Fedora 11 Released

The latest revision of the Fedora distribution, long one of my favorites, but recently overshadowed by Ubuntu and OpenSuSE, is available.

Boasting the possibility of a 20-second startup cycle (no mention of hardware needed for this) and improvements in speed everywhere, the distribution also has a way to do a more minimal setup, for either servers or older hardware. From my perspective, I always look to Fedora first, as it is the only distribution that has never come up FUBAR after an install or upgrade cycle.

The installer is still minimal, which might affect the views of some, but I see it as something that is simple, and always works – bells and whistles are better left to the installed product.

Some screenshots of the installation are found here.

Fedora 11 can be, as many other builds, be setup from the start with Gnome, KDE, or XFCE desktops. I haven’t ever used XFCE, and am looking forward to trying that on a lower powered machine (Athlon XP 2400, 2GB RAM, nVidia FX5500 AGP), though I think that I’ll probably revert to KDE, as I like it much better than Gnome.

(As I think about this, another reason why I prefer Fedora – Ubuntu and OpenSuSE have both refused to install on an older motherboard I had that used an SiS chipset – admittedly older hardware, but at no time has Fedora ever refused to install on any motherboard I have tried it on. This simply shows that some customer perceptions are hard to shake – so be careful developers! Still another reason is the very helpful online community, again, in my experience, more helpful than others.)

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The various versions can be downloaded here.  Torrents, mirrors and everything else, oh my.

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