Fedora Core 5: My Review

Okay so I've been more or less straight Debian since I started using Linux about 2 years ago. Although I admit my first Distro was Mandrake (which has since metamorphosed into Mandriva). I moved from Mandrake into a real noobs distro Lindows (which later metamorphosed into Linspire). I stayed with it until Linspire Five-O came out. At which point I bought a laptop and went to Mepis. I've since tried Kubuntu. So then I got a "new" old box to try a distro on. I decided to try something RPM based and after wandering over to DistroWatch.com, I decided on Fedora Core5! I had once tried to help a friend install Fedora Core 4 on his Windows box as a dual boot. We decided however to bag it, we could never get his video or sound card working. So I can say I was a bit leary about this install.rnrnAfter downloading the discs I went through the installer and was impressed with the installation process. It took roughly two hours! Why?!? Because I was burning the FC install discs one at a time as I need them. If I had burnt my discs up front, it would have been done in probably 40 minutes. rnrnThe default packages that come with FC 5 are good, and the installer gives you three options for software to install: webserver, developer, and office suite. I chose all three. It comes with Open Office 2.0, Gnome is the default. Firefox and Evolution are also included in the base install. Security is handled with a default Firewall and SELinux. Out of the can FC 5 found my home Windows network without configuration. I was disappointed that the RPM selection in the default Yum repositories were so limited. But I got around that with this great tutorial I found online. I highly reccomend it. It'll help you get your repositories set up and set up other basics like: Flash, Acrobat Reader, Real Player, MPlayer plugins and so forth. The Tutorial Without that tute I'd probably be outta FC5 and back to Debian and Ubuntu by now. But it really steps you through setting up all the basics. So far I've been really impressed with Fedora Core 5. I think I'll stay for a while.rnrnI've been dual booting since I started Linuxing. This is my first Linux only box. Now for the Fedora Core 5 Screen Shot. (Click to enlarge).