If you want to a bleeding edge
desktop or server Linux, then Fedora is the Linux distribution for you. If you
want to play it safe, try something else.
While Heisenbug — programmer jargon
for a bug that disappears or changes behavior when you try to isolate it — uses
the newest-of-the-new open-source programs it's not hard to set up. Its
installation program, Anaconda, as J. A. Watson shows in his step by step
Anaconda walk-through, is very easy to use. If you've setup a computer from a
DVD or USB stick before, you'll have no trouble with Fedora 20.
Live session & installation
Fedora 19 was a troubled system, with
kernel bugs and other problems. When I first tested it, it would not even let
me login. Not so this time around. From the start, everything was rather
peachy, I must admit. Boring, but peachy.
The free software thingie means you
are restricted to just some casual browsing and no fun at all. I can accept
ideology, and in this sense, Ubuntu is no greater charmer either. The live
session is only there to give you a sampling of what's ahead.
The installer is still kind of
tricky, but I've spat enough poison and venom in my previous two reviews, so I
won't be doing it now. We will see this installer in action again soon, but
that's a different story altogether. Anyhow, after a bit of careful fiddling, I
was able to setup a proper quad-boot configuration.
Since the installer is kind of
dangerous, you pay more attention to what you're doing. Then, probably because
whoever designed it figured there could be terrible moments of panic, they
added all kinds of safety measures, so you won't be killing your data easily,
unless you really insist. There's a lot of mouse clicking needed before you
format existing partitions. Paradoxically, the unclever layout makes it safer.
But more error prone.
The installer does have a bunch of
visual glitches. The text is positioned flush with the surrounding div, so it
appears as if some letters are cropped. There are so many ways the installer
can be prettified, but we won't go there.
Using Fedora
The installation took about 10
minutes. There were no problems. And now, we need to make Fedora presentable.
What I did was try new themes, new windows decorations, new wallpapers,
installed easyLife, which in turn setup the RPMForge and Livna repositories for
extra stuff, like codecs, Skype, Java, and more, and finally edited the basic
layout of the desktop to my liking. You will soon see the results. And I
promise a dedicated article on this topic!
Package management
I was most pleasantly surprised by
both Apper and yum. They are much faster than before, even with all the
compression and bandwidth optimization. The system update for 445 packages took
maybe five minutes, at full line speed. Nice, given the distro was only
recently released, and usually the repos choke in the first week or so.
easyLife
An essential part of all my reviews -
this will get your codecs and such. Now, for all those who emailed me
about alternative Fedora desktop and repo management
tools, I've not forgotten, we will talk about this soon.
Multimedia playback
After this step is complete, you will
have your pr0n helper utils, namely Flash and MP3, so you can watch your stuff.
Moreover, HD playback worked just fine, and I tested a WebM file, with Xvid
and Lame, in Dragon Player, without any issues.
Desktop effects
For some reason, I was not able to
activate them.
Applications
Fedora's default set is okay, but not
mind-boggling. You do get rekonq and Kmail, rather than Firefox and
Thunderbird. Then, there's the Calligra Suite. On top of that, you also get the
lovely Marble geo-educational
tool, which was also the only application to crash, just once, bringing the
total distro sum of problems to one. Yup. SELinux was quiet, too.
Printing
It did not work using the standard
KDE utility, but you can solve the problem by
installing thesystem-config-printer tool, normally intended for Gnome,
logging out and back into your session. Similar to doing the same thing on
Ubuntu and friends. More later.
Resource usage
Fedora 20 Heisenbug KDE edition is
not the leanest distro. It tolled some 500MB worth of RAM, and the CPU
utilization was normally about 3-5%. Overall, the distro was fairly responsive,
but you can do better.
Look & feel
You know how I think that
openSUSE 13.1 KDE is among the
prettiest desktops around? Well, then, why not bring its beauty to the rest of
the Linux world? Which is exactly what I did. I installed the openSUSE Plasma
theme, using the KDE Settings Menu, and did some extra cool work. Remember, I
promised a separate tutorial.
Problems?
No, not really. The logout can be
slow, but it's nothing special. Other than that, the system was perfectly
stable. There were no hangs, crashes or other bugs. Even the KDEWallet was
silent, and there's the new Wireless utility we saw in Kubuntu. In the worst
case, when logging in, it will prompt you for your password, but that's it. No
bogus failed messages, no issues there. Stable, robust. Suspend & resume
worked fine, too.
Conclusion
Fedora 20 Heisenbug, adorned with the
KDE desktop, has some issues. For example, the printing is borked, the desktop
effects do not work, and there's the manner of default boredom. Moreover,
Marble crashed once. But that's all really.
Other than that, the system worked
fine. After 30 minutes of serious customization, I had everything, including a
range of popular, mainstream software, like GIMP, VLC, Skype, or Steam, I had
all my codecs, and the desktop looked beautiful. This was so much unlike the
typical Fedora experience, and I'm feeling rather intrigued. True, you have to
sweat a little to get what you need, but the end result is quite pleasing. Gone
is the beta quality, it seems. And so, for the first time, yours truly, I
recommend you consider Fedora for your production environment. Overall grade,
8.5/10. Now, fix those effects and printing!
Cheers.
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