Thursday, May 28, 2009

Fedora 11

A few days ago I posted a countdown timer for the release of Fedora 11, the latest in a long line of solid Linux operating systems. The countdown was down to just a handful of days but was recently bumped back a handful more! I found it odd when I saw the counter today that it had gone up! Obviously something needed to be taken care of, which is good to see that the Fedora people are not afraid to push a deadline back when something needs work. They generally do not scrap included packages unless it is entirely unlikely that the package will work with the new release. Microsoft, take note. Projected release dates are not set in stone, you can move them back! So what if geeks around the world will give you hell for delaying a week or so, the common user won't care if they have to wait for the latest version of Windows... generally, they won't even care that there IS a new release of Windows.

The latest version of Fedora looks very good, at first glance. With the inclusion of OpenOffice 3.1, the release will be great for the common user who needs their computer to check email, surf the web, and type word documents (and the occasional spreadsheet). If you're up for a slight adventure and would like to install a new OS that is NOT Windows, I would highly recommend it. The comfort of not having to worry about viruses, trojans, and malware is wonderful. If you are not up for the challenge, might I suggest, then, at least installing OpenOffice 3.1? They have added support for the Office 2007 extensions (those damn .xlsx .docx .pptx) that have been driving the world insane. It may not be quite at the level of Office, yet, but it is vastly approaching.

You may find OpenOffice 3.1 HERE

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