It’s almost two weeks now since I change my Linux OS distro into Fedora Core 5 (FC5). I must admit that the journey to explore the Linux world is far from easy or over. Before this, I’ve manage to put my hands on the Ubuntu 5.10. I must say that the experience for noobies like me is very pleasent in some way. But for some reason, I switch to FC5, mainly because of the more large support on FC distro (community forums, guide, rpm, etc). I never really care about FC actually because before this when I want to jump on the Linux bandwagon, one of the distro that I tried were Fedora Core 2 & the experience is not as pleasent as I thought (don’t flame me because of my statement here…remember, I’m a noobie).

Well, I have no intention to do a full review about FC5 here, just to share some of my experience with it (in the full eyes of a noobies). First and foremost, the media. I’m using FC5 “Bordeaux-DVD-i386 version”, but the other media version availaible is in a form of CD wich consist of 5 cd’s. To avoid anything funny (actually I’m lazy to do that please insert the next cd step), I’ve decided to go with the DVD version instead. Fret no though, you can download just the first two CD iso, burn it, install it, and you can add all other bells and whistles through the repos next time. Installation..hmm by far, this is the most pretiest and straight forward installaion screen that I’ve had encounter among all other distro that I had tried so far (Red Hat, FC2, Ubuntu). Ok, maybe my words is too overwhelming there, there is a little flashback on the FC2 too, but mainly I think that the installer (called as Anaconda) is somewhat more relaxing than the past (just comparing with FC2, not FC3 & 4). So, for the installation I opt for the graphical mode instead of the text mode (hell I will use text mode…).

The screen goes into the partition defining. Well, I already have my partition with Windows, so carefully I select to do the steps involved manually. Meaning that, I view the partition table, make sure my Bill Gates partition is unharmed, and then I proceed. There is a warning pop up that ask for a confirmation for each steps, so I’m pretty sure I’m not going to screw my windows and all other partition. Then the option to install the boot loader…obviously I answered yes to setup a dual OSes boot configuration. The screens go to the setup the additional software. There are 3 option which is Office & Productivity, Software Development & Web Server. I choose all except the web server because I’m not planning to make my machine as a web server (but if I do change my mind in the future, there is always next time to do that, right?). There is also an option to customize the installation of the software selection, but I skip that because I like to do it after the installation is complete using the Software Management Application through the latest RPM online. Continue and the installation process begin.

After the installation, my machine reboot and the graphical Grub menu appears. Now, during the previous step on the boot loader installation, I choose FC5 as my default OS, so within 3 seconds if I want to choose other OS, I must press any key. And if I do, the boot loader screen will splash in with all the option according to whatever OSes availaible. Hmmm…no problem there I guess. Once the kernell was loaded, a boot splash screen appears. Here the boot process is only been shown by the progress bar, but I can opt to see the process list. The first time entering FC5 brings me to the some welcome screen. The welcome screen consist of several questions/choices just to make sure everything is fine (confirming date & time, firewall, screen, etc). After that, the exploration begin.

Then, the GDM started and here the login process took place. After login, the Gnome start to load and less than 5 seconds, I already on my FC5 desktop.

Just for a quick reference, FC 5 offers a very good software selection out of the box. Among the noteable one is the default browser which is Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.1, office productivity suites OpenOffice 2.0.2., IM with Gaim 1.5, graphic editing with The Gimp 2.2.10, another type of desktop envoronment which is KDE 3.5.1, and email client Thunderbird 1.5 (refer the release note for the full list). Well, there are many things to shout about the desktop itself, but I reserved that for this moment because I’m still exploring. But the GDM is somehow much faster and responsive rather than what I’m used to in Ubuntu 5.10 (is it because of Fedora itself or the updated version of Gnome? Enlighten me please…).

Conclusion…well, how should I end this. FC5 is not the greatest but not the worst distros either (just limited to the very little number of distros that I’ve tried so far). There is still a room to improve, but who am I to say more than that eh? Also the Gnome is a much improve in FC5, so I stick with Gnome rather than KDE…just because I’m already used to it; not because Gnome is superb and KDE sucks or vice versa. The same goes with comparing FC5 and other distros. FC5 is somewhat giving me the pleasent moments but sometimes it gives me some hassles (suddenly my terminal going blank?). I assume that FC5 is still fresh at the moment and bug like that is already in my prediction. Before any other major release of Ubuntu, I think I stick with FC5 at the moment. Not that I’m a true super fanboy of Ubuntu or whatsoever, but I’m trully on Linux bandwagon through Ubuntu…so it’s kinda too familiar with it I guess. Nevertheless, IMHO FC5 is a great distro and will not dissapoint me for the time being.

P/S: I ultimately depends on the Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes by Stanton Finley to explore FC5. The guide indeed is a very handy mate.