Fedora 28 and 29 (GNOME)

[pip5528]

Well, folks, I have been using Fedora 28 and 29 for a while and I can honestly say it's pretty great. It is a cutting edge distro that is surprisingly stable. You get a lot of modern features and versions of software and yet a very functional system all at the same time. I know GNOME 3 gets a lot of hate for being exceptionally rigid and bloated, but the reason it is so bloated is because it caches a lot of the things it puts into memory, which helps it run faster. Besides, if you're the type of person who uses a computer with 16 GB or more (even 8 is pretty sufficient), then you're probably not going to miss almost a gig worth of space. GNOME also gives you a clean, easy to manage workflow. Fedora uses DNF and YUM as its package managers, with DNFDragora as a graphical front end, which also effectively acts as a software center. When I first decided to try Fedora, I wasn't sure how much I would like it, but now that I have experienced it for a few weeks and use it as a daily driver, I actually quite enjoy it. I started out using Fedora 28 not too long before 29 came out and did an in-place ugrade recently, which went flawlessly. Nothing was lost, I didn't have to back up or reinstall anything, it was all there. Fedora 29, despite being brand new and only having been out for a week now, is actually quite good and quite stable in my experience. I am running Fedora on an older HP from 2011, which has a 2nd generation Core i5 with 4 cores and 4 threads, 8GB of RAM, and a 120 GB SSD for the installation. There is a 2 TB HDD as well, but it is not currently in use for much of anything. For some reason I see people making the claim that Fedora is somehow an advanced distribution, most likely because of it being cutting edge, but I don't agree with that. It's easy to install and easy to use. I would call it a more intermediate distribution and a good distro for anyone that doesn't want to get their hands too dirty but also has decent computer smarts and previous experience using other operating systems. Plus it's also the distro that Linus Torvalds himself uses last I checked.

[Kalthrix]

Hey Pip, definitely a good solid review. I haven't tried out the latest release of Fedora (previously tested 26) and honestly, I was pretty impressed with how well the distribution ran. There is a lot of polish on this distro and it is surprisingly stable being near bleeding edge. I agree with you, as long as you're running with a decent amount of RAM (at least 6GB min, 8GB recommended) and a fairly modern processor, you shouldn't have an issue running GNOME. It will run on 4GB machines, although may (depending on use) run into an issue with using swap if anyone else would like to try, but has older or lower-spec hardware. Going to have to download a copy tonight and see what's new.

[Spatry]

The package manager is a deciding factor for me when choosing a distribution... That said, I have not found a PM I like better than Pacman. Not taking anything away from your Fedora review. It is a decent distribution and test bed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There is a strong community following and is an ideal enterprise solution for those on a budget.

[pip5528]

The package manager is a deciding factor for me when choosing a distribution... That said, I have not found a PM I like better than Pacman. Not taking anything away from your Fedora review. It is a decent distribution and test bed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There is a strong community following and is an ideal enterprise solution for those on a budget.

I actually find Fedora's package management to be quite similar to APT in terms of commands, but it's a little bit simpler than that. I absolutely agree with you that Pacman is the best package manager out there. It's so intuitive and easy to use. Personally, though, I don't really care what package manager I use as long as the overall distribution is solid and fits my needs.