Have been using (and loving) Siduction since GIANTS was released. Really feel like I'm getting the most modern and fairly stable sofftware with Siduction.
Mostly an academic question, but . . .
What does Fedora offer that makes it a worthy competitor with Siduction? Both seem to be just a half a notch behind Arch Linux... Which is a GREAT thing in my mind as I rarely have problems with Siduction. Still, I'm curious how Fedora compares with Siduction from the point of view of someone who used/knows both well.
Thank you.
First of all - if you'd want GNOME, Fedora would be the top option
Fedora is not a rolling release, the packages are not as recent as with siduction, let alone Arch. It is "semi-rolling" at best. Fedora releases a new stable version approximately every six months, with each version supported and receiving updates for about 13 months. Within each release, Fedora provides continuous updates, including kernel, browser, and GNOME updates, but it avoids making breaking changes or major version upgrades to maintain stability during the lifecycle of that release. Major version upgrades and potentially breaking changes are reserved for the next Fedora release, not pushed continuously as in a true rolling release.
Fedora as the upstream project for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is one of the thriving innovative motors of Linux. siduction can't compare with that in any way. We are a handful of people with jobs, that have been releasing Debian Sid for almost 20 years. We innovate on a small scale if we can. We introduce new ways of doing things early, like we did with systemd back in the day. Other things we find useful to our users are, among others, doas or nala. Lately offer snapshots with Snapper and Btrfs as file system. There is a chapter about that in our manual, should you be interested in that.
Thank you for this helpful comparison between Fedora and Siduction. Sounds like Fedora does not have any killer features. I'm better off in the Siduction camp. I'll be sticking with Siduction....fresh baked multiple times daily!
Thank you for all the behind the scenes work you and the other Siduction developers and support staff are putting in.
onepiece
Apart from the rolling-release/point-release difference between siduction and fedora, there is a significant difference between them in package management which for some users is more than an "academic question" :-).
Fedora basically relies on a single binary to do the package management which is the dnf command. By contrast, siduction uses debian's rather large family of apt commands. The apt family is designed in modular fashion with lots of commands that specialise in different functions. Here's a non-exhaustive list of them:
apt
apt-cache
apt-cdrom
apt-config
apt-extracttemplates
apt-file
apt-forktracer
apt-ftparchive
apt-get
aptitude
apt-build
apt-cacher
apt-dater
apt-dater-host
apt-mirror
apt-show-source
apt-move
apt-offline
apt-key
apt-listbugs
apt-listchanges
apt-mark
apt-show-versions
apt-sortpkgs
apt-secure
apt-preferences
apt-transport-http
apt-transport-https
apt-transport-mirror
The modularity has a number of advantages including smaller footprints in the system if users only avail themselves of what they use and need, and being more efficient in scripts. Fedora's singular approach with a large executable may have simplicity on its side, but it's at the cost of flexibility. The UNIX philosophy of having many smaller programs that each do one thing well, and which can be combined to accomplish more complex tasks, is more represented in the siduction/debian approach than that of fedora. YMMV.
Thank you for this informative reply and pointing out another point of differentiation.
There is SO much to learn about both Siduction and Linux in general. Even after almost 10 years of Linux, deep down, I'm still a newbie!
I'm both humbled and eternally grateful for the work the developers and the helpful community so generously offer. And yes, I do donate to Siduction's development from time to time to ensure my appreciation goes beyond words and materially supports this amazing distribution.
Best to all..