Hands on: The changing face of Fedora

Ubuntu may be the most popular desktop distribution, but Fedora support is strong

Regular readers will know that Ubuntu Linux is often the focus of this column. The distribution has come to dominate mainstream Linux use outside corporate server rooms.

Indeed, a check on Google will show more results for searches on Ubuntu than any other Linux distribution. Ubuntu is, in fact, one of the youngest distributions; the first version (Warty Warthog) was released in October 2004.

The reason it has managed to gain such a foothold in just a few years is because, from the outset, it aimed at providing a stable, polished desktop environment, with a carefully chosen selection of installed applications.

Before Ubuntu, an installation of Linux would usually involve having to select the applications you wanted, and you might well have ended up with several different ones for the same kind of task, such as four or five text editors.

While Ubuntu is almost certainly the most popular desktop distribution, there are, of course, others that are also popular. Distributions can loosely be divided into two categories: commercial and non-commercial. The former includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Suse Linux Enterprise, Mandriva Linux and Xandros Linux. The latter includes Ubuntu Linux, Debian, Fedora, Opensuse and others.

A few years ago, it seemed as if a new distribution was being released every week. Thankfully, while there are still a huge number of minor distributions, the list of the major ones is a lot smaller, and Linux development has benefited from this.

A short history of hats
Long before Ubuntu was around, Red Hat Linux was almost synonymous with Linux itself. It was one of the first distributions to exist, back when an installation meant writing raw floppy disk images in MS-Dos to create bootable disks.

In 2003 Red Hat was growing substantially in the corporate server market and the company decided to end support for the venerable and popular consumer-orientated Red Hat Linux. In its place came Fedora Core, which was intended to be a community-driven project.

The Core repository gave a basic functional desktop, while the Fedora Extras repository provided many unofficial (but essential) extras. Fedora was largely controlled by Red Hat, and many users and developers felt it was just a public beta testing ground for future Red Hat Enterprise releases. This, together with the confusion over Core and Extras, led to little enthusiasm for the project and may have contributed to Ubuntu’s success.

In May 2007, Fedora 7 was released. Core was dropped from the name, as the two repositories were merged. Support also moved to the Fedora Project, which has meant more active development from the open-source community.

With Fedora 7 also came ‘spins’, a method of creating custom builds of Fedora from the software available in the repositories. For example, two spins were created for a KDE and Gnome live CD, and another spin for a DVD installation of Gnome, with a large selection of applications. These spin releases compare well with Ubuntu’s desktop variations ­ one CD for a Gnome desktop, and two others for KDE and XFCE.

In November came the release of Fedora 8. Fedora has often stayed ahead by incorporating some of the latest developments in open-source software. This remained true with Fedora 8, which introduced Pulse Audio, an advanced sound server that offers lots of control over how sound is produced.

The desktops available are the latest versions of Gnome (2.20), KDE (3.5) and XFCE (4.4), together with Compiz Fusion, the impressive compositing manager for 3D desktop effects. Network Manager (also found in Ubuntu) was added to provide better support for wireless networks and switching between networks, and an easy-to-use graphical firewall admin tool is offered for those who want it.

The package management system’s performance was markedly improved, making it somewhat comparable to Debian and Ubuntu’s equivalent, apt. Also included is Policy Kit, an authentication system that allows selected operations of an application to gain super-user (administrator) access, meaning better security and better control over what applications can do.

Both Policy Kit and Pulse Audio are making their debut in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), approximately one release behind Fedora.

Fedora is a completely free distribution and contains only free software not affected by copyright restrictions or patents. In other words, on a plain install, it will play next to none of the popular media file formats. Audio CDs, Ogg Vorbis and Wav files are fine, but MP3, AAC and MPEG4 files or video DVDs will not play. One solution to this is Codeina, a small application that runs when you try to play an unsupported format. This can download and install a plug-in that will enable applications such as Totem to play back the file. A free MP3 plug-in is available for download, but there is a charge for other formats.

Few people will want to pursue this option, especially as it is completely unnecessary. Ubuntu gets around the patent problem by informing the user via a pop-up window that in some countries (the US), patent restrictions may be in place, but will still allow you to download and install the free software. In Fedora there is no such official alternative, which discourages many people from using Fedora as their main desktop. Fortunately, there is an unofficial workaround ­ the Livna repository (see section entitled Livna fills some gaps).

Installation
Fedora will install onto any modern PC desktop or laptop. The recommended specifications for a smooth-running full desktop are typical for a Linux distribution: around 512MB of Ram and a 1GHz processor. As mentioned above, Fedora is released now as a set of official spins, either by direct download or via a torrent.

The standard desktop spin is with Gnome, and is available in Intel/AMD 32-bit (Pentium II or later), 64-bit or Power PC versions. An equivalent KDE-based release is available. For older systems, a standard installation spin for 386 (or better) processors, as well as the 64-bit and Power PC versions, is also available.

For most people, the i686 (32-bit) Fedora Desktop Live Media release is recommended.

The installation process has changed little from earlier releases. As with Ubuntu, there are few choices to make and so little opportunity to do anything wrong.

The partition editor lets you set up your hard drive for installation, and to dual-boot with Windows if required. Fedora will set up logical volumes if left to organise your drive itself, something very flexible but confusing to people who want to modify the layout later.

Fedora 8 introduced new artwork, known as Nodoka. A blue and fairly pale professional theme, it contrasts with Ubuntu’s infamous (and often unpopular) dark browns. Fedora also includes a nice, if somewhat gimmicky, touch in that the desktop wallpaper will switch to slight variations in colour, depending on the time of day.

A set of useful applications is installed by default, including Abi Word, Mozilla Firefox (of course), and Evolution. Surprisingly, Open Office is not contained on the single-CD spin, but, just as with Ubuntu, an Add/Remove applications tool is provided, where you can install additional software from the repository in just a couple of clicks.

Also similar to Ubuntu, a software update tool runs in the background and notifies you of any new releases. Fedora tends to track updates to the Gnome desktop more than Ubuntu, so updates are generally more frequent.

Hardware support is generally good. Work has been done to make everything ‘just work’ as much as possible: display resolutions should be detected automatically; USB sticks will pop up a Nautilus window; and so on. Intel drivers are included, so there will be no problem getting wireless access if you use an Intel-based laptop.

Ubuntu usually comes out slightly ahead with ease of use for hardware, though Fedora has begun to catch up.

Post installation
The first thing to do after installation, if you want reasonable multimedia support, is to set up the Livna repository. Since Fedora uses a similar way of organising packages to Debian and Ubuntu, the packages from Livna are available immediately through the standard utilities. Packages include VLC, Xine, mplayer, gstreamer restricted plug-ins, libdvdcss (for playing back video DVDs) and binary Nvidia and ATI graphics drivers.

Adobe’s Flash plug-in is not available from Livna, but is easily installed by going to Adobe’s website and downloading and installing the RPM file directly.

Livna fills some gaps
Fedora’s policy of only having free, open-source software means many useful packages that have restrictions in copyright or patents are not available.

The Livna repository provides a set of packages to fill this gap, though it should be emphasised that these are unofficial and not supported by Fedora in any way. However, the repository is used by most Fedora users, and is regularly updated with fixes and updates.

To make the repository available in Fedora 8, head to http://rpm.livna.org and download the Fedora 8 repository RPM. Install the RPM file by clicking on its icon.