The second Virtual Linux I tried was Fedora. Again, the gnome GUI is very reminiscent of Ubuntu, but there are some differences. I'm not going to go into much detail on this one as it lost my support during the installation.

First, downloading Fedora is quite a chore. The download for the basic installation included 6 CD iso images (about 3GB). Then, the actual installation takes the first 3 of those. This is where it lost my support. Back in the days of DOS and Windows 3.11, I hated inserting disk after disk to finish an installation. I'm more of a put in the disk, get the process going, enter some basic details, then let it finish on it's own kind of guy. I don't like to sit in front of a computer for 45+ minutes waiting to put in another disk. Other than that, the installation was quick and pretty easy, but the disks got me.

After the installation, the default screen resolution was way off, something like 1400x900. On my home computer, that wouldn't have been so bad and would have actually fit my 19" widescreen monitor quite well. However, my work monitor is only 17"s and it is not widescreen, so this caused some problems with the initial setup. This was very easy to change though, just a quick setting change under System -> Preferences -> Hardware -> Screen Resolution.

After I got the screen resolution fixed, and I could see the entire screen without scrolling all around it, I saw a Kernel error message in the bottom right of the screen. I just clicked on "No" and was able to use it, but Kernel errors aren't pleasing to look at right after a fresh installation.

I also did not like some of the preinstalled software. First, Firefox 3 has been in production for several months now, but Firefox 3 beta 5 was the preinstalled browser. There's not much difference, but it's so much more comforting to see a final release than a beta release when you first enter an OS. OpenOffice.org was also not the latest release available. There is nothing wrong with version 2.4, except that version 3.0 is sooo much better. To top it all off, it didn't come with a CD/DVD burning software (Brasero would've been nice).

There were some things I liked, though. The color scheme wasn't overpowering and it was appealing to look at. Most importantly, to me at least, is it didn't come with a bunch of extra software just because it was freeware/open source software (like Ekiga).

Overall, it was a nice OS, but there were just too many inconveniences to convince me to leave Ubuntu.

To be fair, I could have downloaded a DVD, but not everyone has a DVD burner available.

Back to Linux Distros (part 1)
Jump to Linux Distros (part 3)