Saturday, May 23, 2009

 

Thoughts on Fedora 10

Starting in the year 2009 I have been asked to replace Windows installs with Linux installs. Before this I had to coax people to try Linux. Over time this process has become easier and easier. My Linux distribution of choice nowadays is Fedora 10.

My experience with Fedora 10 has been mostly positive. I have installed it successfully on a Dell D610 laptop and also a Panasonic CF-48. I prefer using GNOME over KDE for a windows manager. I used to like KDE 3.4.2 over GNOME but Fedora 10 uses KDE 4.2.1 which to me just seems overly complex.

Some software seems to have become abandoned such as the scanner program Kooka. On one of my older systems I run Kooka 0.44 on Fedora Core 1 (using my old HP 5200C which runs like a tank) and I still prefer it to xsane. Of course both programs do mostly the same job. The thing is developers will usually stop working on older versions of software, so if you want your yum updates then you are pretty much forced to use latest and greatest.

All is not perfect with Fedora 10. One of the things it does which I don't like is auto-logout. Basically Fedora 10 is emulating what Windows XP does: after a period of time you are send back to the user login screen. There doesn't seem to be any way of disabling it which is annoying. It seems to perform software updates often which is good, but I'd rather it buffered all the updates and did it once a week. Doing updates every day seems like overkill.

Still all in all I was able to make Fedora 10 work well, which is important. Java, Flash, etc all worked correctly. One must still exercise some care in choosing your cards and peripherals but for the most part this newest Fedora was painless and even enjoyable. One may order Fedora Discs here.

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