Review Fedora 24 Workstation-Part 1

What is Fedora?
It's Fedora!?!  You don't know what Fedora is?
Fedora is in it's own way, one of the big daddy's of the Linux desktop world.  Fedora is developed by a "community-supported" group of people and "sponsored by" Red Hat.  So the story is they're separate organizations...

For the few of you that may be reading this and not know who red-hat is, it's a monster in the Linux world (the good kind).  It was once the largest contributor to the Linux kernel, though I'm pretty sure that's Intel at the moment.

Red-Hat has turned Linux into a billion dollar company.  They make thier living (I am really, really paraphrasing here, they do a lot more than this) selling Linux to companies and selling support services.  And they've done an awesome job at it.

Red-hat is huge, their business is Linux, and they need Fedora for the front end development.  So likely, it's a must for them to have this distro.  Personally, I tend to think just a little less of corporate driven distros than actual community driven ones, but it's one of the realities of the Linux world.  If Fedora and OpenSuse weren't there, the Linux desktop would probably not be anywhere near as good as what it is today.  So...good for red-hat, good for Fedora..and let's move on.

What is it based on?
Fedora is actually standalone.  It's not based on anything.  Red-Hat is built off of Fedora.  I always like when a distribution is independently developed.


What is it known for?
The reality is Fedora=Red Hat and Red-Hat=Fedora.  Beyond that, the perception of Fedora is it's a good distribution, cutting-edge, meaning there can be bugs.  Also, there are plenty that perceive Fedora as a Mid-to-SR level Linux distribution, not necessarily newbie friendly.

I don't agree with both of those.  I don't consider Fedora cutting-edge in the realm of Linux desktop distributions.  Not when there are so many rolling releases out there in the wild.  It's certainly more cutting-edge than Debian or red-hat, but that's apples and oranges.  When Fedora makes a release, the included software is usually pretty current.  But then there is six months until the next release.
As far as bugginess goes, Most distros give me an occasional problem.  Fedora has never struck me as worse than most of the others.
In regards to new-user friendliness, it definitely requires more setup than a lot of the distros that focus more on an out-of-the-box experience.  But again, following a few tutorials online should get you set up and running without too much fuss.  So I'd say it depends on the person who wants to try it.  Just like anything in Linux, the best experience will come with a willingness to read, dig and learn.  But overall, Fedora is no harder than most desktop distros.

Personally, I like Fedora.  I've run it as my daily driver plenty over the years and even had a few stretches where it stayed on my laptop for months.  Which for me, speaks volumes.  It is not my favorite though.

Review Fedora 24 Workstation General Information-Part 2
Review Fedora 24 Workstation Installation-Part 3
Review Fedora 24 Workstation First thoughts and included software-Part 4
Review Fedora 24 Workstation Package Management-Part 5
Review Fedora 24 Workstation A week with and ratings-Part 6