Ubuntu Fedora Swap — Part 2

Yesterday was the one month point from when I paused using Ubuntu and started using Fedora.  In all honesty I have come to notice that on a day to day basis the only things I use on my workstation are ssh/scp, Firefox, rdesktop, and vi.  It became clear rather quickly that adjusting would not be as hard as I thought.  I have chosen to revert back to Ubuntu.  Following will be the goods and the bads of both fedora and ubuntu.

Fedora
Pros:

After I installed proprietary video drivers AWM actually worked.  The use of appelets quickly turned into hell on earth but that is not fedoras problem.  To be honest I kinda like the OS-X feel with the dock.

The boot loader control panel under system >> administration >> boot loader was a nice little tool I am not used to having.

The firewall control panel under  system >> administration >> firewall was also a change for me.  I generally use iptables in the command line or install firestarter.  Having a pre installed firewall gui configuration tool was useful from time to time.

Cons:

No package for nvidia proprietary drivers that I could find worked. Had to download install from nvidia and compile own kernel module.  Just a little bit of a pain.

For some reason 1 of my 2 22in.  wides creen monitors is blurry from time to time with no real explanation.  This never happened in ubuntu.  I did find out that only using one monitor reduced blurryness but did not completely eliminate it.

I'm sure this is true on more than just fedora but common commands are not accessible without typing /sbin/[command].  This seems like a very small thing but I don't always rememeber to try and type /sbin/ in front of a command that it says doesn't exist.  Therefore I get angry that I can't find the command and waste time looking for it.  I know there is a way to set enviromet paths but I have never really gotten around to learning how to do this because I have never needed it.

Ubuntu

Pros:

Restricted driver utility works great for wifi and video card drivers.  It makes life much easier not having to compile your own kernel modules and all the other tedious tasks involved with having to install drivers manually.

Neither monitor is blurry.

Sudo is configured by default for the user that installs the system.  Even though configuring sudo is not hard by any means it is convient to have it already done for you.

Cons:

Lacks some of the advanced control panels such as boot loader, selinux, and firewall by default.

AWM does not work at all.

Final Thoughts

Ubuntu is geared towards ease of initial setup and completeing everyday tasks.  Anything above and beoynd what a normal user would do on a day to day basis is going to require command line knowledge.   At the same time Fedora seems to be the exact opisite.  Everyday tasks are still easy and more advanced tasks such as managing firewall and security through selinux are also easier.  Initial setup on the other hand requires a little bit more work.  Even though I plan on rebooting back into ubuntu when I finish typing this if I was forced to use fedor I would not have a problem doing so. On top of that anything is better than Microsoft Vista.