If you were using Red Hat before Fedora, that makes sense. The Red Hat of old split into two: Fedora and RHEL.

Fedora was founded to be an explicitly community and non-commercial distribution. Then Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL ) to be an explicitly enterprises focused and commercial distribution.

In recent years, CentOS Stream has been added which is still enterprise focussed but meant to the “community” precursor to RHEL. If anything, the need for CentOS should re-enforce that non-enterprise nature of Fedora.

I see no reason to downvote you at all.

The distros that everybody builds off of are Debian, Fedora,Arch, and maybe SUSE ( common roots with Fedora but long ago ).

I did not mention Ubuntu as Ubuntu is actually built from Debian but actually Ubuntu is the most popular and is itself used as a base by other distros ( most notably Mint ).

If you are looking for an Ubuntu alternative, Debian is the most similar. However, pure Debian is not as new user friendly.

Arch is considered an advanced distro. I think Fedora and its derivatives are solid choices.

If you are really running on a system with only 4 GB of RAM, I would actually recommend trying out a 32 bit distro. The 32 bit version of AntiX or the 32 bit version of Q4OS with the Trinity desktop are the two I would recommend.

I was recently reminded of Adelie Linux though and have been meaning to try it on an old system myself: https://www.adelielinux.org/about/

I think Fedora is solid choice. I will tell you why I do not recommend it to new users myself.

1 - Fedora is very focused on being non-commercial ( see my other comments on its history ). This leads them to avoid useful software like codecs that I think new users will expect out of the box

2a- the support cycle is fairly short and whole release upgrades are required

2b - Fedora is typically an early adopter of new tech. It is not “bleeding edge” but it may be moreso than new users need.

3 - it is does not really target new users like say Mint does though it does target GUI use

4 - I do not use it myself anymore and I do not like to recommend what I do not use. What I do use has a reputation for not being new user appropriate ( not sure I agree ).

Nothing wrong with Fedora though in my view. I would never discourage anybody from trying it.

“Fedora is Red Hat, Red Hat is mostly aimed at companies”.

I said this in another comment but Red Hat Linux used to target both the community and commercial interests. Fedora was founded to be an explicitly community distribution that was NOT aimed at companies. Red Hat then created Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL ) which absolutely targets companies ( for money ). The whole point of founding the Fedora project was for it not to target companies.

Fedora release often, has short support cycles, and is hostile to commercial software. It would be a terrible choice for a business in my view. It is a leading community distribution though.

The top foundational distros that all the others are based on are Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and Arch ( and maybe SUSE — I am not European ).

In my view, Ubuntu’s best days are behind it. Fedora has never looked so good.

I use one of the other distros above but I used Fedora long ago and it treated me well. I think it is a solid choice. My impression has been that it is gaining in popularity again.

For anybody that does not know, Fedora was founded by Red Hat to be their “community” dostro. Before Fedora, there was only Red Hat Linux and it was trying to be both commercial and community. Red Hat founded Fedora to be an explicitly community distribution and then released the first version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL ). This resolved their commercial / community conflict.

Fedora is explicitly NOT an enterprise distribution. They are annoyingly committed to only free software. They release often and have short release cycles. Fedora is certainly not aimed at enterprises.

Rocky and Alma are RHEL alternatives and are absolutely aimed at the enterprise. Fedora merging with either of these projects would be super surprising indeed. It would make no sense whatsoever.

The “community” enterprise option from Red Hat is not Fedora, it is CentOS Stream. Alma has rebased onto CemtOS Stream ( which is what RHEL is also derived from ). That makes sense.

I have fewer comments on the health or future of RHEL or Red Hat itself or how much IBM. Ares about it. I guess I will say that I have never seen so many ads for it. I think revenues are at record levels. It does not feel like it is dying.

I don’t use Fedora or RHEL but Red Hat is one of the biggest contributors to Open Source. So, I hope this cynical poster is wrong. GCC, Glibc, Systemd, Xorg, Wayland, Mesa,SELinux, Podman, and the kernel would all be massively impacted by less Red Hat funding.

We agree 100% on that. I wonder if we agree on the implications.

People have the wrong idea about how advanced AI has to be to take people’s jobs.

The loom was not intelligent. It did not “understand” weaving. It still eliminated so many jobs that human society was altered forever and so significantly that we are still experiencing the effects.

As an analogy ( not saying this is how the world will choose to go ), you do not need a self-driving car that is superior to humans in all cases in order for Uber to eliminate drivers. If the AI can handle 95% of cases, you need 5 drivers for 100 cars. They can monitor, supervise, guide, and fully take over when required.

Many fields will be like this. I do not need an AI with human level intelligence to get rid of the Marcom dept. I need one really skilled person to drive 6 people’s worth of output using AI. How many content creators and headline writers do I need to staff an online “news” room? The lack of person number two may surprise you.

Getting rid of jobs is not just a one for one replacement of every individual with a machine. It is a systemic reduction in demand. It is a shifting of geographic dependence.

Many of the tasks we all do are less novel and high-quality than we think they are. Many of us can be “largely” replaced and that is all it takes. We may not lose our jobs but there will certainly be many fewer new jobs in certain areas than there would have been.

Well, the “journalists” have not been replaced. But most of the content creating industry were not really that and have, as you say, started to be replaced.

If she wants it to. At some point, all the chat bots are going to be given bodies. We all know it.

ChatGPT is already taking people’s jobs. You overestimate the complexity of what some people get paid for.

GenerativeAI cannot do anything on its own. However, it is a productivity amplifier in the right hands. What those “more productive” people do is reduce the demand for other labour.

Chatbots are performing marketing communication, marketing automation, cloud engineering, simple coding, recruitment screening, tech support, security monitoring, editorial content and news, compliance verification, lead development, accounting, investor relations, visual design, tax preparation, curriculum development, management consulting, legal research, and more. Should it be? Many ( I am guessing you ) would argue no. Is it though? Absolutely.

All of the above is happening now. This train is going to accelerate before it hits equilibrium. The value of human contribution is shifting but not coming back to where it was.

Jobs will be created. Jobs are absolutely being lost.

You are correct that ChatGPT is not intelligent. You are right that it does not “understand” anything. What does that have to do with taking people’s jobs? There are many, many jobs where intelligence and understanding are under-utilized or even discouraged. Boiler-plate content creation is more common than you think.

There are quite a few YouTubers with press units making benchmark comparisons to M2 and M3 Macs. Overall, it stands up pretty well.

As everybody else has said, Debian is working as intended. To respond to the actual post though, Debian is working exactly as it always has.

If you think Debian used to be good, you must really love it now. It is better than ever.

Unlike in the past, the primary drawback of Debian Stable ( old package versions ) has multiple viable solutions. Other have rightly pointed out things like the Mozilla APT package and Flatpaks. Great solutions.

My favourite solution is to install Arch via Distrobox. You can then get all the stability of Debian everywhere you need it and, anytime you need additional packages or newer packages, you can install them in the Arch distrobox. Firefox is a prime candidate. You are not going to get newer packages or a greater section than via he Arch repos / AUR ( queue Nix rebuttals ).