Desktop Linux - Ubuntu vs Fedora

Since I started this blog I've mostly been covering the server-side of Linux, not so much the desktop side. My recent switch from Ubuntu(LTS) to Fedora as my main Distro on the Desktop(s) gave me the idea to write about that. Now, I know that this kind of comparison has been done probably a thousand times but I thought I write about my experiences with these 2 great distros.

First of all, why Fedora?

Well, by now I know the Red Hat Ecosystem fairly good and Fedora is pretty stable while maintaining very recent versions of almost any software that I deal with. While Canonical delivers a new version of its OS every 6 months, same as Red Hat with Fedora, I found it to be not as stable and reliable as Fedora.

What are the differences between Fedora and Ubuntu?

From a visual point of view, it's probably the Desktop Appearance. Since I'm using GNOME as my desktop, I'm only able to compare it within these 2 distros. Fedora ships a more basic and default setup with GNOME while Ubuntu adds quite a few extensions and themes out of the box. While GNOME is definitely not lightweight, it feels faster on Fedora compared to Ubuntu. Of course, I can't prove it with any numbers since I didn't run any benchmarks, so take my words with a grain of salt.

The next big difference is the package manager. If you're just using the GUI-Application to manage packages and update, you won't notice the difference. On the command line, there is a difference since Ubuntu is using apt with .deb-packages and Fedora is using yum with .rpm packages.

The syntax does differ a bit from one another. Let me give you an example:

Ubuntu - updating the system:

 $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade && sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade

Fedora - updating the system:

 $ sudo yum -y update

Ubuntu - installing a local .deb package:

 $ sudo dpkg --install /path/to/package.deb  
 $ sudo apt-get -f install

Fedora - installing a local .rpm package:

 $ sudo yum -y localinstall /path/to/package.rpm

In my opinion, yum is the better option when compared to apt because yum offers a lot of plugins or options to reinstall, manage and update packages. Also, the commands to manage packages are shorter but I'm lazy ... so, yeah.

Which choice is more user-friendly?

Ubuntu wins, hands down. It's automatically detecting drivers and will download them when installing the OS. With Fedora, you are more prone to face problems with 3rd party drivers, such as nVidia Graphics. Also, Fedora does have a 6-month release-cycle whereas Ubuntu gives you the option to either, update every 6 months or stick with the LTS-Versions which will give you 5 Years of patches if I'm not mistaken.

Conclusion:

In the end, Fedora is the better choice for experienced users that know their way around a Linux system. Ubuntu would be my choice for new users since it's more friendly towards new users than Fedora might be. One more thing that makes Ubuntu more interesting on paper, is that it's the only distribution officially supported by steam (valve) besides their own SteamOS which is based on Debian.

Feel free to commnet and / or suggest a topic.

Comments

Dynamic DNS with BIND and ISC-DHCP

I personally prefer to work with hostnames instead of ip-addresses. If you have anything like freeipa or active directory, it will do that for you by registering the client you added to your realm to the managed dns and edit the records dynamically. We can achieve the same goal with just bind and isc-dhcp. I'll use a raspberry pi with raspbian 9 for this setup. So here is a quick tutorial on how to configure the isc-dhcp-server to dynamically update bind. First set a static ip to your server. [archy@ddns ~]$ sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces # interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8) # Please note that this file is written to be used with dhcpcd # For static IP, consult /etc/dhcpcd.conf and 'man dhcpcd.conf' # Include files from /etc/network/interfaces.d: source-directory /etc/network/interfaces.d auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 172.31.30.5 network 172.31.30.0 broadcast 172.31.30.255 netmask 255.255.255.0 ...

LACP-Teaming on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7

What is teaming? Teaming or LACP (802.3ad) is a technique used to bond together multiple interfaces to achieve higher combined bandwith. NOTE: every clients speed can only be as high as the single link speed of one of the members. That means, if the interfaces I use in the bond have 1 Gigabit, every client will only have a maximum speed of 1 Gigabit. The advantage of teaming is, that it can handle multiple connections with 1 Gigabit. How many connections depends on the amount of your network cards. I'm using 2 network cards for this team on my server. That means I can handle 2 Gigabit connections at full rate on my server provided the rest of the hardware can deliver that speed. There also exists 'Bonding' in the Linux world. They both do the same in theory but for a detailed comparison check out this article about teaming in RHEL7 . To create a teaming-interface, we will first have to remove all the interface configurations we've done on the (soon to be) sla...

Push logs and data into elasticsearch - Part 2 Mikrotik Logs

This is only about the setup of different logging, one being done with Filebeat and the other being done with sending logging to a dedicated port opened in Logstash using the TCP / UDP Inputs. Prerequesites: You'll need a working Elasticsearch Cluster with Logstash and Kibana. Start by getting the Log Data you want to structure parsed correctly. Mikrotik Logs are a bit difficult since they show you Data in the interface which is already enriched with Time / Date. That means a message that the remote logging will send to Logstash will look like this: firewall,info forward: in:lan out:wan, src-mac aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff, proto UDP, 172.31.100.154:57061->109.164.113.231:443, len 76 You can check them in the grok debugger and create your own filters and mapping. The following is my example which might not fit your needs. Here are some custom patterns I wrote for my pattern matching: MIKROTIK_DATE \b(?:jan(?:uary)?|feb(?:ruary)?|mar(?:ch)?|apr(?:il)?|may|jun(?:e)?|jul(?...

FreeIPA - Integrating your DHCPD dynamic Updates into IPA

I recently went over my network configuration and noticed that the dhcp-leases were not pushed into the IPA-DNS yet. So I thought, why not do it now. The setup is very similar to setting it up on a single bind instance not managed by IPA (I've already written a guide about this here ). My setup is done with the following hosts: ipa01.archyslife.lan - 172.31.0.1 inf01.archyslife.lan - 172.31.0.5 First of all, create a rndc-key: [archy@ipa01 ~]$ sudo rndc-confgen -a -b 512 This will create the following file '/etc/rndc-key' [archy@ipa01 ~]$ sudo cat /etc/rndc.key key "rndc-key" { algorithm hmac-md5; secret "secret_key_here=="; }; We also need to make named aware of the rndc-key and allow our remote dhcp server to write dns entries: [archy@ipa01 ~]$ sudo vim /etc/named.conf ... include "/etc/rndc-key"; controls { inet 172.31.0.1 port 953 allow { 172.31.0.5; } keys ...

SSSD - Debugging PAM permission denied

Sometimes there's weird errors in IT that occur on random chance. I've had such an encounter with SSSD in combination with IPA(+AD-Trust) recently, where only sometimes, a connection to one of the IPA-Servers would fail with this error: Jul 13 13:36:42 ipa02.archyslife.lan sshd[3478]: pam_sss(sshd:account): Access denied for user runner: 4 (System error) Jul 13 13:36:42 ipa02.archyslife.lan sshd[3478]: fatal: Access denied for user runner by PAM account configuration [preauth] In my case, it was only happening sometimes when running a basic system setup role using ansible on every host in the entire environment. This way, there was no consistent pattern besides being the same host every time if it failed. First up, add the 'debug_level=X' to every section required in the /etc/sssd/sssd.conf where X is a number from 1 to 10 with 10 being the most verbose. Afterward, restart sssd and check the logs for any obvious problems. 1) If you are using local users, check the...

Archy's Blog

Search This Blog