this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025

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If you're looking into switching to Linux, you should avoid Fedora. (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 day ago by RandomPrivacyGuy@lemm.ee to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've seen Fedora being widely recommended among the Linux distros. Sadly, there are many problems that come with Fedora. A lot of this information might be a bit hard to find so I wanted to put everything I found in one place.

Fedora is (kind of) owned by Red Hat (IBM).

Red Hat sponsors Fedora. They own and pay for the infrastructure used for all the Fedora-related things. They own the Fedora trademark and logo. Big decisions are made by the FESCo. While the committee itself is elected by Fedora community, they're pretty much just exclusively Red Hat employees (for F41 elections all 5 of elected candidates work at Red Hat). I'm not going to talk about what-ifs much here, but if there would ever be a divide between what RH wants and what community wants, you can see it being an issue.

US laws and Fedora

Fedora has to follow the US law. In practice, we have seen what that means a while ago, when they had to remove support from some multimedia codecs due to the US patent laws. Since then, basic functionalities like video playback in a web browser/video player have been broken, so for example you can't play Twitch videos "by default" in Fedora, since the codecs are missing (youtube works as they use av1). To circumvent it, you either have to use third party repos or flatpak.

Fedora Export Control Policy and it's consequences

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/export/ Yet another US law that Fedora has to adhere to. Basically, if you live in a country that the USA treats as an enemy, you should not use Fedora. This is yet another one that was actually applied in real life and resulted in basically kicking out a longtime contributor because he had the misfortune of being born in the wrong country. You can read all about in on that person's blogpost:

https://ahmadhaghighi.com/blog/2021/us-restricted-free-software/

top 33 comments

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[–] rollmagma@lemmy.world 55 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This is bad advice. It's cherry picking arguments.

Point 1 is a misunderstanding of how Linux, open source and distros work. Private companies and big corporations are an integral part of the ecosystem, linux is not a hobbyist-led project. It will always be pushing the interest of major companies. Just clone the kernel repository and take a look at the amount of US companies email addresses. There's also the whole linux foundation situation, are we ignoring that?

Points 2 and 3 are simply a fact of how the world works and an European company running a distro will be affected by most if not all of the same restrictions. We live in a globalized world and companies have customers and suppliers all over the world and have to adhere to regulations. I'm not saying those particular regulations are good or moral, but not using Fedora because of them is pointless.

[–] krebssteven@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

Thank you for pointing that out. I have seen plenty of tech-actionism here where people advocate for what they see as ‘untainted’ alternatives to us-supported/owned/operated services while ignoring that they are not operating in a lawless space either.

[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

IBM are still ass and antiuser. See the whole CentOS/Rocky split. I've also got personal beef with them regarding buying up and enshittifying small data centers.

[–] frazorth@feddit.uk 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Didn't that happen before IBM merged with RedHat?

[Edit] My mistake, it was about a year after the IBM merger.

[–] ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It doesn’t matter though because Red Hat is an independent subsidiary. They make their own decisions, good or bad.

[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think they would have crippled CentOS without financial incentive and pressure from IBM. I don't think they're as independent as you think they are, even if it looks that way on paper.

[–] ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee 2 points 19 hours ago

I think they’ve been financially pressured to do these kinds of things since they went public, aka since the beginning.

Shareholders demand infinite growth, and at a certain point the suits look at something like CentOS and think “we’re paying to help people not need a RHEL sub”.

[–] frazorth@feddit.uk 2 points 21 hours ago

While I completely agree with this, I'm sure RedHat is perfectly capable of ruining things without IBM forcing them to, it was more than I was trying to remember the order of events and I thought I remembered that RedHat managed to get that change in before blamed could be fobbed off on IBM.

[–] lazycog@feddit.uk 3 points 16 hours ago

Reminder: Arguing and discussion is okay, but keep it civil and do not attack the person you are arguing with.

[–] RushLana@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 1 day ago

I would recommend mint to non technical users and Debian / Arch to more technical ones.

[–] hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 day ago

Free and open source software are made collaboratively by communities on the internet, its difficult to determine any nationality for many projects. Trying to run a fully EU linux system is impossible. But as most free software itself is not a revenue generating business, so largely use what you want.

But if your goal is a more European system I do have a few reccomendations.

OpenSuse: Its a free to use version of an enterprise distro, similar in business model to red hat/fedora but it is based in Germany.

Linux Mint: This is generally my pick for a beginner friendly distro. The project lead and founder is French.

KDE: Is my choice of desktop environment. It is German. The lead developer is German, and the nonprofit that funds the development is headquartered in Berlin. There are many pieces of software under the KDE umbrella including the Calligra office suite, and the Krita image editor.

I also recommend Blender, the 3D animation package. It is primarily Dutch, as the founder and nonprofit foundation behind it are based in the Amsterdam.

But really use what you want and works best for you. Nearly all free software projects, including all I've listed are some sort of international amalgam.

The best way to make free software more European is to be European and contribute. Volunteer, write code, write documentation, help users in community, report bugs, donate, fork, maintain or release something you made freely.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If points 2 and 3 are deal breakers for you, you might as well stop using Linux altogether. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Compliance-Requirements

From Torvalds himself:

[...] all of the Linux infrastructure and a lot of its maintainers are in the US and we can't ignore the requirements of US law. We are hoping that this action alone will be sufficient to satisfy the US Treasury department in charge of sanctions and we won't also have to remove any existing patches.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It does bother me that the linux foundation is based in America. The recent geopolitical meddling against Russian contributors shows why it's an issue. The RISC-V foundation moved to Switzerland specifically to avoid that.

Is there any European alternatives to GNU/Linux though?

[–] Lumiluz@slrpnk.net 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Redox, and that rust project I think.

I'm sleepy though so take it with a grain of salt

[–] Octagon9561@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago

Fedora is free and open source software, one of the few distros recommended by privacyguides and one that takes SELinux, PipeWire and Wayland support seriously and isn't stuck on an ancient kernel like all the Debian based distros. Which is most of them. This is the same kind of FUD that was spread about Signal the other day.

[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I agree with this although really all Linux distros have to follow US laws to various extents as they are available across borders. Almost all linux distros are international projects with contributors everywhere, but the jurisdiction where the project is hosted is what most matters for the legal side.

We shouldn't fall into the trap of "nationalising" linux projects too much though - being based somewhere does not mean owned by or controlled by those countries. These are international collaborative projects and not reflections of geopolitics. They still follow open source licensing. However I do share the jurisdiction concerns about the US which have gotten even worse in the last few months.

On my main PC I personally use OpenSuSE which is based in Germany. However I do have a living room PC running Nobara based on Fedor (both US based) - I dont intend to change that at the moment but the current US government behaviour has made me more wary.

Some alternatives: Linux Mint is based in Ireland, and it is derived from Ubuntu, which is based in London. Personally I'm not a fan of Snap or the commerical side of Ubuntu but I've previously used Mint and still use it happily on some VMs.

Manjaro is "developed" in Austria, France and Germany according to its site, with a legal entity in Europe, and it's based off Arch which distrowatch lists as originating in Canada.

Other elements - I use KDE for my desktop which is legally based in Germany too. The GNOME foundation is based in California, USA. Again both are open source collaborative projects so where they are based legally may not matter. Also distros take their code and package it themselves. Plus projects can move and be forked should the need arise.

Personally I'm into the buy European movement in terms of avoiding US companies but at the moment I'm not changing my linux habits. But awareness is important particularly given the US approach to global law and order now.

Distrowatch.com does provide the origin / base country of each distro if people feel more strongly about moving away from US based linux distros.

[–] Aphelion@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

+1 for Manjaro. Best distro I've found for real time audio work.

[–] Skunk@jlai.lu 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Per my username I am supposed to like weed, so obviously OpenSuse Thumbleweed is my jam. And it is European.

Btrfs snapshots is the optional icing on the cake.

[–] calisti@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 23 hours ago

I can absolutely vouch for openSUSE tumbleweed.

[–] DioEgizio@lemm.ee 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

This is a bad argument. Fedora is NOT owned by red hat, it's just sponsored by them. That is like saying you shouldn't use arch or kde because they're sponsored by Valve. This is not how Linux distros work. Fedora is an amazing distro and it's my favorite one, if you like it use it. And for the whole export thing, wait until you learn the Linux foundation is in the US so they're basically subject to the same thing

[–] RandomPrivacyGuy@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago

Fedora is NOT owned by red hat, it’s just sponsored by them. That is like saying you shouldn’t use arch or kde because they’re sponsored by Valve

Is Arch Linux trademark owned by Valve? Does Valve own the Arch logo? Is Valve paying for Arch servers and build systems? Maybe Valve is hosting the Arch Linux website? This is absolutely not comparable. There is a difference between simply being sponsored and owning THE ENTIRE infrastructure and even trademarks.

[–] Patch@feddit.uk 1 points 21 hours ago

Fedora is NOT owned by red hat, it's just sponsored by them.

If you want to get technical, Red Hat owns the Fedora trademark, including the name and logo imagery, and owns all official Fedora web domains. They license them back to the Fedora project for free, but Red Hat is the owner.

They also own almost all of the physical assets used by the project (including most of the infrastructure).

Technically they don't "own" the code, but as it's under open source licensing that's not really a meaningful distinction (nobody owns it).

So the ownership situation is a bit more complicated than you're making out. If Red Hat wanted, they could without warning take everything away from Fedora, including all of their infrastructure, websites, and their very name and identity. Technically they can't stop the Fedora community renaming, forking, and rebuilding, but that'd also be true in any other ownership model too.

[–] innermeerkat@jlai.lu 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’m using Aurora as a daily driver since few months. I really like the atomic and immutable principles. I know about micro os open suse but the desktop edition is still in alpha stage. What do you then recommend to replace Fedora?

[–] jlow@beehaw.org 3 points 20 hours ago

Yeah, I think I'm staying wit Bazzite for now, it's just too perfect.

There are a few atomic alternatives, though:

OpenSUSE Aeon: https://aeondesktop.github.io/

OpenSUSE Kalpa: https://kalpadesktop.org/

EndlessOS (based on Debian): https://www.endlessos.org/os

VanillaOS (based on Ubuntu): https://vanillaos.org/

[–] Sibshops@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

If someone specifically wants to support European companies, Ubuntu is headquartered in the UK.

[–] itsnotits@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

and its* consequences

[–] plumbercraic@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Bummer. I have been thinking of jumping to Fedora from Mint to get proper Wayland support. Maybe I'll just wait it out.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

One European alternative would be OpenSUSE. It uses rpm like Fedora. I use Tumbleweed, the rolling release flavour.

[–] paraffine@jlai.lu 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Do you have NVIDIA? If so how easy is it to install the proprietary drivers? I got it finally working on Fedora (running Plasma/Wayland) a couple of months ago.

[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I use OpenSuSE and have a 3070 card; installing and maintaining official Nvidia drivers is easy. Its a couple of clicks within the settings tool Yast.

OpenSuSe does support and use Wayland, and KDE is maining Wayland now. However Nvidia and Wayland still have issues so I personally still use KDE with X11.

This problem would be across distros though; fedora won't be any better as the problem is the official Nvidia drivers themselves (plus Wayland's own issues). And in fairness Nvidia have been releasing fixes - it just feels slow.

I have zero issues with Nvidia under OpenSuSe (except with Wayland)

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 points 1 day ago

I do. But I rather use my Intel card because with the nVidia drivers my laptop always crashes after waking up from sleep. And thanks to its shitty hardcoded thermal configuration I can't use the nVidia card for anything useful anyways.

But installing nVidia drivers on OpenSUSE is really easy. Nvidia has official repositories for OpenSUSE and OpenSUSE has packages to easily add these repositories.

https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers

[–] venotic@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 1 day ago

I've seen Fedora being widely recommended among the Linux distros.

Completely ignoring the strongest aspect of Linux in that there being - there's more than Fedora out there.

[–] deadcatbounce@reddthat.com -2 points 19 hours ago

Wait until you discover the corporation/person that owns Linux.