Friday, May 31, 2013

Fedora 19 Schrodinger's Cat Feature Review

by Dietrich Schmitz

There's much to be said about going with a Distro which provides true innovation and leading edge technology.

So much so that today I have chosen to review Red Hat supported Fedora 19, aka Schrodinger's Cat, currently in its beta testing cycle.  I didn't waste time downloading it--this is my desktop on the Xfce spin:



My Fedora 19 Schrodinger's Cat Desktop
Almost reminds you of the good old days of early Ubuntu does it not?  Simple, elegant, intuitive.  I've been running Fedora 18 for quite a while now and will tell you without equivocation that it has been quite stable and there isn't a single thing I can think of that I miss coming from the Debian derivative world.  No, this Red Hat-sponsored Distro has everything but the kitchen sink.  Yum running with FastestMirror and AxelGet technology flames through updates and software installs.  APT has no particular advantage over yum.  And all of the stability nonsense which spews forth from the Debian fiefdom simply doesn't hold water.

Debian's argument for stability is, as far as I am concerned, strictly arbitrary and nothing more than a speedbump put in place to slow you down.  

So, step over to a real leading edge Distro supported by a real multi-billion dollar sales company, Fedora, and benefit from true best of breed,  industry-standard technology.  Let's begin the feature review.

Create and Develop

3D Printing

3D modeling and printing is enabled through a variety of tools in Fedora, including OpenSCAD, Skeinforge, SFACT, Printrun, and RepetierHost.



Developer's Assistant Feature

Get your development started with templates and samples, code with the appropriate toolchain, and package and distribute your creations.  Perfect for new developers and developers not previously familiar with Linux, the Developer's Assistant provides an easy method for developers to start new projects via package sets by language (currently C, Java, and Python).

Node.js Feature


Easily build network applications and real-time, distributed applications with the node.js development and deployment ecosystem.


Ruby 2.0.0 Feature

The newest version of Ruby, a popular development language is now available in Fedora 19.

Thermostat 1.0 Feature

Thermostat is a monitoring, instrumentation and serviceability tool for OpenJDK which enables developers to examine applications as they run.

OpenShift Origin Feature

Implement your own PaaS infrastructure with OpenShift Origin to easily enable developers to code and deploy applications in a cloud environment.

Scratch for Fedora

Scratch is a graphical, educational programming environment, created by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. Scratch makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, games, animations, music, and art.

Deploy, Monitor, and Manage


Checkpoint and Restore

The Checkpoint/restore capability provides the ability to checkpoint and restore a process, and is useful for cases such as process failure, or moving a process to another machine for maintenance or load balancing.


High Availability Container Resources Feature

Extend the HA stack beyond management of virtual guests, to containers inside the guests themselves, with High Availability Container Resources. Enabling the ability to manage both virtual guests and the resources that live within the guests, all from the host cluster node, this feature can be used without guests needing to run the cluster stack, and new containers can be defined and subsequently added to the HA cluster, which is built on pacemaker and corosync.


Open Linux Management Infrastructure (OpenLMI) Feature

OpenLMI provides a common infrastructure for the management of Linux systems, making remote management of machines easier. Extending upon previously available capabilities, a storage API for remote storage management, providers for remote hardware inventory ad AD/Kerberos realm enrollment, and easier, more scriptable remote storage management are now in place.


Virt Storage Migration Feature

Migrate virtual machines, with or without shared storage between the hosts.

Systemd Resource Control Feature

Modify your service settings without a reboot -- dynamically query and modify resource control parameters at runtime with systemd Resource Control.

SysLinux Boot Option Feature

Optional, simplified booting of Fedora, ideal for images used in cloud environments and virt appliances.

Desktop Environments and Spins

  • Gnome 3.8
  • KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.10
  • MATE Desktop 1.6

Clearly, Fedora has a lot to offer in new leading edge technology as well as mainstream stable technology offerings.  You can read more about the Fedora 19 features here.

Seriously Folks, I endorse Fedora and actively use it, so I hope you will consider giving it your full evaluation.  There really is no better community Distro.

I stake my reputation on it! :)

-- Dietrich

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