Fedora 29 has released, It had been since the Fedora-Core 2 days that I had used Fedora (rather it was my first foray in linux). We used to wait for computer magazines to deliver free OS CDs. Back then it was a Windows + Fedora. Everytime I had an issue with Fedora I had to switch back to Windows, see what is right / wrong how to go about it and fix it. We didn’t have the comfort of using Smart phones and tablets back then around 2004. Setting up eth0 was still an effort for a newbie like me.

As years moved, Fedora improved and its ability to replace my desktop’s default OS. However still we had to tweak around to make it comfortable. Codecs, font rendering, etc. However it has been one of the most comfortable environments for developers, most of the things available as rpm packages.

With Fedora 29, a whole lot has improved, first and foremost, which is on everyone’s mind is GNOME 3.30. This is by far one of the most important GNOME 3x releases. WHY? Install it and you’ll see the amount of RAM that it hogs is way lesser than the earlier versions. Now my 9 yrs old laptop can effectively run GNOME, the modern RAM eating browsers and still leave me room. The new GNOME is lovely and modern yet for the nostalgia the Bluecurve theme deserves a special mention. For years as long GTK2 / GNOME2 ran on my PC, it was the de-facto choice.

The font rendering too has improved off-the-box, Now there is no need to install the freetype-freeworld package, make changes to the ~/.fonts/fonts.conf or .Xresources. I’m not sure what has really changed, whether the patent expiry has come through and we get it as-is without the patent issues.

Hope this Fedora legacy carries on for long. And finally kudos to Redhat, Fedora Team,GNOME and endless other teams for putting in effort for us to consume this beautiful lovely OS which is free!

Fedora magazine has a lovely article that has triggered these memories.