I am learning about community-based Linux distros as they are my preferred choice compared to corporate ones. And when I get to Fedora, what I see from the fence is a sofisticated, well-supported OS.

However, seeing that it is sponsored by the Red Hat corporation, the question arises: could Red Hat eventually take control of the project? I suppose the answer comes down to how much weight Red Hat actually has on the development of said distro. From what I know, it has employees dedicated full-time to it.

Let’s rephrase the question and say that the Fedora project ditched Red Hat from its development due to some irrepairable decision; how viable would the continuation of the OS development be as compared to, for example, Debian, which is also community-based but, as far as I know, has no such backing from a corporation?

Please, note that, while I am indeed a Debian user, I am not trying in any way to shit on Fedora. I myself am curious to try it out as I have recently arrived to Linux.

  • Cekan14@lemmy.orgOP
    7·
    2 days ago

    Yep, that’s exactly what I care about and one of the reasons I ditched Ubuntu. I guess I’ll look into OpenSUSE as a potential alternative if I feel like distro-hopping in the future (although I know even less of its relationship with SUSE).

    • tyrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      Why don’t you look into projects that aren’t related to a company? Aren’t Ubuntu, fedora, and open suse the 3 that have corporate support? There are plenty of distros out there that are stable on the Debian branch and a lot of interesting projects on the Arch branch as well.

      • FoundFootFootage78@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        The five major upstreams are Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, and Arch. Three of those are corporate, two have some questionable security practices.

        So there’s no perfect distro.

          • pheusie@programming.dev
            2·
            4 hours ago

            Not the one you asked, but here’s my two cents.

            Arch, by virtue of its DIY nature, has little to no defaults. As such, common security measures are not pre-configured either. Thankfully, it makes up for that with its excellent wiki entry on security. Unfortunately, I don’t think most users ever seriously implement what’s found within.

            As for Debian, it actually does come with plenty of relatively sane defaults, including security. And Debian has shown to take security rather seriously. However, (most) Debian repositories are not great at providing up-to-date versions of the software they package:

            • The stable branch has outdated packages for the sake of providing a ‘boring’ (but reliable) experience. While security updates are backported, it is not the preferred way of keeping software safe and secure.
            • The testing branch is in a disturbing condition in which it holds software that is a bit more stable than the unstable branch. However, it does not enjoy the security updates backported to the stable branch. Nor does it immediately receive the security updates as they come to the unstable branch. A rather unsettling middle ground, if you will. Definitely not recommended for the security-conscious.
            • Finally, the unstable branch. Intuitively, this should provide the fix for the above problems. It should provide current software, which should mean that it receives updates as they’re released, security included. But, anecdotally, the likes of Arch, Fedora and openSUSE seem to be doing a better job at offering a (semi-)rolling release distro. But, please be my guest, and prove them wrong.
          • FoundFootFootage78@lemmy.mlEnglish
            22·
            19 hours ago

            Not really, I’ve mostly just heard about their security problems on the grapevine, I don’t have specific concerns in mind.

            Arch is pretty famous for being lax on security. Debian for having a pretty scrappy organisational structure.

      • Cekan14@lemmy.orgOP
        2·
        2 days ago

        I’m just learning about all this stuff but yeah, I’ll definitely take a look at Arch, although just out of curiosity, since I am overall satisfied with Debian.

    • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      I’ll look into OpenSUSE as a potential alternative

      You could do worse!

      I’ve worked with OpenSuse for a few years and I really like the people involved. They’re stand-out in that they’re European based (no bad thing in today’s uncertain world if you’re not American yourself.) They’re a german organisation but the employees are spread through Europe and further afield and they’re a really, really small concern, but IME, they genuinely care about doing the right thing, even if that comes before financial growth. One example of that is their tutoring programs and, unlike many organisations even in the FOSS world, I get the feeling they genuinely uphold their guiding principles

      I use Debian myself at home and at work and it’s my go-to for everything, but if it didn’t exist, OpenSuse would probably be the next on my list and although I’m not working with them at present, I would happily do so again.

      • Cekan14@lemmy.orgOP
        4·
        2 days ago

        That’s so nice to hear! Thank you so much for sharing. I’ll definitely have OpenSUSE on my list to try sometime and if for some reason I need to switch my system

    • HumbleExaggeration@feddit.org
      31·
      2 days ago

      Funny to read. I recently came to the same conclusion and downloaded openSUSE yesterday. At the moment I am waiting for a time slot to install it.