Did I ever tel you that I use Arch (btw)? Maybe I did. Most likely even this joke is already on this blog somewhere. But after nearly 5 years of usage it was time to move on and choose something that fits my needs better.

I cut it short: I use Fedora Workstation now. As of writing its Version 44.

Yeah, yeah… I hear you and see that you reach for your Pitchforks already. But calm down and let me explain. I actually have valid reasons. And none of them are AUR related, even in the face of the pretty recent DDoS and Malware campaings that were running against it.

Let me start by telling you why I choose Arch in the first place. And its a very simple reason but absoltely understandable if you are like me and like to tinker with stuff. Arch gives you freedom. I would refer to it as a choose your own adventure kind of system and it has (by far) the best wiki that is out there documenting installation, tools, concepts and usage. It taught me a lot. And I really mean A LOT! If Arch ever broke, and it actually broke less than I expected, I had to fix it. And I actually could fix it because of the vast amount of information that is available about it. That was nice as I learned almost everytime something new about my system. And this is where the issue begins - at least for me. I just (re)started my job journey as a solo freelancer and the one thing that I cant have right now is a system that I have to fix (unless someone pays me to do that, but thats different). I need a reliable system where I dont need to fear about the possibility that it breaks after a system update. Its not about that Arch breaks all the time (it really doesnt) and my system was stable for quite some time now without any major hiccups but there was this constant fear that it could break. I could be doing work for the next 8 hours…. or debug my system and then rush the customers project to be on time for delivery. Guess what I chose…

Therefore its Fedora now. Something bigger, something more enterprisy, something that I dont have to fear about breaking. I know that it is not without flaws, and I really miss pacman, but it feels more solid. Its not a rolling-release distro so Software is not as up-to-date as I am used to. But do I really need bleeding edge? I asked my self, seriously. I dont. I use it for a few weeks now already. It “broke” on me once during my setup, but that was completely on me as I messed up a config file. But during setup and configuration I expect things like that. During day-to-day work. I want it to work. And I still have everything from my previous install. My data backup restored flawlessly and even my window manager (mango) works very very well. Although I had to add a copr repository for that which is apparantly something like the AUR but then again it is not… I have to do a bit digging to get the terminology right but I ensure you, I will stay at Fedora for quite some time.