I always used Ubuntu on my hardware and about 90% Debian derived distros for customers vs a 10% of Red Hat derived ones, some CentOS and some Amazon Linux 2. I really don't like rpm. I do adapt to the different organization of the configuration files but I prefer the Debian one (maybe because of habit.) Most importantly I feel it's easier to google for solutions to Ubuntu problems. Of course I'm also more used to do that, I'm probably at 20 vs 1 Debian/Ubuntu vs RH machines now.

I’m a developer who’s pretty much always used Ubuntu, and haven't bothered digging too deep into other distros. What are the modern features I’m missing?

To put it simply: most things that you are enjoying in Ubuntu now first showed up in Fedora months or even years ago.

The packaging system is what originally brought me to debian and ubuntu; RPM caught up a while back, but apt was better for decades. Stability and easy access to good tooling is what I like about Ubuntu; how is Fedora better?

Fedora is a maintainers dream, in my (limited) opinion.

Things like mock and fedpkg make modifying upstream/bundling your own stuff up super easy. Then add in COPR (like PPAs) and it's a feedback-loop friendly setup

It's also a very "tidy" system to administer for the most part, although sometimes I get tripped up on the "sysconfig" stuff.

What does Fedora currently have that Ubuntu is missing?

Fedora just gets everything sooner. Newer kernels, gnome, packages. But it's still rock solid because of Red Hat/IBM.

Well, that's just bullshit.

You either get stuff sooner or get stuff more stable, you can't have 'rock solid' stuff sooner.

Depends what you mean by stable... In my experience, recent Fedora releases don't break. They also have the best laptop compatibility. But if 3rd party software (or your own software) targets specific libs, you need to keep up. Ubuntu is typically about one release cycle behind.

"the early bird get's the worm, but the second mouse get's the cheese."

Ubuntu feels to me like it’s been feature complete for about ten years and all we really get in the new versions are updated upstream apps and drivers, a stability crapshoot (sometimes better, sometimes worse), and an extension of support. Is Fedora doing anything different?

Fedora is where most of the innovations in Linux happen, because it's an upstream of CentOS Stream, which is an upstream of RHEL.

Manjaro! It gives you the best of Arch without the tinkerers overhead... I've used RHEL, Debian/Ubuntu, Slackware, et al, and Manjaro, for a laptop, is hands-down the best developer distro out there IMHO.

I have to say I agree. I feel like a lot of people seem to think it is a suit and tie enterprise type boring distribution. Its really not. It has similarities to the enterprise distros, but it certainly doesn't feel like RHEL.

Its where the new fun stuff goes first... not so new that it will bite you, but still new enough to be fun to play with. That seems perfectly in line with the marketing I see from framework.