Adieu, Fedora

[Patrick Bartek]

It's been a nice ride these past 7 years with Fedora as my primary OS, but it's time to move on.  My current and future needs are for a support life measured in years, not months.  And CentOS and Scientific Linux didn't fulfill my other requirements.  Neither did the Rolling Release distros:  At some point, support for older hardware must be dropped to make way for new, and the old system "breaks."  I can't have that.

So, with the release of 15 (I'm still using 12), which would have traditionally been my next upgrade, my decision was finalized.  GNOME 3 was really what did it.  After using it for a while to get familiar with it, I decided I just didn't like it.  And KDE is still a resource gluten--the primary reason I left it years ago.  Considered XFCE and LXDE instead, but decided the best option was to abandon the Desktop GUI environment all-together in favor of a well-featured window manager, simple launch bar for most used apps, floating menus for the others, and a terminal or two.  I don't really need all the other crap.  Not even 3D.

My primary choice is Debian 6, 64-bit, and Openbox.  I've been testing both in VirtualBox for a few months.  So far, so good.

I'll still keep an eye on Fedora for old time's sake.  And 12 will stay on the system as a back up.  So, it's not exactly farewell, just . . . 

Auf Wiedersehen,

B