Being an ardent Linux fan, I was literally dying to give Fedora 9 Sulphur a try. The release was a much hyped one, with loads of new feature thrown to the community. The below is an account of my experience with Fedora 9 !!!
Installation
Installation of a Fedora Distribution was never more easier. Default options are well thought off and would cater to the needs for most systems. The number of applications bundled together with the distribution is again mind-boggling. Who said that there aren’t many application softwares to choose from on Open source platform ? The sheer number of choices, reinforced my belief that an Open source software substitute exists for every proprietary software.
What’s New in FEDORA 9
Fedora has always been a feature rich Linux Distro. The new release is certainly not an exception. However, things that really stood out for me were……
1.Network Manager
It has made managing your network devices easy in Fedora.New features available in this release include:
* Multiple active network devices
* Ad-hoc support, so that you can easily form a network with wireless devices.
* Support for mobile broadband cards (GSM/CDMA) through PPP
* System-wide network configuration through NetworkManager with PolicyKit.
2. Seamless Upgrade
Fedora releases are scheduled periodically, once every six months. Updating to new Fedora release, generally meant a fresh installation but all that is set to change with PreUpgrade. Fedora new features a PreUpgrade software tool that does a in-place upgrade to a new release of Fedora in a safe and easy way. You can upgrade from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 and from Fedora 7 or 8 to Fedora 9 release using this tool.
The Final verdict
Despite all the talked about improvements, I was a bit disappointed with Fedora 9. Although, the booting and shutdown time have become less but the applications took noticeably longer to launch with the Distro. This was on a system running on 1.73 Ghz Processor, with 256 MB RAM. The slowness and unresponsive nature of the OS was a huge turn off for me. Things were far better with a Fedora Core 6 on the same system….
Scribbles of a Chaotic Mind 