It seems like just yesterday that I got home from Iraq and refreshed my laptop (Dell Latitude D610). I ran Fedora 8 the entire time I was in Habbaniyah. After getting home, I was excited to get a chance to skip 9 and go right to Fedora 10. I didn’t use it long before I got a new laptop (Dell Latitude D630). Linux never made it on the new laptop. After I read a review of Fedora 11 Beta, I figured it was worth a shot. I downloaded Gparted LiveCD, opened up 20GB of space and popped in the DVD. I split this posting into three sections: the good, the mediocre and the ugly.
The Good#
Sprint Cellular Broadband Card: God Bless NetworkManager. No reboot. No installation. I just plugged it into my running machine and it worked like a champ. In fact, I’m using it now since my broadcom wireless card isn’t working.
Performance: This thing rocks. It is probably because the drastic changes going from a single-core, 32-bit proc to dual-core 64-bit. But, this thing is snappy!
Ext4: First major distro using this as default. Congrats Fedora Team!
The Mediocre#
Gnash/swfdec: I wish these two would just join forces and develop a kick ass, open-source flash player. I decided to go with swfdec. 64-bit, mozilla-plugin. Adobe can kiss my ass.
PackageKit: This software just annoys me. I understand its purpose but yumex is and always has been a better solution. I guess I am a bit biased though since I am not a beginner.
The Ugly#
Installation: The installer can’t seem to figure out how to eject the DVD and pukes at the end.
Wallpaper/Background: It is just ugly. Now, I couldn’t design anything nicer but all I wanted to do was change the desktop background and never see it again.
Firefox: Firefox is great. However, I am a habitual text highlighter. The entire system locks up when I drag text a little bit on accident from within Firefox.
Broadcom/Nvidia: Can’t really blame this on Fedora but these drivers are still an issue. I can’t get either of them to work.
Conclusion#
What can I say? I love Fedora. This seems to be the least stable beta release I have tried yet but I think it is because they are pushing the envelope. I like to see it too. Fedora is consistently trying new things and experimenting.