Enterprise Linux on desktop?

Anyone using enterprise Linux on their desktop such as RHEL, Alma, Rocky, CentOS etc.?

I’m curious if it’s easy to use for this purpose or if the older packages are a pain.

@linux

  • spaghetti_carbanana@krabb.org
    2·
    9 months ago

    Sort of, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I started on OpenSUSE Leap but had issues getting things like GPU and Steam working. Red Hat was also a non-starter because of the lack of gaming functionality.

    TW works great for gaming and the enterprise features I care about (like domain joining) work out of the box. Its certainly harder to set up than something more geared towards home use (typically one of the various the downstreams of Debian or Arch) but that doesn’t bother me.

    • Shareni@programming.dev
      1·
      9 months ago

      Sort of

      Not even close

      Fedora Rawhide (?) == Opensuse TW

      Fedora == Opensuse leap

      RHEL == Suse enterprise

      The higher ones are a testing ground for the one below, until you get to the actual product, the enterprise distros. They have completely different priorities

      Red Hat was also a non-starter because of the lack of gaming functionality.

      Unless you’re running bleeding edge hardware, you can install the drivers just fine. Enterprise users also need GPUs. Flatpak solves steam in most cases.

      • NaN@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Opensuse Leap is built from SUSE Linux Enterprise and then additional packages added (those packages from Opensuse are also available to SUSE), it is not very comparable to Fedora and is more like Rocky Linux. SLE doesn’t have an upstream distribution in the same way Fedora is to RHEL.

        • Shareni@programming.dev
          1·
          8 months ago

          It seems neither of us are correct. According to this, they’re both built from TW, but now leap can use those enterprise packages as well. I couldn’t find a more recent article. The main reasoning seems to be to allow opensuse users to test sel packages.

          • NaN@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            1·
            8 months ago

            A Tumbleweed snapshot is very different than Fedora though. They are created automatically, sometimes daily, based on the activity in Factory and the result of automated testing, so any snapshot from there is essentially a snapshot of factory where the main development happens. Fedora has much more work before it is made a release.

            Leap uses SUSE Enterprise binaries now, it’s part of the closing the gap they mentioned towards the end and it did end up implemented in SP3. The package hub is community packages from openSUSE. SUSE and openSUSE have a very different and much more collaborative process.

            • Shareni@programming.dev
              1·
              8 months ago

              Isn’t the rawhide -> branched -> stable process similar?

              Rawhide is also rolling with daily updates, it gets frozen before a release (branched) and tested, and then branched is released as stable.

              TW is rolling, it gets frozen before a release and tested, and then that snapshot is released.

              They’re both using OpenQA to run automated tests before releasing the snapshot for the day.

              Leap uses SUSE Enterprise binaries now, it’s part of the closing the gap they mentioned towards the end and it did end up implemented in SP3.

              Nice, that’s good to know.

              The package hub is community packages from openSUSE. SUSE and openSUSE have a very different and much more collaborative process.

              Yeah, I’m starting to get that. It looks really nice for both corporate and personal interests.

      • spaghetti_carbanana@krabb.org
        1·
        9 months ago

        TIL about Fedora, last I knew it was a rolling bleeding edge OS. Clearly lots of movement in the Red Hat camp.

        As for gaming, drivers were not the problem for me. Getting games to run with ease was. On OpenSUSE, I just install Steam, enable Proton and basically go at that point. Red Hat was non-trivial to do this. Could be a skill issue, but I had a better time getting going with OpenSUSE TW.

        • biribiri11@lemmy.ml
          1·
          8 months ago

          Fedora has been a thing since 2003, released alongside Red Hat Enterprise Linux after Red Hat Linux was discontinued. The gaming issues sound interesting, though. Did you have steam installed through rpmfusion, flatpak, or something else?

          • spaghetti_carbanana@krabb.org
            2·
            8 months ago

            Sorry I meant TIL about it being considered stable, haha. I’ve known about Fedora because I used it when it was meant to replace the free Red Hat Linux.

            As for Steam, I don’t recall how I installed it, sorry! I just recall significant grief getting it going (again, perhaps a skill issue) but had no big roadblocks using OpenSUSE.

      • Secunergy 🐧@social.tchncs.de
        1·
        8 months ago

        @Shareni Not sure this comparison is correct

        Fedora rather corresponds to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or Debian Testing

        Fedora Rawhide is very experimental, OpenSUSE once had a testing version, couldn’t find it now on the download page

        • Shareni@programming.dev
          1·
          8 months ago

          Yeah, I learned more about their lifecycles due to this thread.

          I think you’re correct as far as usability is concerned, but they’ve got a lot of similarities:

          • both are released as daily snapshots, that were only auto tested
          • those snapshots are frozen before an update and tested further
          • then they’re released as a new minor/major version

          The comparison really breaks with leap and sel. While fedora is directly upstream of rhel, both sel and leap are downstream from TW, and leap also has sel packages and so it’s also downstream from it. But I think my point still sort of stands because it seems like they mainly implemented that to get additional testing for sel packages.

          Usability and stability wise, a better comparison would be: fedora:tw -> centos:leap -> rhel:sel