Expecting big things from Fedora 8

The anticipation for Fedora 8 -- the community-based Linux distribution from Red Hat that's set to debut nine days from now-- is high. There wasn't much to brag about with Fedora 7, I'm told, but the increase in community involvement at that time is something that is continuing, with Red Hat ceding more control over the free distro than ever before. And when it comes to Fedora 8 --codenamed "Werewolf" -- genuine improvements are promised:

-- The Codec Buddy will suggest free alternatives to proprietary codecs for playing multimedia files.
-- Iced Tea is a free, open-source version of Java
-- Improved laptop support, in which the holy grail of power management -- suspend that works -- is supposed to be addressed (probably the No. 1 problem with Linux after wireless support)

I've been experimenting with CentOS, a free version of the mainline Red Hat Enterprise Linux product that costs between $80 (for the desktop version and a year's online support) all the way up to $1,299 (for the server edition with up to 2 sockets and a year's telephone support). CentOS (I've been running version 3.9, but the latest release is version 5) is reassembled from the Red Hat open source by the CentOS people to work just like the real thing (minus the cost, of course). And like Red Hat, CentOS has long periods of support (in the form of security updates) for all of its releases. So if you're the type who doesn't want to upgrade every six months (Ubuntu types) or every couple of years (Slackware, Debian), CentOS may be for you.

CentOS, and by extension Red Hat, has impressed me with its installer (the superb Anaconda), hardware detection and functionality. It's perfect for the office desktop. (Although SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian and even Slackware are strong contenders for the server room and the desktop, in my opinion).

Fedora, by its nature, is not as locked-down as Red Hat in terms of features. It functions as a test bed of sorts for the mainline Red Hat product, and Fedora's community orientation makes it perfect for the home/nerd user who wants to use something close to RHEL but more cutting-edge. I'm anxious to see how the latest from Fedora runs on my $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450).

Fedora's main competitor -- openSUSE, Novell's free rendition of SUSE -- released its latest, version 10.3, on Oct. 4. Among its new features is easier implementation of proprietary codecs for multimedia (sound familiar?), Novell's anti-malware program AppArmor, virtualization tools (something Fedora is also including), improved package management and much quicker boot time.

At this point, however, all the buzz is still about Ubuntu, whose 7.10 "Gutsy" release has dominated Web discussion for the past month or so. I'm running it on my laptop now, and at this point I feel confident saying that its the best thing I've run on this PC. One thing I've learned is that while some things run on my Gateway laptop that never did on the VIA thin client, a laptop poses its own unique problems -- mostly touchpad and fan issues (the thin client's fan almost never runs, and you can't hear it when it does; the laptop's fan is loud, and thus far only Debian, Ubuntu without the latest kernel, and Red Hat/CentOS manage the fan properly) and the dreaded suspend which only partially works in Ubuntu).

As always, the way to find out if a Linux distro works for you is to install and give it a test drive. Your PC -- and you -- might like it (or not).

Remember, if SUSE or Fedora don't float your boat, there's always Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, Debian, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, Slackware, Sabayon, Mandriva, Linspire, Zenwalk, Vector, Gentoo, the BSDs (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, PC-BSD, DesktopBSD) and dozens more.

It's freedom of choice that's truly free.