Some people ask me from time to time what will Linux be after 6 months or a year, what changes are planned, which features will be implemented. The answer is actually very simple: Try Fedora & see first-hand! What you see in Fedora now will be used by all distributions' next releases. Since the creation of the Fedora Project, when the distro was named "Fedora Core" the goal was clear:push innovation to the limit, try new technologies, live on the edge!! At first many considered Fedora a test tube for Red Hat and maybe it was. But now it is for all! What other distros consider risky and "not mature" Fedora delivers it and with style I might add. Because Fedora always was rightfully proud about its artwork and never gave as an unstable OS.
Fedora 10 with KDE4What new things does Fedora bring with its latest version 10?
- PackageKit: It is the biggest development in Linux program installation in years, in my opinion. It can be used by ALL distributions as a GUI while using their back-end of choice (APT, YUM, ZYPPER, URPMI, whatever). Unification at no cost to diversity & choice. It can't get any better, can it?
- KDE 4.1.3(now 4.2.1): It feels stable and well integrated. Can't wait for version 4.3!
- Gnome 2.24: It brings incremental updates as usual, such as tabs in Nautilus.
- OpenOffice 3: Version 3 can open MS-Office 2007 files. A big Plus to interoperability that Ms-Office XP+2003 users need a plug-in to achieve!! Fedora made the update. Ubuntu hasn't yet.
- Firefox 3: I know, if you read once more about Firefox 3, you 'll shoot yourself on the leg!!
- Plymouth: It's hard to describe, so see the video. It's not a screensaver, it's the bootloader!!
- RPM 4.6: This is a major update to RPM package management system, "the first one in several years, to replace the ageing and messy rpm 4.4.x codebase"
- Improved pulseaudio.
- Latest kernel 2.6.27
- Latest Compiz fusion 0.7.8
- Boot-time: Fedora 10 includes multiple boot-time updates, including changes that allow for faster booting and graphic booting changes.
- The great (as usual!) Solar theme.
As you saw in the above videos, it is not an exaggeration to say that Fedora 10 is the best looking OS by far.
All my hardware worked out of the box, although I don't have any "exotic" devices (ATI 3650 video card, Sound Blaster X-FI and onboard ethernet controller). Pulse audio gave me no problems. A nice addition is LXDE Desktop (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment), as it uses less system resources than Gnome or KDE and is ideal for older computers and netbooks.
The only disadvantage I discovered after a few days of using it, is that Yum speed is not as good as Ubuntu's & Debian's apt-get and Synaptic. It takes some time to check the dependencies, while synaptic is much snappier.
Would I suggest Fedora? To anyone that has never tried Linux before, I will keep suggesting Ubuntu. First time Linux users don't usually care so much about the free/open source ideology and want the easiest possible way to have 3d graphics, flash and wireless support. And Ubuntu makes it much easier for the new user. Ubuntu's Live-CD is better as well, as it includes OpenOffice(although it is ver 2.4.1) where Fedora's has abiword and Gnumeric.
On the other hand I suggest to anyone who is feeling comfortable with Linux to try Fedora. Because if there is an innovative OS, than this is Fedora. And it's configuration tools are better.
Sounds great! Where can I get Fedora? Is it completely free?
You can get Fedora from the official Fedora Project site.It is totally free and does not ask for serial numbers, activation or registration. You can download the CD version or a DVD version that contains both Gnome & KDE. Or you can download the PowerPC version if you have an old MAC.
6 comments:
I've been looking at Fedora for a bit now and like what they are doing. I tried OpenSUSE not too far back and installed one basic packages that pulled in like thirty dependencies, then I learned what dependency hell meant. With my low speed-connection, I'm not going to try another rpm distro until the package manager gets fixed, otherwise, I'd like to.
What new things does Fedora bring with its latest version 10?
PackageKit: It is the biggest development in Linux program installation in years, in my opinion. It can be used by ALL distributions as a GUI while using their back-end of choice (APT, YUM, ZYPPER, URPMI, whatever). Unification at no cost to diversity & choice. It can't get any better, can it?
Sounds neato. I for one never had much luck with rpm distros. Mandriva was a nightmare for me with umpri and package management. I might look into this later after saving up my pennies for another hardrive. Aint Linux fun.
I really like the idea of bringing the newest and best software to the desktop and I think that Fedora is quite good at this.
However, most features you listed were already in Intrepid:
-GNOME 2.24: check
-Linux 2.6.27: check
-Compiz 7.8: check
-Firefox 3: check
-KDE 4.1: check
This was October last year. Soon the new version of Ubuntu will be released with a new kernel, GNOME and Compiz(8.2).
OpenOffice 3 wasn't included in Intrepid though.
I'm also curious to the PulseAudio improvements, that wasn't really good in the current stable Ubuntu.
Plymouth really is a great improvement and I think Fedora did some great work here.
Well, we should list the upstream projects that every distro includes, shouldn't we?? Otherwise for Ubuntu 9.04 the only thing to write would be the new cool notification system.(I hope it becomes default for Gnome, so every distro includes it)
Ubuntu 9.10 will have Plymouth by default, as well!
2.6.27 isn't exactly latest when there are distro's releasing with 2.6.28 and 2.6.29 is in the final RC before release in the next few days.
Concerning the kernel: Fedora 10 is a few months old, which is A LOT in Fedora terms!! Fedora 11 will ship with the latest available kernel at the time of release.
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