TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

This release caught me by surprise. Usually releases of major distributions are done with a bit more fanfare, but I had no idea Fedora 10 was even close to release until I saw it on DistroWatch.

Install:

Booting up the LiveCD showed me a rather odd loading screen. You can't tell but those three distinct progress bars were racing each other independently from one side of the screen to the other. Bizarre.

I've always been impressed at the visual polish of the Fedora project, and this release is no exception. The default color scheme and background is professional and smooth.

The installer is full-screen, but the widgets for each screen seem to not scale properly. They look much too small and cramped up in the top left side of the screen.

The actual screens themselves haven't changed at all from previous versions, so I won't bother showing you those. Suffice to say if you've installed anything since Fedora 8 you'll know what to expect.

Reboot and login brought me to the desktop. I dream of a day when the term "spatial browsing" is no longer used. This feature is the rotting, diseased appendix of the Gnome codebase. Spatial was a bad idea to begin with. Get over it and set the default view in Nautilus to "browser." Good grief.

This may not be an issue for most people, but for those with smaller displays, the default window size for the Nautilus preferences dialog doesn't allow you to access the OK button.

The menu setup didn't exactly make sense to me. Why put "Network Configuration" in the main Preferences menu if you're also going to have a "Network" folder?

I immediately missed the "Touchpad" control panel that's present in Ubuntu, and couldn't seem to find it anywhere. I despise the "touch to click" feature that's enabled by default on all touchpads. It gets in my way when I type.

As I'm writing this, I notice that when I attempt to scroll down a page of text in Gedit using the arrow keys on my keyboard, the scroll seems to last too long, like the key is being repeated too many times. It's an odd bug. The same was true when scrolling in Firefox using my mouse and the scrollbar. It just seemed to scroll too far every time.

There was no simple way to install Nvidia drivers like in Ubuntu. The normally helpful Personal Install Guide was useless this time around, directing me to either set up an obscure repository or manually install it from the website. If Ubuntu can detect and install these packages I see no reason why Fedora can't do the same.

I had to find and download the latest drivers from Nvidia, and search the repositories for Make and GCC. Thankfully the kernel headers were included as a dependency for the compilers because I couldn't find them using the search box of Add/Remove Software.

Aside from the ridiculous menu layout and overall blue theme, I saw very little to distinguish Fedora 10 from Ubunt 8.10. Considering my history with both, I consider that a compliment.

On the same token, however, I've come to expect a higher level of experimentation with Fedora. There are normally several whiz bang features included that are at least different, although nine times out of ten they don't work. This release felt uncharacteristically conservative to me.

Software Selection:

Package management is one of the things that has always what killed my chances of using Fedora exclusively. I can deal with a few bugs here and there for a bleeding-edge desktop. What I can't deal with is non-functional or underwhelming software installation.

Say what you will, but I very rarely have issues with DEB-based Linux distributions. I'm fond of the way the system works. YUM is great and all, but it's not the default system for all RPM-based distributions.

The software update mechanism worked out of the box this time. That was good. It's been given large, colorful graphics. Also good. It installed packages to support Punjab and a proportional Japanese font. Not so good.

Abiword replaces OpenOffice on the LiveCD. GIMP, Pidgin and Firefox were installed. I noticed a strange program called "IOK" gave me an onscreen keyboard. I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this is supposed to be.

Cheese didn't work with my camera, but I had the same issue with Ubuntu 8.10 so I'm assuming it's a bug in the program and not the underlying OS.

Conclusion:

With very few compelling features, no touchpad configuration, and no automated video card support I find it very hard to recommend Fedora 10.

Everything present in this version can and has been done better in Ubuntu. If you haven't dipped your toes into the Debian side of the pond, this is as good a time as any.

Die-hard Fedoraphiles will probably do just fine with this release, and that's okay. I however have been spoiled lately by using a distribution that works on my hardware with minimal fuss. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and steer clear of Fedora 10.