Hi! I’m seeking some advice and sanity check on hopping from Ubuntu to Fedora on my personal PC. I’ve been using Ubuntu LTS for almost two years now, switched from Windows and never looked back. But I cannot say I know Linux well. I use my PC for browsing, some gaming with Steam (I have AMD GPU), occasional video editing, tinkering with some self-hosted stuff that is on separate hardware.

I don’t like the way Ubuntu is moving with snaps. And LTS version falls behind too much. So I decided to move to Fedora.

My plan is simple:

  1. I will install Fedora on a fresh nvme drive. I want disk encryption, so I’m going to have LUKS over btrfs for /home, and the root will remain unencrypted.
  2. I will copy all files from old /home to new /home, with the exception of dot-files.
  3. I plan to make use of flatpaks, so I don’t think configuration for my apps is easily transferable. I’ll have to install and configure apps from scratch, unless I’ll have to use an RPM package.

Does all of this make sense? Is there a way to simplify app re-configuration in my case?

And as I never used Fedora extensively (booting from live image doesn’t count), are there any caveats I should be aware of?

  • Maestro@kbin.social
    252·
    1 year ago

    Why not move to Debian? Ubuntu was born in a time when Debian stable had a really long release cycle and wasn’t desktop ready. But times have changed. Debian is a great desktop without all of Canonical’s Ubuntu “experiments” like snap.

    • GustavoM@lemmy.worldEnglish
      122·
      1 year ago

      This. Edit /etc/sources/apt, switch to sid, sudo apt update and you’ll have “a better ubuntu.”

    • joyofpeanuts@beehaw.org
      6·
      1 year ago

      I second this. I have been using Ubuntu for at least 10 years by I really do not like snaps or flatpaks for that matter. So, after some disappointing attempts using Debian in the past, I had a new go at it 1-2 years ago and I was positively surprised: Ubuntu without the useless bloat - kind of normal because Ubuntu is based on Debian. For sure the my next PC will be using Debian: efficient, highly configurable, and quite user friendly once you understand it’s ways of configuring things.

      • pound_heap@lemm.eeOP
        1·
        1 year ago

        I see your point… I use Debian for my self-hosted environment, so having similar system on desktop may save some cognitive load. My main arguments against Debian are (maybe misinformed though):

        • No btrfs support in installer OK, Debian wiki says it’s there
        • Major annual upgrades to keep up with stable look more scary than more incremental and frequent updates of Fedora. And using Sid as someone suggested sounds too crazy for main PC

        So yeah, looks like it’s just upgrades… Gives me something to think about while I’m moving my apps to flatpaks

    • thayerEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      That still wouldn’t answer their dilemma of older versioning of packages, unless they went to Sid.

      • Maestro@kbin.social
        4·
        1 year ago

        Debian stable has newer packages than Ubuntu LTS. Debian has pretty regular releases these days.