Fedora vs Arch

[mathmeister]

Leaning towards Arch to put on my laptop. Which should I go for and why?

[Burusutazu]

Arch is a lot of work but you get what you want, Fedora focuses on stability and uses more tested software. I like to use linux casually so I would personally choose Fedora, or more specifically Korora a distribution based on Fedora.

[spartaman64]

i use arch because it a lot of fun but yea it does have a steeper learning curve

[Half-Shot]

Fedora - Standard ol Gnome 3 distro.

Arch - Do it yourself

 

Take your pick. That's really about as much as you can compare two entirely different things.

[Zvon]

I would go with Arch, it's tougher to set up but other than that it's amazing. The official and user repositories have practically any software you can imagine and if you install "yaourt" it will even compile the software from user repositories automatically so you don't have to do it yourself.

[VicBar]

I agree with most of the posts here, Arch can be kida tough, but there is no lack of support, the https://wiki.archlinux.org/ is very very good, and has all the info you could need; if not there are great forums, but it is definitely DIY.

I haven used Fedora personally, but I know it to be where Red Hat developers test whatever features they plan on adding to the paid support Red Hat offers, so it's very capable but mostly used as a testing site. Perfectly good desktop disto though, and server as well.

 

So if you want to dive head first into Linux, Arch is the way to go (speaking from personal experience on my Arch install), it has been a learning experience, and still is. If you want an out-of-the-box Linux experience I guess Fedora, but then again also why not CentOS or Debian/Ubuntu/Mint?

[adrtho4]

Arch is nice and will teach you how linux works especially since you are building it from the ground up.  Fedora is great as well and is testing ground for a lot of features that will eventually make it into Redhat. Unless you want to do it yourself go with Fedora, else, Arch.

[DimasRMDO]

It's up to you and it depends on your situation, if you don't want the troubles (install this, install that) then install Fedora.

If you have lots of time and want to mess around then you can install Arch, it doesn't hurt though it's a pain in the head at first. But you'll get what you want, that's what Arch about.

[casualgamer]

I personally like Arch because of the great wiki pages and the latest software available. Also you can customize it however you want. 

 

I was on a conference a few months ago and the guy was talking about new features in new Debian and one of them was new version of Samba. I checked my Arch and it had several versions newer Samba than Debian. 

 

You could give both a try if you have time and decide for yourself.

[Britwit]

I find Arch to be more to be bleeding edge and least from the package management to be easier and better for the "I want to do this all from scratch" attitude and the rolling release is nice. 

[Azgoth 2]

Have you already used Linux for at least a few months?  Are you willing to put in a good amount of time to do configuration and setup and such?  Then there's no reason not to try Arch.  Minimal install size, so you get a small, and thus generally very fast, system.  It's also one of the best-documented Linux distros, especially on more technical/in-depth topics (hell, the Arch Wiki is where I often find myself when looking up issues for other distros, it's that useful).

 

New to Linux, and/or want a system that more or less "just works" out of the box (at least much moreso than Arch does)?  Then Fedora is the better bet.  Less setup and configuration to worry about, more stuff is automated, and you still get a lot of very new software with it, much like Arch.  You'll have to spend less time tinkering and tweaking and fixing things, but you get a less slimmed-down/minimal system that won't be quite as fast (but still, in all likelihood, plenty fast enough).