Please note that if you go to the homepage, you’ll see that Fedora is now recommending the 64-bit version over the 32-bit version for all users.  But 32-bit is still available for those who want or need it.

What’s So Beefy?

What makes this release such a “Beefy Miracle”? Well it’s quite “beefy” in that it packs a lot of new features, updated software, and general improvements across the board. I have to admit there are a lot of changes that are behind-the-scenes and aren’t visually apparent to most regular users, but a good amount of people who use Fedora aren’t regular users. In any case, it’s a win-win situation for anyone who is remotely interested in Fedora.

Under-the-Hood Changes

A large portion of the changes in Fedora 17 are backbone changes or updates as well as improved developer tools. Fedora 17 ships with the Linux kernel version of 3.3.4, but this will regularly get updated to the latest and greatest throughout the release’s lifespan. Users of the OpenStack software (which is a major tool that can be used to create public and private clouds) will rejoice that it has been updated to the latest version codenamed “Essex”.

Fedora 17 also introduces support for JBoss Application Server 7, a tool used as a Java application service. The Fedora Project has also taken the first steps toward a “unified file system” where multiple similar folders (such as /usr/bin and /usr/sbin) are merged into one folder, which simply aims to make the file system more sane.

Desktop Changes

Fedora 17 has upgraded to Gnome 3.4, which offers many bug fixes, an improved application search experience, smooth scrolling, and application menus (which are accessible by clicking on the application name in the top left of the shell). The updated Gnome desktop environment also offers a refreshed Epiphany browser, now simply called “Web”. This is great for anyone who simply wants a browser that works without using extensions and the like. It doesn’t come preinstalled in Fedora, but it’s a few clicks away by installing the epiphany package. KDE has also been upgraded to the latest 4.8 version.

GIMP has also been updated to the new version 2.8, where the most prominent feature is the new single-window mode.

2+ Desktops, 1 Computer?

Last but not least, Fedora 17 adds support for automatic multiseat. Although this feature wasn’t quite as publicized, I found this to be one of the most interesting things about this release (even though I probably won’t be able to use it myself).

Automatic multiseat is a term that simply describes this – currently with any Linux distribution you can have as many users as you’d like logged into a console (locally and remotely). Each user can do whatever they please at the exact same time as everyone else who’s logged in. Now apply that scenario to full graphical desktop environments. Automatic multiseat allows multiple graphical sessions to exist on the same system so long as the additional hardware is plugged in (monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.).

This now means that multiple people can log into their desktops without any issues while only working on one physical system. As today’s system specs are more than capable of handling this, you can save time, electricity, heat, space, and money by having multiple people work with one system.

If you’re still somewhat confused, check out this video for a more hands-on explanation or this link on how to set it up.

Conclusion

In the end, is it worth it to upgrade to the Beefy Miracle? Absolutely! Is it worth it to try it out if you’re not a Fedora user? As long as you’re not an absolute beginner, yes! This release packs plenty of nice improvements, and it runs quite stable and fast. So fast in fact, someone’s been able to reduce Fedora 17′s boot time to just 2.5 seconds!

What’s your opinion of Fedora? What do you like or dislike about it (whether from a technical point or an ideological point)? Do you like the direction Fedora as a distribution is going? Let us know in the comments!

The post Fedora 17 “Beefy Miracle” – Possibly The Best Release Yet [Linux] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

There are a good amount of proprietary products that are being made available for Linux, both free and paid, and they aren’t going away anytime soon. But because Linux allows the best of both worlds, you may also be curious about the proprietary drivers that are available.

Why Do You Possibly Need Proprietary Drivers?

In virtually all distributions, only open source drivers that come with the Linux kernel are used out of the box. While this should be perfectly fine for simple use (and it should work on any graphics setup), AMD and nVidia users may still feel the need to use the more powerful proprietary drivers so that games, videos, and more all play as smoothly as possible.

Intel users shouldn’t feel left out. Intel doesn’t offer any proprietary drivers, but instead pushes all of its work directly to its only set of graphics drivers, which are open source and included with the kernel.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu users have the easier route to getting these drivers installed. You’ll simply need to open your dash, menu, etc. and look for the Additional Drivers application. This little program will look to see if you have any hardware in your system that could be better supported through proprietary drivers. While it may also include wireless drivers, this is usually the place for the proprietary graphics drivers.

Simply click on which you’d like to install (I’d usually go with the latest), and apply.

If you like a more technical route, you can technically find the fglrx package for AMD cards and nvidia-glx-xxx for nVidia cards (where xxx is the version number, like 185), but I recommend using the Additional Drivers application as it takes care of everything, and I’ve run into problems just installing fglrx through the package manager instead of through Additional Drivers.

Fedora

Fedora users have it a little more difficult, but it’s very manageable. First, you’ll need to head over to this site and install the free and non-free packages for your version of Fedora. These packages will add information about the repository which hosts the proprietary drivers, as the default repositories of Fedora are open-source only. Once that completes, you should now be able to search for kmod-catalyst for AMD cards or kmod-nvidia for nVidia cards.

This is a package that keeps track of dependencies and kernel modules, so whenever you install a new kernel it’ll update the drivers as well. Install, restart, and you’re up and running!

Conclusion

While I’d love to see proprietary-quality open source drivers, I highly doubt that something like that will ever occur. For those who need to use all of the horsepower their cards provide (especially when you have a higher end card; weaker/older cards are usually 100% supported), using the proprietary drivers is still the best way to go.

Please note that using proprietary drivers should work fine unless you have an AMD card while running Gnome 3. Until the problem is fixed, your performance while running Gnome 3 will be quite sluggish even though it’ll still run. If you run into this problem or any other issue, you can always uninstall the proprietary drivers and revert back to the open source drivers.

Do you prefer open source or proprietary graphics drivers? Do you think proprietary drivers should be open sourced? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: Forrestal_PL

The post How To Install Proprietary Graphics Drivers In Ubuntu & Fedora [Linux] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

All of these Linux distributions use .rpm files as installable packages rather than the .deb files which belong to the Debian family. So, let’s get started!

Fedora

Fedora can be seen in many respects as the big mother of the RPM family, just as Debian is the big mother of the Debian family. This is in part because Fedora is made from scratch and isn’t derived from another distribution, and a good number of distributions are based off Fedora (although not nearly as many that are based off of Debian). Fedora is almost entirely controlled by the community, sponsored and funded by Red Hat. Through personal experience, Fedora is probably one of the easiest distributions to join and get involved in.

Fedora is highly focused on providing only free software. This applies to literally everything. If some software or any piece of it doesn’t have the right free license, either the software is completely removed from the repositories or the violating piece is removed.

For example, MP3 and similar codecs are nowhere to be found in Fedora’s official repositories, so out of the box you can only play Ogg files. With the help of an additional repository, however, you can get those restricted codecs. Some people find this a pain to get a “working” system, but others appreciate the work Fedora puts towards free software and accepts that an additional repository is needed as a temporary workaround until the world is more accepting of open standards.

Fedora is made to be all-purpose and can be used perfectly on any system, but Fedora is better known for testing enterprise environments. Fedora is also highly cutting edge compared to other distributions that run on a regular release schedule, and the community prides itself on that. Despite Fedora being a cutting edge distribution, it is still surprisingly stable.

openSUSE

Enough about Fedora, next we have openSUSE. If people don’t think about Fedora when they think of an RPM distribution, then they’ll more than likely think about openSUSE. This green distribution isn’t nearly as cutting edge and has longer development and release cycles. Therefore it is arguably among the most stable RPM distributions available, with a decent array of available software.

openSUSE is known for making an important change compared to other Linux distributions by using the KDE desktop as its default desktop environment rather than GNOME. openSUSE also includes a lot of free software, but they do not have a powerful focus on it as Fedora does. Note that although both Fedora and openSUSE use .rpm files for packages, if you find a package online meant for Fedora, it won’t necessarily work in openSUSE, and vice versa.

CentOS

Last but not least, we have CentOS. CentOS is short for Community Enterprise OS. This distribution is actually made from Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is a distribution that can only be bought via a support package. CentOS allows people to use RHEL without having to pay for the support package and with CentOS branding instead of RHEL branding.

CentOS is therefore binary compatible with RHEL out of the box, so any packages made for RHEL will work in CentOS. As the name suggests, CentOS is an enterprise distribution, and although RHEL is based off of Fedora, it’s package selection is much reduced to “enterprise” software. Therefore, lots of desktop tools and games that regular desktop users might be accustomed to won’t be available. On the good side, which Fedora’s release cycle only lasts for 13 months, CentOS releases have support for at least 7 years. So, CentOS is highly advisable for servers.

Conclusion

The world of distributions in the RPM family is quite interesting to explore, especially with so many distributions having a leg in enterprise affairs. Whether that means that the distributions are complicated or that they’re more reliable than “regular” distributions, that is up to you. Either way, if you choose to go the RPM way rather than the Debian way, hopefully this article will help you figure out what each distro is all about.

What information did I miss out on? Why one do you like the most and why? Let us know in the comments!

The post Fedora vs. openSUSE vs. CentOS: Which Distribution Should You Use? [Linux] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

About ClamTk

ClamTk is available for most of the popular distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora, but is installable on all systems via compilation of the source code. In Ubuntu, you can install it by searching for “Clam” and installing the “Virus Scanner” or by running this in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install clamtk

In Fedora, you should be able to install it by searching for “clamtk” in the package manager or running in the terminal:

sudo yum install clamtk

Interface

Once it has been installed, go ahead and open it from your dash/menu/etc. You will now see the (very simple) main window of the application. There are a couple of different buttons to scan your home folder, a directory, or a file, or to exit the application. Below those buttons are a few checks made by the program to see if the latest version of the ClamAV engine, the latest GUI version, and the latest virus definitions are installed.

The virus definitions should be updated automatically through the scheduler (more on that later), while the engine version and GUI version are dependent on what is pushed to your distribution’s repositories. If any of the two are majorly out-of-date, you should notify the repository maintainers using the recommended method. Most distributions ask that you file a bug complaint or simply wait.

Menu Options

Aside from the very simplistic interface, some more advanced features are hidden within the menus. Under Scan, you’ll find a few more options for scanning, including quick and recursive scans. Under View, you can see the history of actions taken with the program, as well as clear that log. Under Quarantine, you can check the status of your quarantined items, restore or delete individual quarantined items, or simply empty the whole quarantine.

Under Advanced, you can schedule scans, run the antivirus wizard, submit a file for analysis, or tweak other preferences. The scheduler is an important feature as it makes staying virus-free easy and doesn’t require you to remember to run the scanner. It also makes up for the lack of real-time protection. With the scheduler, you can schedule scans of your home folder or entire computer, as well as virus definition updates.

The preferences include multiple scanning preferences, startup options, an option to whitelist directories so that they won’t be scanned, and proxy options so that you can get your virus definitions without any issues.

Finally, under Help, you can manually check for updates for the antivirus engine and the GUI, as well as look up information about the GUI itself.

Conclusion

ClamTk is an easy-to-use GUI for the ClamAV engine that should help you keep your Linux system virus free. However, more importantly, this easy tool will help you get rid of nasty viruses that may be on a separate hard drive or removable media. Don’t forget that as a rescue solution, you can boot up a Linux environment using a LiveCD and install ClamTk to combat the virus that may be plaguing your Windows machine.

What do you think of ClamTk? Is there any antivirus solution on Linux that is better? Let us know in the comments!

The post Scan Your System And Removable Media For Viruses With ClamTk [Linux] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

So, how exactly do we do this?

Helpful Information

Before I begin, please note that within the Linux community, it’s generally advised to simply do a clean install rather than upgrade Fedora Linux. This is recommended because a clean install will give you a clean operating system, without any obsolete packages, configuration files, and other “junk” that may be generated from an upgrade. Additionally, some distributions handle upgrading to newer versions better than others do, so it is said as a more general rule.

However, there may be times when doing a clean install isn’t really needed because you’d like to keep everything that’s been installed and you’re happy with the “cleanliness” of your hard drive. I’ve found Fedora to be one of the best at upgrading to newer versions (despite even the Fedora community not explicitly recommending to use the upgrade path).

In my experience Ubuntu has a more complicated way to upgrade to releases more than a 6-month cycle away, and even direct upgrades tend to have some problems when complete. Fedora hasn’t ever had these problems, so I’d recommend it more than anything else.

Upgrading

There are two different ways that you can upgrade your Fedora Linux installation. In reality, there are more than two different methods, but the two that I will mention are the only sure-fire ways of having an easy, successful upgrade.

You can either upgrade using a utility called “preupgrade”, or upgrade using the DVD version of the desired Fedora release.

Using preupgrade

The preupgrade utility has a couple of advantages and “disadvantages” over the DVD. With preupgrade, you will only have to download the installer and the packages on your system that need updating. When downloading the DVD, you’re also downloading a lot of packages (such as different server packages) that you don’t even have and that just sit there on the DVD, untouched.

preupgrade also automatically changes all your repositories (even the custom ones) to start using the newer repositories, although I believe the DVD does this as well. As for any claimed downsides, it apparently doesn’t run the upgrade quite as well as the DVD does, but I haven’t had any problems with it yet so I only consider that to be a rumor.

To use the preupgrade utility, you’ll need to install it via the package manager or run sudo yum install preupgrade. Then to start it, you’ll need to open up a terminal if you haven’t already and run sudo preupgrade.

A window will appear welcoming you to the utility, and will then ask you which release you would like to upgrade to. You can also choose to include alpha/beta/”rawhide” versions by clicking on the appropriate checkbox, but do this at your own risk as they are not stable, final releases.

Clicking next one more time will already start the identification and download process. Once it completes, you’ll be asked to restart your computer, where it will boot into the downloaded installer and run through the upgrade process. After another restart, you should be booted into your updated system, with all programs, files, and settings intact.

Using the DVD

To use the DVD, you’ll need to download the DVD ISO and burn it to a DVD disk (or write it to a large enough USB stick). Once that finishes, put the DVD into your optical drive, boot from it, and go through the first steps of the installer. At one point it’ll detect what it is currently on your hard drive and identify any instances of Fedora already installed. It should find your current instance and ask if you want to upgrade it. Choose that option and continue with the rest of the installer until the upgrade completes. Then you can restart and you should be inside your updated system.

Other Experimental Choices

Other methods of upgrading are possible but won’t be described in this article. If you’re really interested in what they are, you can go here to find all upgrade options.

Conclusion

Fedora’s upgrade path is fairly seamless compared to other distributions and works exceptionally well. It offers flexibility and ease of use, which is basically all you could ask for from an upgrade. I especially like Fedora’s ability to upgrade directly to any release (such as from F13 to F15 without having to upgrade to F14 first). The closest Ubuntu comes to that is updating between LTS releases, but for any others you’ll need to upgrade from one release to the next, all the way until you are done.

What do you think about the options to upgrade Fedora Linux? How do you compare them to other distributions? Any other thoughts? Let us know in the comments!

The post How To Upgrade Fedora Linux Easily appeared first on MakeUseOf.

My operating system of choice for this article will be Fedora Linux, as Linux in general is known for getting servers up and running quickly, and easily. In addition, Fedora is well supported by both a community and a corporation, has great security, and offers graphical configuration tools for multiple servers.

Step One: Installation

New Install of Fedora

If you don’t have Fedora installed on your system yet, you can do so with the DVD because you can also choose to install Apache at the same time. If you take this route, while installing from the DVD you’ll be able to choose which packages you want to install with the “Customize Now” switch. Choose it and then under the Servers tab, you can select “Web Server”. Go ahead with the installation until you can boot into your new system. From there, you can install the graphical configuration tool by choosing the package system-config-httpd from your package manager, or run sudo yum install system-config-http.

Fedora Already Installed

If you already have Fedora installed, you can install both the web server and the graphical configuration tool. You can install the httpd and system-config-httpd packages from the package manager, or run sudo yum install httpd system-config-httpd.

Step Two: Configuration

You can now start the graphical configuration tool from System Tools –> HTTP. The first tab you’ll see is the Main tab, where you can configure the server name, administrator email address, and under which addresses the server is available under. I recommend that you add an address right now, and choose “All available addresses” on port 80 for simplicity.

The second tab contains the different virtual hosts, or the number of different websites on the same server, that are configured. The server can differentiate what domain name was entered into the browser and therefore choose the correct virtual host when displaying a page.

There are plenty of different settings that you can choose for each virtual host, including the necessary components as well as hard-to-configure ones such as SSL (HTTPS). For a majority of items, the graphical configuration tool should be able to take care of your needs.

The final tab has everything to do with performance and the amount of connections that are allowed. There are no recommended settings as each server has different capabilities, so if you have a larger website you’ll need to play around with these numbers and see what works (provided that you have enough traffic to test out the settings correctly).

Additional Needed Configuration

Before you can actually access your new web server, you’ll need to open your terminal and then run sudo service httpd start to actually start Apache and sudo chkconfig httpd on to make Apache start at every boot.

Step Three: Testing

Step 3 in our process is simply to test out whether you can access your page or not. On the same machine, open up Firefox and type in localhost or 127.0.0.1 to see if you get this test page (provided that you didn’t change the document root):

If not, you may have done something wrong in your configuration or not started Apache yet.

Conclusion

It’s pretty cool to have Apache up and running on your very system, considering that it’s the same technology being used by most of the websites you visit every single day (including MakeUseOf). If you want other machines to have access, you’ll need to go into Fedora’s firewall configuration utility (installed by default) and make sure that HTTP (Port 80) is open. Also, if you want to run more complicated web frameworks such as forums or WordPress, you’ll have to install MySQL and PHP as well, but I’ll leave that for another article.

How easy do you think this process is? What do you like or not like about Apache? Let us know in the comments!

The post How To Set Up An Apache Web Server In 3 Easy Steps appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Ubuntu and Arch let you easily install either implementation, while Fedora users will have a slightly tougher time (at least when it comes to installing Oracle Java). This article should clear up any of the confusion on how to get it working, including some tips and tricks I discovered for 64-bit users.

Installing OpenJDK (Easy)

Installing the OpenJDK implementation is actually fairly simple. In order to get all Java functionality, you should run this command to install needed packages if they’re not installed already:

sudo yum install icedtea-web java-1.6.0-openjdk

. This installs the Java Runtime Environment and the needed browser plugins to get a complete working Java system. You can also install those two packages via the package manager.

Installing Oracle Java (Harder)

Simple, right? Well, sadly some Java programs seem to require Oracle Java in order to work correctly, though not everyone has this problem. I’m going to split this into two sections, one for 32-bit users and one for 64-bit users. You can then skip the section that doesn’t apply to your system.

Downloading Files

Before we split off into the separate paths, all users can at least download the required files. 32-bit users can either download the JRE from here or the 32-bit JDK from here, while 64-bit users should only choose the 64-bit JDK (I’ll explain why later). Make sure that when you download your file, you choose the one that specifically mentions RPM, which is what Fedora uses. For the sake of simplicity, save the downloaded file in your Downloads folder. Additionally, for the time being, I recommend you still use the Java 6 packages, such as 6u27 at the time of this article, rather than Java 7 because it is still too new.

Installation

In order to get the setup to run, you’ll need to open a terminal and run

 chmod +x /home/<user>/Downloads/<filename>

to add executable permissions to the file, and then run it by simply run it by typing

/home/<user>/Downloads/<filename>

. Don’t forget to substitute <user> with your actual username and <filename> with the name of the file that you downloaded. Go through the setup until it completes.

Configuration

Congratulations! Oracle Java is already installed on your system! However, you’re still a couple steps away from actually being able to use it. We need to create a lot of symbolic links in multiple places for the system to be able to use it correctly. Note that these commands mention folders such as “jre1.6.0_27″ or “jdk1.6.0_27″, which refers to the version 6u27. If you downloaded a different version, say 6u29, you’ll need to edit the path appropriately.

32-bit JRE

If you chose the 32-bit JRE, you’ll need to enter in these commands in order:

1. sudo alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/jre1.6.0_27/bin/java 20000

2. sudo alternatives --install /usr/bin/javaws javaws /usr/java/jre1.6.0_27/bin/javaws 20000

3. sudo alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so libjavaplugin.so /usr/java/jre1.6.0_27/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so 20000

32-bit JDK

If you chose the 32-bit JDK, you’ll need to enter in these commands in order:

1. sudo alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/jre/bin/java 20000

2. sudo alternatives --install /usr/bin/javaws javaws /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/jre/bin/javaws 20000

3. sudo alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so libjavaplugin.so /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so 20000

4. sudo alternatives --install /usr/bin/javac javac /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/bin/javac 20000

5. sudo alternatives --install /usr/bin/jar jar /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/bin/jar 20000

64-bit JDK

Through personal experience, I’ve found that 64-bit users will have to do a few things differently. I asked that you download the 64-bit JDK instead of the 64-bit JRE because the JDK includes a working Java Web Start application while the JRE does not. Additionally, you’ll have to use a few tricks in order to get that to work. Therefore, please use these commands in order:

1. sudo alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/jre/bin/java 20000

2. sudo alternatives --install /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so libjavaplugin.so.x86_64 /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so 20000

3. sudo alternatives --install /usr/bin/javac javac /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/bin/javac 20000

4. sudo alternatives --install /usr/bin/jar jar /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/bin/jar 20000

5. sudo ln -s /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/jre/javaws/javaws /etc/alternatives/javaws

6. sudo ln -s /etc/alternatives/javaws /usr/bin/javaws

What those commands do differently is install the 64-bit browser plugin rather than the 32-bit plugin as well as use a different way of creating the necessary links for javaws, as the other way did not work for me.

Final Steps

Last but not least, you’ll need to edit a file and add in a line of text. To do that, you can open your favorite text editor to change the /home/<user>/.bash_profile file. If you installed the JDK (32-bit or 64-bit), add:

## export JAVA_HOME JDK ##
export JAVA_HOME="/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27"

If you installed the JRE, please add:

## export JAVA_HOME JRE ##
export JAVA_HOME="/usr/java/jre1.6.0_27"

Conclusion

Java has finally been installed and configured correctly! You should now be able to use Java wherever you may need it, including Firefox. If you use a different browser, you can create a link from the Firefox location to your browser’s plugin folder. Although it’s quite a bit of work, it’ll pay off in the long run.

What do you prefer, OpenJDK or Oracle Java? Would you like to see Oracle completely open-source Java and maintain one single implementation? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments!

The post How To Install Java On Fedora [Linux] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

As Fedora 16 is currently in beta, it still has plenty of bugs. However, the feature freeze date occurred before the beta release, so in terms of features you shouldn’t see much if anything changes anymore.

If you want to test out Fedora 16 Beta while reading this article, you can download the default and any other available spins from here.

GRUB 2

The first new feature you may (or may not) notice is that Fedora finally uses GRUB 2 as the bootloader. While one might think that GRUB 2 was already in widespread use before this change, you perhaps don’t realize that GRUB 2, for the most part, was only implemented in any Debian-based distributions. Go outside of the Debian world and it’s a whole different story.

However, considering that GRUB 2 is actually close to a stable release, the people over at Fedora decided it was time to get back to the upstream standard. GRUB 2 brings with it loads of improvements, more options, and overall better booting.

A Newer Kernel

The Linux kernel included in Fedora 16 is also updated. In case you don’t know, the kernel is the very core of the system. Without the kernel, Linux wouldn’t be Linux. Not only are the basic workings located here but also all of the drivers. Even though Fedora 15 made the jump from the 2.6.38 series to 3.0/”2.6.40″, Fedora 16 uses the absolute latest kernel from the 3.1 series. This means that even more bug fixes and hardware support is included, resulting in a better experience.

The Gnome Desktop

Once you finally get logged in, you’ll start to see some more visible changes. Not only is the wallpaper new, but the entire GNOME desktop is being bumped up to version 3.2. After GNOME 3′s debut with Fedora 15, it’s nice to see these updates come out to start smoothing out the rough edges and add features that users felt were missing.

The major change to the desktop itself in this iteration is the inclusion of an updated menu when you click on your name in the top right corner, as well as “Online Accounts“, which basically adds better intergration to things like Empathy, the instant messenger program. Currently you’re only allowed to add Google accounts, and it fails at doing so, but this should be fixed when the final version comes out.

The default “Awaita” theme has also received some updates to include slightly different shades of blue and other minute adjustments.

Fedora has also included a new virtual keyboard known as Eekboard. This keyboard is very easy to use and requires no changes in the settings or installation. This is the first time I’ve seen a working virtual keyboard readily available to use.

Additionally, AMD graphics card users will be happy to know that with the open source Radeon drivers, I do not have any problems with GNOME 3 whatsoever. There are no graphical glitches to be seen, and the speed is actually very impressive (I’m using a Radeon HD 6950, but still). I have not yet tried to use the proprietary Catalyst drivers to see if they behave together.

There are also many changes present in the other supported desktop environments, KDE, XFCE, and LXDE. However, GNOME 3 is the default and will be all that I will cover. If you would like to see KDE, XFCE, or LXDE in action in this Fedora 16 Beta, you can also download those spins by going to the download page.

Even More Changes!

As always, there are plenty of other behind-the-scenes changes that you will more than likely not notice, except for a slight performance increase. At the end of the day it shouldn’t be very interesting to a lot of people, but if you do want to check it out, you can click here.

Conclusion

So far, I’d definitely recommend that you try out Fedora 16 when it is released as stable on November 8th. This latest version builds on all the changes made in Fedora 15, and I’m happy with the results. From here on out, the beta will be worked on to fix all bugs until it is eventually ready to be released. Once that happens, everyone can enjoy the bug-free goodness that comes in this release.

What is your favorite feature in Fedora 16? What would you like to see in future releases? Let us know in the comments!

The post Linux Just Got Better With The Fedora 16 Beta Distribution appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Using NetbootCD isn’t necessarily easy. You’ll need to learn to use text-based installers instead of the GUI versions found on live CDs. To me though, this is a small price to pay to contain my steadily-growing pile of Linux CDs.

Getting Started

First things first, you’ll need to download NetbootCD and burn the ISO to CD. If you’re really old-fashioned you can also grab the floppy drive version of NetbootCD, but for most people the CD is what you’re looking for. Whatever version you use, boot the disk and you’ll see a menu like this:

You’ll need to use the arrow keys to browse the menu, because your mouse will not work here. Before you start installing anything I highly recommend you run the “download” option. This will ensure you are using the most recent version of the NetbootCD script, and as such have access to the latest versions of your distro.

Once you’ve updated, click “install” to see your choice of Linux distros:

Pick the distro you want to run and you can pick which version of that distro you want. For example, here are the Ubuntu choices:

Generally you’re going to want the latest released version, but the choice is entirely up to you. Pick what you want and the download process will begin:

Note that your wireless setup may not play nicely with NetbootCD. To keep things simple, plug your computer directly into your router or modem with an ethernet cable.

Net Installations

Eventually your computer will load the net installation tool for your distro. Install the way you normally would, following the prompts and answering any questions. Since every package needs to be downloaded before it is installed, this will take longer than usual.

Depending on your distro, you may need to pick which desktop you want installed. For example: Ubuntu users will be given a choice between the Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu desktops, to name a few (why are there so many versions of Ubuntu?)

Be sure to choose something or you may end up with a command-line-only system. Note that the spacebar selects your option and enter continues to the next step of installation.

Once you’ve got everything the way you want it, you’re ready to boot into your Linux distro of choice.

Conclusion

I really like the idea of only needing one Linux installation CD around for my favorite versions of Linux, as well as future versions. If you like not to waste CDs but still use GUI installation tools, I suggest you check out Unetbootin or Linux Live USB Creator. Both of these tools make it possible to boot Linux from a USB drive or an SD card.

How do you like to install Linux? Let us know in the comments below, along with any tips for first-time users of NetbootCD.

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