For example Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Enterprise Linux.
I’m considering switching to RHEL, to get a “professional” Linux, since it’s free if you register an account, but is it worth it?
Is the experience very different from Fedora?
Older software is the most noticeable thing. Enterprise does not mean it is better - just that it is supported for a long time and they do that by not changing much on them. They are more designed for servers rather than workstations and generally not a great experiences unless you are running hundreds or thousands of them in an enterprise situation.
Professional just means payed for. What you are paying for is support in managing the systems, not a great user experience.
For home desktops it is far nicer to be on newer software rather than things that came out 5 to 10 years ago.
Can I assume you’re not actually running an enterprise distro?
I mean, me neither, yet, but:
- Both SUSE and Red Hat have had a minor release this year, with their software being less out of date than Debian
- I feel like enterprise distros seem to be very different in the areas where differences between distros actually matter: Package management (which can be fine-tuned a lot more with application streams, security updates, package modules, etc.) and complete, up-to-date documentation (which is the thing most people miss in Linux).
I was really looking for real world experience, not a re-hashing of unvalidated opinions that have been around for >10 years (when they might have actually been true).
It looks like you have your mind made up and are looking for affirmation, not discussion. Next time, say that instead of being an ass to people trying to help you.
I think I was pretty clear with what I was asking in this thread:
“Is anyone here using an enterprise Linux distro?”
You also asked
I’m considering switching to RHEL, to get a “professional” Linux, since it’s free if you register an account, but is it worth it?
Is the experience very different from Fedora?Nobody cares when someone tries to preemptively qualify incoming advice. It’s an open forum. Everyone will just ignore your criteria because you admittedly don’t know much about this. If you gave us a reason that didn’t vibe as “I think I know more than I do” I bet people would consider not chiming in.
What a normal person does is simple: just ignore the advice that they don’t value.
Not anymore because all the reason I mentioned. Has the experience change in recent years? Not likely. It is the same software as in other distros - just years out of date. That has not changed as the goals of these projects have not changed. They might be on newer versions then 10 years ago but they are still way behind more frequently updated distros - or at least will be very shortly. That is fundamentally how these enterprise distros work. Their target audience is businesses needing support, not lots of end users.
The big attraction towards these distros are the support that enterprise people will pay for - which you do not get with the free version. If you don’t mind older versions of things then it might be nice for you. If not then I would stay clear of them.
their software being less out of date
It almost sounds like we need to review how and why and when RHEL bundles software to be released within their distro, and the difference between an old snapshot and a relatively new fork.
Yes, Debian.
Debian from top to bottom.
If you’re looking for something like this, but not paid for, try Debian stable. Same idea but free. Ubuntu also have an LTS version and I’m sure others.
The “Enterprise” in the title just means “support”, which is a check box for a lot of organisations. Not so much home users.
Not worth it imo. You’ll end up installing everything you use regularly from 3rd party repos (or building yourself) to get up to date features. Just use Fedora.
These days, you also have the options of Flatpaks and Distrobox. Do not nearly as big a problem as previously. No need to build from source.
I mean, for most things, why even rely on EPEL when you can install something like Arch in Distrobox. A super stable base with totally up to date apps is a great combination.
you also have the options of Flatpaks
Please don’t. Ask your security staff, ask your build/release staff. See if they know why validation is important. If they do, you learn to avoid flatpakSnapPypNpm dreck. If they don’t know, then you learn about them as well.
God, so very much this. I couldn’t imagine running RHEL as a workstation unless I was forced to. You’d be beating your head against the repos all the time.
I have some RHEL machines at work. They are used as VM hosts for windows VMs (CAD software). I set them up, but I also have a huge list of other apps and servers that I manage,develop and support, and so the person that wanted these mahines wanted professional services as an option if I am out or busy with other projects. Plus it allows us to offload liability for security if need be, whereas when I do it, there is anyone else to blame, legally speaking. ( Although so far we have not had a breach on my watch knocks on wood )
I just use fedora at home, I find the they are about the same and I personally wouldn’t pay for the additional services. The package manager is different, but that’s about it.
I know pretty much everyone knows this but distros like Alma and Rocky give you a pretty much identical experience to RHEL for free.
And RHEL itself is free for individuals.
The biggest difference between Fedora and RHEL is that the packages in Fedora change far more frequently, are much more up to date, and are supported for a far shorter period of time.
And RHEL itself is free for individuals.
RHEL is (was) great, but the ‘free’ thing is an absolute annoyance to renew periodically and - importantly - the subscription crap is needless hassle. I use Rocky for the dev stuff and RHEL when it’s prod customer stuff. That spreads out the infrastructure plan to be 1. everything working, and then 2. glue in the subscription bullshit.
I manage a number of RHEL/Rocky and Ubuntu machines for work. EL is fine as a server distro but it doesn’t make a great desktop distro. The packages are old and I’ve found it to be missing a number of packages I use on a desktop system. For a desktop, Fedora or Ubuntu is a better fit.
More than a decade ago I bought SUSE enterprise for a couple of years just to support the project. Never needed any assistance so I’m not sure about a different experience. BTW The box was nice 🤣
We use Alma Linux at work and it’s fine, I suppose. I see two main reasons why you’d choose an EL linux distro:
- You have (professional) software that officially supports it. RHEL’s release model makes it an attractive target for proprietary software and many vendors choose to support it.
- You need/want very long support cycles. You can run 10-year-old software even though you probably shouldn’t.
Apart from those, it’s a competent distro, Red Hat know what they’re doing. If you want the equivalent to an Ubuntu LTS / Debian in the Fedora world, it get’s the job done. I quite like their approach of keeping the core OS stable while updating drivers, tools, and compilers (e.g., the kernel version number has very little meaning in RHEL).
Is the experience very different from Fedora?
Yes. the age of the core packages is very noticeable. The number of fully supported packages is also very small and you need to go to EPEL very quickly (at which point you’re no longer getting enterprise support…). On the plus side, it’s much more stable than Fedora in my experience.
Edit: My main recommendation for a stable distro would probably be Debian unless one of the above points applies.
Try it out maybe? You’re not buying a car… There’s not much point going around and asking if you spend 20 mins trying it out and realise you don’t want to use a 5 year old DE.
Basically expect the system will change only when you update to a new version, and that you’ll need to use external PMs like flatpak or nix for all user packages if you plan on doing anything more advanced than browsing and office work.
Read their reply. This is someone who already made their mind up without even testing it.
I think it depends on your use case. For my gaming desktop I use Fedora to get the latest packages. For professional scenarios I’ve been using Almalinux the past couple of years. It started life as a RHEL clone, but since RHEL changed their code distribution rules I see them more parallel in the stream rather than down. It’s completely free, but there are options to purchase support and live kernel patching if required.
If you want to go the Suse route, Opensuse Leap will give you the closest experience to Suse enterprise. I believe Suse actually offers conversion tools to convert Leap to the full enterprise OS. I don’t have personal experience with it, but have considered it in the past and this is the information I recall.
Personally using rocky Linux. Which is essentially free rhel. It moves slower then fedora.
So Technically No. Our proprietary CAD was only supported and certified to work on RHEL or SUSE. I wanted to test before commiting to a distro. So I went with OpenSUSE leap since it shares SUSE binaries and has same release and service cycle. It installed and functions well on OoenSUSE While not identical to SUSE, I can say all the complaints I saw online of things not working in Linux were working for me. They sort of have to on a paid distro with support, so it seems to carry to OpenSUSE with the same binaries
- nVidia hosts a repo specifically for SUSE and OpenSUSE ( probably RHEL too) it meany adding that nvdia url and updating in Yast2 GUI. Everything works, no tearing, no glitches, nVidia app for thermal settings or tweaking.
2)btrfs works. I saw lots of complaints of people saying btrfs filled their drive, etc. SUSE / OpenSUSE as jobs establishes to monitor number and age of snapshots and remove automatically as needed as well as cleaning tools. It all runs behind the scenes.
- patches, people complain they don’t know if a CVE affects them, if they have applied a patch or not, what package etc. On SUSE/OoenSUSE you have several patch, patches, lp commands that show you what has been released, what level and whether your system has it installed, not required, critical etc. Keeping up with CVE and patches is easy.
I assume RHEL will also have these types of perks to make some aspects easier
RHEL will also have these types of [perquisites]
Yeah.
Yum upgrade. The work that goes into a reliably safe, brain-dead, boring update process with a rollback and by-the-checksum validation of installed product is the most unsung part of the distro.And people really should value the ability to answer
- are we safe from CVE-xxxx-yyyyy? (it’s in the changelog and often an upgrade command like
yum update --cve <CVE-ID>will settle it) - how do we know we installed all of that and it’s valid? (
rpm -V some-RPM)
And ‘how do we know’ is an amazingly powerful question that’s easy to answer on EL and hard as heck to answer on debs or anything with flatpak/snap/pyp/npm nonsense.
- are we safe from CVE-xxxx-yyyyy? (it’s in the changelog and often an upgrade command like
RHEL comes with very limited repos, so this might help: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/
Much more stable but much, much older packages at some point. Can you tolerate that?
It is a lot easier these days as Distrobox and Flatpak offer great escape hatches to get newer software when you really need it.
Some of us fiddle with the base OS more than we should. In many ways, I think using something that changes less often is a great idea.
One great thing about RHEL is the documentation. First Red Hat themselves make great stuff. Then there are mountains of third-party materials. Finally, since it changes slowly, whatever issues you are facing have probably been seen before by others and what you find about it on the Internet will still apply.
Sometimes older, tried and true packages is what you want in prod.
Drives me nuts but so does debugging issues because someone ran yum install on some unsupported package
i suspect that the biggest reason to use an enterprise distribution is the support since it helps shield you from the consequences of interoperability that naturally come out of the whole linux ecosystem of the right hand not knowing what the left had is doing.
