This is a continuation of my last review of ubuntu.

Fedora, following Ubuntu, was the next major Linux distribution to rev to a new release. This one is fedora 11. It continues along history of subtle and not so subtle refinements of the distribution.

The install was as uneventful as one could expect. Fedora thoughtfully includes a live test in their distribution which to those of you who know this, allows you to gauge comparability with your hardware prior to a dedicated install. Once you decide to install, one click gets you started.

Once satisfied that all was right with fedora on my test rig, an hp with a core2 duo 1.8ghz processor and 2gb of ram, 80gb sata drive, I choose the allow to install to disk option. A few questions and answers later, I was in business. Some of the more interesting (surprising??) questions revolved around drive encryption (yes Virginia, it uses ext4 file system), user accounts and password complexity and the like.

Once completed I was faced with a clean gnome desktop. Fedora has done a few nice tweaks to what I normally expect from desktop configurations in Linux. The ability to turn on effects, including the cube and the always fun wavy window were easy to find and configure. Changing the desktop resolution was also straight forward.

Day to day use was uneventful. It recognized everything attached to my machines, allowed me to print to my windows samba printer, map to samba shares.  In short it got out of the way.

I have been using Ubuntu on a secondary desktop for the good many years and I suppose I’ve been spoiled by it.  It almost always worked on my hardware and its application availability was superb.  What it was missing at times was native support from some of my more esoteric hardware, like my tablet laptop.

Not so with Fedora.  I was amazed that there was nothing I had to do in order to get it to work with my tablet.  That including support for its built in finger print reader.

As of this writing I’ve been using Fedora for a few weeks.  I’ve now replaced all of my Ubuntu installs with Fedora. That’s laptops and workstations.  So yes, it’s that good.

So it’s good to welcome back an old friend. Hopefully he’ll be around for a long time.