The Fedora Desktop

Today I thought I’d report back in detail on my experiences with Fedora 11, the community distribution release from perennial Linux giants Red Hat. It’s a distribution with a reputation for being close to the cutting edge, some would argue too close. Many people have complained to me about bugs, but is this fair? I haven’t looked at Fedora in depth since version 8 or 9, so I wanted to see for myself. I have some history with Fedora, but I felt it lost it’s way a little a few years back. It was time to put past experiences – both good and bad – aside, to really see what Fedora 11 could bring to the table…

Vital Stats:
Distro base – Red Hat
Packaging – .rpm (Managed by YUM)
Linux Kernel – 2.6.29.5-191.fc11.i586
Default Desktop – Gnome 2.26.2

Introduction & Background:

Boot screen

Although I downloaded Fedora 11 a few weeks back, I actually installed it while at FUDCon (the Fedora conference) in Berlin; surrounded by Fedora developers and Red Hat employees. Now that’s what I call support. I first installed Fedora way back in 2003 when it was called Fedora Core, it had just been split from Red Hat Linux. It was even one of the first distributions I managed to convince my employers at the time (the National Health Service) to try out. It wasn’t my first Linux experience by any means, but it was quite early in my adoption of the platform. I kept coming back to it over the years but felt increasingly disappointed as it got more experimental and felt less usable. The last version I used properly was Fedora 8 and that left something of a sour taste in my mouth. YUM (the package management tool) kept locking up for no apparent reason and the system wasn’t really stable enough to use as a proper desktop. I’d briefly looked at other releases of Fedora in the meantime, but going into this Fedora 11 install, I wasn’t sure what to expect at all. Read the rest of this entry »

The Weekly Rewind

You may recall from my last Weekly Rewind that I’d travelled to Bonn, Germany to visit my Linux Outlaws co-host Fab, and his girlfriend Katy. They came over and stayed with me last year for LugRadio Live 08. So to use a footballing analogy, I suppose you could say this was the return leg. This article finds me in a different location, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam actually. I’m in some kind of cafe/bar to be precise, and I’m waiting for my flight back to Manchester. So let’s recap the events that led me here:

On Sunday night after I wrote my last article we had a bit of a party. Some of Fab and Katy’s friends came over for beers, and it was great fun. I ended up doing a bit of an impromptu gig with Fab’s acoustic guitar. I can’t resist a chance to show off. The gang seemed to enjoy it though and I wasn’t booed off, so I consider that a victory (again with the football analogies). On Monday I had a walk around Bonn and saw a bit of the town, ably guided by Fab. It’s a really lovely place I must say, very relaxed; lot’s of trees and open space. Not your typical big city by any means. The people seem pretty cool as well. In the evening we recorded and streamed Linux Outlaws 98, but we didn’t have a chance to edit and release it yet, at the time of writing. Quite a few people watched live and got involved. You’ll hear it very soon, in the next few days I promise. On Tuesday we drove to Berlin and got ready for Linux Tag 2009. Read the rest of this entry »