Respectfully huge disagree. Standard Fedora would be better (and is my personal recommendation) since a bunch of administrative command syntax would be different with Atomic. The internet’s going to show troubleshooting advice for the former 9 times out of 10.
You just described exactly why I would install an Atomic distribution.
So they can’t run something they don’t understand, and end up nuking their install.
The biggest differences in usage (dnf vs rpm-ostree) essentially function as a knowledge/intelligence filter to prevent fuckups.
Everything I value is against “how long it will work without issue”, “how quick is an update”, and finally “how much effort do I need to help maintain it”.
Atomic systems have netted me positives on all my values. The people I know who used atomic, have only approached me due to edge cases such as specific laptop fan issues, which weren’t hindered by the atomic system.
They’re both terrible choices for a beginner - constant version churn every six months confuses newcomers, some initial brokenness after every new release - Fedora would be the last distro I’d install.
What would you suggest instead? Those initial roadbumps with major releases shouldn’t happen at all really, but I don’t personally see bi-annual version updates as a confusing thing since major companies are commonly shipping yearly version updates now.
Mint. They can stay on the same release for 5 years, if they desire, or upgrade every 2 if they want. Binary-only drivers are easily integrated, it has a polished experience, integrated backups, and anyone that has used Windows can navigate Cinnamon relatively easily.
Personally I can’t recommend Mint in good faith due to their heinously slow downstream update ‘schedule’ for apps they provide (and because Cinnamon feels half-baked still) but other than those issues Mint’s great.
Fedora Atomic.
Updates are stable.
They can’t fuck it up.
Respectfully huge disagree. Standard Fedora would be better (and is my personal recommendation) since a bunch of administrative command syntax would be different with Atomic. The internet’s going to show troubleshooting advice for the former 9 times out of 10.
You just described exactly why I would install an Atomic distribution.
So they can’t run something they don’t understand, and end up nuking their install.
The biggest differences in usage (dnf vs rpm-ostree) essentially function as a knowledge/intelligence filter to prevent fuckups.
Everything I value is against “how long it will work without issue”, “how quick is an update”, and finally “how much effort do I need to help maintain it”.
Atomic systems have netted me positives on all my values. The people I know who used atomic, have only approached me due to edge cases such as specific laptop fan issues, which weren’t hindered by the atomic system.
They’re both terrible choices for a beginner - constant version churn every six months confuses newcomers, some initial brokenness after every new release - Fedora would be the last distro I’d install.
What would you suggest instead? Those initial roadbumps with major releases shouldn’t happen at all really, but I don’t personally see bi-annual version updates as a confusing thing since major companies are commonly shipping yearly version updates now.
Mint. They can stay on the same release for 5 years, if they desire, or upgrade every 2 if they want. Binary-only drivers are easily integrated, it has a polished experience, integrated backups, and anyone that has used Windows can navigate Cinnamon relatively easily.
Personally I can’t recommend Mint in good faith due to their heinously slow downstream update ‘schedule’ for apps they provide (and because Cinnamon feels half-baked still) but other than those issues Mint’s great.