Fedora 17 - my impressions

[lmello]

Pros:

- Simple to install
- Works 'out-of-the-box'
- GNOME 3.4 is a major improvement over its predecessors
- Pretty artwork (tip: install Faenza icons!)

Cons:

- Damned separation of <package> and <package>-devel which troubles compilation from source
- Difficult to customize
- I don't know what the heck goes on during boot process (ie, the new systemd)

Overall:

Good desktop/laptop distro. Can be used as a server though, but it's tricky to modify anything under /etc.

[thenktor]

- Damned separation of <package> and <package>-devel which troubles compilation from source

Business as usual

[witek]

Pros:
- Works 'out-of-the-box'
- GNOME 3.4 is a major improvement over its predecessors
- Pretty artwork (tip: install Faenza icons!)

Disagreed. In order to make it usable as a desktop system one needs to manually install codecs and additional repositories, however this is well described over the internet.

Gnome 3.4 - "de gustibus non est disputandum" but many dislike it thus MATE and Cinnamon were born.

Artwork might be good but when I installed XFCE version then some of Gnome applications don`t look as those from XFCE and I can`t fix it.

The only thing I really like about Fedora is yum package manager and especially its delta packages when not a whole new package is downloaded during upgrade but only the diff between the older one.

Fedora is aimed at innovation and is not a good solution for those who need long-term stability of things. That is why Centos or Scientific Linux are more welcome on servers. On desktop? Maybe but also for those who seek adventures.

[flebber]

Fedora is all well and good until you rely on it and then it always crashes or fails at the most inconvenient time.

- GNOME 3.4 is a major improvement over its predecessors

Well it couldn't get worse, well according to some the changes in nautilus n 3.6 are a step backwards and Distro's based of it are not including the updated nautilus, Ubuntu for one example. Gnome in its vanilla form to me lacks a good workflow its hard to operate quickly, seems gnome is becoming more of a base package for other distro's to customize rather than an out of the box solution.

[GJones]

IMO Gnome 3 is a disaster. Especially for power users. The window management is tolerable if bloated, but it is seriously lacking in features.

Case in point: opening a file with a custom command. In KDE, Xfce, or LXDE, you can set this very easily in the file properties window; it takes < 5 seconds. But with Nautilus 3, if you e.g. want to open Lua files with 'xterm -e vim', you have to create a new local .desktop file for an xterm session running vim, and then log out and log back in for the changes to take effect. That's not simple or easy, that's putting up obstacles.

The entire point of a desktop is to help the user get work done. Removing features that help people get stuff done is a recipe for failure.

Re Fedora 17: my impression is that it has a number of serious drawbacks as a desktop. Primarily:
- The updates. Oh gods, the updates! There are too many and they're quite slow, deltas or no.
- Some stuff is broken OotB. The nouveau driver crashes with some older video cards, and most notably, GRUB 2 will freeze completely if you try to edit boot parameters on the fly.
- As mentioned before, installing codecs is a bit of an ordeal.
- Also as mentioned before, package splitting makes it annoying to compile stuff.

That said, it performs well, and is pretty secure by default (AFAICT).

I figure it would make a decent workstation OS, if you had some kind of centralized update method; especially if you didn't need any kind of multimedia support (or didn't want workers watching Youtube or listening to music on the job ). For the desktop I think it falls a bit short.

(Mind, I'm mostly considering the LXDE version. The Gnome 3 version is much less usable.)

[flebber]

The AMD support is terrible as well. They criticize the catalyst driver but it appears to be more the Fedora team consistently updating the xorg version for little gain.

If Fedora changed there policy to be new only when it matters and not new just for new's sake then it would be a lot better. This is how it seemed to be in the earlier Versions 4-9 but lately I just wonder.

[GJones]

To be fair, Fedora is basically the beta version of Red Hat.

That said, I don't think it would kill the project to use a separate repo for security updates, so that users could avoid gratuitous system-breaking updates without risking getting hacked.

[gaucho]

That said, I don't think it would kill the project to use a separate repo for security updates, so that users could avoid gratuitous system-breaking updates without risking getting hacked.

Although I haven't used this myself, I think there is a yum plugin available which implements the feature you've mentioned above: yum-plugin-security.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost. ... ostcount=7
"Re: What really makes me want to scream." 31 Mar. 2011.

(Dangermouse explains that this plugin will only enable updates that concern security; I assume it would disable/exclude other updates [although I might be misunderstanding that]).

I've been using Fedora off and on since F9, with a variety of DEs (Gnome, KDE, Xfce, LXDE), so I'm comfortable with the basics but I don't consider myself to be a power user. I just roll along with the suggested updates; everything goes smoothly -- usually. I can only recall two updates that borked my system to the point where it wouldn't boot. I had no idea how to fix it, but was able to access the user forum from another computer and quickly found a solution posted by a resident Fedora guru ...

[flebber]

The only thing to note though with all this is that Fedora is fun. On Fedora forum though that most of the long time members Guru's will refer you to use Centos or scientific if you require a stable system.

Just thinking( and yes it hurt a little ) that if Fedora adopted the Ubuntu release cycle then people could use a stable Fedora and still have the experimental releases that benefit red hat.

[lmello]

Wheew what a debate!

I feel like I'm the only person in the world who actually liked GNOME 3! But my mother and a friend who never ever used Linux got their way in quite well so... YES, the removal of features and customization options is bullshit - they should ship GNOME 3 with gnome-tweak-tool, nautilus-actions (this solves GJones' example) and nautilus-open-terminal by default. A functional menu-editor should be developed also... but it's a different desktop experience and that's the main reason I like it - it doesn't feel like a Windows clone like KDE does. I don't think installing codecs is an 'ordeal', just go to rpmfusion and then 'yum install gstreamer-bad gstreamer-ugly gstreamer-ffmpeg' and it's pretty much done. Too bad you must find libdvdcss eslewhere.

I only tried Fedora because I wanted to try GNOME 3 but GSB 3.2 for Slackware 13.37 didn't work at all. So I guess I'll use Salix MATE (dying to see the 1.4 release on 14.0!) on my desktop computer and Fedora on my laptop, after all the only Qt application I use is Texmaker anyway.

The real *nasty* thing about Debian and Red-hat based distros is the !@#$% separation of libraries and headers. I mean WTF why would anyone who trust the power of a GNU/Linux box do that!? I looked at my previously installed Slackware installation and even with a good bunch of SBo's installed the /usr/include directory occupied less than 500MB! Besides Slackware based distros, which other Linux "lineage" does NOT practice this?