The new faces of Fedora 21

[viking60]

Fedora has had a facelift and Fedora 21 comes in three versions:
Workstation Server and Cloud.
Fedora aims to be more focused but will probably still be for experienced users. The Workstation part is the most interesting one here.

Fedora Workstation is a reliable, user-friendly, and powerful operating system for your laptop or desktop computer. It supports a wide range of developers, from hobbyists and students to professionals in corporate environments.

The Cloud version is a different animal:

Minimal, fast, flexible

Everything you need, and nothing you don't. The Fedora Cloud Base image is smaller, so you can deploy faster. Then use the universe of services and tools in Fedora to customize, so your cloud is right for you.

Since we consider putting data in the cloud is like giving away the key to your home - that one is not much of an option.

And the server could be nice for testing purposes but If you need a server there is the brother of Fedora - Centos.

Fedora Server is a powerful, flexible operating system that includes the best and latest datacenter technologies. It puts you in control of all your infrastructure and services.

Downloading the 1.4 Gig Fedora 21 workstation now.....

[viking60]

Ok I have downloaded it now and picked a virtual machine and ran the Live CD.
It comes with Gnome 3 so I was not keen to explore it any further and simply picked Install from the desktop and installed Fedora 21 in EFI mode.

The Installer pretty much auto- reccognized my keyboard language and timezone so I only had to press Enter.
The confusing part was when Fedora 21 needed 7 mb to install and I did not have that left on the VB. Other distros simply claim the space on the disk even if something is installed and warns you that everything will be deleted.

So I had to reclaim my 21 MB Virtualdisk and actively delete all content there before Fedora 21 was happy.

This was unusual but actually a secure thing since it should not be too easy to destroy data on a disk.

So the Installation started while the installation ran I was warned that I had not created a user and a root password; so I did while the installation was running.
Somewhat unusual that too but it seems to work just fine.
I made my user administrator which should give me sudo rights.

Installation finished: Time to reboot then.

Removed the CD and put a Multicd in there that has a menu option to start from Harddisk. I have noticed that when I install in EFI mode the CD/DVD is ignored during boot even if it is mounted in the DE (this is not particular to Fedora).

Fedora presents a Gnome config screen that wants me to hook up to my Google services and Facebook and the most common cloud stuff.
Naturally I skipped that and then I got offered help screens and getting started with gnome 3 offers.
This is good even if I don't need it so I skipped it.

And there we were with my beloved Gnome 3 Interface.

It is almost usable...
SInce then Gnome Boxes has reached stable and that looks interesting though...
I opened Dolphin and ssh'ed into one of the boxes on my network - no problem. I checked out libre office (nice) before I went to the terminal and did a

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yum update

I like Yum - it is intuitive
There were 570 updates!

So far everything has worked pretty much out of the box without problems.

I tried to install Virtualbox guest additions but got an error message on one of the install points however I was able to pick a nice resolution in settings.

I checked out boxes and tried to enter a url to a computer in my local network; so far I have had no sucess with that - whatsoever....
I activated network in my VB settings but after that the Gnome DE simply "greys out" showing only a grey desktop whithout hot corners or menus.
And that is where the test of Fedora 21 stops.
Here is an image of my current Gnome 3 desktop


It looked promising there...for a while....But Gnome 3 never fails to dissapoint me.

[viking60]

Ok having calmed down I was abble to log into "Classic Gnome". I hit F2 and tried a

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metacity --replace

and got the hot corner on the top left back that showed the Gnome3 desktop.
On the bottom I got the message

A problem has occured with Gnome-shell

and If I want to report it.

And yes I want to report it... and when I had done that... I got the message that the problem had alredy been reported.

So how to sum this up Fedora has goten nice new websites. And Gnome 3 is exactly as bad as I remembered it.

But after a

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init 6

I managed to log into Gnome-shell again so it is back now. It is just not stable.
Boxes cannot connet to other computers over the network - it does not work.

I will maintain that Fedora is one of the most important distros out there. But you need to be a voluntary Guineapig to use it

[Snorkasaurus]

Here is an image of my current Gnome 3 desktop

That looks pretty sweet. :-)

It looked promising there...for a while....But Gnome 3 never fails to dissapoint me.

Ain't that the truth!

S.

[viking60]

Yup; Gnome 3 is the "Oh no something went wrong" DE

[Snorkasaurus]

Yup; Gnome 3 is the "Oh no something went wrong" DE

I should say that with some helpful suggestions from the folks here at bjoernvold.com I have found that basic OpenBox and some select LXDE components can make for a pretty functional and very lightweight custom DE!

... now if I could just find a way to run my father's accounting software with wine.

S.

[viking60]

Yes I use Openbox it is light fast and has everything I need.
And accounting software is typically made for Windows that is a PITA but Wine or Play on Linux could maybe work with it.

[Snorkasaurus]

And accounting software is typically made for Windows that is a PITA but Wine or Play on Linux could maybe work with it.

The software my father uses is made by Intuit and is not even listed at the winhq site. It is an enterprise application typically only used by large corporations that would of course be running Windows. I have tried wine and PoL and tricks and blah blah blah... it has been a little while though, perhaps I'll give it another shot.

S.