Fedora 11 Leonidas - King of Spartans

[Mrkvonic]

Hello all,

I have just baked another long, thorough distro review: Fedora 11 Leonidas. The article includes live CD session experience and installation and covers topics like Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing, multimedia support (Flash, MP3), web camera, some unique features and applications, like Minefield and autoten, and much more.

I think you'll be pleased overall. Do remember Fedora is an almost perpetual beta and not best suited for new users.

Enjoy:

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/fedora-11.html


Comments and suggestions would be most appreciated.

Cheers,
Mrk

[Beavenburt]

I'm going to pass Fedora by. It's a distro i've tried several times and I have yearned to fall in love with it. But alas it never goes smoothly.
Besides other issues I have never been able to get 1280x1024 resolution with fedora, never, regardless of all advice I have sought, which is the biggest deal breaker for me.

[Arup]

I hope they fix the super slow Synaptic, last time I tried on Fed10, it was a royal pain in the neck.

[lodore]

-{ Quote: "I hope they fix the super slow Synaptic, last time I tried on Fed10, it was a royal pain in the neck." }-
you mean yum and packagekit?

the new version of rpm is alot faster.
been testing it in a vm.

[Kerodo]

-{ Quote: "you mean yum and packagekit?

the new version of rpm is alot faster.
been testing it in a vm." }-
Does a vm itself slow down performance any?

[lodore]

-{ Quote: "Does a vm itself slow down performance any?" }-
shouldnt do.
depends how much resourses you dedicate to it.

[Kerodo]

-{ Quote: "shouldnt do.
depends how much resourses you dedicate to it." }-
Ok, thanks. I have never yet tried any vm. Might be interesting.... :)

[Arup]

-{ Quote: "you mean yum and packagekit?

the new version of rpm is alot faster.
been testing it in a vm." }-


Thanks, will give it a spin then.

[chronomatic]

-{ Quote: "I hope they fix the super slow Synaptic, last time I tried on Fed10, it was a royal pain in the neck." }-


As was said, Fedora doesn't use Synaptic (but that's irrelevant). The best way is to simply use the terminal:

yum search foo

yum install bar

yum update

Those are pretty much the only 3 commands the average user will need and it's much faster than any GUI.

I am a big Gentoo geek, but I have been using Fedora 10 for the past few months and have come to like it a lot. I like the focus on security the RH/Fedora people have (SELinux, stack smashing, exec shield all on by default).

[Beavenburt]

Fedora 11 final now released.
Been running 10 for a week or so and I must say i've loved it. It recognises my new monitor resolution which is fantastic. I could never get 1280x1024 to stick on my old monitor.
Anyways, I did a fresh install of 11 tonight and I must say I think it's great. I reckon some of the issues you had Mrk were due to being beta. It installed flawlessly for me. No hardware issues, nothing. Partitioning went as planned. You're right insofar as there's a learning curve but once you get passed it, this distro really is very nice and polished. Yum is quick and works well. Everything is set out nicely and easy to find.
I'm using Gnome (I feel like a KDE traitor!) and it's light and snappy. As always with Fedora you get a beautiful theme.
This is the distro that i've always wanted to run well on my system and finally it does. No complaints here and i've got my distro of choice at last.
Anyone trying Fedora out, make sure you enable the rpmfusion repo. Fedora is a free OS and doesn't come with any propriety software at all by default or in it's official repo. But it's not difficult to enable the rpmfusion repo and download what you need.
Loving it. Home at last.

[lodore]

I will be trying it soon.
I like debian Lenny but its useless without being able to access to data on ntfs partitions.
lets hope network manager updates dont break wireless this time round with fedora.

btw dont forget the command for yum haters "yum remove yum"
i dont really have a prefrence of eiether yum,apt-get for commandline or packagekit or synaptec for GUI they all work well.

@Beavenburt, your right about it being easy to enable the rpmfusion repo. its four clicks lol.
then if you open up a media player and play a file it will install the codecs for you (expect libdvdcss)

installed in virtual machine and i can select to install grub to boot partition.

[Beavenburt]

Yum is working just fine for me at the moment. No problems, thus far. That's liable to change though! Installing of codecs when needed is a nice touch.
I'm wired :lurking:

[lodore]

-{ Quote: "Yum is working just fine for me at the moment. No problems, thus far. That's liable to change though! Installing of codecs when needed is a nice touch.
I'm wired :lurking:" }-
ubuntu does automatic codec installs when needed as well once the right repos are added. fedora has had the feature since 10 and ubuntu since i dono when but around same time.

does plymouth proper boot screen work for you?

Not sure if i will use gnome,kde or both. decisions decisions but little time lol.

[Beavenburt]

Nah, Plymouth doesn't work for me in 10 or 11. But then i'm not fussed with that. It's only a bit of eye candy isn't it. I actually quite like the thick moving blue and white line.
I felt bad leaving KDE but Fedora is a gnomecentric distro so I thought i'd go with the default. I actually really like it, which is a BIG surprise. I used to hate Gnome. But, it's really quite light and fast here and more customisable than I remember.

[lodore]

-{ Quote: "Nah, Plymouth doesn't work for me in 10 or 11. But then i'm not fussed with that. It's only a bit of eye candy isn't it. I actually quite like the thick moving blue and white line.
I felt bad leaving KDE but Fedora is a gnomecentric distro so I thought i'd go with the default. I actually really like it, which is a BIG surprise. I used to hate Gnome. But, it's really quite light and fast here and more customisable than I remember." }-
Hey,
I agree that it is only a bit of eye candy.
Genrally when i use a distro with KDE its hard to tell what distro it is.
I hope Fedora keep add more branding so you can tell instantly you are running KDE on fedora.
With gnome you can easily find install programs and settings etc.
I couldnt find kpackage kit in kde through the menus.
I only found it because I knew the name of it and typed it in to search box.

I wish KDE and Gnome was more 3D. OSX and windows 7 interfaces look alot nicer.
even updated icons would help. Gnome power icon looks like it came from windows 98 lol.

I like the standard panel design of Gnome.menus and notifications at the top and an empty bar at the bottom to run programs.

[Beavenburt]

I don't like Gnome default layout at all. The first thing I do is delete the bottom panel and move the top one down and then add a window list. It's the one Windows habit I can't break and it's just the way I prefer it.
Depending on your graphics card, you should be able to get 3D natively in KDE4 or with Compiz in Gnome. As for icons, I think the default Oxygen icon set in KDE4 is the nuts.

[jrmhng]

I want a mainstream distro to use for a desktop computer but dont want to have to upgrade all the time.

How long is Fedora supported for? Can you do an in place upgrade?

[Kerodo]

-{ Quote: "I want a mainstream distro to use for a desktop computer but dont want to have to upgrade all the time.

How long is Fedora supported for? Can you do an in place upgrade?" }-
You'd probably be better off with Debian. They take more like a year and a half or so between versions...... And it's also quite good out of the box nowadays.... One of my favorites.

[chronomatic]

I can't run Fedora 11 here. There is a bug blocking me from doing so (a major bug). Soundblaaster Live! and Audigy soundcards will not work with it due to kernel failures. It's really annoying and the Fedora devs don't seem to care even after numerous people filed bug reports.

[jrmhng]

-{ Quote: "You'd probably be better off with Debian. They take more like a year and a half or so between versions...... And it's also quite good out of the box nowadays.... One of my favorites." }-
Which version? Stable seems too slow with their updates!

-{ Quote: "I can't run Fedora 11 here. There is a bug blocking me from doing so (a major bug). Soundblaaster Live! and Audigy soundcards will not work with it due to kernel failures. It's really annoying and the Fedora devs don't seem to care even after numerous people filed bug reports." }-

Well they are using the latest kernel which is buggy. Was there the same problem with older kernels?

[Kerodo]

-{ Quote: "Which version? Stable seems too slow with their updates!
" }-
Lenny is what I used recently and liked a lot. Stable is stable.... :)

[lodore]

if anyone can work out how to get ntfs partitions to mount properly in debian lenny let me know.

[Beavenburt]

-{ Quote: "I want a mainstream distro to use for a desktop computer but dont want to have to upgrade all the time.

How long is Fedora supported for? Can you do an in place upgrade?" }-

Each Fedora release is supported for a year I think. There's a new release every six months or so. And yes you can upgrade.

[andb]

-{ Quote: "if anyone can work out how to get ntfs partitions to mount properly in debian lenny let me know." }-

have you tried ntfs-3g?

[lodore]

-{ Quote: "have you tried ntfs-3g?" }-
yup its installed but when i right click mount on nfts partitions in Nautilus it fails to mount them. never had this issue with ubuntu or fedora.

[Nick Rhodes]

-{ Quote: "Each Fedora release is supported for a year I think. There's a new release every six months or so. And yes you can upgrade." }-

I think they say previous version is supported 6 months after release of the next version.

[Kerodo]

-{ Quote: "if anyone can work out how to get ntfs partitions to mount properly in debian lenny let me know." }-
That is the one and only issue I had with Lenny also, just couldn't get HD#2 to mount no matter what I tried. I'm wondering if it's just a Gnome/Nautilus issue of some kind. It kinda seems like the disk IS mounting, but I just can't access it in Nautilus. I don't know though.....

[Beavenburt]

Found this while browsing the fedora forums:-

http://www.dnmouse.org/

I've just used this brilliant little program and it works beautifully. A really big help for newbies to get all the required codecs, drivers, media player etc. It drops an icon on your desktop, you run it as root and it downloads and installs your selections. Great little app.

[lodore]

its mentioned in mrk's fedora review i reccomended it.
Just tick what you want and in a few minutes everything is installed and ready.

[wilbertnl]

Hello there!

Having played with the preview recently, last week I decided to install Fedora 11 Release on my systems.
Fedora Leonidas is the first distro that installs on EVERY system in my home with success, finally!
It demonstrates that linux is progressing and getting hardware compatible.

I think that Fedora has the very best font rendering available in linux world, the fonts are just sharp out of the box.
And http://rpmfusion.org offers the missing proprietary and other software/drivers with simple clicks, bravo!
If you want to enable LCD subpixel hinting, then install freetype-freeworld from rpmfusion.org.

[phasechange]

-{ Quote: "I want a mainstream distro to use for a desktop computer but dont want to have to upgrade all the time.

How long is Fedora supported for? Can you do an in place upgrade?" }-

Ubuntu LTS is probably the answer... https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS

[GlobalForce]

Good bit about the font details Wilbertnl. Thanks for the forward.

[L815]

I suggest using Packagekit and do a search for "fastest"; usually the last one in the result window.

This plugin will do a search for the fastest servers before downloading/installing anything.