I have no intention to start a flame war but I have just been thinking:

According to Distrowatch, Fedora is the third on the "hit-list", right after Ubuntu and Mint.
I tried ALOT of distros and I really like Ubuntu/Mint and OpenSUSE. I tried Fedora for a week and I hated it. I was wondering why people use Fedora, what features it got over a distro like Ubuntu or OpenSUSE.

For you who use Fedora right now, what do you think about it?

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think the question is a good one, if you'll pardon me saying. It's kind of like asking "why do people like the color blue?", or "How can people stand eating broccoli?". It's all personal preference. Fedora is a good distro, just as openSUSE, Ubuntu, and Mint are. They're all a little different, but if you're getting started, Fedora wouldn't be too bad of a place to start.

Personally, I went from Mandriva (years ago), to openSUSE, and have been there since. Who knows what distro I'll pick next, but (as you did), if I don't like it...I'll move on.

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Fedora is also good, it's depends on person to person.

of course its a matter of preference. But what is it that keep people hanging on to in Fedora? When I speak to people or read about Linux, Ubuntu is (almost) the first thing mentioned. Of course, its really user friendly, and have a great documentation on the internet. But I guess that most people will be switching distro till they find the right one. And since its third on distrowatch, someone must really love it. And why not OpenSUSE. In my own experience I found OpenSUSE easier to use and more user friendly for Windows user, than Fedora. Of all RPM based distro I like OpenSUSE to most. I know I know, "personal preference".

It uses the most bleeding edge technologies. Its a playground for RedHat and new linux tech.

But is it that good a playground that its one of the most used??

A lot of people are happy to take the odd bit of pain or inconvenience, to have the latest, shiniest version of everything. If that's not you (yet???), then its not you.

I started using Red Hat while the free version was still called Red Hat Linux, I think it was all the way up to version 3. While I can use just about any linux distro I still prefer Fedora because it's what I know best. (Personal preference strikes again.)

If you upgrade to a new Fedora the day it's released, it can be a little unstable. If you stay a little bit behind the curve, you'll be fine. I'm currently running Fedora 14 and plan to upgrade to 15 around the time they release 16.

1. Cutting Edge : the software NO ONE ELSE dares include. You bleed a little some days, but that comes with the territory.

2. RedHat style: this is the RHEL playground and development yard, with all of the good and bad that entails. If you live in a RHEL shop, you want either RHEL or Fedora on your laptop.

3. Sometimes you just like what you like. I like Debian Linux and Texas cooking (no, not from there) and cannot tell you why: I just do.

So I guess is more the cutting edge technology that attracts people?

Also, remember that the DistroWatch ranks are according to hits to their discription of the distro, not how many people use it (which is impossible to know).

Travis has the answer for most of us: we started when Fedora 1 was just the replacement for the free version of RH9, and got used to it. Over the years, it's got more experimental, and I shan't be using it after support ends for F14.

You might as well ask why Ubuntu is so popular. It can be every bit as bleeding-edge: think Unity! And Canonical is getting almost as focused on corporate customers as Red Hat.

If you want up-to-date combined with reliability (i.e. not Fedora) and some respect for the needs of the users (i.e. not Ubuntu), try Sabayon or PCLinuxOS.

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Just installed F15/KDE and like it a lot. I've been using Linux since some RH version on floppies, so have stuck with Fedora even tho some of the quirks get in the way now -- like NetworkManager. I know some people find Fedora harder to use, but you just need to read the release notes and get on the wiki or post questions here when you have a problem. I had to modify a bunch of scripts because of the new network port nomenclature: p3p1? What's that about? Anyway, I mean to try Ubuntu at some point, but just haven't seen the need.