The newest Fedora release is out, the fifteenth version of Fedora core. I did the upgrade a week ago and have had enough time working with it to have formulated a few opinions.

1. Installation: Very smooth, downloaded the DVD Iso and burned it using K3B, used a "live disc" Parted Magic to reformat the partitions ( I use a custom partition layout, due to some unique requirements I have for my system) inserted the DVD and rebooted. The installation was easy, the anaconda GUI installer has advanced to the point that it is no more difficult than a typical Windows installation.

2. Boot: Used the grub bootloader installing on the boot partition, not the MBR as I have a dual boot  setup using Windows 7 and Fedora. Using this configuration works well as it avoids problems with Windows 7 cranky bootloader, and can be customized by editing the /etc/grub.conf file.

3. The System: By default the 15 release installs Firefox 4.1 and the Gnome3 desktop. (more on this in a moment), during installation you have the option to install quite a bit of additional software using the "custom" option. It is not possible to list all the options available, as they are legion. Just about any configuration you might want (i.e. graphical desktop,  web server, development, etc. is available. As a guide for post installation tasks Professor Kriehn's site is hard to beat.  He has not yet added a new page for 15 but almost all of the instructions provided for 14 apply to 15, with some notable exceptions, particularly those having to do with compiz-fusion.

4. Gnome3: This is the first truly "new" release of Gnome in awhile, and will take some getting used to. It is a compositing desktop based on a merger of MetaCity and Clutter, and as such, does not support compiz-fusion.  You do have the option at login of using "classic" Gnome with compiz, but I must recommend against it, as my experience indicated it is still quite buggy, and prone to crashes. If you still really want to use compiz (I do!) KDE still supports it , and can be installed via yum. The new Gnome desktop is very cool though, and just takes a bit of getting used to. If you want faster app switching install "Docky" using .

Thoughts: It took me a bit to get used to the new desktop, but i am starting to really like it. It is very intuitive, and once you understand how it works, very efficient. It is also fast!. Much faster than the old Gnome2 interface. I will update this bulletin as I get into more of the newer features.

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