Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE comparison

Solution 1:

Each distro has different strengths and different philosophies.

Ubuntu aims to be easy to use. They are based on Debian but adopt a slightly more pragmatic approach, as opposed to Debian, which is more pure in their quest for Freedom. Ubuntu has LTS releases which are supported for 3 years. I'd say that's a minimum req for anyone intending to use lots of installs. You don't want to upgrade your production machines' OSes every 6 months.

Fedora likes to be close to the cutting edge. Each Fedora release is similar to a Beta of RedHat's workstation/server product. Fedora releases every 6 months and each release is only supported until the next two releases are out. So you should plan to upgrade once a year to keep up with security releases. This is fine for a small number of non-critical machines, but I would avoid it on production servers unless you intend to take over security patch maintenance.

Given a choice between Fedora or Ubuntu, for production work, I'd be inclinded to choose a Ubuntu LTS release, for the 3 year support window. Given the choice of any Linux distro, most of the major vendors are fairly reliable; I'd be inclined to choose CentOS or RedHat because I'm familiar with Fedora/RedHat's configuration, having used it for 12 years now.

Solution 2:

I think this is a pretty opinionated question to ask.

Fedora came out of the Redhat project, I believe around the time Redhat had "dropped" desktop users in favor of their "enterprise" userbase. It is a "community" project.

Ubuntu is based on Debian, and aims to be easy for non-technical users.

OpenSuSE is again a "community" distribution out of the SuSE camp. They sell a commercial product similar to Redhat.

All three are just as much "Linux" as the other, since they offer the Linux kernel, as well as a slew of GNU applications.

All three have their own way of dealing with packages (rpms, .debs, rpms [last time I looked])

All three have strong community support

Any one of these systems could be placed on a netbook, laptop, desktop, workstation, or server. It all comes down to which one you have a preference over, primarily stemming out of their package managements and ethos behind how they consider packages "stable".

Fedora for instance, likes to use "bleeding edge" packages, knowing their users don't mind the occasional hiccup.

If you haven't downloaded, installed, and used each one, you will never know. There are hundreds of other projects just as qualified to take on more users than these three. I recommend you get familiar with installing these on an extra system, or partition atleast, and try them on for size.

Solution 3:

It really depends on what you want your distribution to do. Need a workstation ? Ubuntu is a pretty safe bet. Need a server? Debian is the most stable release there is, because it's designed that way. If you need a professional-grade server, Red Hat Linux is for you.

You will find that there will be as many answers as people who will post in this thread. Because Linux is Linux, distributions are just the same product with different flavors. And for Linux like for ice creams, not everybody (dis)likes the same flavor for the same reason.

In short, you should try several popular distributions and make your own mind, because what could work for one person could be unbearable for you.