Introduction

Fedora Core 5, code name Bordeaux, was meant to be released on Wednesday the 15th of March, 9 months after its predecessor Stentz. A lot of people were waiting for it with great expectations. But 5 days before the official release, an announcement was made, the event was postponed to Monday the 20th. The announcement suggested that Fedora Core 5 would be the first distribution to include the new Gnome 2.14, released on the 15th of March.

Ten days later, there was a lot of excitement and everybody was eagerly awaiting the release. The rumor had it, Bordeaux would hit the shelves at 2pm UTC! A Swiss mirror leaked some ISO on the 17th and was quickly overwhelmed by the mass of people trying to download from it. Fedora forums were buzzing. A few minutes before 2pm, some 584 people were viewing this thread and probably constantly refreshing their browsers to be the first to see where to get the ISOs fro,.

Stanton Finley had already published the Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes (which you should read if you plan to install and use Fedora) here

Finally, at 2pm the 5 ISO CDs were available on http://download.fedora.redhat.com. The official website hadn't been updated yet, but the ISO were there and people were already celebrating the new release.

Later on that day, Bordeaux became available on Fedora mirrors, an entry was made in http://www.distrowatch.com, the official repositories became available for Fedora Core 5 and the official website was updated. It even became available at the Livna repositories.

I became quite excited myself and I decided to find out if Bordeaux really deserved all that hype. I could have opted for a 5 CD installation or for the DVD, but there were so many people hitting the mirrors that download speeds were very slow. After asking some questions, I found out that only CD1 and CD2 were required for the default installation, and that I could use the package management to install extra software later, directly from the repositories.

During the download I took the opportunity to read some websites and forums. I had also spent some time during the week end on the #fedora IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. The Fedora community is huge. Its forums are very active, its websites are full of documentation and are very easy to read. I also found a lot of help and a good ambiance in its IRC channel.

I finally got the two ISO files. I checked their sha1sum and burned them on discs. I was then ready to boot on the first CD of the newly released Fedora Core 5. Now it was simply a question of finding out how good the distribution itself was going to be...

Installation

The first thing you see when you boot on the CD, is a graphical Grub menu . As you can see below, Fedora Core 5 uses a new logo. In fact, this logo appears everywhere within the distribution accompanied by the "Fedora Bubbles" theme and backgrounds. Apart from the usual options, the menu allows you to run a memory test, to check the integrity of your CDs and to boot in a rescue mode, which features tools that are designed to fix broken installations. I wanted to test the default installation so I simply pressed Enter.

A default kernel was then loaded. There was no boot splash, and a text-based menu appeared. It asked me if I wanted to check the integrity of my CDs. Then, the system started X and ran a beautiful installer: Anaconda. Its welcome screen is particularly good looking and gave me a really good first-impression. I also liked the fact that it included the distribution's release notes.

The Anaconda installer guides you through different steps of the installation. First, you have to select your language. Fedora supports a lot of languages as does Anaconda. Then you have to choose your keyboard layout. I was disappointed not to be able to test the selected keyboard layout before validating my choice. I remember the Slackware text-based installer provided that test. It's a pity Anaconda doesn't do the same. This is a minor problem however.

Anaconda then asks you topartition your drives and offers 4 options:

• Remove all partitions and create a default layout
• Remove all Linux partitions and create a default layout
• Use the free space on selected drives
• Create a custom layout
  

If you opt for the default partition layout, an option to review and modify it becomes available. I chose to remove all partitions and went for a default layout. A warning message told me that removing my partitions could make me loose some data. I appreciated that. A little warning can sometimes prevent great mistakes from being made, and partitioning drives is not always easy for novice users.

Anaconda then asks if you want to install a boot loader. The choice is extremely simple: Grub or no boot loader at all :) However, a lot of options are provided to configure Grub. For instance, you can add a password to it, define default boot parameters for the kernel, force LBA32, and choose to write Grub in the MBR. You can also add, remove or edit boot entries very easily.

Anaconda then tries to configure your network and lists your network devices. For each device you can decide if you want it to be activated on boot and if you want to use DHCP or to configure it manually.

You then have to choose your geographical location. For that, Anaconda provides a clickable world map. Then, you're asked to choose a password for the root superuser. And last but not least, you are asked to make a selection among the various software applications included in Fedora. In here, you can choose "office and productivity", "software development", "web server" or you can customize the software selection to suit your needs. As I only burned the first two CDs, I went for the default options.

Finally, the screen below appeared. It told me where the install log was stored and that the installation options I chose had been saved. This was a pleasant surprise. Not only it is saved, but you are shown where to look for it. Also, the screen suggested Anaconda had all the information it needed to start installing Fedora on my machine. I could sit back and relax while the installation was going on. I really liked the fact that everything was asked first, and that the installer only started to work once it knew all that it needed.

I pressed the "Next" button, and the installation began. Anaconda formatted my drives and showed me the following screen.

While Anaconda was installing the packages on my hard drive, a progress bar indicated how much was installed and the name, version and description of the packages being installed were written under it. After a little while, an estimation of the remaining time appeared as well. Depending on your hardware capabilities and the speed of your CPU, the installation can take more or less time. Some installers use this time to show adverts (remember Mandrake 9.2) or to tell you how your life will be forever changed by this formidable experience (remember Windows XP), using shiny pictures and big slogans. Anaconda was not like that. It simply did the job, it looked nice, and it even let me mix fun and duty by giving me the opportunity to read the release notes. I really liked that.

8 minutes before the end, I had to change the CD. I wish I didn't have to, but I can't really blame Anaconda for that :) The remaining time estimation went up a bit, but since it's only an estimation, I didn't pay too much attention to it.

Finally, the installer finished, the CD got ejected and I was congratulated for the hard work. In fairness, I didn't do much, Anaconda did most of it, but since I did read the release notes I suddenly felt like I deserved some congratulations...

Anaconda didn't only install Fedora on my machine. It gave me a really good impression of it, and after reading the release notes, I couldn't wait to push the "Reboot" button and to start looking at my newly installed operating system.

First Boot

Upon reboot, Fedora started with a graphical Grub menu. It used the "bubble" theme which I saw in Anaconda.

Once the kernel was loaded, the boot process got hidden behind a boot splash screen. However the user can decide to show the details and see its output. The overall process is very pleasant.

Just when I finally thought I was going to log in Fedora, a Setup Agent required me to answer another set of questions. I would have preferred Anaconda to ask me everything at once and I didn't really like being asked twice, but the Setup Agent was pleasant to the eyes so I didn't mind too much. First, it asked me to accept a License agreement, then to answer some questions in order to configure my firewall and SELinux (a kernel fedora improvement which addresses security issues). It also set the date and time and offered an option to use NTP. It then asked me to choose my screen resolution and guided me through the configuration of my sound card. Finally, it allowed me to define a user and to set its password.

Once the Setup Agent finished, the system is ready to be used.

Inside Fedora

GDM started and I was ready to log in. Here, the same theme is used, made of the new Fedora logo and the blue bubbles, as seen in Grub, the boot splash and the installer.

After I logged in, Gnome started to load and a splash screen appeared. I don't know if this is an improvement made by Gnome or by Fedora, but Gnome was much faster to start than before. The splash screen only appeared for a few seconds.

Finally, here I was, looking at the default Fedora Core 5 desktop. I personally think it's beautiful. I remember being impressed when Bluecurve was first released, and although it was replaced in Fedora Core 4 by Clearlooks as the default theme, it looks like the desktop is becoming more and more good-looking. The widgets are very nice, the fonts are perfect, and the theme matches the ones found in Anaconda, Grub, GDM and the boot splash.

Gnome 2.14 also brought some innovations which make the desktop even nicer to use. For instance the power battery indicator now features really nice popups when the power cable is switched off or when the battery is fully charged. A lot of nice applets come with the default installation. Among others I particularly appreciated a CPU frequency monitor and "Tomboy notes". This applets allows you to write sticky notes in a very intuitive way. If you haven't tried it before you should definitely do so. Also, if you run something that requires the root password, the desktop remembers that you have the authorization and doesn't ask you anymore. A little applet is shown and the feature can be deactivated. I found that very nice!

The desktop is very impressive and well integrated. It's actually hard to say what was done by Fedora and what was done by Gnome, but the end-result is very good.

I plugged a USB key to see if it would be mounted automatically. It worked out of the box, and even showed a popup saying that there wasn't much space left on it :) An icon sat on my desk to show the removable device. That device also appeared in the "Places" menu and in "Computer".

I was impressed by the built-in CD/DVD burning features of the desktop. If you right click on a CD, you can start copying it to an ISO file. Also, an application called "CD/DVD Creator " is included and allows you to easily burn data on discs.

The file system is easily accessible through Nautilus and Windows networks are detected automatically. I found that accessing devices, file systems and networks was very easy.

By default, Nautilus, the Gnome file explorer, opens each folder in a new window. But it is possible to run the File Browser, in order to navigate through the file system in a single window. Gnome also includes new search features which makes it easier to find files wherever you are.

Thanks to the Gnome Theme Manager it is also very easy to change and modify your desktop theme. Fedora comes with two really good looking themes: Bluecurve and Clearlooks.

Fedora Core 5 is up to date and offers a very good software selection. The default email program is Evolution 2.6 and sendmail works out of the box. The default browser is Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.1 and it opens by default on the Fedora Core 5 Release Notes (which I though was another good idea). Also, the default productivity suite is OpenOffice 2.0.2. Among other applications, the distribution features Gaim 1.5, The Gimp 2.2.10, KDE 3.5.1, Mozilla 1.7.12, Linux 2.6.15, Thunderbird 1.5 and Xorg 7.0.

A little detail caught my attention, there was no IRC client installed by default in the Internet menu. This is quite a pity considering how active and useful the #fedora channel is. I also thought the menu items could be more consistent. For instance, some items are named after the application they launch (ex: Firefox Web Browser), others after the purpose they serve (ex: Email), and others even consist in sentences (ex: Add/Remove Software). This is only a detail, but it could be easily improved in the next releases.

Fedora Core 5 provides two graphical tools to update the system and to install new applications. Both tools rely on YUM and its repositories. Pup replaces up2date and allows the user to update the packages that are already installed on the machine, and for which a new version has become available.

Pirut, which can be run by clicking on Add/Remove Software, in the Applications menu, allows the user to list available and installed packages, to browse them by category and to search packages by keyword. With this tool, you can easily install or remove packages, depending on your needs.

I was finished exploring the desktop, and it was now time for me to setup my hardware and to mold the distribution according to my needs. With a bit of help found in #fedora I got various pieces of hardware detected and configured, and I decided to keep Fedora Core 5 as my main distribution on my laptop.

Conclusion

I was never a Fedora fan myself. I started using Slackware Linux, then I got addicted to the Debian APT package management and I finally ended up running Kubuntu. I never paid too much attention to what was going on in Fedora. In fact, the last release I tried was Fedora Core 1. So I didn't have much expectations about "Bordeaux", even though I got more and more excited over the release after I had talked to some people from the Fedora community. I have to say though: this distribution impressed me in a way that no other distribution did before. Some things should of course be improved, such as the automatic hardware detection or, as mentioned above, the menus. But apart from these little details I can confidently say that Fedora Core 5 is the best desktop GNU/Linux distribution available at the moment. Suse and Ubuntu are working on their next release, for sure this Fedora release placed the bar higher than it has ever been before. A giant step was made in making Linux ready for the desktop and Bordeaux is proof of this.