Hi Keith! My experience with Fedora urges me to tell you to stick with it. I started with Mandrake 8.0, then went to 9.0 and 10.0 but, during that interval I tried Fedora Core 2, 3, 4 and now 5. I kept with Fedora at FC3 as I hit problems with Mandrake 9.0 and only tried the rest of the Mandrakes out of curiosity. In my opinion, FC wins as it gets everything up and running whereas Mandrake (Mandriva) balks at various peripherals. Also, although I started with KDE (the Mandrake default), when I switched to Fedora it defaulted to GNOME and, in the end, I grew to prefer it and Mandrake 9.0 hit problems with GNOME even though the documentation insists that both desktops run OK. However, one piece of advice : DON'T upgrade. Always install from scratch as I've found in the past that upgrading results in problems which disappear when one goes to a direct install of the new version. Everything from FC2 up to 5 has proved worth it even if it meant only in little ways. I particularly like yum as it operates far more reliably and easily than did the rpm method of installation and upgrading of applications. So, I am eagerly awaiting FC6 and will be getting it as soon as someone makes it available on DVD. One tip, though (and this probably applies to any distro) try to keep your /home on a separate drive if at all possible (hard drives are so cheap these days anyway) or at least on a completely separate partition. In this way, you can hang on to all your files and settings without having to run through "preferences" again and again! During the install you merely tell the install GUI to do "custom" partitioning and then you indicate that you want /home left as is -- doing this ensures that your files stay put and that the partition doesn't get formatted. For me, long before the "freebie" appeared in "Linux Format" magazine (yes, it's easily obtainable here in Canada and half the newsstand price if one subscribes directly) I bought FC5 on DVD for about $10.00 and consider my expenditure well worth it. One thing that may be coming in FC6 is reversion to the upcoming standard updating method (whose name I've forgotten at the moment) but means that the Linux community is aiming for a universal installer so that one doesn't depend upon yum, or rpm or apt etc. depending on one's distro. Also, each new FC issue contains the latest versions of the standard things such as : Firefox, Evolution, OpenOffice, GIMP and useful things such as Tomboy. One can also install various KDE apps which run just as well on GNOME such as Kooka, K3b, KOrganize, KAddress, KAlarm and so on. I also found that FC5 likes Samsung laser printers and the built-in drivers work just fine but I don't know about Canon as they are like Windoze modems : for my Canon color ink-jet I use Turboprint which, although it costs about $30.00 or so, is well worth it as it even interfaces to the printer's internal data such as cartridge status, cleaning, setting nozzle line-up and so on. Hope this helps. CroombeFP
