Hats off to Fedora 10 (Fedora 10 Cambridge)

Member Name: Patman99

Product:	Fedora 10 Cambridge
Date:	21/01/09 (89 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: FREE, comes with loads of programs PLUS access to 100's more. Secure by design.

Disadvantages: Works differently to Windows, so needs a bit of time to get used to.

For those of you who have never heard of the Fedora Project before, it is basically a community off-shoot of Red Hat's Linux project 'Red Hat Enterprise Server'. Red Hat release all of their code as open source, and the Fedora team then re-builds it & brands it 'Fedora'.

What is this Linux thing anyway?.
Well, its a highly secure, virtually virus-proof, hacker resistant OS that is developed entirely as an 'Open Source' OS. In other words, it is written entirely by enthusiasts as a free-to-modify alternative to Windows.
It is also where programs such as Openoffice, The GIMP, Blender & Scribus all started-out.

Can I install it beside Windows?.
If you have a big-enough hard disc, then 'yes' you can install it beside Windows. It comes with a built-in partition management program that allows you to either shrink your current Windows partition, or use free unpartitioned space on your drive. However, be warned, RESIZING YOUR WINDOWS PARTITION MAY LEAD TO DATA LOSS, SO BACK-UP YOUR DRIVE FIRST.

So whats it like?
About as unlike Windows as you can get to be honest. It is built on Kernel 2.6, and has both the main gui's installed (Gnome & KDE), along with a few others.

I must admit that although I am a seasoned Linux user, Fedora 10 is quite unlike anything I have come across before. The desktop is completely devoid of icons, and the menu system is very strange indeed. Click on the 'f' button, and instead of a standard Windows-style menu, you are presented with a pop-up box. Along the bottom of which are various icons depicting the various types of 'sub-menu' such as 'Settings', 'Applications' & 'Most recent'.
As you move across these icons, relevent menu items appear above them, from these you can select a program to run or another sub-menu. I found that you really need to concentrate on your mouse actions, as I frequently found myself wandering across a nieghbouring icon and dropping into a completely different sub-menu instead of launching the program I actually wanted to.

The software package manager included is 'KPackageit', and unlike 'Synaptic', it really can handle a variety of file types. Not only that, but its a breeze to use. Just type in the name of the program you want to install, and then scroll down the list until you find the correct one, then click on the 'cross' & select 'ok'. The package manager will sort-out all the dependencies (all the other programs and modules that will need to be installed or upgraded) and download and install your chosen application.

I ran Fedora 10 with the KDE 4.1 desktop environment, and found it quite interesting to see just how much has changed from KDE 3.4. The whole think is smoother and sharper than before. It now looks more like a highly polished piece of work, and less like something from Windows 98.

Fedora, like almost all Linux distros, can read & write to Windows NTFS partitions, so accessing info from your XP/2k/Vista partition on a dual-boot system is easy. Also, as part of the user account setup, you can specify network login for use on a server environment.

Another feature is the ability to build your own distro. Once you have installed all the programs you are going to need, you can select the menu option to build a liveUSB image. And hey presto! you now have your own .iso image to burn to CD (with K3B) and give away to friends, distribute on the net etc.

Summary: Got a spare PC?, then give this a spin. You'll be quite amazed.

Variety of features:
Reliability:
User friendly: