I am not aware of the previous Fedora stewardship, but I am a fan of the work Matthew Miller has done as Fedora project leader.
It's transformed from a niche, business-focused distribution, to a forward-facing, top-shelf distro I see more and more recommended. After a decade on Arch Linux, a foray into macOS and Windows, I'm back to Linux and this time Fedora is the perfect distro for me.
Killer features:
* Upstream first. Why I originally went with Arch Linux. Maintainers should only patch iff software is unusable unpatched. In general, upstream knows what they're doing better than any distro maintainer.
* Sane and pragmatic defaults for people that have things to do. This is not a build-your-own-distro package, it's ready from day one to get on with your day.
* Standard, open technologies, instead of home-grown, NIH software. cough Canonical cough.
* Free software only, but not to ultraorthodox levels. It gives us a choice to enable third-party and non free repository at first boot.
* Spins instead of community-maintained derivatives distros. Fedora spins are exactly like the base Fedora Workstation, but with a different set of pre-installed packages.
* Forward facing. BTRFS by default, Pipewire by default, Wayland by default, have all started here. Fedora Silverblue is a look at the future of Linux OS with first-party support. OpenSUSE has explored this space, pretty much nobody else is.
--
With Fedora the year of the Linux desktop feels a little closer. To many more years of success!
It's transformed from a niche, business-focused distribution, to a forward-facing, top-shelf distro I see more and more recommended. After a decade on Arch Linux, a foray into macOS and Windows, I'm back to Linux and this time Fedora is the perfect distro for me.
Killer features:
* Upstream first. Why I originally went with Arch Linux. Maintainers should only patch iff software is unusable unpatched. In general, upstream knows what they're doing better than any distro maintainer.
* Sane and pragmatic defaults for people that have things to do. This is not a build-your-own-distro package, it's ready from day one to get on with your day.
* Standard, open technologies, instead of home-grown, NIH software. cough Canonical cough.
* Free software only, but not to ultraorthodox levels. It gives us a choice to enable third-party and non free repository at first boot.
* Spins instead of community-maintained derivatives distros. Fedora spins are exactly like the base Fedora Workstation, but with a different set of pre-installed packages.
* Forward facing. BTRFS by default, Pipewire by default, Wayland by default, have all started here. Fedora Silverblue is a look at the future of Linux OS with first-party support. OpenSUSE has explored this space, pretty much nobody else is.
--
With Fedora the year of the Linux desktop feels a little closer. To many more years of success!