What did you dislike about Arch? I made the opposite move years ago: I went from Fedora to Arch, and it was possibly the best choice I could have made.

Not OP, but I value stability over having the latest version. Fedora is fairly bleeding edge compared to other fixed release distributions, but also tested.

Fedora is also easier to install. The older I get, the less hassle I want.

I had a similar view towards Linux at first, preferring Fedora to ArchLinux for stability. But after switching back to Arch and sticking with it I've learned stability is a matter of software choice and experience with Linux, it's not necessarily more or less stable at the OS/package manager level.

Using AUR/user-style packages or non-mainline packages (beta, unstable) is always a risk in whatever distro you use and stable packages in Arch are as stable as elsewhere... depending on the type of software you choose.

The power of ArchLinux makes the learning curve worth it IMO. Plus the minimalism of the base system is a good way to become intimately familiar with Linux.

The other major factor is what laptop you are using. Since switching to a Thinkpad (or Dell XPS) which has good hardware support in Linux I've had zero problems at the graphics/network/external monitor level which is typical source of issues with new distro releases.

I cannot disagree more. 90% of the most obnoxious issues I deal with on linux are related to nasty driver incompatibilities, and you will not convince me that I should have had more experience with linux. I want my drivers to work on install. I shouldn't need a second computer and a usb drive to get my system working.

... which is why I noted the importance of using well-supported hardware, ie Thinkpad or Dell XPS which are both very well documented in the ArchLinux wiki and well supported by the community with drivers. This solved a big chunk of the issues I was experiencing.

I've found the people who attack Linux for lack of graphics/network driver support are people who haven't used it in recent years. This was a far bigger problem in the past than it is today. But if you're planning to use Linux for your desktop, with the latest software, not 2yr old distros, it's essential to purchase a laptop with Linux in mind. Much like how MacOS is limited to particular hardware, it's good to view Linux for desktop similarly.

Fair enough, I mostly meant that certain distros are more likely to support your hardware out of the box.

I have had Arch break on numerous occasions. This is especially true if I am compiling things from scratch frequently. I've had Fedora break as well, but less so and generally it's easier to find my way out since I can refer back to the release notes.

I haven't really found anything I'd want to do that I couldn't do in Fedora. It's well documented, it's close to upstream, it's got a large community and it's linux. I don't feel I have any less power from using Fedora than from using Arch. Other than the rolling release and installation process, there's not much to separate them in day to day use.

I too went from Arch to Fedora and life is easier now. It's astonishing just how well Arch works, but maintaining it is still a lot of work.

I'm pretty busy and spent too much time fixing my Arch machine, which outweighed the time I was saving.

I still have an Arch laptop and many Arch virtual machines for playing CTFs and HAM radio stuff.

Flatpak is a fine replacement for AUR in many cases, and it's more secure, too (if you keep an eye on the permissions set in the manifests - many specify --filesystems=home).

(do not use rpmfusion for VLC and the like - use Flatpak instead!)

I'm surprised you prefer arch linux for amateur radio stuff. Hamlib, wsjtx, and fldigi are packaged and in the main repositories on fedora, but the same is not true for arch linux. What software are you using that you find easier with arch linux?

Most important reason is that I haven't actually tried.

Shack laptop is running Arch and a bunch of custom stuff that happened to compile fine on Arch.

Your comment made me check, and even GNURadio and osmosdr is packaged in Fedora. Huh. Time to re-visit that decision :-)

Fedora is THE distro for radio enthusiasts :-)

Those are all available in AUR (source packages / recipes), both latest release and -git versions.

I'm not using Arch, but do like reading Arch wiki quite often. Also you asked what is to dislike on Arch. It's just I don't see any value running bleeding edge. Looking at gnome changes for example. Don't mean, they're not doing great job, but I can safely skip many versions to see any significant difference. Reading Changelog for Gnome 3.26 keeps me convinced it's not something I'll rush for. Same with kernel (with some exceptional releases and CPU support). Rather wait for those small changes to accumulate and then reinstall my fav distro (let's say every 2 years). But I understand that we're all different and have different needs.

I absolutely loved AUR repository and I wish Fedora had something similar. However, with rolling release, something has always been broken: Gnome, GDM, Wayland session, suspend/wakeup, bluetooth. Update would often fix one thing and break another.

Nix/Guix as a better AUR replacement is something I want to try in the near future (maybe even pkgsrc if that's still a thing on Linux). Right now, I just compile myself and "stow" stuff (and sometimes use AUR for the build recipes).

I have experimented with Arch at times, but I didn't have a great experience with the package repository. It seems like I had to go to AUR for a lot of packages that were in the default repository (or at least RPM Fusion) for Fedora.

Isn't having to go to RPM Fusion for a package effectively the same as having to go to the AUR?

No, copr[1] is to Fedora as the AUR is to Arch, and as PPAs are to Ubuntu.

RPMFusion a very longstanding and trustworthy repository for software that fedora/RedHat can't/won't distribute. Many of the RPMFusion maintainers are also maintainers for fedora packages in the official repositories. RPMFusion is of very high quality and doesn't often break . You don't really have to worry about some Joe Shmoe putting together a rpm spec that backdoors your machine, just add the RPMfusion repository and you can forget about it.

That type of attitude should not apply to things like PPAs, the AUR, and copr. Anyone can put anything up and you're trusting random people online to not bork your machine. With RPMFusion you're still trusting internet strangers, but they have a solid track record of many years and it's effectively no different from trusting the maintainers of official packages.

[1]: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/

In the past, I might have said that there were some major similarities, but not so much now. The issue that I see with AUR is that each one is really independent and there isn't much of an assurance as to how well updated it would be. In the past, RPMFusion was also too slow to update for me, though, and I would frequently deal with update failures because of it.

But that changed a few releases back. I literally just updated from Fedora 26->27 and all of the RPMFusion packages were automatically upgraded along with it. I have also found that the repo maintainenance is exceptional at this point.

I think that the Fedora equivalent of AUR is probably COPR, but COPR probably isn't as good as AUR overall.

I switched from Arch to F25 and stuck through F26 as well. It was nice going into something that "just worked" but so many little issues I have with GNOME are starting to make rethink. Toast that doesn't autohide and oh you updated yesterday but too bad here's a toast to remind you to update today too! Here have toast about your battery! Toast about your GNOME extensions! Toast for everyone! And then disabling night light until tomorrow literally means the calendar day, not the next night light cycle, so if you are watching movies late and 12am hits then your night light turns back on. Wtf.

I should switch back to i3 or sway. There are just too many inconsistencies and little details or issues missed in GNOME that I feel should never make it into a release. Hopefully I don't break anything. I guess that's the advantage of Arch, I know what I'm getting into and there are decent docs for those kinds of changes.

I used Fedora for over a year until very recently and loved it for the same reason: rock solid. However, I recently made the move to Manjaro, an Arch variant with stable releases. Manjaro's definition of stable is not as stable as Fedora's, but the big draw to Arch for me is the AUR, which I think is even better than the Ubuntu's PPA system. COPR just doesn't have the breadth of software as the other two. If Fedora could expand their community to get more software available through COPR, or if they set up something similar to AUR, I would be back in a heartbeat.

>I wish other popular distros would do the same.

You don't have to wish. There are distros they're doing same. Won't name them, because names would make look biased.

Debian is one. Them most popular one (Ubuntu) does not do that.