Fedora 15 is here and includes a nice selection of new features and improvements. Fedora 15 “Lovelock” features GNOME 3.0, KDE 4.6, XFCE 4.8 and a long list of new features. Here is a link where you can download Fedora 15.
GNOME 3.0
The Fedora 15 default desktop is GNOME 3.0 which is completely different than any previous releases of GNOME. This latest version takes on a much more modern, experimental, look and feel that has been “designed for today’s users and technologies” according to the official GNOME website.
I’m all for looking great but what about hardware compatibility? Many users are complaining about GNOME 3.0 crashing because of video card incompatibility. I was unable to install Fedora 15 GNOME 3.0 on my Dell desktop or in Virtualbox. Although this was a pretty dissapointing turn of events, in the end I understand Fedora has always been about bleeding edge innovation. And really what would you rather have GNOME 3.0 or UNITY?
Here’s an excellent tour of Fedora 15 GNOME 3.0 by InfinitelyGalactic on Youtube.
KDE 4.6
KDE 4.6 has been described as the fastest, smoothest, and most polished release of the KDE 4.x series so I was excited to try it out with Fedora 15, especially after my experience with GNOME 3.0.
I installed KDE. Then I logged out and picked KDE on the login window. My KDE experience with Fedora 15 was quite pleasant in comparison. I tested several things including the new Faceted Browsing for Dolphin file manager which allows you to search for files quickly and easily with Ctrl+F. The new Activities area is quite interesting, allowing for a user to have completely separate, customizable, desktops and then virtual desktops inside each of those. I can see myself assigning each of these to specific roles throughout my work day. During my 4 hour session trying out the features and playing with it, KDE 4.6 worked great on Fedora 15.
Here are some more highlights of KDE 4.6.
XFCE 4.8
XFCE 4.8 makes many new improvements and features available to Fedora users. I looked at a few of the new features including added panel customization options, drag and drop launcher creation, the new fuzzy clock, and the directory menu icon.
XFCE is one of my favorite interfaces because it’s fast and works so well on low resource computers. After a short installation I logged out, back in and was using the default configuration of XFCE 4.8 on Fedora 15. Although it was a bit bland after coming from KDE 4.6, Fedora 15 with XFCE 4.8 preformed as promised with several of its new features leading the way.
Fedora 15 New Features
Fedora 15 Lovelock is chalked full of new features, some are visible to the average user and some are not. Here’s some of the Fedora 15 desktop features.
- Btrfs filesystem
- Higher compression in live images
- Power management improvements
- LibreOffice Included
- Firefox 4 Incldued
- Indic typing booster
- Better crash reporting
- Redesigned SELinux troubleshooter
- Sugar .92 learning platform
A few more advanced features included in Fedora 15
- systemd system and session manager
- Dynamic firewall
- BoxGrinder appliance creator
- Spice integration in Virt Manager
- Consistent network device naming
- Improved support for encrypted home directory
- RPM 4.9.0 package manager
For a complete list of features, click here.
{ 2 comments }
Damn, how could they ruin GNOME so much! Looks like it is time to switch to KDE, I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time anyways.
I admit it’s a bit immature, but i like the new Gnome shell (much better than unity anyway), while waiting for a good release I’ve switched to XFCE