Final Thoughts: There are lots more about Fedora 15 that I have not covered in this review. Because those are the same across the Fedora editions, I will save them for a review of the main edition, which should be published some time next week. Specific to this Spin, I think the developers should have spent more time in customizing the default Xfce desktop. On a modern desktop operating system, somethings are expected to work out of the box. Unfortunately, on the Xfce Spin of Fedora 15, the most basic of those do not. I hope, Fedora 16 Xfce will provide a better, out-of-the-box user-experience.
Resources: Torrent and direct download ISO images of Fedora 15 Xfce for 32- and 64-bit platforms are available for download here. Support questions may be posted here and here.
Screenshots: View a few more screenshots from a test installation of Fedora 15 Xfce.
This is a screenshot of the desktop running Cairo-Dock, instead. looks and feels a lot better than the default desktop.
A screenshot of the default desktop on Fedora 15 Xfce. somebody mistakenly placed Gnumeric in the wrong category.
This just shows some of the system administrative tools.
Yet a few more system administrative tools
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Fedora has a clear no-mono by default policy. AFAIK, cairo dock requires mono as dependency. In fact, they went so far as to include gnote as an alternate for tomboy by default.
So your wish is probably not going to come true anytime soon 😉
Currently I’m using Fedora 15 LXDE with an old laptop.
Quite happy with it.
I think LXDE is a better choice if you’re looking for a light desktop.
Cheers!
I am currently reviewing the LXDE Spin, and so far, I’m pleasantly surprised. So, I agree with you. It is better than the Xfce Spin. The review will be published tomorrow.
I continue to be disappointed by LXDE because every so often you come across a panel or configuration box where the text is ABNORMALLY HUGE.. like the “I’m blind as a bat can you make the text bigger?” feature has been turned on for just that element.
It just felt too ‘not ready for prime-time.’
As for me, I adore XFCE: the ability to click anywhere on the desktop and get ALL my system in the resulting dropdown (when I’m not using launchers like Gnome Do, that is) is a hugely unappreciated feature. And I’m trying to maximize real estate on my screen: docks and panels just get in the way of work.
Gnumeric in the Education category has nothing to do with Xfce. It is a Gnumeric bug: the Categories field of the gnumeric.desktop file contains both Office and Education.
Install Gnumeric for GNOME and it will appear in the Education category there, too.
“… behind the times”
In what sense? Do you mean that it fails to fix what is not broken? IMHO, the “traditional” Applications menu tree is much more usable than KDE4 Kickoff or GNOME Shell’s Activities, which follow the click-more-for-more-fun philosophy. Why would you want to click a gazillon time if you can simply hover the mouse pointer over a menu tree and only click when you have found the application you want to launch.
Point-and-click is so broken in Kickoff and GNOME Shell’s Activites that you had better type to launch an application. A nostalgy for the pre-GUI era?
Maybe the Team’s focus is primarily on Gnome and then KDE. I have been using Fedora KDE since FC12. Easylife is the best way to install all propriety stuff not shipped by fedora.
The DVD ISO of Fedora 15 actually includes Xfce, LXDE and KDE.