Fedora Does Real World Work. Debian is for Hobbyists

It's interesting to watch the pace of change with Linux on the Desktop.

Want technology on the leading edge?  Fedora is here today with best of breed solutions, all of which merge to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the largest commercial Linux Distribution in the World.

Fedora was first to implement systemd.

Fedora is first with a robust implementation of state of the art technologies including rpm-ostree and Docker on their Project Atomic platform.  And, Cockpit eases the process of managing servers and containers in the cloud via a unified web management interface.

You see, at release 21, Fedora split into server, workstation, and cloud divisions.

The transition was amazingly uneventful, due to Red Hat's senior guidance and the incredibly hard work done by the Fedora Team coordinated with upstream GNOME Project.

Fedora takes what they do very seriously and when it comes to meeting target milestones, they galvanize into action and meet them in a timely business-like fashion. 

Every time Debian runs into delays, that pushes back Canonical's Ubuntu milestones who hitched their wagon to Debian and delays get passed in turn down the line to the rest of the Ubuntu derivatives who hitched their wagons to Ubuntu.  It's a serious problem, particularly for Canonical Ltd. who are trying to run a business.

No, the real work is done by Red Hat/Fedora in the business world.  No messing around.  No divisiveness, stalling, stonewalling.  Tasks move along with rhythm and cadence, all oarsmen stroking to a beat, following directions and executing them as ordered in synchronous precision.


Debian is the proverbial speed-bump on the road to innovation and with an 18 month release cycle nothing gets done in a hurry.

Debian devotees won't like to read this but, Debian isn't behaving like a professional Distro should.  They allow themselves the luxury of procrastination and all the while 'make pretend' some highly technical issue must be considered before embarking on any kind of work.  I call it 'work avoidance'.  Because, that is really what it is under a veil of techno-speak designed to obfuscate what is or isn't really happening in their hallowed organization.  If they are to survive, a radical change must be made to their release management policy.

The real world can't afford to behave like 'hobbyists'.  The real world won't wait.  Debian is falling farther behind, but that's okay as far as they are concerned.

The work will get done.  Eventually.  

Fedora does the real-world work.  Debian is for hobbyists.  -- Dietrich

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December 9, 2014: The Day Desktop Computing Got Fun Again

Remember when Desktop Computing was fun?

The early days of Ubuntu were a time when GNOME really had things going for it.  Then, one Mark Shuttleworth took the product in another direction.  Unity.

Unity was initially interesting but didn't fit usability and that began the period of when I didn't like what I saw happening to Ubuntu.

During that period, The GNOME Foundation was undergoing its own change.  GNOME 2.x was determined at end of life and GNOME Shell, a concept GUI was established.

As with any GUI paradigm change comes a period of 'growing pains'.  I was really resistant to what GNOME was doing.  And so, I spent a long period in search of a good alternative GUI.  Ultimately, I found myself liking LXDE, and dwelled in Lubuntu.

Then, I tried Fedora 18 LXDE spin.  I concluded it was from a technical standpoint as good as Lubuntu.

Philosophically, I didn't like what Debian and Ubuntu were doing.

When it became apparent that Mark Shuttleworth was running his own railroad and broke ties with The GNOME Project, I thought he was trying to control delays in upstream decision making.  That made good business sense.

But in the process, he flip-flopped on putting full support behind Wayland turning to creating his 'own' Display driver, Mir.

To make it short and to the point, there is no other Distro which uses Unity.  NONE.

Today, Unity is on an island all by itself.

During the period of 'transition' The GNOME Project came out with initial revisions with GNOME Classic 'fall-back' to keep the malcontents happy.  In each iteration, GNOME made feature enhancements in an effort to continually refine the 3.x shell.

Each major revision, I gave it a try and turned away giving it a 'thumbs down' on usability.

Until 3.12, I didn't like Shell.  It was at that level it became truly usable and ready for prime time.  That was a year ago.

Today, GNOME Shell has reached 3.14 and I have been using it for several months on Fedora 21 Alpha/Beta/RC Workstation.

Even with Alpha, I found myself smiling and laughing at just how well the interface meshed.  It is polished, professional and just fun to use.

Yes, it is fun to use.  I really haven't felt that way in a very long time and I look forward to turning on my PC every day because Fedora 21 Workstation with GNOME Shell 3.14 is just that good.  I would add, Red Hat is the largest supporter of The GNOME Foundation and has worked closely in the design of GNOME Shell.  Red Hat also provides web infrastructure for The GNOME Project.  The relationship is close knit.  The end result is what you see and use.

December 9, 2014, has been promised by the Fedora Team as a 'Go' for Fedora 21 Workstation.  The day will be remembered as when Desktop Computing got fun again.  -- Dietrich

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Debian on Death's Doorstep: Developers Resist Systemd by Resigning

Is Debian Dying?

There is no shortage of consternation brewing over on the Debian Debacle Cul-de-sac where the nattering nabobs of negativity have forced yet another vote taking for the decoupling (or not) of the current plan to migrate to a replacement for sysvinit system.

The votes are in and it would appear no change in plans will take place.

So, it's full steam ahead with standards-compliant systemd replacing the aged sysvinit middle-ware design.

What lies ahead?  Much discussion preceding the vote taking took place including the proposition of forking Debian.  Yes.  A fork.

And, despite the issue of migrating over 40,000 applications, the proposition is still being taken seriously.

From my vantage point, Debian has always been a 'speed bump' on the road to innovation.  Their software management policy is simply unacceptable in today's world where life can change in a New York Minute.

The concern should present to those Debian derivatives, of which there are many, that delays in moving forward on systemd continue to mount.

Canonical Ltd. Mark Shuttleworth has intimated in a question and answer session (video) including Mir, their Wayland alternative, won't happen any sooner 2016.  I predict that there will be further delay as other unforeseen Debian issues present during their migration to systemd support.

Developers of Debian derivatives and application software ought to be giving serious consideration to the overall 'health status' of their beloved operating system.  They have their work cut out for themselves.  Not only must their Distro middle-ware be modified, but also the applications that run on it.  That is a 'double-whammy' and I'd suspect that when the going gets tough, you'll hear more kvetching and see Developers who can't knuckle-under hitting the exit doors seeking to retire their Derivative or joining up in the RPM camp.  I hope that the latter will be their preference.

Looking at the above chart from Wikipedia showing those major Distros that have adopted systemd, both Debian and Ubuntu stand out and, as a result, all their derivatives will fall into the same status until Debian can reach a stable systemd plateau.  It is interesting to note Gentoo and Slackware have indicated no plan to change over to systemd.

Are these indications that Debian is in the midst of her final initial death throws?

If developers align to advocating for a Fork, then the demise of Debian may well soon follow as a wholesale 'plate tectonic shift' occurs.

As for Me, I am wagering Debian's days are numbered.  What say you?

-- Dietrich

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There is no Substitute for #1. Fedora 21 Workstation. Linux Done Right.

There is no substitute for #1.  Fedora 21 Workstation is Linux done right.

You can take this message however you want.

Anyone hoping that Ubuntu Linux will reach critical mass adoption is in for a surprise.  Under the governance of Canonical Ltd. a corporate structure to receive IOUs from one Mr. Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu Linux is moving sideways.  It has been a boat without an anchor and no clear charted course.

The good news is that one Distro has overtaken it.  Yes, I've been showing my bias for quite some time.  Most of my readership know that.  But it must be said.

Quietly, industriously, cooperatively, success is here for a true champion Linux on the Desktop.  It is with the arrival of Fedora 21 Workstation I officially see a product with fit and finish that goes beyond what Unity on Ubuntu can ever offer.  Ubuntu lacks critical leadership to be truly successful on a global scale.  It has moved in different directions yet not with the best interests of the Linux Community.  Unity has driven a wedge into the community and has become an island on which no other Distro wants to set foot.  There is no broad support for Unity from the Linux Communiity.

Fedora 21 Workstation integrates, with close direct participation and involvement in design, GNOME Shell 3.14.  Red Hat has taken The GNOME Project under her wing, providing direct infrastructure support for all GNOME-related websites.

This is a turning point.  Fedora 21 Workstation is on a footing to take the mantle and prestige away from Ubuntu.  It succeeds where Ubuntu does not.  Fedora moves forward with clear, published, pragmatic planning and the full support of its community and has traction.  Ubuntu is spinning her wheels and by mere association with Debian will continue to suffer as dependence slows progress by default.

There is no substitute for #1.  Fedora 21 Workstation is truly Linux done right.  -- Dietrich

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Fedora 21 Alpha Workstation Impressions

Fedora 21 Workstation (GNOME 3.14 Desktop GUI)

Draining the Swamp, is the title of a 2001 GUADEC presentation done in Seville Spain back in 2001 by +Jim Gettys, author of the X Window system.  Citing his remarks in an April 2014 story, Christian Schaller (Senior Software Engineering Manager at Red Hat, Developer at GNOME) writes about Gettys' vision:

(...) "We are trying to bring that ‘draining the swamp’ mindset with us into creating the Fedora Workstation product.

With that in mind what is the driving ideas behind the Fedora Workstation? The Fedora Workstation effort is meant to provide a first class desktop for your laptop or workstation computer, combining a polished user interface with access to new technologies. We are putting a special emphasis on developers with our first releases, both looking at how we improve the desktop experience for developers, and looking at what tools we can offer to developers to let them be productive as quickly as possible. And to be clear when we say developers we are not only thinking about developers who wants to develop for the desktop or the desktop itself, but any kind of software developer or DevOPs out there." (...)

That sums up what Fedora 21 Workstation is all about.

Fedora has embarked on an ambitious plan called Fedora.next which breaks out three distinct product lines: Server, Workstation and Cloud.  I only give my initial impressions for Workstation.  Here goes.

Shiny and New

It's a good sign when I find myself smiling, which is what happened after installing Fedora 21 Alpha Workstation.


As I write, and after a week of poking around Fedora Workstation Alpha, I am thinking:

"This is Alpha?  It's more production-ready than other general releases I have seen".  Seriously Folks, it's that stable.

The most obvious change?  Visual.

Fedora Workstation gets the proverbial face lift with GNOME 3.14.   And that is what keeps me smiling.

Adwaita Gets Some Love

In its default form GNOME is fitted to Adwaita Theme.  There are no rough edges.  Just smooth contours, gradients, delicious fonts, all composited to make the eyes feel good.   GNOME has worked diligently in shaping their Human Interface Guidelines to assist GTK Application Developers.

In other work done outside of Fedora, the Adwaita team did a major redesign which improves portability, provides maximum GTK compatibility for Developers and is now the default theme for the GTK toolset.

Bells and Whistles

Alan Day has labored and brings swarming animation.  A nice professional touch of glitz never hurts and lends to the overal professional feel.

Venturing into GNOME Software, you'll discover the newest version now offers Live Search.

Pressing the nine dots icon (or tap the Super key) to type any city name will return the current time in GNOME Clock.

As well, typing a quick calculation into the search field will return from GNOME Calculator an instant result.

Other New Features

• Touchscreen Gesture support
• Interactive GTK Inspector (for Developers)
• Mozilla Location Service
• New Animations for Activities
• New Minimize Maximize Transition Effects

Updated Apps

• Weather App Geolocation Support
• Maps Route Planning
• Boxes Multi-Window, VM Snapshot Support
• Music Online Provider Support
• Photos Google/PicasaWeb Integration
• Evince PDF Reader Redesigned
• dnf (Yum replacement) Speed Improvements

Kernel Update

During this week, Fedora 21 yum update-testing downloaded Linux Kernel 3.17, which the Linux Foundation reports includes several feature enhancements.

New Default Terminal Theme

GNOME Terminal now defaults to using the Solarized theme (below).

GNOME 3.14 Solarized Theme

New System Log Utility

For those who feign going near system logs, a new utility called Logs will come in very handy (below) and makes viewing logs simple.

New System Logs Utility

Wayland Remains Non-Default

To those who have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of Wayland production support, I say: "Good things come to those who wait." ;)

Seriously, Christian Schaller gives an update on the status of Wayland and I will say from my own vantage point while Wayland may be stable, the process of migrating GTK Apps to use Wayland is ongoing.  Schaller writes:

(...) "So we want to keep being a place where you do get access to new and exciting technologies first, but as you see with the Wayland effort we are now going to go the extra mile to make sure we offer this new technologies in a way that allows you to still use Fedora as your day to day working machine without worrying that these new features will hinder your work. So we will keep Wayland available as a separate non-default session until we feel very confident that our users are not going to be negatively impacted by the switch. Which means we want to fix and polish up the last remaining bits and pieces, make sure that performance is top notch, make sure all input hardware works flawlessly, work with NVidia and AMD to help them make their binary drivers available for Wayland before we make this the new default." (...)

Conclusions

As for 'Draining the Swamp', I am giving a thumbs up to the Fedora and GNOME Teams for their hard work.  Fedora Workstation really shines and despite being Alpha, I have not had any major problems aside from what gets sent in the automated crash reports.

Fedora succeeds and while the use case Target Audience includes, Students and Developers I would feel comfortable recommending it to Grandma.

Fedora Workstation product documentation can be found here.
Alpha/Beta Testers are encouraged to participate.  Get the Prerelease here.

-- Dietrich

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Antergos

 by +Max Wachtel 

Antergos is an arch-based distro that aims to be user-friendly. It is fairly new and the installer that I am using is the testing version which has come a long way. They recommend using either the suse usb maker or dd (I went with dd). My computer, a HP/Compaq 6510b laptop, booted into Gnome with the wireless working which is needed because the installer downloads fresh. The sound works and this laptop has touch controls for sound and wireless which are working. The installer (cnchi) came up automagically.

                                   I chose the graphical installer

                          Then cnchi checks internet and disk space

                                            and set the language

                                                  and location

                                              now set keyboard

                                         next, choose Desktop

                        and then you choose what software you want

                  next, you choose where you want to insall Antergos.

                                                then click GO!

      the install took about 15 min, then rebooted into my new system

                         the package mgr for Antergos is pacmanXG

                                   and there is a lot it can do

     but it is based on arch so you can do it all with the command line

Over the past few weeks I've tried the gnome version of ubuntu, fedora, openSUSE and debian and none of them was as responsive as Antergos. I must say though, I don't mind using the terminal but having a graphical interface makes looking for programs eaiser. Between the offical arch repo and the arch user repo, I found all the programs I use in other distros. As I've always heard good things about arch but taking the better part of a day just to get to a usable desktop is a bit much for me. Antergos gives me what I want without the hassle! And if you get stuck, they have a very frendly and helpful forum.

On the inside it comes with chromium, music/video players and as I chose to include proprietary software, all media played without fuss. I like Clementine for audio and VLC for video and using pacmanXG is fast and easier than some of the 'others' that seem to take forever to finish. LibreOffice software is included but I removed it and installed Kingsoft along with abiword and gnumeric. I use Google Chrome instead of chromium and getting it, Dropbox and SpiderOak installed was fast and they were up and running in no time. I have a small home network and the arch wiki was very helpful in getting samba going.

All in all, I am very impressed with this distro and will be sharing it with all my friends. It's ease of installation is a big plus in my book and using arch as a base, they have a large selection of software for their users.  -- Max

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Fedora 20 LXDE Spin Tune-Up Tips and Tricks

by Dietrich Schmitz

Regular readers will have figured out by now that I have a particular obsession affinity for Fedora.  It has things that make it just 'better' than the competition.

Still, competition exists and Fedora is not everyone's cup of tea.  And isn't that the way of the world?

It seems that it suffers from an arguably undeserved reputation for being more difficult to set up and use.  Some of that is true, still.  But, I maintain that the Fedora Team has done a brilliant job pulling together their twentieth iteration family of spins, Fedora 20 and the 'ease of use' category hasn't been overlooked.

All the spins have their merits -- you have Gnome (Fedora Desktop default), KDE, Xfce, Mate, and LXDE spins from which to choose.  Conspicuously missing from the line-up is a Cinnamon Spin, but, fortunately, as with Enlightenment 17, Fedora chose to include software groups, should you feel the need to run with those GUIs.  Only you must install one of the aforementioned spins first before installing one of the two guis.

That is all well and good.  But, some of you also know I have this thing about minimalism.  It's not just about visual elements; it's minimal in terms of resource consumption as well.

Thus, I have come to like the LXDE Desktop along the way using Lubuntu.

Let me say that Lubuntu is a very fine Distro for new users coming from a Windows perspective.

I've gone back to Lubuntu several times in the past because of one thing or another that set me off and I got annoyed by so as to induce a reflex response -- go back to that which 'just works well'.  That was, for me, Lubuntu.

It is easy to install, use, familiar, comfortable, lean, minimal and wicked fast.

When briefly using it not long ago, I thought to myself, "Self, why can't Fedora be like this?"  I was left to wonder about it until this past week and I set out to reproduce the "Lubuntu Experience" by seeing if I could tweak up the 'bland' out-of-the-box Fedora 20 LXDE Spin by making a few needed changes.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to achieve the desired result.  Fedora 20 LXDE tweaking helps more than a bit, I think.  But, you can be the judge.  

Here's a run-down on what I've done to tweak up the LXDE Spin a bit.

Btrfs Filesystem

I don't think this is easy to do on Ubuntu, but, I can't remember if I tried to make Lubuntu run with Btrfs as the root filesystem.  Somewhere, I read that it gives grub major headaches, but, I have found the out-of-the-box selection of Btrfs with auto-configuration makes a separate partition for /boot (512MB) using ext4.  There was no thinking on my part to make that happen, but given grub is running on ext4 is the 'rub'.  Nicely done Fedora Team for making this a 'seamless' process.  There's nothing worse than the feeling one gets after an install seeing on first boot a grub> prompt.  That's a sign that something has gone fubar and it usually requires going back to grub.cfg and/or booting up a pendrive and using fdisk to remedy.  So, I was quite pleased that the new Anaconda installer handles Btrfs so well.

Full Disk Encryption

Full Disk Encryption will encrypt your entire HDD/SDD and every time you boot, you will need to input your WDE password to unlock the drive before the system can bootstrap.  This is strongly recommended in today's world where theft of Laptops has become rampant.  As a matter of good security practices, I'd suggest it be used on any hardware, regardless of whether it is a Laptop or not.  In the Anaconda installer, it's a checkbox [x] selectable item.  Check it!

Linux Kernel 3.12 zswap

My good Friend +birger monsen shows in a Google Plus post how to enable a new feature found in the Linux Kernels >= 3.11 called zswap.  

Zswap essentially takes data that would otherwise head to I/O disk swap space and compresses it in a kernel ram cache using LZO compression.  Effectively, a speed performance gain can be realized by using zswap.

Interestingly, Lubuntu 13.10 has zRam, a similar technology (but not the same), enabled by default and it helps greatly with older PCs, even ones having as little as 256MB ram will benefit.  Naturally, I have zswap.enabled.  Why?  Because I am bad. :/ Seriously, if you google around, you'll find information that shows IBM is equipping their Linux mainframes with zswap for heavily I/O bound applications yielding measurable performance gains.  Enough said.

Yum Plugins

If you love yum as much as I do, then Fedora is for you.  It's just far superior to Apt-Get for so many reasons.  In Fedora 20, presto has been merged so a separate install of the plugin is not necessary.  But, I installed two delicious plugins: yum-plugin-fastestmirror and yum-plugin-fs-snapshot.  The former, determines the 'closest' mirror to your geo-location -- this actually can make a difference in terms of number of hops your tcp/ip packets must travel to reach your PC, believe it or not.  It's a must-have as far as I am concerned.

The latter, yum-plugin-fs-snapshot, is 'money in the bank' if you need to have a restore point from which to recover.  Apple OSX and Microsoft Windows users enjoy having such when things go fubar.  Now, with this plugin installed, whenever using yum to make an update/change/removal, the plugin will diligently create a 'snapshot' (a standard feature in Btrfs).  The plugin automatically backs up each time yum is called.  By virtue of copy on write (COW) technology Btrfs uses minimal disk space and the backup time is near instantaneous.  The first time I messed with Btrfs a few years ago I thought something was wrong.  The snapshot command returned to a prompt in less than a second.  I thought, "Did it just core dump?"  Nope.  

It all seemed counter-intuitive at first but with COW you only get only pointers to read-only data (data that hasn't changed) with any other disk 'writes' getting a full copy.  It's a great idea that Btrfs borrows from the SUN's Solaris ZFS filesystem. (See directly above yum in a terminal session doing an automated fs-snapshot.)

Install both plugins with:

$sudo yum install yum-plugin-fastestmirror yum-plugin-fs-snapshot

Google Droid True Type Fonts

Google Droid fonts, easily, are as good as Windows Tahoma TTF and Ubuntu TTF true type fonts and were installed with:

$sudo yum install google-droid*

After installation, be sure to go to the Preferences->Customize Look and Feel->Fonts tab and make sure hinting is using Rgb and set to 'Full'.  This is especially helpful on LCD Laptop displays.  On the 'Widget' tab, set the 'Default Font' to Droid Sans 10 point.

Adwaita Nemo Widget Theme

I chose by trial and error Adwaita-Nemo Widget theme.  Install with yum:

$sudo yum install adwaita-nemo

Select from the Customize Look and Feel->Widget tab.

Elementary Icon Theme

Just by chance, I decided to try Elementary Icon Theme and liked how it gives LXDE an overall professional feel.  Install it with yum as follows:

$sudo yum install elementary-icon-theme

FedoraUtils

FedoraUtils is a 'grab bag' of utilities with a Zenity gui wrapper for a series of shell scripts.  Used judiciously (not all scripts are applicable), one can quickly configure features which otherwise might require additional time when done manually at the terminal command line.    

Features include:

• Install codecs and additional software
• Fix various problems
• Tweak and cleanup your system
• View system information
• And much more...

OpenBox 'Flatbox' Window Decorator Theme

What really sets LXDE apart is it's OpenBox window manager.  I love OpenBox for it's blazing speed and minimalism.  I went to Box-look.org to check around for other styles of OB window decorations and ultimately chose Flatbox.  Download the obt file and import from Preferences->OpenBox Configuration Menu->'Install a new theme' button.

The decoration is clean and doesn't cause the eye to break -- it integrates as though it was meant to be.

It's a clean crisp look that when added to the Elementary Icon Theme and Adwaita-Nemo Widget style is simply superb.  In fact, I really think appearance-wise it is better than stock Lubuntu.

Pidgin Instant Messenger - pidgin-libnotify

I hate how Google Plus Hangout (formerly GTalk) works.  So, instead I set up Pidgin.  It's really better anyhow, since you'll never miss any message from a friend with Pidgin (such as when your G+  tab is closed).  And if you install pidgin-libnotify along with xfce4-notifyd you'll have notifications screen up when friends come and go.  Don't forget to go to Pidgin->Tools->Plugins->Libnotify Popups (select)->Configure Plugin button  and checkmark [x] 'Buddy signs off' and 'Buddy signs on'.  Also, in Tools->Preferences, be sure to have Pidgin minimize to your system tray 'Always'.

Install pidgin-libnotify and xfce4-notifyd with:

$sudo yum install pidgin-libnotify xfce4-notifyd

If you don't like the default location for Pidgin's popup notifications (top right), open a terminal and type xfce4-notify-config and set the location to lower right as I did.

Compton Composting

LXDE in the Fedora Spin is considered lightweight by design.  Thus, you don't get any compositing like KDE, MATE, Gnome Shell, or Cinnamon.


If you have the intestinal fortitude, clone the compton project using git and manually compile as I did.  This rpm 'should' be installable on Fedora.20 if you pass in $sudo yum localinstall --releasever=19 <package name>.  But, I haven't tested it.

RPMFusion Free and Non-Free Repositories

RPMFusion provides Free and Non-Free rpm packages which aren't found in the standard Fedora repository system.  Follow the directions to install the *.repo files and you are good to go.  Once done, I installed VLC Media Player, Mozilla Totem plugins which are accessible from both Chrome and Firefox.

Redshift-Gtk

At first, I was skeptical about this technology.  But now, I am sold.  What does Redshift-Gtk do?  Well, it when fed your latitude and longitude, goes to its own database of current weather conditions indexed by time of day, and then makes a display color 'heat' adjustment.  It automatically adjusts throughout the day to the most ideal setting for viewing and eases eye strain accordingly. I strongly recommend it and you will appreciate it most at night when an otherwise 'bright' screen can kill your vision.  Install redshift-gtk with:

$sudo yum install redshift-gtk

With LXDE, you'll need an autostart file in your ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/ directory.  


The commands in mine include starting Pidgin, compton, and redshift as follows:

dietrich@localhost LXDE$ cat autostart

@compton -c -r 16 -l -24 -t -12 -G -b

@pidgin

@redshift-gtk -l 43.030718:-74.992302 -t 5700:3600 -g 0.8 -m vidmode -v

Conclusions

Looking at the Desktop, it is clean, easy on the eyes.  If you've never tried Fedora, I would suggest LXDE especially for older PCs.  You'll find the machine will return to life and OpenBox's windows paints and LXDE GTk refreshes will snap on screen instantly.  Short of using Lubuntu or #!CrunchBang, I cannot think of any faster Linux Distro setup.  

Fedora 20 Linux LXDE Spin running with the tweaks shown in this story.

Hopefully, the tune-up tips and tricks I gave will increase your level of enjoyment using Fedora.

Fedora Linux:  The safest operating system on the planet.

I stake my reputation on it.

--Dietrich

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