Friday, March 20, 2015
5 Reasons To Try Fedora 21!
Fedora 21 is well on its way to being released in early December, and it brings with it a ton of goodies! Plus, since Fedora is known for being a cutting-edge distribution, there will be a lot of interesting software and technologies that you’ll get to use. Since Fedora moves so fast, it’s important to have these new releases.
Let’s take a look at what one of the most popular distributions will be offering with its upcoming release.
Finally, A New Fedora Release!
When Fedora 21 finally hits in early December, it will have been approximately a year since the last release. Since Fedora is such a fast-moving distribution, it’s been quite painful to remain on Fedora 20 for this long, but the wait will be well worth it. Can we just be happy that we will have a new release to play with?
Fruits Of Restructuring
After Fedora 20 was released, the Fedora Project decided to go through some restructuring of how they did things in order to be more competitive in the future. This shift was going to take some time, so we all knew that we might have to stick with Fedora 20 for a lot longer than we’ve ever stuck to any Fedora release before. But now, that restructuring is complete, and Fedora is offering a new lineup. We now have Workstation, Server, and Cloud images, where Workstation is the new name for the desktop Fedora images that you know and love. I bet this new name was “inspired” by Red Hat, but the name thankfully doesn’t mean the Fedora desktop suddenly became business only.
New Software
Fruits Of Restructuring
After Fedora 20 was released, the Fedora Project decided to go through some restructuring of how they did things in order to be more competitive in the future. This shift was going to take some time, so we all knew that we might have to stick with Fedora 20 for a lot longer than we’ve ever stuck to any Fedora release before. But now, that restructuring is complete, and Fedora is offering a new lineup. We now have Workstation, Server, and Cloud images, where Workstation is the new name for the desktop Fedora images that you know and love. I bet this new name was “inspired” by Red Hat, but the name thankfully doesn’t mean the Fedora desktop suddenly became business only.
New Software
Of course, after waiting for so long, it’s hard not to be excited about the new software that will be included. The kernel will be at least version 3.17 (although Fedora 20 has been good about updating the kernel), and you’ll get updated desktop environments with GNOME 3.14, KDE 4.14, and MATE 1.8. The GCC compiler has been updated to version 4.9, which will produce faster and more efficient machine code. GNOME’s support for Wayland has also improved quite a bit, so it’s not unreasonable to think that the Wayland display server could become the default in Fedora 22. There are even KDE 5 packages that you can try out if you’re interested in that.
Improved Polish
Despite only being an alpha, a lot of writers around the Web say that Fedora 21 is very polished and stable. I certainly have to agree with them, as I haven’t come across a single issue while playing around with it. Polish was a criticism quite common to Fedora, and during the restructuring the developers made an effort to fix that. I’d say they did a very good job, and it can only get better with the beta and final release.
COPR Repositories
While not necessarily new for this release, Fedora is also emphasizing the use of COPR repositories, which are akin to Ubuntu’s PPAs. This is an effort to make it easier for third-party developers to make their software available for Fedora, which is a key part toward increasing Fedora’s adoption rates. Fedora used to be the go-to distribution, but lost that position once Ubuntu rose to prominence. I’m very interested to see how well these will be used.
Getting the Pre-Release
Improved Polish
Despite only being an alpha, a lot of writers around the Web say that Fedora 21 is very polished and stable. I certainly have to agree with them, as I haven’t come across a single issue while playing around with it. Polish was a criticism quite common to Fedora, and during the restructuring the developers made an effort to fix that. I’d say they did a very good job, and it can only get better with the beta and final release.
COPR Repositories
While not necessarily new for this release, Fedora is also emphasizing the use of COPR repositories, which are akin to Ubuntu’s PPAs. This is an effort to make it easier for third-party developers to make their software available for Fedora, which is a key part toward increasing Fedora’s adoption rates. Fedora used to be the go-to distribution, but lost that position once Ubuntu rose to prominence. I’m very interested to see how well these will be used.
Getting the Pre-Release
Getting the alpha (or if you read this a bit later, the beta) is very easy. Just head over to this page, which will always show you the latest pre-release version of Fedora. From here, you can download the ISO image by your preferred method, burn it to a DVD or write to a USB drive, and boot from that prepared media. Just be sure that if you install it to your computer (or virtual machine) that you immediately check for updates, because there’s a good chance that there will be a lot of changes that can improve your experience even more.
Fedora 21: The Most Polished Release Yet
Fedora 21 is quite an exciting release that I’ll continue to follow through the rest of the alpha and beta phases. If you haven’t ever tried Fedora before, then this may be the best release to try out once it’s final. If you already use Fedora, then be sure to upgrade when it comes out as you’ll be very pleased.
What’s your opinion of the new-look Fedora? Will you be trying it out? Let us know in the comments!
Fedora 21: The Most Polished Release Yet
Fedora 21 is quite an exciting release that I’ll continue to follow through the rest of the alpha and beta phases. If you haven’t ever tried Fedora before, then this may be the best release to try out once it’s final. If you already use Fedora, then be sure to upgrade when it comes out as you’ll be very pleased.
What’s your opinion of the new-look Fedora? Will you be trying it out? Let us know in the comments!
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
GNOME 2 is back: Ubuntu MATE is now an official flavor
Ubuntu MATE is now an official flavor of Ubuntu.
Yes, that means Ubuntu is giving a stamp of endorsement to GNOME 2 once again. You don’t need to switch to Linux Mint—just install the Ubuntu MATE disc and get a desktop that works like it did before Ubuntu's Unity and the GNOME Shell came along.
Meet MATE
If you’re using Linux, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the MATE desktop.
It’s a continuation of the old GNOME 2 desktop code. The developers are continuing to improve how it works with new technologies without dropping everything and starting from scratch. This makes it more controversial than projects like Linux Mint’s Cinnamon desktop, which use take modern code and try to make it behave more like a traditional desktop, instead of bringing the old GNOME 2 code forward. GNOME 3 now also offers a Classic Mode to appeal to users who want a more traditional desktop experience.
But never mind the competitors, and never mind which project will have the easiest time coping with new technology in the future. The MATE desktop works well today. If you don’t want to play with new stuff, if you’re comfortable with GNOME 2, or if modern desktops just seem too unwieldy, it’s a great option. This is a core strength of Linux: When users don’t like desktop changes, they can bring the old desktop forward. Windows users are stuck with however Microsoft wants the desktop to work this year.
If you’ve ever used GNOME 2—in other words, used Ubuntu before Unity, or many other Linux desktops before GNOME 3—you’ll feel right at home. It’s GNOME 2, but polished and made modern to work well with the rest of the underlying system. For users who’ve never used it before, that means a traditional desktop taskbar, an easy application menu that doesn’t take up the full screen, no integrated shopping search results, and a simple interface that just gets out of your way.
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What an “official flavor” means
The official recognition doesn’t mean Canonical will start offering Ubuntu MATE instead of its home-grown Unity desktop—far from it. It puts Ubuntu MATE on par with other official flavors like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Lubuntu, Mythbuntu, and Ubuntu Studio. Ubuntu offers a list of these flavors on its web page.
This recognition is an official endorsement of Ubuntu MATE going forward, and that means more press and recognition. It also means the Ubuntu MATE project gets access to Canonical’s infrastructure, which it can use to host its ISO images for download and automatically build and test them.
Want to try it yourself? Despite the first beta release of 15.04 being its first release as an “official flavor,” you’re probably better off grabbing a more stable release like Ubuntu MATE14.04 LTS from the Ubuntu MATE Project’s website.
Source : http://www.pcworld.com/article/2893647/gnome-2-is-back-ubuntu-mate-is-now-an-official-flavor.html
Source : http://www.pcworld.com/article/2893647/gnome-2-is-back-ubuntu-mate-is-now-an-official-flavor.html
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