Distrohop 2

linux, fedora, ubuntu, distro

Some errata to Distrohop:

  1. Neon actually isn’t quite as up to date as I thought! It turns out they only keep KDE software up to date, not all Qt-based tools. And they even break them! KeepassXC is at 2.4.6, same as Ubuntu, and the Calibre from the repo is broken, and won’t be fixed, because the Neon people don’t care about the admittedly slightly idiosyncratic way Calibre is put together. Still, outright breaking it isn’t very nice, so that’s two points off for Neon.
  2. My little hardware issue with my screen appears to be related to a regression in kernel 5.7. I have not yet tried the workaround, but for now booting with kernel 5.6 also works around the issue (Ubuntu comes with 5.4 and I suppose that’s why it works).
  3. Installing Noto Sans improves Fedoras looks quite a bit (same as Neon). Also, that font stuff? Apparently the patents expired in 2010 and Fedora has been shipping with the same engine as Ubuntu ever since.

So, what problems are left? That silly modprobe to access my works VPN, can only use Fedoras mediawriter to create EFI-bootable USB drives and a worse breeze-gtk theme. The pro’s are: (nearly) as up to date as Neon (for KDE apps), much more up to date (already) than Ubuntu, no #WONTFIX broken packages, a few NeuroFedora packages. Starting with Fedora 33 (in two months) BTRFS by default. I guess I’ll be staying with Fedora after all!

Update 1: The just released kernel update 5.8 also seems to work now with my screen! Update 2: Today (august 31) after 5 hours, the USB-C connection suddenly gave out again. Replugging, restarting, different kernels, different cable, even a USB boot with Neon, nothing produces any sign anymore. dmesg is suddenly silent… I guess I should be pointing finger at my screen, even though it does work find if I plug it back into my desktop (over regular USB3). Also, the laptop works fine with the dock… Hmm…