Fedora 37/38 Budgie Spin
Running this from beginning of Feb when the writing was on the wall.
First understand the bristling and squirmy bed of contradictions that is Fedora. A virtual established nation-state of worker ants, since the 90's, now the size of Lithuania.
It suffers simultaneously from way too many damned chiefs that have mucked it up ad infitum and stunningly, an entirely stable and easy desktop in spite of those chiefs. Buckle up.
Fedora is Gnome Workstation. Only Gnome since the 90s. It's Gnome today.A renegade faction of ants, with Rhel's (rhel=nation state el presidente) blessing decided to create their Spins. Spins are LXQT, XFCE, Budgie, and a bunch of stuff that is not Gnome. It's community forked but that community is watched tightly by the nation state. Probably a good thing.
I consulted Mr. Strobl about Budgie. I learned Budgie could install over the Gnome Workstation...or I could beta test the brand new Budgie Spin Prerelease 38. I went from one to the other. (37 to Beta.) Sadly the Spin still has GDM which is still sandbagging the kernel when it is not use (crashes). At Buddies of Budgie there are GDM removal instructions, I got to get on that. Using LightDM with GDM still there gives Fedora Budgie a hint of instability....although my Prerelease turned Official today...
Behold a beautiful crisp customizable Budgie that you know:
Kept the top tight, let the plank drift left. this really agrees with the fingers all the way around. the centered menu pulls down with the WIN key and looks familiar. Note Budgie Desktop Settings and Control Center. NOTE: I did have to install Gnome-Settings to override something but that was a month ago and I did that in Solus too...
Very Budgie, very awesome. Not to beat a dead horse but Nemo kicks the snot out of Nautilus--
and is stock. Solus finally did this before the outage when I exiled to Mate. I look forward to my return to Solus.
PACKAGING: one of the many Fedora accepted "kinks" that you learn to work with, like anywhere...3 software centers and they all show different stuff--none of them are even cousins. Software center GUI is awful. I use it read, like Solus' SC, not to do anything else. Solus: has cool changelog in their SC GUI. Fedora: has snarky 1-5 star app reviews for each product. Some may appreciate it though.
The crappy thing is it has no real categories. Solus has this beat by a mile. Oh, yeah, you see vague buttons like "work" and "play" but they dead-end into "editor's picks" and "Ed from Pascal's Pizza Pick" and so on. The only way to see a list of apps is to type "password manager" --or your phrase---in the upper left magnifying class. Too many chiefs killed this software center.
WHY I WILL NEVER USE A DEB STRIPE AGAIN:
DEB: take this Snap and love it. No .deb package for you ever. You had to scrounge a curated (by someone else) package like Brave online. Debian hates curated .deb packages. You will not see ^^ a picture like this in the deb software center.
FEDORA: we demand you get a Flatpak from our curated Flatapaks or Flathub Flatpaks. (AINT HAVING TWO FLATPAK REPOS BIZARRE?).
FEDORA: but here's a curated RPM if you don't if you don't like that idea.
Me: Why thank you I believe I will have the RPM.
DNF, every bit at good as EOPKG (but not faster and I don't care) is the best to search with (like eopkg):
sudo eopkg rmo and dcMUCH BETTER than dnf autoremove or clean all (equivalent commands): dnf commands all too often raid /boot efi files and disappear them. then black blinking cursor of death. i am using Fedora Budgie booted from another HDD because Fedora DNF tore the boot out its own install....
updating grub2 .config sucks and you have to live with it sometimes. everything has kinks. I like the distro and I get a lot of work plus goofing on it.
SOFTWARE center and DNF don't even have the same packages to install. Too many chiefs. Then there is a third SC called DNFDragora which is a hail mary search that scapes everything:
I've found stuff that wasn't in either...to many chiefs.
Too many repos. Maybe 20. Some they vouch for, some are theirs, some they let you install gladly and easily while winking at you and scolding at the same time. Too many chiefs. Mixed messages.
CONS of Daily Driving:
**the operating itself (not the packages) system updates yearly and changes editions number. many Fedora forum users wait for this like they wait for a colonoscopy, all having a different ritual or plan when the upgrade---WHICH YOU HAVE TO DO MANUALLY--comes with no guarantees. Fedora, to its credit, seperates your/home on install so borking will have no effect (a PRO actually)
***cowards like me who want to skip the tragedy will just move from (OLD OFFICIAL VERSION) to (BETA TESTING NEXT VERSION) which acutally comes with regular catastrophes but at least its patched up and fixed as it goes, daily. Beta testers simply update their system til its official while the others go from 37 to 38 the hard way.
**this distro is so well-documented it's over-documented. That means you will never find the information you need because every fix is version-specific. you will find an upgrade article from 2003 next to one from 2023. you might fix your problem in 4 hours when you could have fixed in in 15 minutes. Fedora Terminators needs to internet prune in a bad way. Depracated info in huge piles--Terrabytes of outdated info exist and muddy. Too many chiefs.
***I have a dozen repos and something's wrong with that
***ufw presets are /sus/ as the kids say. this distro a little more trusting than Solus. I miss that about Solus.
PROS:
***the packages inside the editions (OS) are not rolling...they are updated daily. from firefox to glib to kernel to security. Every day. Go worker ants!
**snazzy
***easy...rhel way of doing things has always agreed with more than deb way. totally subjective of course.
***pretty
***every package you could desire. rpms rule.
**No K-packages to contaminate and infest and mangle your system😉
***it's familiar:
One more con: installing Nvidia drivers are hard. There is no doflicky. There are 85 sanctioned convoluted ways to shoehorn Nvidia...sadly none of them involve using a normal install.
Lasty i LOOOOOOOOOOOVe the software and it will be hard to leave. That is better than solus in that respect.
things I use everday:
the F is a weird browser that japanese college students made called Floorp. Yes Floorp. They set out to fork Firefox and make it look like exactly like Chrome. A daily driver for sure. And a trip.
See the small D in the green box? Dialect: A translator that is FOSS and does NOT use google.
Blue ungoogled appimage there, my favorite browser. No current RPMS exist for this.
See the three 3D squares? OnlyOffice Baby. If you want something like apache open office except actually worked on by humans in the last few years then OnlyOffice rocks as a Suite. I personally needed Libre dumbed down for my simpleton tastes. All of its programs are stable for me. Strangley the nation-state distro did not ship with any office software. It's OK. I like being left to my own devices there.
Budgie Spin OOTB Software:
Atril is OOTB. Evince is cleaner but not enough for me to switch.
Parole media player sucks. It will not play anything until you fetch the 264 stuff. I had to install VLC which makes no demands on me.
I forget what notepad there was. I am in love with Gedit and pretty much swap that out wherever I go.
FF is OOTB, I always use it.
EYE of MATE is the default picture viewer. See Atril.
Gnome-Terminal. I've tried to replace you but I can't. I enjoy using it and always have.
Gnome-Disks: see Gnome-terminal^.
All in all this was the right place for me til the dust settles. It's easy and pretty and not complicated and as long as you are able to get used to 'idiosynchracies' without crying or moaning you will be fine. Isnt that the norm for every distro tho?
Solus is famous for "gets out of your way and lets you work." Fedora Budgie Spin follows the same philosophy.
The Fedora Budgie Spin is managed personally by Josh Strobl (vis a vis the nation-state of Rhel) of Buddies of Budgie and it's pretty easy to ask a Fedora Budgie question at Buddies or their emails. The maintainer is pretty responsive.
In the end you can really flush this review and all reviews down the toilet because at the end of the day because we all know what we can deal with and what we can't deal with. that's why we hop or auditon or test drive. The most popular distros are the ones I am bored with (been there done that) or everythng breaks for me.
I've tried UBU, Arch, Ultramarine (I likey), Spiral, etc versions of Budgie but the closest one to the old crisp responsive Solus Budgie experience is Fedora so it was a good fit for me personally.
Edge: Solus
Solus is still the hottest one on the block.
Solus feels more secure (traffic-wise, what have you)
I want to say Solus is more stable but I'm one day out of Beta Testing.
It will be hard to leave Fedora Budgie/it will be easy to go back to Solus Budgie. Reconcile that🙂.
edit: edits
