Why I started:
I like Gnome Shell. Mostly because of its ability to be modded by extensions. But this bug (and some other things...) made me think I can't get a real good vanilla Gnome-Shell by Ubuntu...
The differences I discovered:
debian
feels like good old ubuntu, I really like it. Most things added to ubuntu (unity, software center) are not interesting for me.
BUT:
- Adding a printer was a bit harder, I needed an online connection to do that.
- bind mounts in /etc/fstab are shown in the system monitor as mounted devices. that's not sooo bad, but as I bind many folders from the same drive in my home-directory, it is really redundant information.
But overall a good experience. Gnome-Fallback-Mode is also more beautiful than in ubuntu. (In debian, it looks more like Gnome-Shell with two panels...)
fedora:
I started with Fedora, because the live-USB was amazing fast. I never had such a fluid live-system!
But the disappointment began soon:
- At the first boot, the system ended in a black screen. I found out that was because of my TV attached to the HDMI port in my Nvidia Card. Disconnecting the TV, rebooting, getting the proprietary nvidia driver solved the problem, but that really wasn't a good first impression...
- the bind mounts-problem is even worse than in debian: In Fedora, the bind-mounts in fstab are even shown in nautilus! (left column, under "devices") unfortunately, they are completely useless there, clicking them leads to nothing....
- And finally: The font rendering in fedora is really bad, especially in Firefox. I tried several tricks, from editing .fonts.conf (which helped a bit) to installing addition fonts-packages, looking at that pixelated font-rendering is just depressing.
Why I stay with Ubuntu:
The worst thing in Fedora were really the fonts. I really have to say to the debian/ubuntu guys: Good job! Fonts are important, it's the thing you look to with the highest optical concentration.
OK, that wasn't a problem in debian, but anyway, the thing that bothered me in ubuntu is easily solveable by going a bit in dconf, for the bind-mounts thing, I haven't found a solution yet...
I really didn't thought fonts can be so important to me! (Although in 2006, when I last tried fedora, fedora had the same problem which kept me from trying on with fedora...)
What are your experiences?
I mean apart from obvious things like .deb vs .rpm and different desktop environments.
And, additionaly: Do you know the reason for the bind-mounts problem I described or the fonts-rendering problem in fedora?
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