Some thoughts after installing Fedora 17 Beta RC2...

I'm a fake programmer who can read code but can't write it, so I can't say anything too technical. I'm a pragmatist at heart, and I've currently installed Fedora 17 Beta RC2 on both my laptop and desktop. Here are some brief thoughts, in case they're useful to anyone wanting to try it out.

The laptop is a 2nd-gen i3 + 4 GB RAM + Intel HD3000 graphics, and the install went very smoothly. The graphics driver works perfectly, everything’s snappy. The desktop is an i5 750 + 4 GB + ATI HD5770 + Creative Audigy4 sound card. Apart from the closed-source graphics driver not being installable, it’s basically perfect.

Here are some problems and impressions.

• GNOME 3.4 is a huge step up in stability compared to GNOME 3.2 — at least so far I haven’t hit a single random GNOME Shell reset.

• GNOME 3.4 has very few usable themes, only one from some Indian dude, and its fonts completely don’t suit Chinese. The old 3.2 themes can sort of be used, but the icons in the launcher get completely messed up. So I’d recommend sticking with the default theme.

• GNOME 3.4 doesn’t have many extensions, but it’s not like there are none at all. The common ones are already there, and the fcitx plugin also supports GNOME 3.4 now — you can install it by ticking it on that extensions site.https://extensions.gnome.org

• GNOME Shell 3.4 supports software acceleration — in other words, if you run a 3D game under GNOME Shell, your game performance won’t take a huge hit just because GNOME Shell is there. I ran HoN and the performance was satisfying.

• For Chinese font beautification on Fedora 17, you can just copy Ubuntu 12.04’s font + etc files over. Remember to make the folders readable. As for the font rendering patch, installing it or not makes no difference; if you absolutely must, you can find a repackaged version from some Russian guy.

• The fcitx input method is already in the Fedora 17 repos, but it only includes basic dictionary support. If you need more, you still have to add csslayer’s Fedora 16 repo — it’s 16, but it works fine on 17.

• Intel cards are perfect. I don’t know about Nvidia. For AMD cards, Fedora 17 ships Xorg 1.12, which the closed-source driver doesn’t support, so you’re stuck with the open-source driver.

• Right after the first install, remember to run yum makecache + yum update immediately — there’s a lot to update.

• Desktop icons sometimes get misaligned. Press Alt+F2 and type r, or just reapply the style, and they come back.

• Fedora 17’s Firefox bundles a pathetically weak Flash plugin. The version is low and it doesn’t work — it’s Shockwave Flash 11.1 (yes, 11.1). If you have problems with Flash, remember to disable it.

 

That’s about all I’ve got for now. Hope it’s useful.