I did the Linux Distro Chooser and it came up with Fedora, Mandriva & OpenSUSE. I haven't had any experience with Fedora. I have given it a test-run.
With version 10 Fedora has released its most recent Linux distribution out there. It is a free distribution which is targeted at more advanced users. It functions as a sort of digital testing grounds for the commercial Red Hat distribution (which is quite excellent by the way). This tenth release aka 'Cambridge' introduces quite an myriad of changes and improvements.
Fedora 10 promises better networking, shorter boot-times, more hardware-support and access to the newest and Linux software out there. The first Fedora 10 alpha was released last August and right now the completed version 10 is down loadable.
Installing
Fedore comes with quite a bit of software spread over no less than 6 discs. Booting from the CD shows the 'Anaconda' installer and it al looks very professional. The installation procedure is just as easy as in the Mandriva distribution. What is different from the previous distributions is that it gives you the option to encrypt the entire hard-drive right from the start. This could be a valuable thing for people lugging around their Linux laptop filled with precious data. When booting from an encrypted system the user has to type in two passwords, first the encryption password and later on the log-in password. It is possible to create a multi-boot system just like the many other Linux distributions I wrote about earlier.
Booting times are shortened - according to the developers - to me it seems that you are kept busy with fancy graphics but it is rather fast nonetheless.
I opted to install the Gnome desktop as I have had less good experiences with the still experimental KDE4.1 desktop that is also available. If you do want to try it out you could download the KDE4.1 live cd. After booting you are presented with a Gnome 2.24 desktop and I must say the 'Solar' theme looks nice - very up to date and very much like Vista/OSX including the rather huge desktop icons that seem to be the most fancyfull thing these days. It is rather blue though a whole assortment of wallpapers can be chosen - they remind me quite a bit of the ones provided with Vista and OSX. The 'finder' or 'explorer' that comes with Fedora 10 is rather simple, each folder you want to open will open up a new window on the screen very much like the old OS2/Warp and the default Windows95 explorer settings - there is no 'breadcrumb' navigation tool.
Network
Networking is smooth sailing on Fedora 10, thanks to the new 2.6.xx kernel a wide array of Wifi chip sets are supported right from within Linux without the need to use the ndiswrapper I wrote about earlier and offers a similar experience as Mandriva.
Video & audio and other applications
Like Mandirva Fedora 10 comes with Open office 3.0. For browsing the web Firefox 3.x is present and unlike Mandriva - where flash works right out of the box - you need to install flash manually which is no big deal to the more experienced user.
Due to liscensing problems mp3 playback also isn't possible right after installation and one needs to download and install the appropriate files separately.
Feodra 10 does come with a new sound server called 'Pulse audio' which is supposed to be more efficient and more stable than the well known OSS and ALSA solutions
The Nvidia and Ati drivers that Mandriva One comes with are not present in Fedora 10 - also these need to be installed separately - again no big deal for the more experienced user. Livna is an alternative software repository that will probably offer these missing files as easy to install packages in the near future. Actually things like this make the Fedora distribution so great in my opinion.
There is no F10 repository yet.
Installing and downloading software is done through 'Yum' which is Fedora's main software package tool. Contrary to the very informative dialog screen on the Mandriva software management tool Fedora's Yum is rather minimalistic when it comes to providing the user with progress information in the gui. You really need to delve into the log terminal window to get any hints of what the system is doing.
I did opt to install the main developers tools and c compilers. You really need those and the developers libraries if you want to install programs - emulators for example - that aren't in the software repositories. You need to download the source code and compile the software yourself. If you know what libraries are on your system and what dependencies are needed by the source code it is quite easy to make and install the binaries and have the new software up and running in no time. Compiling is relatively fast - even on my mere 1.5Ghz PentiumM - perhaps the 2Gb RAM memory help!
Safe boot
It is fairly easy to use the so called 'First Aid kit' that is able to repair and restore corrupted boot loaders, repair failed raid systems. One needs to manually add that to the system but I would not go without it as you might need it.
Verdict:
The experience is slightly less smooth than the Mandriva experience. The Gnome desktops differ slightly and I actually prefer the Mandriva Gnome one. I needed to manually install quite a bit of extra software that was available in the Mandriva One distribution - but that distribution is extra special because it is known to include closed source 3rd party software.
All in all a no brainer to install and very easy to use. With red hat package compatibility the amount of software available seems to be quite larger than the Mandriva installation.
I really have to try out both systems more in depth on a spare system later on.
For now I will go with Mandriva One 2009, but Fedora 10 is very very intriguing.
With version 10 Fedora has released its most recent Linux distribution out there. It is a free distribution which is targeted at more advanced users. It functions as a sort of digital testing grounds for the commercial Red Hat distribution (which is quite excellent by the way). This tenth release aka 'Cambridge' introduces quite an myriad of changes and improvements.
Fedora 10 promises better networking, shorter boot-times, more hardware-support and access to the newest and Linux software out there. The first Fedora 10 alpha was released last August and right now the completed version 10 is down loadable.
LIVE CDs
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/10/Live/i686/
F10-i686-Live-KDE.iso 19-Nov-2008 14:30 679M
F10-i686-Live.iso 19-Nov-2008 14:20 681M
INSTALLATION CDs (6 in total!!!)
Fedora-10-i386-disc1.iso 19-Nov-2008 20:02 687M
Fedora-10-i386-disc2.iso 19-Nov-2008 20:02 674M
Fedora-10-i386-disc3.iso 19-Nov-2008 20:03 676M
Fedora-10-i386-disc4.iso 19-Nov-2008 20:03 691M
Fedora-10-i386-disc5.iso 19-Nov-2008 20:04 687M
Fedora-10-i386-disc6.iso 19-Nov-2008 20:04 80M
Fedora-10-i386-netinst.iso 19-Nov-2008 19:53 129M
INSTALLATION DVD
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/10/Fedora/i3...
Installing
Fedore comes with quite a bit of software spread over no less than 6 discs. Booting from the CD shows the 'Anaconda' installer and it al looks very professional. The installation procedure is just as easy as in the Mandriva distribution. What is different from the previous distributions is that it gives you the option to encrypt the entire hard-drive right from the start. This could be a valuable thing for people lugging around their Linux laptop filled with precious data. When booting from an encrypted system the user has to type in two passwords, first the encryption password and later on the log-in password. It is possible to create a multi-boot system just like the many other Linux distributions I wrote about earlier.
Booting times are shortened - according to the developers - to me it seems that you are kept busy with fancy graphics but it is rather fast nonetheless.
I opted to install the Gnome desktop as I have had less good experiences with the still experimental KDE4.1 desktop that is also available. If you do want to try it out you could download the KDE4.1 live cd. After booting you are presented with a Gnome 2.24 desktop and I must say the 'Solar' theme looks nice - very up to date and very much like Vista/OSX including the rather huge desktop icons that seem to be the most fancyfull thing these days. It is rather blue though a whole assortment of wallpapers can be chosen - they remind me quite a bit of the ones provided with Vista and OSX. The 'finder' or 'explorer' that comes with Fedora 10 is rather simple, each folder you want to open will open up a new window on the screen very much like the old OS2/Warp and the default Windows95 explorer settings - there is no 'breadcrumb' navigation tool.
Network
Networking is smooth sailing on Fedora 10, thanks to the new 2.6.xx kernel a wide array of Wifi chip sets are supported right from within Linux without the need to use the ndiswrapper I wrote about earlier and offers a similar experience as Mandriva.
Video & audio and other applications
Like Mandirva Fedora 10 comes with Open office 3.0. For browsing the web Firefox 3.x is present and unlike Mandriva - where flash works right out of the box - you need to install flash manually which is no big deal to the more experienced user.
Due to liscensing problems mp3 playback also isn't possible right after installation and one needs to download and install the appropriate files separately.
Feodra 10 does come with a new sound server called 'Pulse audio' which is supposed to be more efficient and more stable than the well known OSS and ALSA solutions
The Nvidia and Ati drivers that Mandriva One comes with are not present in Fedora 10 - also these need to be installed separately - again no big deal for the more experienced user.
Livna is an alternative software repository that will probably offer these missing files as easy to install packages in the near future. Actually things like this make the Fedora distribution so great in my opinion.
There is no F10 repository yet.
Installing and downloading software is done through 'Yum' which is Fedora's main software package tool. Contrary to the very informative dialog screen on the Mandriva software management tool Fedora's Yum is rather minimalistic when it comes to providing the user with progress information in the gui. You really need to delve into the log terminal window to get any hints of what the system is doing.
I did opt to install the main developers tools and c compilers. You really need those and the developers libraries if you want to install programs - emulators for example - that aren't in the software repositories. You need to download the source code and compile the software yourself. If you know what libraries are on your system and what dependencies are needed by the source code it is quite easy to make and install the binaries and have the new software up and running in no time. Compiling is relatively fast - even on my mere 1.5Ghz PentiumM - perhaps the 2Gb RAM memory help!
Safe boot
It is fairly easy to use the so called 'First Aid kit' that is able to repair and restore corrupted boot loaders, repair failed raid systems. One needs to manually add that to the system but I would not go without it as you might need it.
Verdict:
The experience is slightly less smooth than the Mandriva experience. The Gnome desktops differ slightly and I actually prefer the Mandriva Gnome one. I needed to manually install quite a bit of extra software that was available in the Mandriva One distribution - but that distribution is extra special because it is known to include closed source 3rd party software.
All in all a no brainer to install and very easy to use. With red hat package compatibility the amount of software available seems to be quite larger than the Mandriva installation.
I really have to try out both systems more in depth on a spare system later on.
For now I will go with Mandriva One 2009, but Fedora 10 is very very intriguing.
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Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc. | www.markvergeer.nl
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