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Yes! GNOME 3 is finally here!
When I saw that the next [#15] Fedora release would include the latest GNOME release and saw some screenshots of GNOME 3, I was sold. To me it was openbox on steroids. Simplicity with a lot of nice functions making work easier by working behind the scenes. Just the way I like it. All I need, in the end, is an Operating System that works. I have no issues with delving into CLI to fix or tweak stuff. And if you are a newbie, the better, you will find these things later.

I was so excited about GNOME 3 that I decided to give Fedora 15 Beta RC2 a try. It installed nicely on my Eee PC 701. Everything, that is important, seemed to work fine. This is also one of the reasons I prefer Fedora. For some reason it just works perfectly out-of-the-box on my Eee PCs. Install within 30 minutes and I am good to go. If I need to tweak things, I can do that later. Instead of the other way around. Unfortunately this has made me very lazy.

This is why I still use GNOME instead of openbox. You see, I have this secret love for openbox with tint2. It is just that I do not want to tinker too much to  get everything up and running. And I am a bit picky with which distro I use. But Fedora 15 with GNOME 3 impressed me a lot.

It was a bit odd with that black and white menu/taskbar on the top, but it was perfect. It blended in with the background of the screen. As if it was part of the hardware, outside of the LCD screen. Making you focus purely on the application in use.

When clicking on ‘Activities’ or giving the upper left corner a slight bump with the cursor you got an overview of the applications running in that certain workspace. What else do you need?

The ‘Applications’ menu is very simple. You can either scroll through all applications or look through certain categories. Just perfect. So simple. The dock with favourites on the left is pure genius. That you only see it when you intend to  open a new application just makes sense. If you are working, why do you need to see a list a possible applications you can open or can switch between?

If you know what you are looking for you only need to go into ‘Activities’ and start typing to search for the application. You can also search, in your web browser, by clicking on ‘Wikipedia’ or ‘Google’ [mine is changed to DuckDuckGo].

The system settings is very similar to what you will find on a Mac. All settings in one windows.  Simple, functional and less cluttered with settings scattered in different menus.

So far it has been a very enjoyable ride. Slightly bumpy, but not much that it had an effect on my work. I managed to go from beta to final release without losing any data or hair. I guess I am lucky to be using pretty vanilla hardware. I have one worry…

Now that I am on holiday I thought I would give Arch Linux a go by installing CTKArch and then installing GNOME 3. But after looking at the new features of tint2 I am tempted to at least give openbox with tint2 a go on my 701 first. To make that switch even easier  I thought I would install Fedora 15 with LXDE, which uses openbox, so I configure and get used to it on a familiar system. Instead of getting used a new DE and a new system. I downloaded Fedora 15 LXDE and burned it on a CD and tried to boot it on my 701. Freeze… Not good at all. I tried the regular Fedora 15 LiveCD and had the same experience. The LiveCD works fine on my 1000H, but I prefer to be using the same system on all of my computers. If this issue still exist when they release Fedora 16 I am forced to switch distro. At the moment I am eyeing Arch and openSUSE.

This is not the first time I am having issues booting Fedora media. First time it happened was version 11 or 12. The DVD install would not boot on my Eee PCs. I could only boot the LiveCDs. Not too much worries because the LiveCD install is much smaller than the DVD install. I have always used Red Hat and Fedora and I am very familiar with rpm and yum, but now it seems like I must move on.

It is also time for Fedora to become a rolling release. When they release a new version they are cutting edge, but I would assume running Arch Linux or openSUSE Tumbleweed is far more cutting edge. Fedora has a good release, I am not disputing that, but reinstalling every six months, when you can be running another distro that you install once, tweak the way you like it, and continue to get updates  until your hardware dies is more appealing. It will be difficult, but I think unfortunately Fedora 15 will be my last Fedora version. It is not a bad distro, it is just not that unique anymore.