What's in Fedora 8?

Fedora 8, code named 'Werewolf' has improved itself in various segments compared to its predecessor Fedora 7. The new GNOME 2.20 can also be found in this distro now which was only available with openSUSE 10.3 and Mandriva 2008. Bigboard that was released a few months before Fedora 8 is now integrated with this distro. It is an online sidebar incorporated with the Fedora desktop that can be integrated with other online applications such as Google Talk, AIM, etc.

Installation

The installation process is similar to the previous version, Fedora 7, and difference if any is in the artwork alone. We installed it on a machine having Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB HDD and for external display we plugged Radeon X1950 Series graphics card. This distro detected all the hardware and configured itself automatically. We also installed it on HP Presario V3000 series laptop with Intel onboard graphics card and 512MB RAM. It worked fine and the desktop effects looked wonderful.

The 'Werewolf' effect

A unique feature in Fedora 8 is the integration of the online desktop compared to conventional Fedora desktops. You can login to the online desktop from the Session Settings option in the login screen. Another unique feature is the color of the default wallpaper that changes with the passage of the day to match the ambience outside. Apart from the latest GNOME version you can also install KDE 3.5.8, and if you are looking for a KDE 4 development environment, it can be found online on Fedora repository.This version also includes Xfce 4.4.1 desktop environment.

Having the new Pulse Audio as a default sound server enables you to control the volume of different applications individually, ie you can set the system sound and media player sound separately. The CodecBuddy is now included in this distro which enables Linux to play some proprietary audio formats such as MP3 by separately downloading the codecs through CodecBuddy. Unlike openSUSE 10.3 which provides out-of-the box MP3 support, one has to download this codec from Fedora's online repository. Similar to openSUSE and Mandriva this distro also has OpenOffice 2.3.

The writer has been improved and supports features such as exporting documents in MediaWiki format. The Calc has now support for inline matrix or array constants in formulas. Moreover, one can preview one's work before exporting to HTML format in Draw, Calc, Writer and Impress. The conventional homepage of fedora has also been changed. Similar to openSUSE 10.3 it also has secure remote management capabilities for XEN, QEMU and KVM.

BottomLine: This has been amongst the most widely used Linux distros and the latest features make it an enviable option.