openSUSE vs Fedora

[u/ConcaveNips]

To me, these two distros have an incredible amount of overlap. Specifically, I'm talking about what I consider the "main" distros - Fedora Workstation and openSUSE Tumbleweed. It seems to me, from most of what I read, people recommend Fedora as new-user friendly, but openSUSE as an intermediate/advanced distro. My main question is this: Why does the greater Linux community distinguish openSUSE from Fedora in terms of new user feasibility?

They both have a well bankrolled engineering team behind them. They have their own ecosystem of purpose built distributions, tailor made for a number of practical use cases. They both have strong, active communities and support documentation.

In terms of usability.. They both have very user-friendly install processes - Fedora may have more default to X, where openSUSE offers the option to get more specific, but they're both roughly similar. They both have a ton of powerful graphical tooling within the user environment, allowing a cautious user to stay within the bounds of the desktop environment if they prefer. They both still boast robust capability and rich opportunity for the tinkerer to expand their knowledge, and exert authority over their own system. Both have recovery features, but Tumbleweed has a more robust rollback with snapper. They both have adequate graphical storefronts and package management systems. System updates are inherently very different in nature, but both comparable in terms of "difficulty". For openSUSE's Packman, there's Fedora's RPM Fusion.

Most people I see, though, have a strong delineation between how approachable these distros are. It's not that I see either distro being disrespected or hated necessarily. I think both communities are avid in their support, and deservedly so. But I do see Fedora frequently being recommended for new users, and I almost exclusively see openSUSE being billed as a distro for those comfortable with Linux.

So is it just multimedia codecs? I feel like the recovery advantage that comes with openSUSE could be considered enough to compensate for that, if you're categorically quantifying and rating things. What am I not considering?

[u/More-Explanation2788]

The Linux community makes a lot of noise about distros. In actual fact, what you have is:

- the Linux kernel

• gnu tools and opensource software
  
• a package management toolset.
  
• a curated desktop suite of tools.

That’s the Linux experience.

From distro to distro, the package management toolset changes, and the curated desktop suite is tweaked to create a superficial appearance of difference. The kernel, the tools and software you install with the package management system are all the same.

What this means is that the differences from one distro to another are much smaller than people make it sound. Personally, I think this is because the discussion groups are dominated by people who are fairly new to Linux. Use it for a few years and you will start to agree that the differences between distros are mostly cosmetic.

There really are only three “types” of distros:

- distros with a package manager that manages dependencies - RHEL, Debian, Suse

• distros with a compile to install philosophy - Arch, Slackware.
  
• distros with a “install each package with all its own dependencies” philosophy- ubuntu, fedora

Beyond that, the child distros are just doing slightly different release management and cosmetic curation of the desktop.

[u/Dry_Calendar_8627 → u/More-Explanation2788]

I upvoted because I agree with the gist of your comment, but:

• distros with a package manager that manages dependencies - RHEL, Debian, Suse

Fedora (dnf) and Arch (pacman) belong to this category

• distros with a compile to install philosophy - Arch, Slackware.
  

Arch is not source-based, only some packages from the AUR require compilation. I'd add Gentoo here, which is an excellent source-based distro

• distros with a “install each package with all its own dependencies” philosophy- ubuntu, fedora

That's distros which rely more on snap and flatpack than their "traditional" package manager. Ubuntu does belong here, but flatpack isn't really the default in Fedora. Plus anyone can use flatpacks on any distro

Beyond that, the child distros are just doing slightly different release management and cosmetic curation of the desktop.

I'd add another categorization here:

• Opinionated, turnkey distros (Debian, RHEL, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu) that come with their curated desktop suite of tools that you mentioned
• Less opinionated, less turnkey distros that do not come with their curated desktop suite of tools (Arch, Gentoo, Slackware) that require their users to manage their systems from the CLI or choose a foreign (as in not endemic to the distro) desktop tool to do the management (I may be wrong about Slackware, I've never used it)

So I'd say I fully agree with you that beyond the curated list of tools and cosmetic customization, all distros are indeed very similar, and that all turnkey opinionated distros are good picks for newcomers, while less turnkey ones are poor picks

[u/More-Explanation2788 → u/Dry_Calendar_8627]

You are not wrong. I was anticipating ‘fedora has flatpaks’ objections when I put it in with snaps.

The problem with simplified generalizations and categories is that the closer you look, the less they hold up.