adds these, after you've signed
off your soul to the devil and whichever license agreement. The same that happens in all other distros basically. Lost opportunity there :(
And finally the SELinux part. Yeah, so:
$ cat /etc/selinux/config
SELINUX=disabled
I know of no person that has it enabled, since you can't do any serious work without pulling your hair out.
They should do something about it indeed.
I'm glad you have found Fedora to be very stable. It's something we work very, very hard to accomplish. Fedora has long-since stopped referring to itself as "bleeding-edge", though. We've adopted the term "leading-edge" instead, which we intend to mean that we always try to ship the latest stable version of software, rather than in the early days where it was always the latest version. (There's a subtle but important difference there).
As for the non-free software, device drivers, etc.: I really wish it was just that simple. We have had lawyers working for years trying to find a way to do that, but the simple fact of the matter is that Fedora's sponsor is Red Hat, Inc. which is incorporated in the USA. A lot of really terrible laws are in place in the US that mean that if we even tried to do what you are suggesting, it puts us at risk of something called "contributory infringement". Basically, it means that we can be sued in the United States for every person that uses a script we provide for acquiring non-free software in a way that constitutes infringement. For most other distros, they usually just take the risk because they don't have a wealthy backer that could be targeted by patent lawyers. For Ubuntu, they incorporated in the Isle of Man tax-haven specifically because they don't have a treaty with the USA that would get in the way.
As for SELinux, I've been running with SELinux in enforcing mode as a developer for the last seven years. It has been a very long time since it stopped me from accomplishing anything I should be expecting to have work. Occasionally there are bugs in it, but with the advent of SELinux Troubleshooter, I can click a button to allow the action for the moment and send a bug to the SELinux developers who will update the policy, usually within a week.
SELinux has come a long way in the last few years, and I think you'd be surprised to see how much less obtrusive it is. Most people I know that have it turned off have simply done so because they've been doing it that way for 5+ years and have simply assumed that nothing has changed.
Wow. Thank you for this informative comment. I didn't know about all these legal complications.
As for the SELinux stuff, yeah I know it's come a long way and I've been meaning to learn to
use it at some point. I even bought a book a few months ago!
SELinux by default has gotten a lot more usable over the years, so that in most cases, the only thing you need to know about is "setsebool" to turn the can_network_connect boolean on for Apache processes (in my practice, anyway).
It's worth leaving running, and much easier than it used to be.
Ad 1: Do anyone really need LTS for desktop OS? Especially since it's quite experimental distro so rapid changes and experimental solutions are part of what Fedora is.
Yes a lot of people do need it. And by desktop use, although I wasn't clear enough, I mean
software development too.
As for the "experimental" and "rapid changes", I can assure you it is far more stable than Ubuntu by miles and miles. Just don't install it at the first day of its release; wait for a month or two.
No change is appreciated by many. People used XP because it was the same experience overall (tweaked by updates). A lot of people (without access to legit installs / copies of recent versions that are even worse copies, or lack of awareness) still use XP. It is the easiest (read: most familiar) version of Windows in existence even today. LTS is the equivalent of that.
Ubuntu provides less than a year of support for non-LTS releases. Anecdotally, this is quite annoying because the overlap between two consecutive non-LTS releases is normally a couple of months and their quality control for new releases is not great.
Yes. Now I regret I upgraded my Ubuntu to 15.04 Since there is no support for cuda from NVIDIA, so is the Intel graphic driver. If you are using an OS without third party applications, I think it should be fine, but that is not the most case.
1) 13-month support per release. i.e. no LTS support
2) Marketing. And by "marketing" I mean lack of marketing from Fedora/RedHat and too much marketing from Cannonical, which has persuaded people that Ubuntu is more stable and user-friendly for "human beings".
For #2 I can say that I find Fedora more stable(by far) and as for user-friendliness I can't see what more Ubuntu(which I've used for 2 years) has to offer.