Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

Linus Torvalds currently uses Fedora with GNOME, which was fun to learn because that's also been my personal choice for a while now.

(source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA )

Yeah mine too (but using Silverblue).

After spending years with Arch/NixOS/Ubuntu/Sway Im quite happy with Fedora+GNOME now. It just works.

It's been well known for awhile now that it's his preferred setup.

He seems to want as much stability as possible; while being as minimal as possible; with as little fuss to install and keep up to date as possible. Fedora meets those needs. Gnome is Fedora's main concentration.

He explained that in the linked video - Fedora makes it easy for him to test custom kernel builds.

He said also because fedora seemed the most amenable to running custom kernels which is basically what he does all day.

Oh I didn't know Gnome was the official flavour now, last time I paid attention it was still KDE

It's been a long, long time. I think Red Hat 8/9 (from 2002-2003) had a default KDE build. Even in Fedora Core 1 Gnome was default.

Now, there's a separate build to download for KDE. It's likely because Gnome is default install for Red Hat Enterprise Workstation.

I don't think it's ever been KDE.

He seems to switch every half-decade or so. Waiting for his next KDE era :-)

Indeed. In fact, only recently the Fedora KDE version was elevated to "Edition" status and is now on the same tier as the Gnome version.

Most newer popular distros (Bazzite, CachyOS, Zorin, Asahi, etc.) default to KDE now, and it's very nice that Fedora's not only keeping up, but also providing the basis for some of them.

Which is weird, I've compiled and ran custom kernels and modules on debian before fedora 1.0 iso was announced on freenode/#fedora and it wasn't even good.

It seems you're right, and now I'm wondering how I ever thought otherwise...

No worries. I started using Fedora around the 4-5 timeframe and am still using it 40 editions later -- time flies. To my memory, it's always been GNOME-first.

I've been very pleased with KDE on Fedora for the past ~five years.

Ok have you considered things may have changed in the 40+ releases since then?

He must not use any gnome extensions.

Yes, but I've been considering both operating systems to have changed for the better, not just fedora for some weird reason.

For Gentoo, it was/is? part of the standard installation to configure and build a custom kernel.

LTT is my most watched channel according to YouTube rewind, but this one was one of my favourite of all time.. I was excited for this to drop as soon as Fake Linus started to hint at it.

It still is an utter pain if you ever need to get close to the rpm system.

Probably what he means is that a make install (or whatever the incantation, it’s been a while since I compiled a kernel) just works on Fedora and never has to deal with the rpm nonsense (I use Fedora too, but packaging is even more dreadful than deb, if you can believe it)

I remember the first gentoo. On the framebuffer it had a beautiful blue/gray background with the logo and provided you with choices. You could build everything from scratch or install a bootstrapped version. I tried both, failed and gave up (my poor AMD k5 couldn't handle the heat). But the point here is: it was always easy to build a kernel within your debian installation from deb-src. You could even build it as a deb, install it and reboot into it. If my job was to manage a linux kernel, I'd have a script which took the latest sources, set kernel parameters, packaged it as deb-src and then it is just two steps to build and reboot. Then I could switch between them easily.

Indeed it is strange. Red Hat is more or less considered the corporate steward/benefactor of modern Gnome.