Fedora, Two Weeks On

After two weeks of using Fedora on a daily basis, i thought it important to give an overview. With any OS there are pros and cons, and we always miss things that we are used to, this is normal human behavior. Fedora 10 is definitely no exception, but the fact that i haven't considered removing reflects on more than my laziness.

Pros:

•  Speed: Fedora is ridiculously fast. It has way outperformed Ubuntu-eee 8.04 and Kubuntu 8.10 on the EEE. Even with KDE 4.2 beta, the desktop is as responsive as i have used it on any other device.
• Size: Fedora can easily be customized to take up far less space than i could manage with openSUSE. Albeit marginally larger than Ubuntu, i still class this as a positive.
• Desktop Integration: The OS is well suited to the desktop. Whenever i install Kubuntu i find myself fighting with tools that don't feel right on the KDE platform. Fedora seems to have this right with good tools that fit in nicely in both KDE and Gnome.
• Tablet Setup: This was very easily done, much more so than any other OS i have tried on.
•  Software: The available software repositories allow for easier installation of certain applications that matter to me, such as CodeBlocks and KDE 4.2 beta ( which i could not get on Ubuntu-eee ).

Cons:

•  KPackageKit: While it is good for its current age, it is not nearly mature enough for me to use as a primary package manager, and there is not very much control individual packages installed. I had to install Yum Extender ( yumex ) for more options.
• Kopete: Before upgrading to the KDE 4.2 beta, the version of Kopete was one that i have seen before, a very buggy version that crashes a great deal. Thankfully the update fixed this, but it doesn't reflect well on default applications.
• No YaST: i really miss some features, especially 1-Click install.
• Yum: Yum is sadly much slower than Zypper or Apt, and hence makes package management take more time. This is not a big issue, but it could have been better.

Other than these, a few things should be taken into account. When testing out different OSes, i could not try Mandriva. It was sad, as i had really looked forward to it, but after two failed attempts with Unetbootin, i gave up on it. I have also not tried openSUSE 11.1 ( altho i had tried a rather sluggish openSUSE Factory ). It should also be noted that i have an SD Card which i use as a swap partition, just to aid the OSes along. As a final word, i have to say that i would still install openSUSE 11.1 onto a new desktop PC or more powerful laptop, because features like 1-Click install with more software availability than any platform i have seen are too big for me to leave behind.