I am trying out Fedora for multiple unrelated reasons (use RHEL at work, new config, it might be more optimized) and I noticed a number of concerning caveats, even in mind with the fact that I already use RHEL:
- Software support seems lacking. I have a growing number of software neither the repo, nor rpmfusion has. In any other case I would need to use copr for installing community maintained packages. However copr feels relatively abandoned and unreliable. That mainly comes down to packages being undiscriminately displayed without download stats or upvote status (unless you look them up one by one). Also a large part of packages are incompatible because they were made specifically for Fedora 38 with no 39 fixup in sight. Rpmfusion is weirdly empty, I expected it to have majority of the stuff I need so I dont inevitably have to rely on copr. I already had to download executables from upstream.
- Install Groups. They are not getting listed properly! It only lists the most basic meta groups. This is combined with the lack of actually being able to search for groups and you got yourself a lot of random groups you wont find unless you start looking it up online.
- Xorg wiki page. Ex fucking cuse me?! Did I mistype something, because I clearly remember trying to use one of the most popular and allegedly well put together distros. At this point why even have a wiki page?
- base-x group contains everything needed for running Xorg. I will actually eat my hat if you can tell me I can find that info without stackoverflow. Cant search for the group, nothing is documented about it.
I would agree with the sentiment that I could technically write the documentation and package all the things I need in copr, but Im having serious doubts if this “platform” developed by the same guys who dont document it is actually worth the hassle.
I guess the positive thing to say about it is that it performed better for gaming than my Arch install, and I had done zero optimisations on it yet.
I’ll give you that, documentation compared to the Arch wiki is not as comprehensive; nothing’s as comprehensive as the Arch wiki lol
I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to accomplish:
“Let me put it in perspective: You install a basic desktop”
If i’m installing a basic Fedora desktop, i’m going to their website, downloading the default ISO, and installing the default Gnome desktop. That has xorg and wayland and display drivers and all the things you need to get it running on pretty much any hardware. If i don’t want Gnome i’ll use an ISO with a different desktop, still get wayland and xorg with the default install.
If you’re installing Fedora from the minimal install and then building the desktop (or window manager, maybe you use i3 or openbox) up from scratch like you would in Arch, you’re going about it the wrong way. You can go this route but i’m not surprised you’d run into some issues there and have to solve for missing packages (as you would in Arch too, though the Arch Wiki is much more helpful with this type of install).
I linked the wiki page, that does not adhere to the meaning to documentation in any way shape or form.
I installed with the netinstall image and ticked the meta group meant to be made for a collection few Window Managers you want installed. It failed to install Xorg.
I didnt want to build it up from scratch, I was only missing Xorg that I expected to be installed. I didnt even understand why it would not be installed for a Group containing X11 based WM.
Even if we argue that it should not be built from ground up, not having any way of knowing that base-x contains all the Xorg packages means that the distro lacks basic debugging capabilities if something does go haywire. But I wont go further into this because it would be ridiculous to debate this. It was a thing on every single distro 30 years ago!