

Fedora 14 is out - skbohra123
http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/

======
dman
As a python developer one of the things I particularly like about Fedora is
its inclusion of Python systemtap probes. This allows you to examine at a
glance which python functions are taking most of the runtime. The fedora
patches have been submitted for upstream inclusion at
<http://bugs.python.org/issue4111> . More details about this feature can be
found at
[http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SystemtapStaticProbes...](http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SystemtapStaticProbes#Python)
. fwiw I am not affiliated with Redhat or any other OS vendor in any way.

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runjake
I just tried the default F14 desktop and the KDE spin (both on Live CDs) and I
can't believe how depressing the desktop environments still are.

The colors are depressing, there are little tiny buttons and icons everywhere,
but no indication or popups as to what they do. The UI transitions are clunky
(at least what I'm used to on Mac OS X and W7). Fonts are blocky. The KDE
desktop looks kinda nice in screenshots, but once I started interacting with
it, my positive impressions changed.

I'm a guy who spends his time in Terminals, but like it or not, the GUI has
become an effective management tool for all of this.

Everything is virtually as I left it in 2001. This is depressing, because my
plan was to eventually go back.

~~~
old-gregg
Can't comment on KDE because I never liked them, but Ubuntu/Gnome has
progressed quite nicely since 2005 (my first "Linux year"). In fact my opinion
is 180 degree opposite of yours: 2 years ago I switched to OSX and couldn't
tolerate how dumb and unusable the UI felt: I waited a year hoping to adjust
but surrendered and went back to Gnome.

I've given up on arguing about GUIs though: it all comes down to individual
preferences, oftentimes in coffee shops and offices I look at people and
notice how bizarre some of their UI habits are, and I'm sure others can say
this about me.

Here's my take on Gnove-vs-others, and a good counter argument made in the
comments: <http://kontsevoy.blogspot.com/2008/11/ubuntu-8.html>

~~~
runjake
Great points.

I think the thing that especially appeals to me about the OS X and W7
environments is that they're not an eye sore (warm colors & effects, not
kludgy looking), and they have quick access to system-wide search that works
(Spotlight and Windows Search, respectively). These are my rather minimalist
needs.

I have a hard time coming up with an analogy, but when I open windows on one
of the live CDs, I feel like there's a gnome (no pun intended) in the
background grabbing and stapling up shoddy UI mockups on the inside of my LCD.

It all comes down to tastes, as you say, though. I used to be a MOTIF and
IceWM guy, so mine have definitely changed. I can't imagine "most people"
would like the state of the Linux UI, though.

Having used KDE (since it was an ugly Windows 95 clone, anyone remember those
initial efforts?) and GNOME from their births, not much has really seemed to
change. Meanwhile, the UI paradigms have shifted significantly, in the rest of
the computing world.

~~~
SkyMarshal
_> not much has really seemed to change._

On the surface perhaps, but the beauty of Linux is that what you see is not
what you can get. There are plenty of cool UI paradigms available just an apt-
get away.

For example, I use Ubuntu, but I auto-hide the taskbar and use Gnome-Do to
access _everything_. Terminal is available via Guake drop down. Windows are
arranged in workspaces on the surfaces of a 3D rotating cube. Mouse is 100%
optional for controlling windows and OS. And if I wanted I could exchange all
that with a tiling WM like Xmonad or Awesome (though I find Compiz Grid +
Guake equally efficient).

Now, I haven't used Windows since my Win 7 eval copy expired last February, or
OS X since the last time I walked into an Apple Store, but I don't see that
their UI paradigms have shifted significantly at all. It's still basically the
same mouse-controlled window systems, perhaps with a few new bells and
whistles like desktop search, GPU-enhanced eye candy, and optimized
performance thrown in. But none of those change the usage paradigm as far as I
can tell.

Am I missing something?

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recampbell
As per the announcement:
<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_14_announcement>

This is the first release to include official ec2 images. However, I'm having
trouble finding them, anyone know the ami?

~~~
rwmj
Justin tells me that AMIs are only currently available on US-East right now,
but will be available for all EC2 users later today.

Edit: When they are available, he'll post a message here:
[http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/cloud/2010-November...](http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/cloud/2010-November/thread.html)

------
twymer
I keep being tempted to move to something other than Ubuntu. Got my start on
Linux way back when it was still called "Fedora Core" so I think I'm going to
wind up installing this to see how it looks these days.

Anyone use Fedora regularly?

~~~
TallGuyShort
I use Fedora's LXDE spin on my netbook, and the KDE spin on my workstation.
Once I felt comfortable using Linux, I wasn't liking some of the directions
Ubuntu was headed in (not that it's bad - it just wasn't targeted at someone
like me), so I switched. Almost everything has always worked out-of-the-box
for me, which has always been one of Ubuntu's strongest points. I used to do a
lot of work with a custom kernel, and Fedora has some great tools for that
kind of development. It's not as polished or user-friendly as Ubuntu, but if
you like the Unix-ness of Ubuntu as opposed to the glitter, you'd probably
feel more at home with Fedora, which is more traditional and generally has a
more advanced community.

edit: Plus, I've always had good experiences with Red Hat's products, so I
like to be loyal :)

~~~
twymer
That's actually the big reason I was looking to change. I feel like every
Ubuntu release is pulling more away from what I like to have.

~~~
bilban
What would you like to have?

~~~
TallGuyShort
Speaking for myself, this is why I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora. Let me
clarify that I completely understand why most users would prefer's Ubuntu's
approach, and I'm sure there are ways to make Ubuntu work this way, but
basically I just feel more comfortable on Fedora for these reasons:

\- There's a huge amount of Ubuntu branding and renaming. I initially paid
attention to this after the pretty silent updates that added "Ubuntu branding"
to Firefox. I saw a lot of packages and applications that were renamed (or at
least represented differently) to make them more generic. Personally, I would
rather use the raw software and see the real names for the software packages.
Fedora does this a bit too, but to a lesser extent.

\- The interface is very polished, but I like having a very raw, stripped-down
interface. I generally work quickly, and I can't stand it when the OS can't
keep up. I like KDE, and this can be a memory hog, but Ubuntu's additions are
even worse, IMO. It was getting harder and harder with each version of Ubuntu
to get the interface where I wanted, and now that they're branching away from
standard GNOME, I only see this getting worse.

\- On that note, I was very unimpressed by Kubuntu, as it had obviously not
received the same quality of attention as Ubuntu. As I prefer to use KDE and
LXDE, I appreciate the very consistent quality between all the "spins" of
Fedora.

\- SELinux and hard-drive encryption work out of the box. Again, I'm sure I
could get this running just fine on Ubuntu, but it's so much easier with
Fedora, so this contributed to me just feeling more at home.

\- The kernel had been modified a ton before it got shipped in a release. When
I recompiled a kernel it wreaked havoc on some of the software that had
previously relied on the added functionality. On Fedora I rebooted into a
vanilla kernel and had no problems.

I realize some of these are pretty abstract reasons, but these seem to be
directions they're heading more and more, so as I said, I just feel more at
home on Fedora, now that I'm comfortable using Linux.

~~~
bilban
Thanks for that. I abandoned Ubuntu and went back to Debian (desktop) for some
of the same reasons - I don't like Ubuntu's take on Gnome.

I think Ubuntu should have versions/spins like Fedora. I think it's confusing
for the end user with their odd branding Kubuntu etc. How about Ubuntu -
Education Edition, Ubuntu - Lightweight Edition, Ubuntu - Netbook Edition -
something like that instead.

~~~
TallGuyShort
I agree - it's really hard to tell the difference between a project that's an
official derivitive of Ubuntu, and not a separate "*buntu" project.

I'm curious - how do you like Debian?

~~~
tyrmored
I switched to Debian from Ubuntu (where I got my start in Linux) because I no
longer felt like I needed the UI or install to hold my hand and wanted to be
able to build up my own system from a minimal install. I chose Debian simply
because my Ubuntu experience had made me very familiar with aptitude, and I
wanted to stick with something popular so my chances of successfully Googling
for help were higher.

My work's servers use Debian, and my home ISP runs an unmetered repository for
it too.

I've tried Fedora in the past when I was still very much a newbie and found it
intimidating. Given I know next to nothing about Red Hat derivatives of Linux
it would probably pay to get familiar with them sometime over the next few
months.

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sagarun
Fedora/yum has a kick ass killer feature, which is called "presto - The delta
RPM" . I live in a developing country where the internet/bandwidth is costly.
Presto saves my bandwidth and money. When i last updated my F13 Presto reduced
the update size by 83% (from 194 M to 33 M). For this i will stay with Fedora
for ever.

------
Matthew_S
I'm relatively new to the linux world. I started using Ubuntu about 3 years
ago. I moved to Fedora just to experiment, and it was one of the best choices
I made. They do well to encourage their community to contribute, and they make
it so easy to do.

It got me involved from the start, and had me starting to dabble in python and
learn how to make desktop widgets. Also, having all the dev tools needed
available in meta-packages is a huge plus. As well as starting me on the path
of coding and learning how to contribute to a project, Fedora may very well be
the reason I am back in school for CSIS. That's something other OS's may have
never offered me. I have a lot to thank these guys for, hopefully one day I'll
be able to.

I'd say it's totally worth trying out. There's a lot of young and innovative
minds out there that are googling "how to be a hacker" as I write this, and I
hope that they come across the Fedora project while searching.

------
dchest
How do you get Ubuntu-like subpixel antialiasing in Fedora?

~~~
Legion
The lack of this is the primary reason I don't consider running Fedora over
Ubuntu. Shallow, perhaps, but when you stare at a computer screen all day,
good font rendering matters.

There is a guy who maintains a set of Fedora packages with versions of Cairo
and Xft with the relevant patches for that beautiful font rendering:
<http://www.infinality.net/blog/?p=5>

I've always been reluctant to jump to Fedora and rely on this guy to keep up
his work, though.

EDIT: Looks like this guy already has these patched packages (and some
Freetype tweaks too) ready for Fedora 14, see his most recent post.

I still really wish this would get out of the "some dude has to patch it in"
territory and just become the standard font rendering configuration for Linux
distros besides Ubuntu.

~~~
dchest
Thanks! I actually tried installing these, but haven't noticed the warning
that it shouldn't be configured via gnome-appearance-properties.

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mseebach
It's been a (long) while. Is yum still painfully slow?

~~~
sigzero
I would say it has not been slow in the last few distros. I really like the
delta downloads (it only downloads the changes and not full programs). It is
generally a very nice distro to work with.

~~~
aaronkaplan
It seems to me that the delta thing has made updates slower, not faster. I
have a reasonably fast network connection and a P4 CPU; maybe with a slow
connection and a fast CPU the equation works out better with deltas. But I
imagine the real advantage of using deltas is server-side, not client-side.

Deltas or no deltas, apt feels significantly faster, but yum isn't slow enough
to be a real problem for me.

~~~
nodata
Delta downloads are slower if you have lots of bandwidth or have a local rpm
source (squid or a local mirror). You can easily disable deltas.

Be careful: apt is deprecated. aptitude has been its replacement for a while
now.

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kev009
Python 2.7 and D support. Nice!

