| From: David Collier-Brown <davec-b@rogers.com> | For a long time, I've been using the Fedora XFCE spin, but wanted to build a | new for-work dev machine and got RHEL 7.2, so I would have a supported version | to host recent tools on. | | Fedora is fun, but tends to lag in app versions while being at the bleeding | edge in kernel versions, I hadn't noticed that. Can you give an example of a package that mattered to you? I was under the (untested) impression that Fedora updates applications more frequently than Ubuntu. But maybe that's because, where I use Ubuntu, I usually use LTS. RHEL really does keep applications stable to a fault. That's what their mandate is. They've recently softened this with a new scheme that lets you choose to bolt on blessed updated subsystems ("software collections"). These are not replacements but additions. Keeping packages current, if it is done right, is a lot of labour. Doing it wrong causes grief for the user. I imagine only the well-resourced distros can do it themselves for a broad range of packages. Debian does it for many downstream distros. Stability vs quick adoption of change is a tradeoff. In my (limited) world, I put these as useful points on a spectrum: RHEL 6, RHEL 7, Ubuntu LTS 12.04, Ubuntu LTS 14.04, Ubuntu, Fedora I don't really have a feel for where to place the various Debian streams. I never end up using XFCE so I cannot address that.