Fedora 8 hits the tubes

New OS season is in full swing, and all you folks running Fedora are invited to the party -- Fedora 8 was released today, featuring GNOME 2.2.0 and Compiz Fusion. Other notable features include a new look and feel called Infinity, better wireless networking, enhanced Bluetooth integration, better laptop operation, and a host of other tweaks and fixes. Go grab a torrent now -- those OS wars are starting to heat up.

[Thanks, Craig B.]

[Preston @ Nov 8th 2007 12:09PM]

I'm glad they're starting to heat up. Innovations in operating systems lately have been crappy at best. A little eye candy here and there is pretty but useless.

[DickHardknocks @ Nov 8th 2007 12:19PM]

No OS can succeed unless third party software developers cater to its users.

That rule has allways been true for video game consoles and will always be true for OSystems.

[zargon @ Nov 8th 2007 12:27PM]

Linux does more than a better job for what I need in a desktop computer, so no problems there.

I assume it will also work for a large population of users also, but only if they are willing to use alternative software to what they are used too. Which is the key, many people do not like change or just cannot do change.

Oh well, linux has been able to more than hold its own over the years and that is all I need.

[WooWoo @ Nov 8th 2007 5:29PM]

Walked into a GameStop the other day and saw that they had dedicated less floor space, and no wall space, to PC games than to any single console they sell. The trend seems to be echoed at many of the bigger Wal-Mart/Target style retailers, too.

It is not completely unrealistic to say that developers are largely abandoning Windows in favor of console gaming, embedded applications, web applications, etc. In the latter two, Linux is little different than Windows, and they enjoy much more similar market share. If you're comfortable doing your gaming on a console and settling for just the Id/Epic FPSes, you'd probably be comfortable on Linux. The application base is really not that different at all from Windows, and the more coherent package management systems of Ubuntu and Red Hat alike both make managing the desktop incredibly simple, compared to Windows.

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 8th 2007 1:49PM]

Yeah, it's getting there, but the bad thing is the gaming selection. I only wish it would pick up. I'm talking new games here. Yes, I know there are tons of games, and most of them my parents would love, but I want more. Now, you add in that fact that mainly only the free stuff is gaining ground in Linux and there aren't that many people giving out free games that take teams of people to create. Yeah, there are a few groups banging away at the game drum for Linux, but most of them take forever as they are hobbyists. By the time these are "ready", they are usually dated. You add that to the thought that a game would not sell well in Linux and it sort of deters publishers and developers. (Well, that and the growing dependence on DirectX. Damn you Microsoft. Damn you.)

Here's to hoping that the studios realize a "one horse" market isn't a good thing.

[John @ Nov 8th 2007 2:06PM]

Actually, a one horse market IS a good thing for developers. If you did any web development, you would know just how stupidly frustrating it is to make pages render correctly (and god forbid, use any complex javascript) thanks to MSIE, Firefox, Safari, and then all the other smaller competitors and the legacy versions of those products.

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 8th 2007 2:15PM]

I am a web developer (well, sorta... I do Web(CFM, Raw HTML, JS)/C#/Java/C++/Actionscript and the occasional VB) and When I work on a web page I've found that if you design it around Firefox with the occasional IE hack everything works great. It's a shame that a certain company can't get on the ball and start following at least most of the standards. If Operating Systems had standards, you wouldn't have this "one horse" competition.

[Randavance @ Nov 8th 2007 11:37PM]

In my opinion if an OS needs thrid party support, open sourec is about as inviting as you can get to a third party.

As for games, sure we won't have a native WOW on Linux any time soon (not that it stops us from running it with WINE), but soon enough third parties will catch on and start to realize that even though it's a small percentage of PCs running Linux, it's a deprived audience happy to pay for a good native game.

[Olivier @ Nov 8th 2007 12:23PM]

Ubuntu runs OKish on my C2D macbook, although the laptop will sometimes not wake from suspend properly.
I wanted to try OpenSuse 10.3 but the whole EFI changing with Refit cooled me off.

Has anybody tried running this new edition of Fedora on Macbooks? Any comments?

[strider_mt2k @ Nov 8th 2007 12:42PM]

You fought in the OS Wars?

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 8th 2007 1:59PM]

Back in 1996 we used to gawk at the new Pentium machines. They were shiny beauties. Built like tanks out of steel cases up until then. 200Mhz MMX extensions coming out... I remember I was in the trenches at a local college, those in charge were lobbing COBOL bombs over the cubicle walls. There was Armageddon on everyone's minds. The air was stuffed with thick smoke and many of us were passed out down at the local bar trying to drink our worries away. It was a time of panic. How would the world be after the great 2K rush? How would we survive such a horrible injustice to mankind. Gates was leading the Axis into a great expansion process gobbling up everything they could get. Expanding into new territories and burning everything they touched. They were building an army of massive proportions. The walls were about to break. Those were hard times....

[Joe Smith @ Nov 8th 2007 12:44PM]

damn, engadget, I didn't know you were supposed to talk about software. What gives?

Just kidding, I love you guys!

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 8th 2007 1:38PM]

Software is quickly becoming the thing that makes gadgets go... so it's inevitable.

[Satish @ Nov 8th 2007 12:45PM]

Engadget..please edit the post to add the vista tag tooo... u deliberately missed u..

New OS season is in full swing, [full-->links to leopard tag]
[Swing-->Ubuntu]..

wat about vista?

[snowglyder @ Nov 8th 2007 12:49PM]

They're talking NEW OS. Vista's old news...

[Anton @ Nov 8th 2007 12:54PM]

Looks like Mac OSX, but it's FREE...mmmmmm now that is a nice combo!

[Joe @ Nov 8th 2007 12:58PM]

Wow, it's ugly. Windows 3.1 was better looking.

[enzo @ Nov 8th 2007 4:48PM]

Halloween is over! Go back beneath the bridge from whence you came.

[John P @ Nov 8th 2007 4:05PM]

That's the beauty of linux - you can basically make it look however you want. So what you see there is just the default look.

I was going to upgrade from Fedora 6 to Ubuntu, but now...I think i will try this. All I want is better wireless connectivity (its on my laptop). That is really the worst thing about linux to me, since I have a separate desktop to handle games.

[a ham sandwich @ Nov 8th 2007 3:05PM]

har. thats what all linux distros look like, albeit different colors maybe (ubuntu's orange?) :P

sad as that is to say :(

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 8th 2007 1:40PM]

Low-res screen cap + default icons (that are amazingly easy to change) = bad impression.

[Randavance @ Nov 8th 2007 11:38PM]

Trust me, Linux looks a lot better, thats the stripped down default (think classic mode in WinXP).

Linux can run a selection of Desktop Environments, the most popular of which are GNOME, KDE, and XFCE. That one's GNOME. You can customize every aspect because every aspect of your operating system is open source and thus completely up for modification and optimization. But to give you an idea.

This is GNOME (default)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gnome-2.20.png

But so is this (MacOSX style)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ubuntu_OS_X.png

And so is this
http://www.gnome-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre1/62864-1.jpg

And KDE is even more customizable. You can really make it look however you want.
Here's a page of other GNOME themes if your interested.
www.gnome-look.org

[blackfeather @ Nov 8th 2007 1:15PM]

Actually, it looks more like the Atari logo...

[NuShrike @ Nov 8th 2007 1:19PM]

Try looking at the other side of the pond such as the *BSDs. The original innovators and now with Sun's ZFS soon. And of course look to FreeBSD as a preview of possible new tech for MacOS X.

[Kaminix @ Nov 8th 2007 1:42PM]

Funny, I thought Red Hat/Fedora was running KDE.
Anyway, Fedora isn't all that bad, but I like my Kubuntu. Tried Fedora once though...

[Solust @ Nov 8th 2007 3:15PM]

Fedora can look like either one if you want it to. By default it uses Gnome though.

[Andrew @ Nov 9th 2007 5:34AM]

I have always preferred KDE, Gnome was just a little too... meh... for me.

I don't see much difference between the two (don't shoot me!) but I haven't used Gnome in so long. Haha, ever since I set Red Hat 9 to autoload KDE to prevent accidental Gnome usage. I haven't had the desire nor need to use windows (ironically, except to fileshare with certain windows-only protection like Peer Guardian 2) since about the time I switched to Fedora Core 1...

Its amazing how far Linux is coming is such short time!! I'm using Fedora 7 and I already feel outdated, and for once, that is an AMAZING feeling to have!!! Big props to the Fedora Community, and Ubuntu and all the other devs out there making me feel outdated and pushing Linux more mainstream!!!

[John @ Nov 8th 2007 2:08PM]

If you're going to post a screenshot as representative of the OS, please don't use GNOME with all its horrible defaults...

[krefik @ Nov 8th 2007 2:26PM]

GNOME 2.2.0 - hUh, something like frosty February 2003AD? ;-)

[jwtrooper @ Nov 8th 2007 2:28PM]

I'll admit I have OSX, XP, and Vista and used to loath Linux but Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon has got me using it more than the other three... very nice subpixel font rendering and lots of customability with eye candy far exceeding OSX or Vista... Compiz is incredible!!

[charles @ Nov 8th 2007 2:33PM]

whats the difference between Fedora and Ubuntu? It would seem to me that the biggest single thing that the linux community could do to increase linux usage would be to as much as possible decide upon a single OS platform.

[Aaron Cunnington @ Nov 8th 2007 9:20PM]

Ubuntu is based on the Debian distribution, whereas Fedora is (or was) based on the Red Hat distribution. The biggest difference is package management, Ubuntu favouring .deb packages and Fedora favouring .rpm packages - both have their advantages. You could always try both of them out to see which one suits you best!

[Chris @ Nov 8th 2007 2:54PM]

Why are the icons on the desktop so weirdly spaced? There's too much room on the left of them and not enough between the bottom 2 icons. Maybe they were manually arranged? Also, the text on the titlebar is sitting on 2 different levels. Compare "fab" to the rest of the text.

[Tom @ Nov 8th 2007 4:29PM]

I recently installed Ubuntu on my desktop and a few-year-old laptop. It's great on the dektop, but the wireless support on the laptop is awful. I still don't understand why linux has terrible wireless card support. the broadcom chipsets are a nightmare

[Aaron Cunnington @ Nov 8th 2007 9:33PM]

I've checked out the Fedora 8 Test 3 LiveCD and the wireless support for my Broadcom wireless card was absolutely flawless; it picked up my 802.11g network with WEP-PSK encryption no problems, and within 30 seconds I was connected up and browsing with Fireferret.

[RedBull Runner @ Nov 9th 2007 1:15AM]

Well, The reason that broadcom support has been pretty terrible, is because broadcom flat out refuses to provide information or drivers for the chipsets. If the information was freely available, like so many other companies do for their chipsets and such, then development would have gone MUCH faster, but instead everything has to be reverse engineered.

[optV @ Nov 8th 2007 6:12PM]

For those complaining about the looks of Fedora, its simply gnome (a window manager) there are many other choices and gnome is highly customizable. Try fluxbox, my personal window manager of choice. This can be made to look simply amazing.

Here are some random screenshots:
http://images.google.com/images?q=fluxbox&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi

[Jwalant Natvarlal Soneji @ Nov 8th 2007 8:07PM]

I am going to give it a try. any suggestions for a first time fedora installer?

[jimmyfinch @ Nov 8th 2007 8:53PM]

Suggestion:

Go with Debian instead.

[Aaron Cunnington @ Nov 8th 2007 9:23PM]

The installation is easy peasy (easier than Windows Vista in my opinion). Just keep all the defaults, and if you're dual-booting, it's better to install everything on to a separate drive, don't install the bootloader on to your Windows drive for instance, as you may need to reload Windows if you want to take Linux off!

[Jack @ Nov 9th 2007 4:36AM]

Last time I used Fedora it had horrific ATI divers, is this still the case or have they got better?

[Andrew @ Nov 9th 2007 5:34AM]

I think that's Linux in general, and it kept me from installing Linux on my other desktop (ATI NB, SB, and Vid Card)

As for an answer to your question, I would like to know as well, how is driver support lately?

[Hotwings @ Nov 9th 2007 5:32PM]

The most ghetto OS i've seen in a long time, this is what happen when you put Windows and Apple in the same bed (without protection) . They stole the top menu bar from Apple, the bottom bar from windows, and the icons again look like Apple cousins. Disgusting.

[jimmyfinch @ Nov 9th 2007 8:53PM]

They took the icons from the Apple IIgs

[NuShrike @ Nov 16th 2007 4:37PM]

the GS icons look way better.