Fedora 14 Released and Reviewed — Advanced, and Not For Wimps

Several readers have sent word that Fedora 14, codenamed Laughlin, has been released. A brief listing of the major changes has been posted, and the download is available at the Fedora project's site. Reader jfruhlinger points out a quick review of the new version, saying, "Remember the days when being a Linux user was like being part of a select priesthood — arcane knowledge needed, but great rewards? Steven Vaughan-Nichols has tested out Fedora 14, and that was how it went. No Ubuntu-style handholding, but some powerful new features."

Comments

Re:KDE

[BassMan449]

I thought the exact same thing. I've first used Fedora Core since 3 and almost immediately switched from GNOME to KDE. Especially now I would definitely take KDE 4.2+ over any version of GNOME.

The bad old days

[MonsterTrimble]

"Remember the days when being a Linux user was like being part of a select priesthood — arcane knowledge needed, but great rewards? Steven Vaughan-Nichols has tested out Fedora 14, and that was how it went. No Ubuntu-style handholding, but some powerful new features."

Thankfully, I missed those days (in general) until I started playing with LXDE & E17. In fact, the main reason I use a ubuntu derivative now over Fedora is that it worked with a minimum of fuss. As a newbie, I was HAPPY for the handholding.

Re:The bad old days

[gstoddart]

a thousand times, ditto! i love linux, but never in a million years do i want to compile a kernel. trust me, there are a lot of people out there who feel exactly the same way.

Well, it's like changing a tire, writing your own interrupt handlers, or hand-optimizing memory usage.

It's something everybody should do at least once in their life so they understand the process. And, once you've done it, you will never want to do it again. Those who sidestep the process never really understand and live in fear of it.

Those who understand the process know what it's all about, and just mostly call AAA, install Ubuntu, or add more memory thereafter -- secure in the knowledge that if they really had to, they could probably muddle their way through it. But, in reality, it's a task best left for someone else and is mostly a waste of time. ;-)

Re:The bad old days

[jimicus]

IME, there are three sorts of Linux users.

The Newbie - uses Ubuntu or something similar - doesn't want to compile anything, just wants something other than Windows with the minimum extra effort.

If you go back in time to before Ubuntu existed, this sort of person was very rare and often graduated to "enthusiast" level quite quickly.

The Enthusiast - uses the unstable, beta stream of a well-known distribution or Gentoo, happy to compile whatever's necessary and will put up with a hell of a lot. For most outsiders, watching these people is like seeing someone in an abusive relationship. You know it doesn't have to be like that, you know they're setting themselves up for punishment but the only person who can pull them out of it is themselves.

The Professional - uses Debian, CentOS or RHEL. Has no intention of wasting time compiling stuff, and wants to be able to get as many packages as possible without any compiling. Is not afraid of compiling if strictly necessary. May have a need to run commercial package(s) which are only supported on these distributions. Usually reached this point having come from some other Unix or bubbled up from the Enthusiast.

Re:The bad old days

[martas]

Hm, it seems I don't fit your taxonomy. I've used Ubuntu for several years now as my primary OS, and, having been a CS student for some of that time, I don't consider myself a newbie; I've gotten my hands dirty trying to compile at least a few not-so-well-managed projects from source (though never the kernel). I don't consider myself what you call an "enthusiast" either - I have no interest in intentionally using unstable code. That leaves "professional", but, as people like you would probably be very quick to agree, I'd never dare call myself that until I've gotten the kernel to compile on, say, some very recently released machine, and used ndiswrapper to get wireless working, bla bla, which I haven't done.

So, I guess I'm the exception that proves that your view of what every linux user should be like is correct?

Re:Windows Logo on New Fedoraproject.org Site

[mattdm]

Okay, fine -- I'll post to undo the moderation.

It's four colors, but they're four completely different colors in completely different shapes. The MS Windows logo has red-orange, green, blue, and yellow, in different window-pane-like configurations depending on version. (In older versions, the orange was more red, and the blue and green were darker -- clearly the four perceptual primary colors.)

The Fedora glyphs are a navy blue, a magenta-tinged pink, definitely orange, and bright green. They're decidedly off-primary, and not in the same way that the Windows 7 and other recent MS logos are.

If you think I'm being pedantic, look at them actually side-by-side and you'll see that the comparison is ridiculous.

Surprisingly, Microsoft doesn't actually own the concept of using four colors for a logo. It reminds me of this silliness. So yeah, I thought you were trolling. And I'll give you a half apology, because even if you weren't trolling, it's pretty silly.

Re:KDE

[dAzED1]

I started as a slackware guy, back in...well, I won't date myself. Then I built everything myself, in a linux-from-scratch style way. Then I moved to Gentoo for a while. Then, after I realized I wanted to get work done, stop farking around, and accept that I wasn't needing to prove something to someone (not by building my own "distro" at least) I moved to Fedora.

Somewhere along the way, I went with XFCE. I was one of those people who had used Gnome because it was so lightweight compared to CDE. I was saddened by how ugly it got. I don't want my computer making decisions for me, on questions I never asked. All this is my long-winded, I've-been-drinking, way of saying that XFCE is where it's at if you want something out of the box that doesn't suck but still works.

Re:KDE

[dudpixel]

got proof? kubuntu is working just fine for me. openSUSE didn't fair so well though which is odd because it is often said to be "the" kde distro.

As far as I know fedora dont really make any changes to kde so you get a vanilla kde (the best sort).

Kubuntu shares a similar view, however they add their own userspace apps to help with certain tasks. I was never a (k)ubuntu fan but I cant argue with a system that "just works".