Neil, this is like polished sales copy for Fedora. After reading this, I put it on my list to install Fedora this week. Thanks for such a well-mapped response. Kudos.
~kari On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Neil <[email protected]> wrote: > I just installed the new Fedora15 (desktop, not RedHat) release, which > comes with Gnome Shell, by default. > > I've personally been a fan of Red Hat/Fedora for a long time, went > through a Mandrake/Mandriva phase, and came back. I have found the > hardware coverage on Fedora to be pretty extensive (even F9 > automagically handled everything on my old Satellite Pro better than > XP did). I'm running F15 on a Qosmio, now, and haven't touched the > power settings (might be able to tweak them, but I find the defaults > to be sane). > > I sort of like KDE, and ran it for a couple of versions with Mandrake/ > Mandriva, but I think Gnome is a bit more solid in some areas. > Although, I wish Dolphin and a couple of other tools were replicated > in Gnome. Fedora will do either/both from the Anaconda install. > Anaconda is a pleasure to work with, and includes the 'unattended' > capability of saving the configuration, and using it to automate other > installs. > > Some of my preferences to Fedora stem from it largely replacing > Mandrake's original release: given that it was *largely* a Fedora+KDE > spin (IIRC). Fedora tends to have a mature user base; the forums are > (IMHO) more informative and less hystrionic, for example, than some of > the flashier distros. It takes a bit longer for software to dribble > into the repos (Firefox 4 only hit the official repos a week ago, > released with F15) because Redhat does a fair bit of retesting and > modification before anything is considered stable for the non-testing > repos. The stability of about everything is correspondingly good. > There are a couple of things (Eclipse) that I prefer the > manufacturer's release of, but I like the stuff I don't have a direct > interest in to just work. > > The liveCD for Fedora has worked well in my experience, and I think is > worth a gander at. Coincidentally, a friend of mine went through a > similar exercise, recently. Moved from Ubuntu by co-installing 4 > different distros on a machine, and competing them on everything he > does (media-streaming, Android development, etc). He chose Fedora > after a shorter testing round than he expected, and has been very > happy with it. > > Gnome Shell: > My jury is still out on this one. I expect it's like moving to a > Dvorack keyboard (or the new swype) in that it's really slowing me > down, but it *feels* like it's faster... But I felt the same way about > GUIs when they first came out, and I can now wheel around almost as > fast as in a console. Faster, depending on the system. It feels like > there is more of a benefit awaiting out past the learning curve. > Change is a pre-req of progress. > > It should be a good choice for a laptop running on batteries--I > believe (without subjective testing) there is a lot less power > consumption going on, and the desktop has somewhat more real estate-- > and is designed with portable devices in mind. > > It's a bit beta-y at the moment (changing the pediatrician's-wallpaper > logon background takes some hacking, or file-replacement, for example) > but they're still working on it all, and leaving skinning/themeing > stuff for later (and once the js/css guys start running it, themes > should come fast and thick). I find a lot of stuff missing from the > GUI, where I go to look for it (Network manager doesn't seem to have a > way to just disconnect/reconnect a connection, except to hit another > one, or turn the wifi off & on) and a good knowledge of command-line > options goes a long way, here. Plus, the whole GUI is essentially a js/ > css front-end, so if something is missing, it can be changed as a js > extension. > > XP: > I also run Windows extensively, but I have found I prefer to run it in > a VM (VirtualBox being my favorite, but looking at KVM more and more). > I find XP in a VM to be more performant than on the actual hardware, a > lot of the time (eg, subjectively it seems to boot faster). In my > case, though, if I'm testing dev code, I might have two or three XP > VMs running fullscreen on different desktops, and just switch between > them and Linux. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users > Group. > To post a message, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] > For more options, visit our group at > http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup > Please remember to abide by our list rules (http://tinyurl.com/LUG-Rulesor > http://cdn.fsdev.net/List-Rules.pdf) > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit our group at http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup Please remember to abide by our list rules (http://tinyurl.com/LUG-Rules or http://cdn.fsdev.net/List-Rules.pdf)
