Installed Fedora Core 4 today on a spare AMD 64 - I used the 64 bit DVD version and performed a server install. This is the “gold” release not a test release, codenamed “Stenz”.
Hardware utilised
MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum board (NForce 3-250)
AMD 64 3200 Winchester S939
1Gb Samsung original DDR400
Seagate 400Gb ATA HDD
Cheap-As-Chips DVD drive
ATI Radeon 7000 PCI
Installation
I have installed Core 2 and 3 a few times now, if you have also then Core 4’s install routine will be very familiar. Very much like Core 3, but in a way simpler. I took the “Server” install option and added X onto it.
The feel of the install routine is more polished and slicker than before, even though the content is practically identical. The whole routine took ~15 mins.
Identifed hardware:
In addition to the above items, Core 4 correctly identified
Realtek 8169 Giganet NIC (onboard)
NVidia Giganet NIC (onboard)
USB Controllers
Both SATA controllers
Firewire controller
IDE ZIP-100 drive
Sound was disabled on this machine as it is destined for a server role, so unable to comment on whether the onboard NForce sound works. It certainly didn’t on Core 3.
First Boot
As usual, boot, setup user account, away we go. I use the Gnome desktop as KDE support in Fedora Core has always been clunky in the extreme.
Boot and login procedures seem much smoother and slicker, the whole system has a snappier feel to it than Core 3 on identical hardware. The desktop looks exactly the same as Core 3, until you look carefully. Where Core 3 had two major menus- “Applications” and “Actions”, Core 4 has three:
Applications - main application groups, system tools etc.
Places - Home folder, desktop, computer, connect to server, search.
Desktop - Lock screen, log out, help, preferences, system tools.
Not much different, but more intuitive in use. I prefer it. And of course, it can always be customised.
First impressions
As I have said before, snappier, smoother, more responsive, more polished. You can tell this is the fourth generation.
There is a new logical volume tool, very useful if you have more than one, supremely useless if you have one.
Nautilus is broken - it can’t handle Samba share names with spaces in. Previous versions had no problems with this 
All in all, it’s very much more of the same but better. Most of the Core 4 improvements are “under the hood” - new GCC version, new X version, new Kernel series… but to look at the differences are very cosmetic, at least for a server. I intend to upgrade my workstation to Core 4 as well, I’ll write up any differences I find in a new review.
Overall: a good release 
but very much evolution not revolution.
