Introduction

Since the days of 10.1, I have been an openSUSE fan. I have been trying out new distros regularly, finding some to be very good, but always in the end rolling back to SUSE for one reason or another.

And then came Fedora 10: I wanted to see if it could finally win me over.

System

I am testing on the same system as before: an Acer Ferrari 5005WLMi laptop (AMD Turion 64 X2 2.0Ghz, 2.0GB RAM, 160MB hard drive, ATI Radeon X1600 Mobility)

This is a rather regular specification set, shared by many others around the world.

First Impressions - Live Run and Install

It was a simple matter to get the Fedora 10 GNOME live CD ISO from the Fedora site, and burn it off.

Booting it up live, I noticed a very cranky progress bar that led to the loading of the desktop, it looked much like a DOS load bar of yore.

But then, that is perhaps best leading up to a surprise: the beautifully done GNOME desktop. After logging into the live session, what you get is artwork that is unparalleled in mainstream distros (my opinion, obviously). If only they had done something about those antiquated icons too…

Fedora 10 Screenie 1

Leaving the goodies till later, I went for the install. It was a live installer with unique features: almost exactly like the ones we see everywhere else. It took about 10 minutes to install. Then I rebooted.

Booting up

For this Fedora release, what had been hyped was the high speed Plymouth graphical booting mechanism. In fact, the boot was actually slower than my Ubuntu 8.10 or SUSE 11.0. But while you wait, you cannot help but notice the brilliant, animated, blue solar theme.

Once loaded, it asks you to make a username, and finally logs you into the GNOME desktop.

Stability

In all my time using mainstream Linux distros, the stability of this Fedora 10 release nearly tops the list. I have been using it for over two days now, and I have failed to crash it even once. And this phase of testing includes very horrible stress tests, opening many things at once, randomly clicking around, opening conflicting programs, playing movies etc.

Server-like stability on a system used as a desktop? What more could I want?

The graphics surprise

On most distros, my graphics card is not configured for 3D effects out of the box. Fedora 10 not only picked the right resolution, but actually allowed me to turn on Compiz effects straight after installation. Not that Compiz effects mean much to me, but they mean a lot to other people, and besides, this is a good way of really testing out if a distro has your hardware right.

This was a fairly pleasant surprise.

Software collection

One of my objections to Fedora: they try to stay on the cutting edge, but omit many apps in their primary disk images. Abiword is the only Office application, requiring you install the massive OpenOffice.org over the internet. This one of the few qualms I have against Fedora 10.

Fedora includes GIMP and Rhythmbox. It also includes the Empathy messenger instead of the Pidgin client.

Fedora 10 Screenie 2

Package Management

Given that Fedora is so conservative in its software collection, one must install many apps and codecs (in particular) from the internet. Here, the PackageKit does fairly well - though I miss the power of the YaST visual package manager of SUSE.

Final Words

I like Fedora 10 very much. I can find practically nothing to really complain about. It looks good, works well and keeps working. And most of it out of the box.

On the negative side, the conservative package selection really bugs me - this is definitely not a recommended install for those with dialup connections. Moreover, there is a lack of really visible innovations - under the hood innovations are good, but a desktop user needs to be able to notice them.

Essential for those already on Fedora, recommended for people wanting a really stable, mainstream desktop linux.

Rating: 8/10

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