Trying out Fedora 19

Today I installed Fedora 19 which is one of many freely available Linux flavors. I haven't used Fedora or Linux for that matter for several years, but I've started a side project where Linux fits in. While I have moderate experience with different Linux distributions from my University days and the first couple of years in the working life it will be interesting to see how much I remember. The reason for choosing Fedora, it could have been any other well-used version, is because this is what I first think of when I hear Linux. This is due to the master thesis I worked on Singapore where Fedora was the weapon on choice during an intense period of development.

If I remember correctly I was using version 6 or 7 back then and the most recent version which I'm about to try out is 19. I'm absolutely convinced that some major changes have been made and I will write some, not all, of them down here.

I choose to install the desktop version as a virtual machine in Virtualbox and after a few configurations and some waiting I had this elegant and slick image on my screen (the Fedora blue which I remember very well).

Before I start configuring and working on the side-project of mine I decided to spend some time reading up on the new features of Fedora 19. The official release announcement lists several items. Some of the highlighted features are:

• Developer's assistant
• 3D modelling and printing
• Open Shift Origin
• node.js
• Ruby 2.0.0
• MariaDB

As you know Linux Desktops has several variants to the desktop and by default Fedora comes with Gnome. I don't have really have strong preference here but I noticed that MATE is an option starting this version, if time allows I might examine this but for now I'll stick with Gnome.

I've will be using Fedora for software development and application installations so the Developer's Assistant got me interested. According to the descriptions it will help developers in setting up a working environment for various programming languages. The included languages are: C/C++, Ruby, Python, Perl, PHP, Java, and JavaScript. With my favorite language being C# I will need to examine further if there is some possibility for .Net here. In any case, the Developer' Assistant looks interesting and it integrates with Github so if you have repositories in the cloud, or want to get involved in a Github hosted project, it seems seems easy to load code from Github to Fedora.

The second thing that interested me is MariaDB which is an alternative to MySQL. To understand how MariaDB is different to MySQL I'll add the whitepaper "MariaDB vs MySQL" to my reading list. Also that Node.js is included in Fedora is good to know, in case I need to write some server side java-scripts.

Another thing, which I'm unsure if it's new to Fedora 19, are social features. In Fedora you can add accounts on OS level from Google, ownCloud, Facebook, Windows Live, Microsoft Exchange. It will be interesting to see how this fits into the overall experience.

So, I have narrowed the new features down and I'm looking forward to starting my project.

Fedora 19 with the nickname "Schrödinger's Cat" was released in July 2013. Following the standard six month or so release cycle the new Fedora 20 will be available in November 2013.