Fedora 10 Review : First Impressions

Its been more than a week since the launch of Fedora 10 , there have been great responses on the latest fedora all over the internet . Its been an overall good experience for me as well , trying out fedora 10 after such a long time , i must say it has improved a lot , although fedora could improve in certain critical areas which i feel fedora should have realized by now . Some improvements are fantastic, some features are way cooler than what ubuntu has , its a mixture of idea i must say . One distro has some good features , whereas another distro has certain other good features which you get impressed by . So there is no ONE REALLY ULTIMATE linux distro as of yet. I guess every distro has its own flaws.Anyways back to fedora , here's some of its cool features and what i think of it :

Firstly , i must say 3 cheers to fedora for the wonderful User Interface , i mean fedora few years back was nothing like this . Fedora has this wonderful GUI , very attractive , very refreshing and something which makes you stick with it . This can be very impressive for those who dont actually want to take the trouble of you know installing beryl or compiz fusion or whatever . The user interface is not as advanced as that , but BY DEFAULT you get a really good user interface which is way better than the default ubuntu interface , i mean we've been seeing the same UI since when , we havent really you know seen a Total revamp which i think is necessary for people to actually start getting attracted to ubuntu.There have been small changes yes , but nothing like how windows xp and windows vista was , i mean if you looked at their GUI , each one was TOTALLY DIFFERENT from the other.THats probably why people are so into Windows' GUI and looks.

Nextly , there are many small applications you find installed by default , which are very useful.One of them which caught my attention is the "Cheese" Application or something like that . Its a simple application to take a photo or record a video which could be directly exported to fspot for editing. Very small app , very useful.A lot of other similar apps are present which can be very handy.


One feature which was the highlight of Fedora 10 was its Improved webcam support.I must agree with this as fedora has superb webcam support, no drivers nothing , fedora recognized it automatically , i didnt have to do anything. Its very rare to see a linux distro recognize a webcam automatically.Ubuntu couldn't do that .

Another very useful program is the Firewall Configuration application which you would find in fedora 10 BY DEFAULT. I stress on the BY DEFAULT because i think that is just fabulous. THere is no inbuilt by default application for configuring your firewall in ubuntu. THis firewall configuration i must say has some REALLY COOL FUNTIONALITY , you can configure anything with this application . Block ports ,open ports,masquerade etc . This could be very useful for newbies as it is very easy to configure.SOmething that is missing in ubuntu.




At the same time when i mentioned that it had some very useful mini apps, i must say it lagged some basic applications which should have been included which would make fedora a ready to use OS. I didnt see Openoffice in this fedora edition. I think it is a must to have openoffice , almost everybody opens documents etc so it should have been there .

Nextly , the default File or folder browser for fedora is not at all up to the mark . Im talking about the nautilus like or windows explorer like application . THere is no BACK,FORWARD buttons , no place to insert a location like , you can directly type /home/prash or whatever , this screenshot says it all . Although the file browser does have that functionality , but going to places->home or places->computer shows a very plain browser which is very disappointing.

Nextly , one more thing which disappointed me , is that fedora couldnt recognize my wifi card by default , or it didnt even have anything under hardware drivers or anything similar. THat again is disappointing. Instead of providing good webcam support , they could have focused a lot more on wifi card drivers as they are more important when it comes to functionality.

The network manager of fedora is pretty much similar to the latest network manager in ubuntu 8.10 , the latest ubuntu network manager , is totally new and improved , it provides some really good functionality , giving you one click access to some advanced network configurations. At the same time the network manager could get confusing for newbies , who may find it confusing with all advanced configurations.




FINAL WORDS :

On the whole , i am speaking relatively from what fedora was few years ago , they have some really good improvements , As mentioned above i really liked some features in fedora which are purely exclusive . I hope other distros get some good ideas from fedora. At the sametime fedora lacks some basic necessities which should be present in every OS . This is what makes me uncomfortable. The GUI is great , the packages are fine . But they do need to improve on, you know making fedora a ready to use OS , which is missing unfortunately.I think in the versions to come im sure they would work on this and make fedora way cooler!! So overall , its a great competitor for ubuntu but at the moment i would stick with Ubuntu .