Ashton Mills14 June 2007, 1:58 AM
The latest in this vintage clothing named distribution (yes yes, we know the are roots in Red Hat) comes with a new distribution format, the latest X.org release for 3D accelerated goodness, and an extremely polished desktop environment. When we eventually got it installed, that is.
It was with much anticipation that we nabbed the new Fedora Core 7 Live CD in the hope of checking it out first before installing it. Unfortunately, the live CD had other plans.
After starting to load the kernel it happily reported a series of 'buffer IO' errors on my DVD drive. It's a pretty reliable Pioneer DVR-111, and not had a problem with burned disks yet, but nevertheless, I burned another and... got the same result. Ok, let's try the 64-bit Live CD.
Same result.
Hrm, checking the forums it turns out this is a common bug and the solution is to append 'ide=nodma' to the kernel options. So I did.
Same result.
Fine, toss the Live CD idea lets go with the full install DVD -- and what do you know, it boots fine! Won't be long now, i think, before I'm exploring a spanky new Fedora Core 7 install.
So I click on the graphical installer and, oddly, it starts the text based one instead. Then, after some initial prompts, it tells asks me to choose the installation source -- I select the DVD, since that's what I have. The drive whirs a little before it spits out the DVD and the the installer tells me it can't find... the DVD.
Repeated attempts grant no relief; it is convinced the install DVD is not the install DVD. Another forum search, and it turns out to be a known bug.
So far, after a number of wasted disks and time, I'm finding it hard to be impressed.
So I did want any self-respecting Linux geek would -- I chucked the DVD contents onto my gateway system (running Gentoo, no less), re-loaded the install DVD, and did a network install via HTTP.
Ironically, the last time I did a network install at home was with an early verion of Red Hat, so early in fact that the curses installer had the 'Redhat Redneck' install language, which was a stroke of comic genius back then. Pity to lose that as Red Hat become a pin up boy for corporate open source. And so far Fedora Core has certainly been far less funny.
Once finally installed, and with a stiff drink in hand, I booted FC7. It has to be said Fedora has always done well with first impressions, and the graphical boot and updated GDM login is very slick.
 Fedora Core 7 desktop: Everything is themed in the distrubtion's colors |
Best of all, it detected the native resolution of my monitor automatically, unlike my less than impressive
experience with Ubuntu. Which invariably means I'm going to draw comparisons.
Fedora Core 7's GNOME desktop is somewhat less customised than Ubuntu's, but as always there's a unique Fedora theme common to both its GNOME and KDE desktops, keeping the look consistent when running applications from each environment.
 Display settings: Easy to use and with dual-head support |
The update manager looks and operates much the same as Ubuntu's, but the package browser -- which uses the same interface as package selection during installation -- hasn't changed much in years and while effective is less user friendly than that in Ubuntu's.
 Updating: Updating to is as easy as Ubuntu |
On the plus side Fedora Core 7 feels a little snappier than Ubuntu, on the down side it's real PITA when Fedora Core prompts you everytime you go to use root access. In Ubuntu it will 'remember' your login for five minutes, so you can execute a number of commands with sudo and only type in your password once, instead of every. single. time.
 Audio: A nice touch -- one of the few visual audio configutation tools for any distribution |
And, as usual, there's no MP3 or DVD support out of the box, and unlike Ubuntu, no prompting for installation of codecs or even where to go online to learn how to enable the functionality -- the user is just left in the dark.
For 3D sexiness setting up Beryl and Emerald is easily done through the available packages, and it appears more stable than enabling desktop effects under Ubuntu, but then Fedora Core 7 is a more recent release. For 3D support FC7 actually bundles the new nouveau open source 3D drivers for NVIDIA cards, though we had more success with the official drivers.
 About: Note our inventively named test system |
Fedora Core 7 sports a 2.6.21 kernel, the new Xorg 7.3, GNOME 2.18 and KDE 3.5.6, so if you're up for trying a recent kernel or exploring the new Xorg and GNOME, it's easy to get into -- and we've only just scratched the surface in this first look.
Head to the Fedora homepage to grab the release.