Firstly, Fedora just looks better, despite being built around the same Gnome desktop as Debian. The astronomical theme that accompanies you while you launch the operating system is carried on to the blue desktop, and there’s a distinct feeling that a lot of love has gone into Fedora’s default theme.
Secondly, Fedora manages to include OpenOffice.org 3, while Debian is still a revision behind, and Fedora’s version of Firefox keeps the original branding, rather than the confusing rebranding of all things Mozilla insisted on by the Debian developers.
You will never take our freedom!
Both desktops take a hard line against including non-free open source software, and we greatly admire this stance. Both desktops prove that a purely open source desktop is just as functional as a hybrid desktop, even if you do have to make certain compromises.
We feel that Debian’s compromise of using the vaguely Adobe Flash-compatible Gnash, though admirable, confuses things slightly. It’s difficult to tell when you go to YouTube, for instance, that the poor performance isn’t a network problem rather than a Gnash problem.
Fedora doesn’t even try, but if you do want to install Adobe’s Flash, you only need to download the RPM and click on this file once. A browser restart later, and you’re ready for YouTube.
You’ll find packages split by category, and installation is easy, with the industry-standard RPM format handles dependencies without difficulty. As you would imagine from a distribution that’s so closely related to Red Hat, updates and patches are taken very seriously.
A feature we particularly like is that the update system will inform you about the nature of each update, whether it’s a bugfix, a security update or a feature enhancement. The makes you more inclined to allow the updates to proceed, as well as keeping you on top of what is changing in your system.
As with Red Hat Enterprise and Centos 5.2, Fedora includes some bulletproof security packages. It has a firewall enabled by default, and includes a sensible set of rules that you can enable or disable using a firewall configuration window. If you’re particularly worried about security, SELinux can be enabled to lock down any wayward applications.
For every day desktop use, Fedora can’t be beaten. The choice of software is excellent, and we can’t think of anything that’s missing. Fedora’s stance on freedom is a little painful if you need proprietary drivers or MP3 support, but these issues can be worked around.
Both the Gnome and KDE desktops look and feel brilliant, and the performance of our Fedora installation is as good as any other tuned Linux distribution. It’s also a distribution that will have users of other operating systems looking over your shoulder.Fedora might not be the easiest distribution to use, or the one with the largest package repository, but we feel it represents the very best that open source software has to offer.
Good article 🙂
Ankur's Tech blog 
Fedora is a distro that has kept me hooked for so many years now. I can’t however use on an everyday basis and here’s why:
1) the screen fonts are just UGLY and hurt my eyes. Even after installing the “freetype-freeworld” package they remain ugly on my TFT screen. And they get my eyes tired after a few minutes of looking at them. This is the major problem Fedora has…
2) No Sun Java available, anywhere :(. And I really need Sun’s Java because of the Portuguese Fiscal Administration applications which require it.
So, to me, the ideal Linux distro is Ubuntu which has EXCELLENT screen fonts that are a pleasure to look at and has Sun’s Java easily available.
hi,
can you email me a screenshot of your screen? I want to see how it looks..
Sun java on fedora is available. Please have a look at http://fedorasolved.org/browser-solutions/java-i386
Ankur
Debian removes the Firefox branding because it is non-free. I therefore conclude that Fedora doesn’t care about freedom.
OpenOffice 3 is in Debian:
http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=openoffice
hi,
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2009-May/msg00137.html
Ankur
@foo: Fedora does care about freedom. Regarding licenses we are sometimes more pedantic than Debian. I know of cases where software with wrong or incompatible licenses is in Debian but not in Fedora.
Regarding this particular issue: The artwork is not free, because it’s a trademark. You are allowed to use it if you have signed the “Mozilla Foundation trademark license” agreement. Red Hat and Fedora have signed it but Debian and others refuse.
As you can see: We care about more about Mozilla’s freedom than our own, because we think whatever problems arise, we can solve them better together with upstream than working against them.
Actually, it is more than just the trademark, the actual artwork is under a non-free license, which is what started the whole iceweasel debacle. The artwork was non-free, so Debian removed it, so Mozilla got Debian to rename it from Firefox.
If you want to care about the logo being “non-free”, you should also note that practically every distribution including the official debian logo has restrictions and hence can be classified that way. It is basically a effect of trademark law. If you don’t protect it, you lose it.
Well, very interesting all I’ve got to say is that so far on my Thinkpad R52 Fedora 10 runs the best, without any doubt of all Linux distros, and I’ve tried many, new ubuntu 9.04, all derivitives (ultimate, mint, etc.) play sites like mlb.com and hulu AWFUL full screen, the 8 versions had all sorts of trouble with the 915 videocard, Suse kept dying on the pulse audio, as did fedora 11, pc linux, Mandrake, Xandros, all froze up somewhere, only Open Solaris and fedora 10 worked good, now I have to admit I could give two flying “F’s” about all this free software crap, I purchashed the Fluendo codecs and dvd player, work perfectly, mlb and hulu look HiDef.
Simply stated I sold my vista machine when I got hacked into on a bank account, bought the reliable, tough R52, can’t afford a Mac yet, and Fedora 10 is the way to go, a big hint to avoid all the RPM crap, do a TOTAL install in the beginning, put everything on you need from the online souce, and update source as well, this machine runs as fast as my friends new Macbook pro.