Fedora 12 (Constantine)

Well its out in the wild and can be downloaded from your favourite ISO or Torrent website.

MUCH MUCH better than 10 & 11 which were buggy and lacked functionality, not really Fedora’s fault, Gnome was in flux as was X, Fedora aim to release the latest software in each release so their fortunes are tied somewhat to the other developers.

Did a fresh install as the upgrade path requires 300MB in your /boot partition, and the default for Fedora has always been 200MB. Rather than mess about with resizing logical volumes I just saved the few files which were important and started from scratch.

Gnome is up to 2.28, OpenOffice 3.1, Firefox 3.5. Compiz is now much better supported as is the hardware on my laptop, didn’t need to download firmware images for my (broadcom) wireless adaptor, in fact all hardware plus all ancilliaries (USB webcam, Bluetooth adaptor etc.) installed with not a gesture required from me. Synaptics touchpad is now correctly identified by HAL and X so I can turn off tap-to-click which I am too clumsy to use. System is running in 750MB of memory and goes very quick and smooth. Graphics are Radeon Mobile 1100 using 256MB of main memory and run very well, also identified and loaded correctly wirh no intervention from me.

Multimedia support needs to be installed as an extra from third party repositories,it’s no big deal, takes ten minutes and there are umpteen thousand guides on how to do it on the web. This will always be the way with Fedora so if its too much trouble leave well alone, use Ubuntu instead. 9.10 is out and is quite good, if you like Ubuntu’s way of doing things, which I don’t. It’s all down to preference.

Screenshots enclosed - themes are down to taste but I like mine quite minimalist. There’s mucho plenty eye candy if you want it including moving slideshow desktops. Personally, I love it, very polished, very capable. Has all the things for grown-ups that Windows does not offer me (hey Bill, why can’t I configure auto-updates off in Winders when on mobile broadband? The amateurs can :D), and runs well on a low-spec laptop. Why should I upgrade to some monster with 3GB of RAM just to mail, manipulate images and surf on the move? Not I, all I need is here, for free.

Five penguins out of five :trophy:

Screenshots of some of the configuration options, system monitor and playing those mp3 files that Fedora can’t play (from a Windows network disk)

Video playback (the tearing on the image is down to the screenshot the original is perfect) this is 720p HD, and the old workspaces on a cube thing- with video playing :slight_smile: No bad for a Radeon 1100.

That looks good Martin, especially the cube browser :cool:. I had issues with Fedora 11 on my play rig, like you said with the graphics drivers initially although I sorted it out…still not 100% sure how. Ubuntu installed easily and without much assistance from me, so from a layman’s perspective that would be the flavour of choice.

I want to have another go with Fedora though, 'cause I feel it’s something I need to keep abreast of for future usage and I can see it becoming a good choice for business networking functionality.

I am going to have a play with Fedora as a Apple file server on my dual core Atom, text console. I currently have Ubuntu but the graphics on the Atom are thirsty. Love the Atom MB for it low power needs and low heat output w/hyperthreading (shows 4 CPUs) yet has 2 SATA 300 and gigabit network. MB and CPU included for under $75. Just add memory, case, drives, truly an adequate computer for less than $200. BTW the hardware is compatible enough to get a Hackintosh up on it.

Major, I run an Atom as my main PC and it’s great. Does all day to day tasks I throw at it.

Mojo - Fedora looks interesting again. I’m a Ubuntu fan though so may find YAST to be a pain - however Ubuntu doesn’t play MP3 files and videos out the box either - you’ll be wanting Mint for that.

I’m currently playing with Suse Studio though to see how well that works.