path: root/published/fedora24review.txt

The Fedora project has released Fedora 24. The biggest news in the default desktop version of Fedora 24 -- which the Fedora project refers to as the Workstation edition -- is GNOME 3.20 and continuing improvements to Fedora's Wayland support, which is close to finished, but still not the default option in this release.

One thing that hasn't changed is Fedora's Anaconda installer which looks and behaves just like the version that shipped with Fedora 23. Having been through Anaconda enough that I know how everything works, I find it's actually one of the fastest Linux installers thanks to its very well done automatic setup features. Newcomers, however, may find the interface a bit confusing thanks to the odd placement of buttons and UI decisions.

Fedora 24's default desktop for the Workstation edition features GNOME 3.20, which <a href="">I reviewed previously</a>, but suffice to say that, if you're a Fedora GNOME fan, Fedora 24 is worth it for the GNOME upgrade alone. The GNOME application suite sees numerous improvements, particularly the Maps application and the greater control over location sharing privacy.

GNOME 3.20's Software app also supports Flatpak, which was previously called XDG-App and offers tightly sandboxed applications for greater security and easier updates. The main Flatpak app available to test at the time of Fedora 24's release is LibreOffice. The LibreOffice website has <a href="http://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak/">instructions</a> on how to get it working. I had no trouble getting it running, but be sure to note the issues listed at the bottom of the page, several of which may be deal breakers. 

Because of the tight sandboxing, Flatpak-based apps are not yet able to pass data to other applications. For example the Flatpak version of LibreOffice can't automatically open links in your browser. The Flatpak version of LibreOffice also doesn't yet include a Java Runtime Environment, which means that any LibreOffice functionality that requires a JRE will not work.

Suffice to say that while Flatpak apps (or possibly on the competing app packaging systems like Ubuntu's Snap package) look like the future of Linux applications, they're not there yet. The future of sandboxed apps looks bright, if somewhat distant.

Closer to complete is Fedora 24's Wayland support. Wayland sessions still aren't the default for Fedora 24, but they work well enough that it seems safe to assume they'll be the default for Fedora 25 (barring unforeseen bugs). I encountered a few Wayland-related problems, but by and large the experience is getting very close to "just works". The major exception for my use case is that screenshots almost never seem to work, so everything you see here comes from an X.org session.

Fedora 24 also features some revamped font rendering tools that put it on par with Ubuntu's font rendering even though, for patent reasons, it still doesn't ship with support for  subpixel rendering. The patent blocking the subpixel rendering tool expires in 2018, but even now fonts on Fedora look much better than they did in past releases, thanks in part to the decision to back off font hinting, which now defaults to "slight" rather than "medium". The result is slightly crisper text that's much closer to the very nice font rendering Ubuntu has long offered.

Other small changes in GNOME 3.20 make Fedora 24 a bit nicer to use. The Files application, better known as Nautilus, has a new search feature that makes it easy to search files by date, including a nice calendar interface for narrowing down searches. Alas the search feature itself is hidden away behind an icon, but so long as you know it's there it's a nice improvement. Searches also now integrate with the back and forward buttons so you can quickly get back to a search after investigating the results. The bug that would occasionally cause searches to hang also appears to have been fixed.

Fedora's developer focus shows in some of the under the hood updates, like the move to <a href="http://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/02/23/upcoming-features-in-gcc-6/">GCC 6</a> and the usual slew of version bumps for various programming languages. Fedora 24 features Python 3.5, Ruby 2.3, NodeJS 5.10, and Golang 1.6 among other updates. The package repositories have been similarly updated with nearly everything I tested being the latest available stable version. 

Part of what makes Fedora an appealing distro is the number of official and unofficial "spins" out there. Regardless of your specialty or interests, there's probably a Fedora spin out there with all the packages you'd want already installed. The latest such spin is an Astronomy Spin, which offers pre-installed apps useful to both amateur and professional astronomers. The Astronomy Spin features the KDE desktop with a complete scientific Python environment, <a href="https://edu.kde.org/kstars/">KStars</a> for astrophotography and <a href="http://www.astromatic.net/">AstrOmatic</a> for data analysis. Sure, you could install that all yourself, but that's part of the appeal of spins: you don't have to do anything.

Fedora Spins come in all shapes and sizes ranging from a <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Games/GamesLive">Games Spin</a>, to a <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design_Suite?rd=Artwork/ArtTeamProjects/FedoraArtStudio">Design Spin</a> to an <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Audio_creation_spin_development?rd=AudioCreationSpinDevelopment">Audio Spin</a>. A full list of Spins, including some interesting, but not officially supported, Spins can be found on the <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Spins_Custom?rd=CustomSpins">Fedora wiki</a>.

In addition to the desktop Workstation release Fedora also comes in Cloud and Server editions, which pack in all the software updates of Workstation, plus all of Fedora's work on server side tools, like Fedora Atomic Host. A very minimal container designed to run Docker apps, Fedora Atomic Host 24 sees a new "developer mode", which automatically starts both Fedora's GUI management tool, Cockpit, and a tmux session, giving developers the best of both worlds right out of the box.

This release of Fedora Cloud also features OpenShift Origin, Fedora's packaging of Google's Kubernetes container cluster manager. 

The Server edition of Fedora sees fewer changes in this release, though there is FreeIPA 4.3, an integrated security management system. The Server edition has also been significantly streamlined, with a smaller installation footprint. 

Fedora is very closely tied to GNOME -- many of the core GNOME developers work at Red Hat -- but there are several alternative desktop Spins available if GNOME 3.x is not for you, including Fedora MATE. Fedora's MATE spin makes a nice lightweight alternative to GNOME, though if you've used MATE with Mint or Ubuntu you may find Fedora's version a little different. Most of the Mint X-apps are not included by default, though some, like the Eye of MATE image viewer, are. The result is that Fedora MATE feels a little less slick than some other distros, though it is arguably, even more lightweight.

Fedora is not a rolling release distribution, but you'd be hard pressed to find a more up-to-date distro that's not rolling. The RC release, which is what this review is based on, features Linux Kernel 4.5.7, and an update to the just released 4.6.2 will likely be along shortly. The Fedora repos are similarly up-to-date with LibreOffice 5.1.4, all the GNOME 3.20 apps and Firefox 47. Once upon a time Debian and Ubuntu far outstripped Fedora when it came to available software, but that's somewhat less true than it used to be. Debian still has more total package -- though not by much -- however I can't remember the last time I went looking for software and couldn't get it installed in Fedora.

Thanks largely in part of GNOME 3.20, Fedora 24 is well worth the upgrade for existing users. If you haven't checked in on Fedora lately, this release makes a good place to jump in. 

fedora24-gnome-desktop.jpg Fedora 24's default GNOME 3.20 desktop.
fedora24-gnome-software.jpg The GNOME Software app can now handle distro-level upgrades.
fedora24-files-search.jpg The new Calendar based searching feature in Nautilus.