Far and above, the premiere piece de resistance au Red Hat et Fedora. kudos, gang. the linux dream distro has arisen: load it up, customize it, game it, take a tunes-romp, tweak it with rpmfusion.org or any other favorite repo add-on or PBone it, and you have the most droolingly ugly reason for homework not to get done in about 6 years. if you don't like Gnome, LXDE works, and be sure to load all the other desktops in,too, because the menu lets you grab anything you want from it. This is what Ubuntu wishes it could be when it grows up.
kids, prepare to get grounded.
adults, prepare your divorce attorneys.
devs, Thank You!
YESSS!

*6: only because Gnome 3 is default.

mjmwired.com

I tried the full DVD and a live CD.

The DVD is not live, only an installer. It comes with an impressively large selection of software and the installation can be customised: desktop, web server, or minimal; KDE, Gnome, Xfce, or LXDE; a choice of software categories (e.g. games, scientific) and even individual programs. I chose Gnome. Not having a graphics card on my computer, I was given the Gnome 3 fall-back, which now looks not too different to Gnome 2. But configuration tools are still missing. The menu editor and Gnome configuration tool are not on the DVD and have to be downloaded. I ran the configuration tool and tried to change the default font. Unfortunately I mistyped, and ended up with no font at all: Gnome was unusable! I couldn't repair the configuration file because it’s binary (whatever happened to the Unix idea of text configuration files?), so I had to delete it from the console and lose all the configuration I’d done.

The live CD is sluggish, but the installation is fast. This is achieved by copying a disk image, so the target partition must be ext4. I used the Xfce version and the result was better than when I last tried Xfce in Fedora. The software selection is poor: Abiword, Gnumeric, Firefox and Midori, Claws-mail, Pidgin, Cheese, Parole. This presumably reflects common, mistaken idea that Xfce is merely a lightweight replacement for Gnome or KDE. The rpm database was broken and I had to manually remove and restore it before I could install any extra programs.

The actual software on both disks was all sound. Of course, you get no codecs, no flash, no proprietary hardware drivers, no proper subpixel smoothing... Installing software with the GUI tool takes forever, if it works. If you’re not in the know, you can find how to install media codecs from Fedora’s site by clicking on Get help, FAQ, Multimedia, and Third party repositories; then you guess which repository to try!

It’s difficult to be enthusiastic about Fedora these days, or to see whom it's aimed at. The home user wants codecs and flash without having to hunt for them; if they like Fedora, they’d prefer Kororaa. The professional user wants stability and long-term support; they’d be better off with CentOS.

I waited over a week from the release date for F16, and ran preupgrade on four different machines (all upgrading from maintained/active F15 machines). Only one of them worked with out significant intervention (the only desktop with one monitor).

The underlying problem in each case is gnome 3, and I do not even use gnome. When F15 came out with gnome 3, it would not run on most of my machines (even in fallback mode), I happily switched to Xfce. Yet, when I look at my logs the undelying reason I can not even get to a login prompt to choose Xfce session is because of gnome-session/gdm.

I have been able to get around these issues, but that is because I have exclusively used GNU/Linux for the past 17 years.
When these distros produce a release that is so difficult to get working, it makes it impossible to recommend linux to your peers. And I warn people to steer clear of Fedora (F15 and now F16).

Fedora needs to drop gnome as its default and use something that works and is designed for people who wish to be productive. I would rate the distribution higher (9 or 10) if it were not for gnome 3.

I wanted to update my other review. I wanted to make sure I was being fair to the Fedora project, since all (but one) of my (FAILED) upgrades had been dual monitor machines, so I just tried an upgrade (preupgrade at the command prompt) on a single monitor machine with no state of the art hardware, a nice solid desktop running Fedora with out issue for three years.
The preupgrade download went smoothly and without a problem, was prompted to reboot, selected the Fedora 16 upgrade at the grub splash, when the machine got to the X11 screen all I got was scrambled colors. I tried rebooting a few more times, even using a different monitor, nothing but scrambled colors.

I HAVE A QUESTION: RED HAT ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? THIS REFLECTS VERY BADLY ON YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM. IF YOUR TESTING GROUND DOES NOT EVEN WORK, WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT RHEL? I can't be the only one watching this debacle and wondering about the future of RHEL.

So I've installed Fedora 16 Verne, Xfce spin on my desktop computing machine, by the way, this is my first little review here on LQ, so that should tell you something too. My computing machine is with 2.5 GHz dual core Pentium, Intel graphics card, Intel HDA. Recently I've been playing with some other distros too and for example Mint and MEPIS had problems with my wireless network to which I connect via Ralink USB wireless adapter. No such thing happened with Fedora 16. The installation was literally a 5 min process. Upon reboot, which is very fast, lovely Xfce 4.8 welcomes you. Now, I did switch to Xfce long time ago, because it is simple, fast and it does not change itself every few weeks. In Fedora 16 Xfce default theme is Adwaita. As for the applications, I'll name only a few and there are a lot of them; There's Midori (with private browsing option), Firefox, Geany, Xfburn, Parole, Ex Falso, Claws Mail... etc. On this machine I have Winblows XP (necessary evil) and Fedora 16 detected it and added it to GRUB's list what some other distros failed to do recently. I installed it few days ago and there were almost 200 updates already with newer kernel 3.1.2-1.fc16. Overall, Fedora 16 Verne Xfce spin is lovely, fast, stable and it works. There was a lovely interview with Kevin Fenzi, maintainer of the Fedora Xfce spin at; http://frostbitemedia.libsyn.com/this-week-in-fedora-episode-38-1, but it looks like the link is down, hope it will be up soon.

Gnome 3 is not a con of Fedora 16, nor a product of Fedora/Red Hat, just use a different windows manager. I recommend Fedora 16 and I recommend choosing which ever windows manager fits your needs best.

Missing for the handicapped and others:

1a) slow mouse settings - Using a logitech trackball, I often have to run Gimp and Libre Office draw in Windows XP because there I can slow down the mouse much more than in Fedora or elsewhere outside of XP.

I have a small motor physical coordination difficulty that is manageable but incurable. the slow-down feature I mentioned would be a real help to allowing me and some others make better use of Fedora, 32 or 64 bit.

For purposes of collaborative discussion, we need an agrees verbatim phrase for this topic that is text search distinguishable from the many mouse references made to mice-related complaints of unwanted slowness and instability.

1b) A Laughlin (F14) feature of Nautilus I much moss is the set of workspace switcher windows at the bottom. I really would find it easier if in Verne I did not have to go through several mouse clicks many times a minute to switch from one running app to another. The F14 version was far less distracting to juggling multiple apps in rapid and random switching. Both of these might well be nice apps to sit with Orca in the Universality Menu.

2a) Firmware and hardware market fairness issues: I have a certain well known higher end router that used to work with Fedora. Now, some time later it does not, in spite of much time trying to fix. Then I read some of the linux-related blogs and the users there had many similar complaints about this manufacturer who had a strong rep for support in the past. Likewise in public, I hear similar complaints.

I believe that this is related to that manufacturer's view of the market, at least for some of their products - those usually sold in bricks and mortar retailers.

These large retailers do not seem to be interested in "geeky" clients. Us geeks are tough and demanding customers. They would rather make easy sales to those less aware shoppers. They make for quick easy sales, but "a fool and his money is soon parted".

Personally I take moral exception to this, however let every person decide their own morals.

In the mean time, I wonder if there is a bricks and mortar vendor of hardware who is willing and able to market hardware to a primarily Linux-based clientele.

In my case I am in the Greater Montreal, QC, Canada area, but this type of store would be nice to see present in every large city.

I am much of a D.I.Y er, so I download and burn my own disks.

Being also an electronic technician for many years, I sometimes create right down to the component level, especially if doing so gives me features I cannot buy, including better physical durability, repairability from easily available parts, etc.

Bruce from Canada

Have been upgrading to the latest Fedora since Fedora Core 1. There is always something new and the cutting edge can sometimes hurt a bit but it certainly keeps you on your toes and in the knowledge about whats going on in the linux world. Been running F16 on production for 5 months now. Downloaded iso's for live-cd and full dvd.