Fedora 16 Review - Linux Distro Reviews

[iSquirrelzTV]

I'm trying to decide between Ubuntu 11.10 or Fedora 16. I can't really decide because they both have many advantages and disadvantages. Please reply!

[seriousarchaeopteryx]

@iSquirrelzTV i have ubuntu 11.10 and it's quite troublesome, it feels slower and seems as if its trying to be a mac

[Daverix]

I'm using Fedora 16 right now. Though it gets a lot unstable on my laptop so I'm thinking of install archlinux on instead.

[Feliexxxxxxxx]

Subscribed!

[LittleAiysha]

Thank you! Like and subscribe.

[harrykri]

I am in Fedora 16 and installed cinnamon interface, it looks wonderful. My family is used to Windows interface so cinnamon is doing magic and same look-like interface like WINDOWS.

[jak1515jk]

ok... when theres a new fedora does it upday to the newest upgrade or do you have to re-download the new fedora?

[dmasterpeace]

Used a number of distros over the years and most recently used Mint for about 3 or 4 years but have come back to the Red Hat community by way of Fedora 16. Called by many an experimental and cutting edge distro I find it rock solid stable, fast and robust. Loving it.

[mythreligion]

@InfinitelyGalactic what are the pros and cons of Fedora 16? and how would you compere it with other main linux distros?

[blazarify]

is fedora really fast with 2gb ram?

[hartviglarsenDK]

I've had both Ubuntu (what a fail) and Mint.. Mint was really nice, but Fedora 16 is a beast! So much better than every OS out there.

[pomeroja]

ubuntu was my first linux OS, but i started drifting from it due to lack of support for alot of packages for the rpm packaging. (rpm is the linux standard that ubuntu/deb distros dont adhear to. and i know that i can install alien) that and half of my hardware in my laptop was not supported very well. it was gorgeous on my desktop computer. so i decided to go to fedora and have not had any issues since. nowhere near as many glitches as the ubuntu i was using. fedora is now my permanent everyday.

[Mr0Pacman]

fedora was my first linux iperating system at age 8 and ive loved it ever since fedora is kinda like debians favourite child and i doubt i'll ever leave it

[madisidik]

this look like mint 12

[Wiew09]

This is rather overview than review. :-)

[Apphacker01]

@devinbritt72 Why on earth would you WANT to use windows?

[71GA]

Which is the default font ??? In fedora 15 it was very ugly font...

[InfinitelyGalactic]

@71GA Yup, it's the Gnome 3 default font Canterall (or something like that) with no font-smoothing. Result = ugly!

[71GA]

@InfinitelyGalactic Why would i install distribution with soo ugly fonts... i ll look into any other distro.

[ninja27299]

@InfinitelyGalactic hi can give me guidense i iam a user of windows i never used a mac or linux what do you recommend linux mint or fedora and what version?

[shootingstarsmile]

My experience was I was using the KDE spin and loved it but it didn't feel solid enough. Also I couldn't stand the add/remove software :(

[samuel22892]

fedora 16 can play frozen throne starcraft or hon??

[abbed8]

What screen recorder do you use?

[malarkannanp]

@abbed8 i think gnome-shell comes with inbuilt screen recorder. try ctrl+alt+shift+r

[xXxStellaAquaticaXx]

Fedora 16 is my everyday Linux distro .. o.wo

And I haven't had any instability issues yet!

[jrmwigga5555]

@xXxStellaAquaticaXx

same here. i actually switched to a couple different distributions after i tried Fedora 16 out, but came back and i'm pretty much in love with it.

[UnforgivableMen]

@xXxStellaAquaticaXx Me ,personally I think Fedora 16 would be awesome system if it wasn't for one thing. It's just pretty slow.. Even with the proprietary graphic drivers and all. I switched from Mint 11 thinking that it was time to move on and I couldn't be more wrong.. For example booting time on Fedora 16 takes 1:24 sec, Mint 11 takes 25 sec..And in general everything just runs a lot FASTER. So in summary I'm not impressed with Fedora and back to Mint 11

[megamanxtreme2]

Seriously, they need to update that GUI, it looks ancient. Other than that, I would try-out the OS.

[arvindemey]

how to upgrade f15 to 16 with terminal?

[swingi25]

@arvindemey I've never used it, but my guess would be with preupgrade-cli.

[polutrapans]

@arvindemey Honestly not worth it. Not recommended by the Fedora Project. Back up and clean install. Its probably good practice to do on roughly the same time schedule as the release cycle anyway if you wanna stay up to date. Google "Upgrade Fedora using yum", and it will direct you to the page.

[lucskywalker16]

@arvindemey Although it isn't recommended by the Fedora Devs, you can find out how to upgrade using yum here: h t t p : / / fedoraproject . org / wiki / Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum

[hadesflames05]

I've always used fedora, and I still do. Dual Booting Fedora 16 with Windows.

[devinbritt72]

Can you teach me how to dual-boot windows 7 and fedora 16?

[qweiopasdz]

@devinbritt72 I don't know about Fedora but I'm dual booting mint 12 with windows 7. It's installed like any other program on the C drive in windows 7. I extracted the files from the ISO image and clicked on the .exe launcher, selected the C drive and the partition size, and the installation started. that's all.

[RockChalkTechHawk]

@devinbritt72 Install windows first but when you partition the hard drive leave a empty/free partition for your Fedora installation. Install Fedora into the empty/free partition that you created during your windows install. Fedora will create a boot manager called GRUB. GRUB will create a menu for you to select either windows or fedora at start up. =) you are welcome.

[swingi25]

I've been using fedora since fedora 8. Currently I am at fedora 15 and I think it's great. I did replace gnome with xmonad because I dislike gnome. Upgrading between new releases goes smooth with pre-upgrade. A lot of people say fedora is not that stable. I haven't had any problems that I couldn't solve. My only problem with fedora is that they sometimes release a new kernel before there are proprietary driver packages available for that kernel, that is why I'm using the nouveau drivers now..

[0neinch]

This is a great review. Fedora isn't for the everyday average user, Fedora is for the more advanced users. They give you a fairly stock system and you have to build fedora to what you want it to be. Think of it like this, Fedora gives you a lump of clay and you must mould that clay into what you want. Other distros mould the clay for you then give it to you. If you are not someone who likes to get hands on and dig around their OS then fedroa is not for you.

[samgondal]

crappy distro...

[NourMansur]

Used fedora since F9 ... and i have to tell you ... its very slow here ... dont know why ... all other linux distros works just fine and smooth ... that one didnt work for me at all ... very slow distribution .... but the actual system disregarding the performance issue is a dream ... i liked it very much and i hope i could use it ... but again very slow for me and my tasks

thanx

(using debian 'stable' now and loving every moment of it )

[JonathanIsrael708]

I'm sorry the crash under Fedora 16 is believe to be caused by Realtek wireless driver in the kernel.

[JonathanIsrael708]

I would use Fedora 16. I had it running and it felt fantastic on my Thinkpad, but it would randomly freeze every couple hours. I've read some people had the same problem. Seems to be a problem with ATI/AMD chipset, although I don't install the closed-source drivers.

[SrCogito]

I installed it on my pc two times, full install, and was quite sad about it because I loved the way it looked and feel, but at some point, usually after restart done because of the first update the system just wouldn't boot on my laptop (thinkpad x100e). That was such a turn off that, despite the fact that I even tried a second time, I always ended up looking for another options and didn't quite had the patience to go look for fixes on forums or whatever...

[Icedrake99]

Good review. :)

[dmn1n]

you should block the trollers that give you a thumbs down.

This is indeed a good review.

[prajullas]

Hey there IG, hope you are fine. This review you did was a bit in hurry berry, No problem it should be short and punchy I think. I have been following your reviews for a long time now. This video came just in time when I was downloading the .iso. The one thing i would search in google after I download a Distro is the availability of documentation other then official docs. Fedora stands apart in that matter. It has some excellent support out there in the web. Thanks again IG. God Bless.

[shadowC10ne]

Started using Fedora 9 after trying Ubuntu and ever since then I'm a Fedora fan. I liked the Fedora community and organization behind it. I also became a translator for my language. As for the testbed issue, it's true. fedora is a testbed for RHEL but since nobody is forcing you to upgrade to latest version you can safely stick with one until it EOF and then switch to newer. By that time initial bugs will be solved unless the problem is upstream.

[TableWolfMusic]

@InfinitelyGalactic Another cool review, all said in the correct helpful order :)

3:00 Question: If they have stripped out the Hardware Abstraction Layer, then how good is the automatic driver support in this distro? Ubuntu follows on from the Knoppix flavour of Debian by instantly recognising hardware such as TV cards & PCI(or PCI-E) RAID controllers.

For a Red Hat server, the latter would be important. So...

Restricted NVidia drivers aside, does this Distro work out of the box with hardware?

[InfinitelyGalactic]

@TableWolfMusic Great question, sorry I think I was a bit misleading in the way I explained on the vid. Fedora have =replaced= the old HAL (standing for Hardware Abstraction Layer) with systemd which is much faster and better integrated with the kernel. All of my hardware was detected and worked fine, but I don't have a very elaborate setup. If an open-source driver for 'x piece of hardware', Fedora will be the first to ship it in most cases. Hope that helps.

[TableWolfMusic]

@InfinitelyGalactic Certainly does help! Thanks. I figured you meant they had replaced the HAL with systemd. Just wondered if the hardware detection was as good as debian. E.G. The bt878 chipset in old hauppauge TVCards works with no configuration needed the first time ubuntu is installed. So in modern terms the hauppauge Colossus (model 1412) is the linux hd capture card of choice (eg for Lets Plays).

Same detection happens with other hardware like RAID controllers. Seems ok from what you said.

[91jmda]

I was using the live usb, and it kept complaining that my disk had many bad sectors and the pop ups kept going and going and going... same thing happened with Sabayon -.-; Ubuntu says the disk is fine so idk - .-;

[InfinitelyGalactic]

@91jmda I've heard that the Linux Action Show guys over at Jupiter Broadcasting had this exact issue with Fedora 15, so maybe it's a reoccurring bug? I'm not sure, I've never experienced it. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

[velvetrevolver016]

You can install things from Add/Remove Software or with yum command. For example: yum install firefox (wine,gimp,Inkscape,etc.) I found somehow difficult when I moved from sled11, but I got used to it after lerning some commands, which I used in recent fedora versions. need to update packages? just run command : yum update (and ofc "su" to run as root)..I find fedora more fun to use than others, that's why I moved back from ubuntu.

[velvetrevolver016]

I left Fedora at 13, cuz ubuntu was somehow more stable.However, I now prefer fedora to ubuntu and other linux distros(except suse, which is extremely stable but I hate YAST),cuz It's really very useful for developers/programmers. (DVD versions are good, but after installation I have problems with grub, that I can't still solve).. Anyone who is new to fedora,should just learn some codes from a cheat cube and have fun with terminal.

[wutdaFU3K]

I've been using Fedora at my home computer since Fedora Core 5. (had it on my ps3 too) Still haven't updated to 16 though.

[jfost784]

I will be moving to fedora with this release, from Ubuntu and windows

[sparkybluefox]

Awesome review!  Very concise!

SBF

[philthrl]

Fedora 16 is my main workstation these days. Fedora generally takes longer to set up than other distros. Rpmfusion repository is a must if Fedora is to be used as a home workstation. I've tried Ubuntu's Unity and find it considerably less stable than Fedora's use of GNOME3. I agree that the add/remove software app needs an overhaul. I've resorted to Yum Extender, which is just a simple GUI atop yum. All in all, this is a great distribution. Thanks to all the developers!

[andamat]

...I'd recommend this to those who needs a fairly up to date kernel and selection of software consistently. For me personally, Fedora is a better fit than rolling distros, like Arch, Gentoo or Debian Sid. I wouldn't recommend Fedora to new users though as it is a little rough around the edges by design. Oh, and give vanilla Gnome Shell a chance, and it's absolutely a productive environment plus it's easy on the eyes:-)

[andamat]

I use Fedora 16 every day on my main laptop. So far it has been as stable as I can expect from a "bleeding edge" distro. As was F15 for that matter. My only complain is that it seems that certain bioses, e.g. the one on my laptop, can't handle the new bootloader and will not boot at all with the default partitioning scheme, with lvm and all that. I just did a simple root + swap layout with grub on the mbr and that did the trick.

[velvetrevolver016]

@andamat yeah. I've that problem. so you mean that I should install with custom partitioning? 

[andamat]

@velvetrevolver016 Yeah why not? Worked for me:-) You know how to do that, right? If not, just let me know and I'll give you some instructions.

[velvetrevolver016]

@andamat that's great. I'll try to re-install it, I've been so sad about that.. hate installing php/mysql and all that stuff on my own.. thanks dude:))

[mschmaUT]

Fedora 13 is where I jumped ship. GNOME 3 for me is not productive, plus I didn't want to stop using COMPIZ. I'm still using Ubuntu 10.10, best distro so far.

[rtepic]

Haven't used it to much. only on other peoples systems. but I do really want to get into yum.



[Spid3rbyteZ]

i stopped using fedora 15 because i had much bugs.. updating wasnt possible and other things like flash didnt work for me..

sry bout my english, i am from austria..

[InfinitelyGalactic]

@Pistenraupe91 Right now I'm using Xubuntu 11.10 dualbooting with Pardus 2011.2.

[omgich]

Great review, tried Fedora once, but was not very satisfied. Now (after your reviews) I'm using Sabayon with KDE. For some of your next Reviews I'd like to see Linux Mint 12 (the one with the Debian-Core)

[VenomousWoe]

Tried Fedora 15 and I liked it, but when the system failed to login (it wouldn't respond to the keyboard), I stopped using it.

[darkdawn01]

Nice review, I hope you can review opensuse 12.1 when it gets out in 2 days.

[ussnooky]

Good review, you could do with some enhancement!

I'm using fedora 16 and I love it, I’ve got and AMD/ATI GC and I'm not bothered with proprietary driver (it makes Linux go hot, like in Ubuntu).

Fedora is easy to use, sure you have to learn the Terminal side and add repo to customize the desktop, other than that no crashes (little).

I'm trying Mint 12 RC and I found it responsive, but graphic system hangs and freezes somehow, I just copy whatever Gnome 3 shell extension from Mint to fedora.

[arvindemey]

How can you update from the F15?

[nw0n]

Fedora KDE review next :P?

[JoFri24]

ok if you like Gnome3-shell the same as in Fedora 15, but nothing realy new.......

i was waiting for something more :-(

[bamdadkhan]

'systemd instead of sys(tem) v' nice pun there. :)

[s3my0nReal]

Hey InfinitelyGalactic, I have ATI Radeon video card, and I want to use GNOME3 with GNOME-Shell. Do you know about the issues which exists between the proprietary ATI FGLRX driver and GNOME-Shell? If so, do you have any information about when these blaring issues will be resolved? Thanks again for awesome review :)

[polutrapans]

@s3my0nReal There have been issues since Fedora 15. Installing AMD's drivers is a no go. Havent been updated yet for 16. The artifacting with the fglrx drivers is minimal, and definitely manageable...

[Niflheyn]

Nice review ^^

[ThePeterTH]

awesome review as always, keep the great work! :)

[ReplacedKnight]

hello..