Hey,

Being my distro-junky self, I leeched a FC4 test3 DVD and am currently playing with this OS off in a chroot. Overall, I'm impressed with what I see.

  • New theme. Clearlook, I think it's called. Much more soothing to see than Bluecurve
  • GREAT SPEED IMPROVEMENTS -- With GCC4's help, Fedora Core 4 feels snappier than Ubuntu. Especially when you try to use heavy Python programs (like YUM), you can seriously feel the difference. In fact, you can feel this during Anaconda, where "checking dependencies" takes less than a second on my system where it used to take at least 10.
  • Extensive use of LVM. Anaconda's auto partitioner (like in Core 3) insists on setting up LVM's for every partition it makes. In addition, there's a GUI LVM configuration tool after setup, for performing those tasks with LVM's. Great work. Never have to regret a partitioning mistake again (huh? /var holds the RPM database too? oops...)
  • Openoffice.org 2 beta is very stable quality (build 104 currently) and Redhat stays on top of updates very well.
  • Virtually all packages in repos up-to-date. Look at Redhat's history, for example, of how quickly they introduced Firefox 1.0.4 as an update for FC 3 and Rawhide. Can't beat that.
  • Up2date works well now. Before, up2date was ultra-slow, not to mention half of the times it can't resolve its own dependences. This seems to be virtually resolved now.


In conclusion, Fedora's come a long way since Core 3 to bolster this new release. This is going to be an excellent distro. I've yet to do any Xen testing, but this may be my distro of choice until Breezy