Since Fuduntu is rolling-release, this is just the latest installation disk. This is an independent distribution aimed at the home user, with particular attention paid to power saving on laptops. It requires 512MB RAM and a P4 or equivalent; for installation, RAM plus swap should be 1.5GB.

The live session starts with a welcome screen that has links to the website and its documentation. Installation is done with Red Hat’s Anaconda, and Gparted is available to run first if required. Installation is by copying a disk image, so the target partition must be ext4. Encryption is available for a separate /home.

The desktop is Gnome 2 with the Cairo dock and Compiz used by default. Software includes Chromium, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Dropbox, Gimp, Shotwell, VLC, Cheese, and LibreOffice. Codecs and the flash plugin are also installed. Apart from Shotwell, everything I ran from the CLI gave no warnings. As a fork of Fedora, Fuduntu has inherited the Red Hat configuration tools: firewall, demons, input method, multiple sound cards — all are handled perfectly. The repository continues to expand: it’s not Debian, but it has something for most purposes and has just added Steam. The programs are not yet labeled to enable package-kit to list them by category, so until someone volunteers to do it, the wiki has a classified list.

Fuduntu is now one of the best distros available: everything works, support is good, and it’s up-to-date without being bleeding-edge.