Fedora Lovesong

Fedora Core 5 Rocks!

I know FC6 is out recently, but I'm still learning FC5.

Anyway. Last summer ('05), while I was hanging out at Barnes & Noble in Flagstaff, AZ, I found this super cool book, called Red Hat Fedora 4 Unleashed. It was fascinating: a giant 1000+ page volume full of very interesting things to learn.

What? There's a world outside of Microsoft and Apple? *solemn nods*

And so since the summer of 2005 have I been tearing through this book, absorbing every detail and nuance and "update" in the *nix world. . . I've since tested 8-10 different versions of Linux, written code and programs for various tasks, and (until this summer) never received a penny for this borderline obsession. I can't help it. I'm done with school, and I still need to learn.

But that's all beside the point.

Fedora Core 5 is awesome. Being super computer geek girl, I've tested the following Linux distros:

Slackware
Free BSD
Fedora Core 4
Debian "Sarge"
Mandrake+Connectiva=Mandriva
MEPIS
Novell SuSE 10.1
Ubuntu
DSL (Damn Small Linux)
some others
and . . . Fedora Core 5.

FC5 is my current favorite; here's why. . .

Each of the previous distros had something lacking. Either redundant sound-card detection (having to run commands each bootup to get sound working), lack of support for flash, printers, or other "update" issues.

But since I have this "old" manual (FC5 is built on FC4) I was able to figure out enough to get my new setup working with:

-macromedia flash video (for online video)
-macromedia flash sound (for online sound; i.e. youtube)
-my printer and scanner and copier (test page printed with color wheel + 1-degree Radial Lines in B/W hangs on my wall)
-cd/music "ripping" (for offline sound/mp3s, ogg, wav-format) Kaffeine/Grip
-updated security torrents & yum issues
-awesome web-developer tools!

So there's my "lovesong" for FC5 as a main, server-type PC.

I'm leaning toward MEPIS for the laptop. Its Debian-based structure and excellent hardware detection are unsurpassed; the KDE-default is also a refreshing change, more intuitive and mobile (and such) than the GNOME-based Fedora Core default. Though they're easily interchangeable (KDE & GNOME), I like to test distros with the "default" X-Windows client just to get an idea of what the developers were thinking when compiling a certain group of packages in a distro.