![]() A Stable Release, But Slightly Slow to Boot (on rotational disks)The last version of Fedora operating system I reviewed was Fedora 2. I quite deliberately skipped Fedora 2. The main reason was that starting with Fedora 2. Fedora developers had decided to abandon a core utility (‘systemd- readahead‘) that was capable of speeding up boot- up times quite significantly on rotational hard disk drives. The reason for its exclusion according to Fedora developers was because they don’t use rotational disks anymore, that was basically their explanation. Now, I do believe that I have a firm grasp on of the mentality of Fedora & GNOME (they’re very close communities), and thus I knew it mattered little what the users had to say about such decisions, because user criticism doesn’t change much in their world. Therefore I was no surprised to realize that systemd- readahead was not present in Fedora 2. So I skipped the next release (Fedora 2. I thought reviewing it once every while would help those that love this GNU/Linux distribution. So that’s why I decided to review the latest release, Fedora 2. So anyhow, the most important change in this Fedora release is ‘Wayland’, which is the default display server protocol used. Wayland was created to address the drawbacks of the old X. Org display server, because X. Distribution Description; Red Hat Linux: Split into Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The last official release of the unsplit distribution was Red Hat Linux. Latest trending topics being covered on ZDNet including Reviews, Tech Industry, Security, Hardware, Apple, and Windows. The Final Builds Site is a web-site with links to the latest free software, installation instructions, FAQ and more. Org was created to address issues in the old days of computing and it was becoming exceedingly difficult to patch to suit the needs of today. While there are many technological differences between the two (again because they belong to two different ‘worlds’), in simple terms, they are both key components of a modern computer operating system because they’re responsible for ‘drawing’ the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Due to its design, Wayland significantly simplifies the whole process and is more efficient at it compared to X. Org as well. So yes, this is a big change. Wayland has been available for Fedora users in few of the recent releases for testing it out, but Fedora 2. However, proprietary GPU drivers (such as those from Nvidia & ATI) may not fully support the new display server and the protocol. Therefore, there can be issues while trying to run Wayland under them. But, the open- source counterparts (back- engineered drivers) seem to be quite stable at the moment. That said, the X. Org session is still available under the login manager, and there is also a wrapper called XWayland for letting applications written X. Org in mind to run smoothly in Wayland, such as Firefox, for instance. Fedora 2. 5 also ships with Kernel 4. Snort is an open-source, free and lightweight network intrusion detection system (NIDS) software for Linux and Windows to detect emerging threats. X. Org 1. 1. 8, Wayland 1. Mozilla Firefox 4. Libre. Office 5. 2. Rhythmox 3. 4. 1 and features the GNOME 3. The GNOME Software [center] now fully supports Flatpack application packages handling (installing/removing) as well (Flatpack is a way of packing software applications for GNU/Linux where developers can include everything their application need to run properly, including libraries and its other dependencies, in a single package, which can be used in any GNU/Linux system. It’s quite identical to Ubuntu‘s Snappy packages, which Ubuntu introduced in Ubuntu 1. LTS). For this review I downloaded the 6. GNOME desktop (of course). The downloadable ISO disc image size is about 1. GB. I’ll stick mostly with performance related info in this Fedora 2. I know, and I’ll be using the default GNOMEShell interface as my desktop session. I’ve also been using Fedora 2. I can better assess the stability as well. Below are the hardware details of the laptop computer I used to test it: Intel Core i. U, Hybrid GPU Setup (Intel Broadwell HD Graphics 5. Nvidia 9. 20. M), 4. GB RAM DDR3, Hybrid Permanent Storage Setup (Seagate 5. RPM, 5. 00 GB rotational disk and a Kingston 2. GB SSD), Qualcomm Atheros AR9. Wireless Adapter, Realtek RTL8. PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller, Realtek ALC3. Sound Card, LED Display (1. FPS/HZ). It's an Asus laptop (F3. LJ- FN0. 24. H). As you can see, this laptop comes with two separate hard drives. One is small (2. 4 GB in capacity) but a faster SSD drive, and the other is a more roomy but a slower rotational disk drive (5. GB). I completely avoided using the SSD because that’s where my main operating system is installed (Ubuntu 1. But that’s not the main reason actually. I did this because I’ve created a ‘EFI’, ‘Boot’ and a ‘root’ partition (2. GB) in the slower rotational disk for the exact purpose of using them to review different GNU/Linux distributions. And those are the partitions that I’ve used on this laptop to measure all the performance related data on other distributions. So, before starting, I completely destroyed all the data on those partitions so that I end up with a ‘clean’ system which in turn should increase the accuracy of the performance related data. Then, after I was done installing Fedora 2. I boot into the newly install operating system 5- 6 times for letting things settle down (first time setups etc) as well. The only change I made to the newly installed system was adding the System Monitor to the Application Dash in GNOMEShell. This was done to avoid unnecessarily increasing the memory usage, because whenever I was measuring the memory usage, if I were to open it by searching on Dash, that would’ve increased the memory usage thus negatively affecting the reading. And while measuring Boot Up Times, Memory Usage and Shutdown Times, I also took 5 samples for coming up with the average results as well. Other tests such as Power Usage (idle) doesn’t require such attention because it uses a software tool for that, and it’s very accurate. It takes lots of samples and runs for couple of minutes as well. I also ran the System Responsiveness test 2 times (I’ll explain why) as well. It was only after I was done running these tests that I actually started use the operating system and to look for what’s new etc. And, I’ve compared Fedora 2. Ubuntu 1. 6. 1. 0 & Ubuntu GNOME 1. I don’t have performance data of a recent Fedora release that was tested under this laptop (Fedora 2. That said, Ubuntu GNOME 1. Fedora 2. 5 since it’s also based on the GNOME 3 desktop. The Installer…(appearances can be deceiving!)Fedora’s installer (Anaconda) can be a bit confusing because its installation steps are not progressive. You just have to go forward and then come back, select something else, go forward then come back and select another setting and go forward etc etc. Also, the partition setup is not the most user friendly interface either. I actually like the old Anaconda far better than I like the new version. Other than this, my usual criticism of its UI, nothing major has changed as far as the Anaconda’s appearance is concerned. And I didn’t encounter any errors while installing it either. I’ll skip the GRUB theme and the boot logo, because they look exactly the same compared to many previous releases (plus, it’s a little difficult capturing the boot- logo. Therefore, unless there is something new, I don’t usually include one in my reviews). The Desktop…As mentioned in the beginning, Fedora 2. GNOME 3. 2. 2. 1 release. Except for the new wallpaper (which looks nice), there are no changes in the look- n- feel of the desktop layout. The file manager has changed slightly. By default, it uses huge icons for folders (it has been doing that in few of the previous releases as well). I honestly don’t understand the logic behind this setup. It’s ugly! Luckily, it can be changed pretty easily. You just click on the button that is located left to the Close button and change the zoom level (I prefer it zoomed out at 5. Compared to some of the recent GNOME releases, this button and the one right next to it (left) have changed in terms of options that they used to provide. For instance, when you click the button next to it (one with four small squares), it changes the folder into the list view. And that’s it. Previously, it was through this button that you could change the zoom levels and folder & files arrangement. Now that it’s heavily simplified, rest of its functions have been moved to the other button. All in all, I like these changes. There actually are a few subtle enhancements in this GNOME release. The best way of exposing them to you is to show you the below video: Multimedia Playback & Adobe Flash…Fedora does not include support for proprietary multimedia codecs. However, installing them is not difficult at all. I usually use the RPMFusion repository and install either VLC or SMPlayer.
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October 2017
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