FC5

[Micah DesJardins]

On 12/7/05, Josh Coffman <josh_coffman at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've been holding off running FC5 until Test 2 or 3.
> But if it looks pretty solid, I might get it earlier.
> I don't have room on my laptop for a another OS so it
> would have to be stable enough to replace FC4.

FC 5 Test 1 is slick! But I'm still not sure I'd recommend it for
daily use.  It seems to boot REALLY fast and I haven't had any issues
with packages yet, but with all the "Test" releases, the OS is
non-upgradable.  You will need to wipe when you install Test 2 and 3
and then again for Final Release.

I have it installed because:

1. FC4 wouldn't install on the hardware I have.
2. RHEL wouldn't install on the hardware I have.
3. It's not my primary machine so I don't have to worry about it
4. I had the space.

The interface is one of the cleanest Gnome setups I've seen yet.
(Although I also like Ubuntu's) and everything is extremely usable and
friendly.

I have the same issues with it that I seem to have with any UI over an
OS.  Eventually I get frustrated with the buttons and widgets, open a
Terminal window or 10 and get down to business.

Now that's not always the case, there are plenty of apps I use that
simply can't be 'done' from a command line, but most of the time, if
there is a command line way to do it that's usually my first instinct.

(Case in point, I haven't figured out where in the Java Desktop System
interface in Solaris to execute a shutdown yet.  I always just launch
a terminal so I can 'init 0'


Anyways, what's cool about FC 5?

Here's the official list I filched from an article on LWN.net:

Notable Features of FC5 Test1
=============================
* Modular X.org
* Vastly improved Asian language input support with SCIM
* Kernel based on 2.6.15-rc1-git3
* GCC 4.0.2
* GNOME 2.12
* KDE 3.4.92
* Xen 3.0 snapshot for i386
* Improved Open Source Java including
gcj, classpath, tomcat, jonas, eclipse, and much more
* 1600+ Extras packages conveniently available via yum
* Major installer changes to use yum for package handling
* Pup!

FWIW My kernel is 2.6.14 (I'm using the X/EMT_64 build)

Test 2 is scheduled to be released 12/23, Test 3 is early January and
it should be in Final release by the end of Feb 06.

Micah