Fedora 8 - Review
Fedora 8 is the latest release from the Fedora project and it is just packed with a slew of exciting new features. Some of the more notable features are Pulse Audio (new Linux Sound System), Codec Buddy, Online-Desktop, Compiz and Gnome 2.20. Fedora 8 also offers a new theme (unique to Fedora) and more visual treats for the desktop user. After using Fedora 8 from the various Release Candidates to the final Fedora 8 release, I came away impressed with the overall release, but wished a few quirks and bugs were ironed out before the final release.    Fedora, for philosophical reasons, does not include proprietary drivers with their distribution, thus I was left to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers myself. I would have liked an option similar to Ubuntu's “Restricted Drivers Manager” for this function, but installing Nvidia drivers required just a simple two step procedure. First, I downloaded the Livna RPM (to enable access to Livna's repository via Yum) and then used Pirut (Add/Remove Software) to install Nvidia-Kmod. A reboot and my test systems was FINALLY good to go. A nice bonus from Livna, would be the included Livna Display Configuration that comes with the Nvidia installation. That application gives you an easy way to pick between AIGLX/XGL or advanced compositing options.    One of the best things about Fedora 8 would be the Pulse Audio system. Fedora 8 is the first distribution to implement Pulse Audio and after using it extensively, I believe other distributions will shortly adopt it as their default sound system. Pulse Audio alleviates the headaches of various sound systems fighting for access to the sound device (finally!!!) and implements many exciting new features to bring the Linux sound system out of the stone age. Some of the more gee-whiz features of Pulse Audio would be the ability to have different volumes for each running application, interrupting music playback for a VOIP call, and “hot” switching of playback streams between devices on USB headsets. Just having proprer mixing with the sound server running stable throughout was highly appreciated.    Codec Buddy is another new feature of Fedora 8, to ease the pain of installing various codecs. The way Codec Buddy works is when you click a file that requires proprietary codecs, a pop-up window will appear giving you the option to install the appropriate codec. I found the actual execution of Codec Buddy to be less impressive than similar applications in other Linux distros. Before Codec Buddy launches, the default application opens and then a pop-up window appears. Problems arose when I clicked an mp3 file and Amarok automatically launched and showed an error message saying that Xine could not play the intended file. This would have worked better if Codec Buddy worked directly with the file type rather than relying on the application, as that can cause confusion (It seems Codec Buddy works with gstreamer codecs but doesn't provide extra xine codecs).   Compiz is installed by default but not enabled. To actually enable Compiz requires a simple click within the Desktop Effects application. Once activated, Compiz works well, but offers a limited amount of features. The only settings you get with Desktop Effects is Desktop Cubes and Wobbly Windows. There's also a more advanced Gnome Compiz Manager available via Pirut, but even that gives only a limited amount of choices when compared with Compiz Fusion. With that said, Fedora has Compiz Fusion available in their repositories and, as of today, just added ccsm (compizconfig settings manager) in their updates -testing repository. Because ccsm is still being tested, you can expect some bugs in the program until it is moved into the regular updates repo. In order to get ccsm working I did have to do my own workaround. Fedora's gnome-wm script would launch compiz with the gconf plugin rather than ccp, which prevented compiz fusion from running normally. A basic edit of gnome-wmf did the trick (gedit /usr/bin/gnome-wm & replace the line that has "gconf" with "ccp"). Once that was done Compiz Fusion was ready to go and made Fedora 8 even better.             Online Desktop is a new Gnome application to integrate popular online applications into the Gnome desktop. The program is still in the early rough stages and I was unable to get it to work.. The program installed fine via Pirut, but after logging into a Online Desktop session, a fatal error was shown, which said "The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME...". This also affected my regular gnome session, so I had to revert back to normal Gnome desktop via gconftool-2 -s /apps/panel/general/toplevel_id_list --type=list --list-type=string '[top_panel,bottom_panel]' Some excellent utilities included in Fedora 8 would be the Firewall Configuration application and Disk Usage Analyzer. “Firewall Configuration” has a simple layout of available services that should or should not be allowed access to the outside world. Another nice touch with the application would be the available Wizard, which guides users through an basic set-up or advanced set-up. Disk Usage Analyzer is nifty utility that I have never used before. The application gives a readout of the available space on your hardrive via folders and directories. The actual scan of the local hard drive runs very fast and I found it to be a very useful (especially for log files that keep growing without my knowledge). I was surprised that Fedora did not include a meta search application with their default installation. Both Beagle and Tracker are available in the Fedora repositories and I chose to install Tracker. Once that application was installed, Tracker worked well but didn't have the tight system integration as in other Linux installations (ex. Tracker was not integrated within Nautilus).   Fedora 8 is a mixture of cutting edge features, polished desktop and a handful of annoying of bugs. I did find Pulse Audio to be the star of Fedora 8 show. Having multiple applications playing sound without having sound server lockups was greatly appreciated. The new look and feel of Fedora 8 was also done just right. The layout should work just as well for home users or business oriented users. The weakest aspect about Fedora 8 would be its troublesome installer. If you have a similar setup as mine, be prepared to do a lot of quick fixes on your own. Even with the problems I had with Fedora 8's installer, I still came away impressed by the release. If they could iron out some of the bugs in Fedora 9 while continuing the improvements found in Fedora 8, than that release could be the best Linux release yet. In the meantime, you can enjoy one of the better current Linux releases with Fedora 8. |
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