I don't think Fedora is going anywhere for quite a while. I'd stick with it. If IBM eventually kills it, it'll be far enough in the future that whatever you choose now will no longer the best option.
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2025
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Fedora is its own thing, and unless IBM was RHEL to die, they have to keep kicking resources in, because the majority of non-security contributions come downstream from the Fedora community.
This assumes IBM will act rationally, which doesn’t have much recent precedence.
i figure, I just want to be ready if something does happen.
Then you should just keep backups of your user data separate from your OS, so that you can more easily migrate.
i dont have anything big enough to back up to. my system has 1.5 TB.
If you are worried about corporate ownership and like KDE. Debian is a good stable Distro for your needs.
Since timely updates are an issue, specifically Debian Testing is a good stable distro.
Yeah i run debian sid but i mainly do that to help with bug testing and have timeshift hourly snapahots. Stable with backports and flatpacks should be enough for a normal gamer user.
Debian testing has way less packages
It also lags slightly behind on security updates
Probably no need to rush into anything. It sounds like the reorg is moving a data security team into Red Hat, and isn't necessarily enshittifying anything.
A backup plan is always good, but this could wind up being a nothingburger.
Legal, hr, finance, and accounting is now IBM, and IBM has noted job cuts as part of the cost savings in its profit forecasting.
Engineering, product, sales, and marketing are not making any changes - yet.
I would note that IBM is also now pushing its "enhanced AI" support over speaking with actual people, unless you have an upgraded support tier. Basic support tier can also no longer escalate cases.
I would agree in not needing to rush anywhere, but I would have to say this looks like the start of enshittification for sure.
Yeah, I agree. The big picture is concerning, though this latest instance just happens to not be a red flag. We're not enshittified yet, but it's a short jump depending on IBM's next decisions.
Considering Red Hat's core is development, it's not necessarily a bad thing to merge things like legal, HR, finance, and accounting with IBM's own departments.
The trouble is, once the parent company starts merging some departments, shareholders often push to merge more departments.
If the right people hold sway at IBM, Red Hat won't continue that route to the point of fucking up the OS. But that's a big "if."
The trouble is, once the parent company starts merging some departments, shareholders often push to merge more departments.
Especially since they are talking about all the money they will save cutting jobs.
Based on the time frames for this, I'm going to guess by the end of 2026 the engineering team will shrink, followed by a 2027 announcement of merging departments for better management, and RedHat basically be just IBM entirely by 2028.
If I still had any servers on RH for work, I'd be planning my moves right about now (personally I started the shift after the 2023 announcement on source code availability, finalized the last three servers in June actually).
Really quite a shame to see how things have changed.
Anyway, I'd suspect there are at least a couple years left before its a mess.
Yeah, I'm not panicking, but I agree with everything you said.
I want to believe that someone at IBM realizes what they lost if they fuck up Red Hat, but I'm sure we all know better than to count on it.
It's just a bummer we have to have this conversation at all. Even when a corporation tries to start out on the right foot, odds are stacked in favor of enshittifying.
i think this sums up what I was getting at a little better than I said it
I ditched Fedora because I didn't like the way the wind was blowing. I mention because despite having a bias against Redhat, I agree with most of the sentiment in the comments. I don't think the future of Fedora is in any kind of jeopardy and if you're happy with the distro, you should keep using it.
Opensuse tumbleweed if you want stability, rpm packages, and bleeding edge. They also have a fantastic KDE edition.
I've been using Tumbleweed for years, and it's great.
I'm definitely leaning that way so far, are there any major differences from fedora I need to be aware of?
I would guess yast, merlyn, zypper, no rpm fusion (?), but you get OPI, good security defaults like apparmor and ufw (which messes with printers). I like it so far. I’ve found most packages im looking for and it hasn’t broken on me once during an upgrade. Zypper also recently got a big speed buff that I’m aware of.
I don't think you have to change. But if you want a new hobby, try Arch. I got it just the way I like it years ago and haven't had to change anything. I picked Arch because I always ended up on their wiki anyway.
The Arch wiki is useful not matter what distro you're on.
even when I was on like tuxedo os it was helpful
ive tried arch a couple times but I dont really get a lot of the options and its a bit more technical than I'm looking for.
If you don’t like bog standard Debian, you might really like Debian Testing.
It allows you to get decently new packages; I’d say typical lag is one week to a couple months depending on the popularity and/or complexity of the project.
I’ve been using it on my desktop for over three years just fine. It’s been quite stable while still getting new software versions in a mostly timely fashion.
Do note though that Testing means Testing; it’s not really concerned with being a rolling release distro, but with preparing for the next release, so there’s a few quirks:
- Sometimes, a package you’re using gets removed while its dependencies undergo a transition, forcing you to use the Flatpak.
- When a new stable release starts to get close (usually 6 months), they’ll start what’s called freezes, where they let in progressively less changes until release, after which things start speeding up again.
- As a general annoyance of anything rolling release-esque, software behavior may change over time, meaning a previously good config can suddenly break, and you have to fix it.
Personally, I’ve grown tired of Debian Testing and rolling release in general; while I still using Testing on my desktop, I’ve thrown Debian Stable on most things I’ve owned since then, and if I really need a newer version of software, I’ll just install the Flatpak or use a container.
Did you try Kalpa? (opensuse) unfortunately, I don't know in which state it is. Aeon works very well for me. I've used silverblue before and I was surprised how good it is.
i dont think I have. ive tried leap and tumbleweed or whatever they're called before but I didn't see any reason to use it over fedora at the time.
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Garuda has been great for gaming, super easy and stable. I landed there after Bazzite and it has been great.
might have to look at that
Is nobody using Ubuntu (just wondering)? 🤔
Ubuntu's not "cool." Personally I don't care for GNOME or the theming in general. Also snaps are not popular. I do like the Debian base though, so I just use Debian KDE.
snaps! hiss
Ubuntu desktop is only gnome based. They modify it pretty heavily before shipping it.
If you don't care for the gnome workflow that is fine but if you have issues with the Ubuntu desktop it is probably caused by Ubuntu.
true, but imo its even worse on Ubuntu. i just like KDE better
I did for quite a while, since it was basically Debian with some extras that I found useful. (The PPA build farm and server, for example.) Then they started forcibly replacing native packages that I used with snaps, which caused me more trouble than I was willing to tolerate, so I switched to Debian Stable.
I still have family members using Ubuntu. I'll probably migrate them to Debian eventually, but there's no hurry, since their needs are pretty basic.
In my experience some packages are also broken such as podman
thats definitely something I want. i really want to be able to have compatibility with as many apps as possible and podman/toolbx are awesome for that.
It is either dead or dying
It is still pops up from time to time but isn't what it used to be
I do and find it stable and comfortable, but for most those two things make it boring i suppose :D
I've not been on linux for long, but I like my kubuntu system. Took a bit of fiddling (non standard video drivers, non standard Proton for steam, wayland was buggy on my hardware), but now it's been working a treat for both gaming and productivity.
Judging by the sentiments for Ubuntu on here, I feel like it's unfairly maligned. It seems like everyone wants Linux to be easier to adopt by the masses, but they don't like the distros that fill that niche.
Mint is pretty popular and that's not much other than reskinned Ubuntu
i dont like ubuntu, both stock and as a base for something else. my experience with distros based on it has been pretty bad, and given the choices canonical tends to make I dont think they are heading in a direction I like.
xubuntu is where it's at.
Why wouldn't you use Debian Xfce4?
Although fedora is unlikely to break bad anytime soon, it's better to support a distro with a good downstream company.
KDE recently released their own immutable distro based on Arch. It's still early though, so maybe use Bazzite or Kinoite in the meantime.
OpenSUSE MicroOS is another immutable like Fedora Atomic, and you can use it as a desktop.
yeah ive heard about KDE Linux but its too early to use rn. hadn't heard of microOS
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