An In-Depth Look at Fedora 15

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] Since its initial release in 2003, Fedora users have been treated to two main releases each year, with the most recent having been launched late last month. Thanks to this regular release schedule, it's not often that one launch feels more special than another, but Fedora 15 is different. A big reason? GNOME 3. Since its own launch a couple of months ago, GNOME 3 has received quite a bit of flak for taking a step backwards, despite being arguably the most attractive desktop environment to ever grace a Linux OS. The Fedora team took a huge risk setting GNOME 3 as the default desktop, which in itself has raised a fair amount of controversy. Being that I haven't given Fedora a fair test since FC6, nor had a chance to test out GNOME 3 up to this point, it felt like there was no better opportunity than the launch of Fedora 'Lovelock' to kill two birds with one stone. As I did with my in-depth look at Ubuntu 11.04, the focus here will be mostly on Fedora itself, but I'll be dedicating a page to talk about GNOME 3. First things first; what sets Fedora apart from the crowd? For starters, it's sponsored by one of the oldest and most financially successful Linux companies around, Red Hat. In fact, the entire reason Fedora came to be was due to the cancellation of Red Hat's desktop variant in 2003. With this relationship, Red Hat and Fedora feed off of each other and share integral technologies. Fedora, though, can boast things such as a lack of cost, frequent releases, and a community that's integral to its success. Fedora has a couple of strong "selling-points", including the adoption of cutting-edge technologies and a goal of being 100% "free", as in libre, or "freedom". In taking the Fedora leap, you can be assured that there are no proprietary or commercial packages installed - important to those who care a lot about true freedom in software. That "free" advantage isn't for the feint of heart, however, as more casual users, especially those coming from Windows, could be in for a surprise with the lack of MP3, Adobe Flash, official AMD / NVIDIA drivers and more. If it's not 100% free as per a software's given license, then it's not included in Fedora. While I am not opposed to installing commercial / proprietary software on any of my Linux boxes, I am at the same time thankful for the dedication to free software by the Fedora team. Aside from the free aspect, Fedora aims to be the most stable distro available, a real "professionals" OS, excellent for developers but not too overwhelming for the casual user. At first glance, one might be confused as to the lack of a 'server' version, but it's clear that the server realm isn't a major focus here, though the OS can still be used for those purposes. At the same time, CentOS, another Red Hat derived distro, would be a better bet as its major focus is in fact servers (all of Techgage's servers run on CentOS). What's New? Aside from the obvious inclusion of GNOME 3, Fedora 15 introduces the option of using the Btrfs (butter FS) file system, something that's set to become default in Fedora 16. Btrfs' goal is to offer unparalleled data security by introducing things like checksums and snapshots, and also enables disk pooling. Btrfs even goes as far to support the SSD TRIM command, so there could be little-to-no reason to stick to ext4, except for the pursuit of absolute performance. Another cool addition is ABRT (Automatic Bug Reporting Tool), an enhanced crash reporter that doesn't require you to install debugging tools prior to sending in a bug report. Instead, you have the option to send the dump to a server that will handle it, making the entire process simple and pain-free. In the couple of times I've tested this, I didn't have the best of luck, but there may just be launch kinks to work out. To help improve start times, Fedora 15 becomes the first distro to default to the systemd init daemon. It aims to reduce shell overhead and can load services in parallel, so the benefits are obvious. With other distros having pondered a move to systemd for a while, Fedora again proves that it's a cutting-edge distro. Other improvements and adjustments include a refined SELinux trouble-shooter, better compressed Live CDs, improved power management, a switch of OpenOffice to LibreOffice, and of course, a slew of regular package updates. Select packages include the 2.6.38.6 Linux kernel, GCC 4.6.0, GRUB 0.97, KDE 4.6.2 and Xfce 4.8.0 (through yum or the specific install discs), MySQL 5.5.10, PHP 5.3.6, Python 2.7.1, SAMBA 3.5.8, udev 167, and xorg-server 1.10.1. A much more thorough list can be found at DistroWatch. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Installing Fedora 15][Top Ad] Catering to both the novice and the professional, Fedora's Anaconda installer makes the process of copying over the required bits to your hard drive a painless one. Like most things Linux, there isn't just one Fedora download option available. The 'Default' includes the GNOME 3 desktop, while additional 'Spins' include others; KDE, LXDE and Xfce. Also available are bulkier DVDs that include a lot more software, weighing in at about 3.4GB for both the x86 and x64 editions. For even more specific needs, the official Fedora Spins page lists a couple of extra niche choices; Security, Electronic Lab (specialized for hardware design and simulation), Games and also Design Suite. Upon booting up with one of the discs, you'll see a screen like this: The options listed here will differ depending on the version of the ISO you downloaded. The screen above is taken from the DVD x64 edition, while the 'Default' CD edition will not feature options to go straight to the installer, but rather go to the Live CD environment first for a richer experience. One of the features that sets Anaconda apart from most other installers is that it asks you up-front if you'd like to test the install media for faults, which is something I always recommend unless you just burned the CD and are confident in the result - or even not, just to be safe. It may not seem like a big deal, since if it installs it shouldn't matter, but it could matter. I've had distros seemingly install fine only to discover burn-related issues not long after (I've had the same with Windows). The first prompted options involve selecting both a language and keyboard layout. The next screen is where the "professional" comes in, with a choice of installing to advanced storage devices such as iSCSI or FCoE. The vast majority of users are fine to leave the default blank... you know if you need the second option. After choosing it, you'll be prompted to prep the hard drive if no partitions exist. You'll then be able to choose a better name than 'localhost.localdomain' for your hostname and also take the opportunity to configure your network. Unfortunately, the Fedora installer doesn't seem to have taken a card from Canonical's Ubiquity installer and choose your timezone for you (requiring Internet connectivity), but it doesn't take much effort to either click your location on the map or select it from the list. After clearing these two screens, you'll be required to enter a root password before continuing on. Onto the good stuff - partitioning! Novice or not, the partitioner is the part of any Linux installer (or any OS installer for that matter) where attention must be paid, else catastrophic results can occur. If you're installing Fedora to a completely blank hard drive, then 'Use All Space' can be chosen. If you are looking to replace a currently-installed version of Linux, the 'Replace Existing Linux System(s)' option will take care of that. In the event you have multiple hard drives, the best idea is to choose the custom layout option, where your tweaking options will allow you to configure things just the way you want. After choosing any option, Anaconda will prompt to ask you whether or not you want to setup a standard partition (suitable for most people), a software RAID, or a logical volume (LVM). Once at the partition configuration screen, you'll be able to create and modify partitions to your heart's content. If you're a novice Linux user and not all-too-familiar with partitions, I'd recommend creating a 500MB ext4 with /boot mounted to it, an 8GB linux-swap, and then an ext4 or Btrfs mounted to / that uses the remainder of the space. If you did not make free space available on your hard drive prior to running the installer, I recommend instead using a tool such as GParted (available on the live CD) to make your changes, since it's a much easier partitioning tool to use than Anaconda. Once your configuration is OK'd, you can choose which drive you want to install the GRUB boot-loader to - usually fine to be left default. Alright... I lied earlier. This is where the fun begins. Here, you can choose which software base you'd like to use for the OS. If you're a software developer, the option is here for that, and ditto for the other options. Once a selection is made, you can click on "Customize Now", which will give you fine-tuning options once you continue onto the next screen. For those looking to just get the install over with, you can simply leave the options default. Once you reach the desktop, you can install anything you like. Doing it here simply saves you some time. At this point, you're pretty much near the end. Depending on the number of packages you chose on the earlier screen, installation could take a couple of minutes or a half an hour. Fin! Time to reboot. On the first boot into your live environment, Fedora will prompt you with a couple of simple questions, such as your name, username, password and also the date and time. For those wanting to make sure their time is always accurate, you can choose the 'Synchronize date and time over the network' option on its respective screen. This will keep your time in sync based on your timezone choice. I'm not sure I'd call Anaconda one of the 'best' installers out there, since most of...

An In-Depth Look at Fedora 15

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Rob Williams