Is there a Fedora stable? LTS?

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asked 2012-02-14 18:51:33 -0600

Klaus

71 ●2 ●2 ●5

updated 2014-09-28 15:28:41 -0600

mether
7061 ●43 ●67 ●111 https://fedoraproject....

Hi. Im new in the Linux world. I tried Ubuntu, it was really easy to use. The community is awesome helpful and very big. Now I know stuff like: ubuntu got an LTS Version. LTS is very stable and good to use for a long time. Its sad, but on work we got some redhat systems and they told me I should use Fedora (or something similar) at home. Well fedora is nice, because like ubuntu there are a lot of drivers on board and its easy to use. The community is smaller and they dont have so many packages, but I have to live with that. I just cannot find an LTS version? So there is no stable fedora version? Because if Im reading around Im always reading that fedora is often very buggy. Specially when they are releasing a new version (every 6th month) its very fatal.

Is there a stable fedora somewhere? If not do I have other options, maybe there is a way to configure Fedora to stable? I saw there is CentOS, it should be stable, but its not so easy to use and not so good for desktop PCs?

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Fedora places a lot of value on quality engineering. We should not be very buggy, even around a new release. If you have specific problems, please report them and we'll try to get them fixed right away.

mattdm ( 2012-09-28 11:04:31 -0600 )edit

It's true that Fedora is fast moving, but the distribution should be (and in my experience is) stable with its release cycle. There's always room to improve, of course.

mattdm ( 2012-09-28 11:05:49 -0600 )edit

Fedora is, among other things, a testbed for RedHat. That's why there's a new version every six to nine months. It's not stable in the sense of not changing, but my desktop machine only gets rebooted for kernel updates and often gets uptimes of 30-45 days.

sideburns ( 2012-10-03 23:42:38 -0600 )edit

For anecdotal evidence: I have (safely off public network!) Fedora machines with uptimes far beyond 13 months.

mattdm ( 2012-10-03 23:56:35 -0600 )edit

@mattdm : It's good that there's a focus on quality. However, that has not been my experience. With the frequent updates, it's hard to keep anything running other than a very minimal installation. A developer's box has usually a lot of tools, and that's when things break if the underlying layer keeps on changing often. I am actually considering moving to Ubuntu LTS because of this, and the fact that I can keep on getting updates to things like Firefox without upgrading the version. With the current Fedora 16 that I have that is not an option. A F17 upgrade failed with some "wellknown" issues.

talonx ( 2013-03-28 01:01:00 -0600 )edit

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answered 2012-02-14 19:10:49 -0600

mether
7061 ●43 ●67 ●111 https://fedoraproject....

Fedora is focused on innovation and leading the progress of free and open source software. This doesn't sit well with the idea of maintaining the same release for a long period of time. For that I would recommend using Red Hat Enterprise Linux or a rebuild of it and I believe this is the project's position as well. RHEL is part of the Fedora family of distributions and is a Fedora derivative with a focus on long term. Of course, you would lose some of the newer changes when you pick that option but that is part of the trade-off you are making. You can't get the very latest software and still have it be maintained for a long time as well.

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Users can use CentOS if dont want/can pay a Red Hat Licence

williamjmorenor ( 2014-02-09 13:19:56 -0600 )edit

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answered 2012-02-15 01:53:12 -0600

robotmaxtron

226 ●3 ●5 ●14

How long term is your long term need? Fedora is focused on progress, but isn't so forward that stability is lost. End of life support is extended for 1 year after it's release for example Fedora 16 will be supported until Fedora 18 ships.

You hearing that Fedora is unstable I will attest to being incorrect. I use Fedora as my daily machine everyday with no problems. If you're worried about stability stay away from Rawhide and the testing repos.

A second option is to use an Enterprise designed needs and honestly, not really necessary for somebody like yourself for home use. If it is absolutely required, I suggest using Scientific Linux 6 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

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answered 2012-02-15 11:53:55 -0600

asto

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Why don't you stick with Ubuntu LTS if you like it so much? Fedora is great if you want to experience the bleeding edge. Packages like pulseaudio (with its initial bugs and all) made it first to Fedora. If your priorities are different, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be, go with whatever works for you. That is the whole point of FOSS - choice! Welcome to "the linux world"!

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answered 2012-11-11 12:17:02 -0600

FedoraLinuxKid
21 ●1 ●2

Fedora has no LTS. And I will argue that Fedora 17 is WAY more stable than Ubuntu. Ubuntu 12.04 for me was quite unstable and glitchy. 12.10 broke my system entirely. Switched to Fedora and really like it. Fedora releases are short-lived (My only problem with it) about 13 months or so. And Fedora 18 won't work with Preupgrade. New tool is FedUp. Or the good old clean install. If you want to use Fedora and intend to do upgrades PLEASE use a USB Stick. Or a Re-Writable CD that will be re-written for every upgrade. Or use FedUp

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answered 2015-11-28 10:51:50 -0600

dejan
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I use CentOS as my desktop as I got frustrated with Fedora instabilities and since I used RedHat before Fedora, and Fedora since the first early release (because of the NPTL kernel - it made huge difference on my workstation), decided to use CentOS... I doubt there will ever be Fedora LTS because Fedora LTS is effectively what CentOS and RedHat EL are.

Advice for you - do not upgrade to the latest version of Fedora. Wait a release or two before upgrading to the next one from what you have. So after Fedora releases 23, upgrade Fedora 21 installation to Fedora 22. That is what I would recommend to everybody. People who claim latest Fedora is stable and never have issues with it are either extremely lucky, or simply they lie about it, or they, like me are power Linux users and solve every problem they encounter after upgrade. Unfortunately, they keep forgetting that there are more "regular" users than power users in the world...

Here is a typical example of a problem after upgrade to the latest Fedora: If you upgrade to Fedora 23, your VirtualBox will be useless as it does not yet support the kernel version. So, you need to downgrade the kernel in order to make your Vagrant VirtualBox-based boxes work again. I am not even going to talk about problems with nVidia drivers whether they support or not latest Linux kernels (this has been major pain in the A* all the time).

So, having all latest software in distribution is actually all nice, but it is definitely not for people like me who want a workstation that "just works". Fedora will never provide that no matter what people say, and no matter how well they test Fedora before release. I always have latest Fedora installed on my workstation, but I boot into it only when I want to test something on the latest release. For serious work, I boot into CentOS 7.

You are not convinced? Next time there is a new Fedora release, come here @ ask.fedoraproject.org , and see what sort of problems people ask about and you will realise that every release has HUGE amount of issues...

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answered 2012-09-28 07:45:59 -0600

gilux
11 ●1 ●1

once a new fedora release is out it can be unstable for some time. but after a while it is rockstable and way better than any other distro out there.. but usually some time later support will end and then you are stuck with an unsuported release.

sure, there is always PreUpgrade but most of the time it will leave you with a lot of headaches to solve like worstcase scenarios where your system wont boot or failing graphics...

seen it happen too many times... and ofcourse it can be solved but for an average user it usualy is just a little to hard to tackle and the reason to leave fedora for what it is and return to whatever OS they were running before..

so I agree, a REAL LTS fedora release is very welcome.

and NO, rhel/centos 6 is not the solution although it IS very very stable it just doesn't have the plethora of packages and drivers a desktop user would need and the packages that are there lag behind by version compared to fedora by years.

however, this could change if rpmfusion would fully support centos/rhel instead of having to add several different repo's like epel, elrepo, atrpms and fiddling with priorities.

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answered 2012-06-17 19:29:20 -0600

gtirloni
1 ●1

I've been a Fedora users since v1 and I can honestly say that Fedora releases are very buggy for the first couple of months.

If you want stability in Fedora-land, always stays with the previous release as it has tons of fixes. I was using F16 and today decided to try F17 after a few weeks of bug hunting but even that wasn't enough. I thought I would be proved wrong but indeed, the latest releases are too buggy.

Right now I'd suggest you install F16 and all updates. It should be pretty stable.

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answered 2018-06-28 05:16:14 -0600

ervindine
1

As an experienced user of both CentOS, Scientific Linux and Fedora I say that most of the concerns expressed in this page are correct. Fedora does tend to move a little bit too fast, you might even call it Redhat Testing : ) for that matter, but it is not as terrible or as buggy as it is claimed to be sometimes. I have used it for a long time, I had my problems, but nothing mission critical. That's my experience as an average user. On the other hand I find Fedora with Gnome a bit too heavy for older machines. It can be as stable as any other distro, none are perfect. The last idea expressed for a closer cooperation between CentOS and Fedora is excellent but I feel it is not being paid enough attention to. That would be a mistake. I have also used CentOS and Scientific Linux and they had their bugs too, there was a bug where Selinux was preventing Firefox from saving a page in a pdf format. Maybe it is still there. CentOS and Scientific Linux are very nice distros. The problem is getting extra packages. Epel, Nux, Rpmfusion and Flathub can help but it is still nowhere near Fedora in that regard. So maybe we should start building more desktop packages for Rhel Clones like CentOS. Also CentOS packages are not as outdated as people have stated here. Often they are more current than Debian and quite stable as well. The Kernel is an LTS Kernel with backported features. CentOS has the same minimal install and easy setup that Fedora has. We need to contribute to the Epel and Rpmfusion repositories to build as many packages as possible for Rhel and Clones. Then we will have a truly "Fedora LTS". And considering the nice way Fedora and CentOS can be setup with simplicity and minimalism, it might as well be one of the best distros. It does have a long term support but upgrades do come, and things do update between and during point releases. So it is not as old as people might think. It is easier to install and setup than Debian is, and faster than Ubuntu. Well this is just my experience. For people with older hardware try Fedora LXDE, LXQT, Mate-Compiz or XFCE. Do not use Gnome, I suggest. Fedora KDE, I haven't really done much testing on that, but it would be interesting to see if KDE makes less use of system resources than Gnome. CentOS and Scientific Linux also support KDE but it is an older version which lacks some of the nice features of the more stable LTS KDE we have now. CentOS is server oriented but it can run on a desktop and with some work it can become a fully functional desktop distro if repositories with more desktop packages are added to it. You don't need to add anything that's already in the official repositories. Those programs outdated or not, work ... (more)

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answered 2016-05-06 11:47:08 -0600

Snydox
21 ●2 ●3 ●6

Ever Since CentOS is part of the Red Hat Family, I believe that CentOS should be Renamed as Fedora Enterprise and It should have a Workstation version just like regular Fedora. Imagine One Community with the same target.

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Is there a Fedora stable? LTS?

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