Giving Fedora Another Run

I hear a lot of good things about Fedora and sometimes I hear some negative things about it but I have not used it myself since some time around 2010. I wanted to make my own evaluation and I thought the time was right to kick the tires again. I am a die-hard openSUSE user, fan and member. I have happily made it my daily driver operating system. The community is great, the documentation is great, and it meets all my needs. I am firmly and happily planted in the openSUSE camp. There is no reason for me to change my distro of choice. That, however, doesn’t keep me from trying out other distributions and evaluating them against what I know and like. My other reason for doing this is that I often get questions for help with distributions other than openSUSE. I generally just fire off other web sites to help guide but I have decided to do one better and develop more practical experience of my own.

First Impressions

Right out of the gate, I must say, I like Fedora. It’s easy to install, I had no hiccups or weirdness with it at all. What really impressed me most about Fedora was the upgrade process from 26 to 27. It was such a clean and very well polished experience. The Software Center let me know there was an upgrade available at the click of a “Reboot and Install” button. I initiated the process and a reboot later (well, a few reboots), it was all done.

At the time of writing, I am using Fedora 27 running Kernel 4.15.14; more current than what I am running on openSUSE Tumbleweed, which surprised me a bit. Gnome is not my preferred desktop environment but I wanted to give Fedora + Gnome a fair shake.

Multimedia Codec Installation

Since I keep a collection of local media, it is a requirement to have VLC along with the necessary codes to consume that media.  I did a bit of searching and found a page on Ask Fedora that had the instructions for the multimedia codecs. They are pretty similar to what I use for openSUSE so this was quite familiar.

Here is where I pulled down the instructions and they worked successfully, even though they haven’t been updated since Fedora 24. It provides some options for conducting the process, I will only share here what I did.

Added Repositories:

Free

dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Non-free

dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

The Packages

Base recommended multimedia codec packages:

dnf install gstreamer1-{ffmpeg,libav,plugins-{good,ugly,bad{,-free,-nonfree}}} --setopt=strict=0

If you prefer xine over Gstreamer:

dnf install xine-lib* k3b-extras-freeworld

For using to internet radio streams, you need a few more packages:

dnf install gstreamer1-{plugin-crystalhd,ffmpeg,plugins-{good,ugly,bad{,-free,-nonfree,-freeworld,-extras}{,-extras}}} libmpg123 lame-libs --setopt=strict=0

Overall the process was easy enough for a novice Linux user to set up, so long as they aren’t afraid of working in the terminal. I didn’t see instructions on installing the packages using a graphical method but I didn’t dig real hard.

What I Like

Right from the login screen, everything feels very smooth and polished. The color scheme is pleasant enough but I would prefer a dark theme by default or activating one that doesn’t require an “extension”.

I was singularly impressed with the software center prompting for and executing the upgrade process from 26 to 27. The Software Center, kept me informed enough of what was going on, rebooted and installed the software. Everything came back and I was now, auto-magically, on Fedora 27.

The whole operating system seems very well thought out. It is as though it was curated by technically skilled artists and were just as concerned about function as they were about aesthetics. This is more of a Gnome thing, but it feels very inviting with the large and colorful buttons and banner pictures, yet clean minimalism to accomplish your tasks.

DNF is a great command line tool for installing and removing software and repositories. It works much like zypper, in fact, the syntax was largely the same for basic installation and removal. I do love zypper but I would also be happy using DNF.

What I Don’t Like

I couldn’t customize the desktop until I installed “Gnome Tweaks”. It was a little frustrating that it wasn’t included by default and the only reason I knew to install that was hearing others talk about it on various podcasts.

The software center didn’t locate the packages I was attempting to install but that was not a problem as I was perfectly comfortable using DNF in the terminal to find the packages I wanted.

Even though the upgrade process was smooth, after the upgrade was complete, there was another round of updates that required a Reboot & Install which seemed odd to me as my experience on openSUSE Leap and Tumbleweed have been that there are updates, then the restart and I’m done. It is not a problem, perhaps at most a small annoyance. Realistically, I could have just ignored the 23 additional updates.

Final Thoughts

Fedora with Gnome, both are a good as you can get Gnome experience. Under the hood, I like what Fedora has to offer. It is clear that the underpinnings of Fedora are well tested, which really makes the final product for the user, the desktop and applications, a great, solid and smooth experience.

Would I recommend Fedora? Absolutely! Maybe not to the typical brand new user but anyone that is not afraid of the terminal. I only just started to become familiar with Fedora and I can say it has been an incredibly positive experience.

External Links

Fedora Linux

Ask Fedora Multimedia Codec Installation