Looking for Fedora fork with long term support

[Draciron]

I am a long time Linux user. I still even have a copy of Redhat 5 around somewhere and even earlier versions such as an ancient Slackware CD from circa 94 as well as many other distros I've tried over the years. I've always favored Red Hat distros. Red hat and then Fedora when it transitioned to Fedora. For the first time since around 97 I find myself unwilling to go to the next version of Fedora. The two biggest reasons is the lack of long term support and the changes to the GDM that prevent usage of root. I frequently run apps as root from a term window as needed and every couple years I find it necessary or easier to log in as root from the GUI. I can understand forcing me to flip a toggle to enable that but to ban me ??? To tell me how to run my system? No that goes against every grain of the spirit in which Linux was created.

I've been trying out long term support distros but mostly unimpressed. Ubuntu 10.4 doesn't even install sshd by default and to my dismay I discovered that it harkens back to ancient days by not disabling root login in SSH by default. The Nvidia support is poor and many of my beloved packages are not supported by Ubuntu. Still it's a whole lot less painful to do tarballs than reinstall my system. I would literally rather physically move which is no small effort given the truck load of junk I've accumulated over the years than to upgrade a machine. It takes me months to install all the software, configure everything and get a machine just how I like it. With Fedora about the time I have my machine where I like it I have to do it all over again and I'm tired of the merry go round. I prefer to not reinstall until the hardware fails. Then I have reinstall. I run between 3 and 10 machines at any given time so I'm always trying out new distros on new machines and machines that I had to rebuild due to hardware failure. If there is a must have kind of thing in a new version I'll upgrade early. That hasn't happened since Fedora 3.

I am also very disappointed in the imitation Microsoft approach Fedora has taken. If I wanted to use windoze I would. Sadly Windows 7 looks more like Red Hat 9 than Fedora 14 does. Fedora looks like Vista, smells like Vista and all too often acts like Vista. Linux has been a pioneer NOT a follower. Microsoft is STILL trying to catch up to many things Redhat brought to the world back in the RH8 & 9 days and even the early Fedora versions helped advance the UI of computing. Since then more and more I see Fedora trying to copy Microsoft while Microsoft tries to copy old Fedora. It'd be hilarious if not for the loss to the Linux community that this constitutes.

I love Fedora's driver base and so far nobody does a better job of supporting Nvidia than Fedora. That doesn't help when you have to reinstall every year.

This is also exceptionally problematic when I'm installing for non-technical people. Used to be I could install and for the most part long as automatic updates were set forget about that system. Every so often people would ask me how too or too log in remotely and install something for them. Today that's just not possible. I'd have to physically go over and reinstall every time a version was obsoleted. Then reconfigure the system and then discover this or that has changed and that I have to teach a user how to use a totally different package because this or that was dumped/changed for no particular reason. I've just stopped installing Linux for non-technical people or if I do I'm forced to use Ubuntu LTS. Over the last 10 years I've installed literally hundreds of machines with Linux for grannies, children and technophobes. Most of whom happily used Linux for years and some of whom lost their fear of technology and became avid Linux users. I just can't do that any more. Especially not with Fedora.

So I'm really in a bind here trying to find a usable distro that has long term support and desktop support. CentOS has long term support but good luck installing dropbox or the current flash version or even sometimes a JVM. Good luck finding packages for lots of software as the RPMs are all designed for current Fedora versions rather than RHE/CentOS as few run either as a desktop. Sure I'll find good Oracle support but that doesn't help me in getting granny installing say Cinalarra or Audacity. Last time I tried to use CentOS or RHE as a desktop the experiment lasted all of a month before I gave up in frustration and put Fedora on the machine. They both make great server distros but as desktops they are abject failures.

So my hope is out there somewhere is a Fedora fork with LTS. One that hasn't taken the disastrous changes made in recent Fedora versions. This machine for example ran Fedora 9 beautifully. Blink of an eye fast. It ran Fedora 11 reasonably. Fedora 12 is slow as a dog on this machine. I have less control over my machine than I did with Fedora 9. Less able to easily customize it. Fewer apps that are important to me live in the repositories. I feel quite abandoned by the Fedora developers to be honest. To be honest I cannot think of a good change in Fedora since FC8. I'm pretty sure that's when they added improved support for USB device mounting. Obviously they've added drivers which has been nice. All the other changes in my opinion have been to the detriment of the distro. Have regressed the UI rather than advanced it. Yes I know the difference between the GDM and the window manager. I have my own issues with KDE 4, but that's not a Fedora issue and over the last 6 months KDE has fixed most of my biggest gripes about KDE 4. Nor does Gnome run any faster on this machine. In the other machines I've replaced recent Fedora installs I've seen speed increases with Ubuntu 10.4 LTS. Ironic since Fedora used to be noticeably faster than Ubuntu.

sorry about ranting but I loved Fedora. I have run it or before that Redhat for so long I feel kinda bereft having to abandon the entire distro. I just can't live with the way Fedora has changed. I really would love to stay with a Fedora fork. Something with a UI along the lines of what 7 or 8 had with the better support for mounting/unmounting USB devices. I want to SEE the start up info. Lots of times when something fails that is how I notice it. I want the logging that Fedora used have. I want the speed that Fedora used to have. I want to still install on ancient machines like Fedora used to do. I think I could actually install XP the massive system hog that it is on machines that Fedora now rejects. I want too once again turn people with little or no technical knowledge onto Linux using Fedora. If I want to log in as root that is MY biz. Let me change a config file or run a command to enable it. I want to install and forget. To again spend my time working rather than working on my machine. Every minute I spend maintaining my machine is a minute of my life lost and keeping 6 machines running using Fedora has become far too cumbersome to consider. If I go through a week of digging out dependencies, battling the compile to get some obsolete tarball to run I don't want to have to go through all that again 6 months later. I want to find a newer better way over the next 3 years and next time I install I don't have to go through that. If I get a driver working for ancient hardware I want it to keep working for years until I buy a newer piece of hardware. I want to take an obsolete system and make it a print server or a file server and not have to install some other distro just to do it.

[oz]

Hello

I'm not sure about the length of support on them, but you can get a listing of distros based on Fedora by using the search feature found at DistroWatch.com:

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

Drop down to the "based on" option in the 2nd search box and enter Fedora and it should give you a listing of around 40 distributions reported to be Fedora derivatives.

Hope you are able to find what you are looking for without too much trouble.

[Lazydog]

I too have been a long time fan of RH and when Fedora Core came along I too switched. And as you I had found that the life cycle of Fedora to be a PITA.

I use CentOS today as my desktop without issues. Your issues might be because you don't have the proper Repo's installed as to why you cannot get things to work.

You have to remember that Fedora is the testbed for RH. What functions in there normally gets transfered to RH in there next update.

You should try CentOS again. It works and when you have issue ask. Maybe even join the CentOS mailing list. There is good information on there too.

And I too have nVidia card and use nVidia's driver without issues.

[Draciron]

Thanks on the suggestions. I have to say CentOS has improved quite a bit as a desktop machine but I'm totally unimpressed with the repositories. About to make a new thread and see if maybe there are some decent repositories out there that are CentOS compatable. Way too much software I use all the time is missing. I feel like I've gone back to FC2.

[ltusman]

Thanks on the suggestions. I have to say CentOS has improved quite a bit as a desktop machine but I'm totally unimpressed with the repositories. About to make a new thread and see if maybe there are some decent repositories out there that are CentOS compatable. Way too much software I use all the time is missing. I feel like I've gone back to FC2.

Try Fuduntu .. dont let the name fool you, it is a fork off of Fedora 14