At the outset, I'll have to tell all the readers out there, that this article is a not-so-techie stuff ! I might drop in a few details here and there but I'm making sure not to get too technical (Coz, I myself don't know much ! Lol. 
)
Fedora 15 has come in for a lot of praises world over for its improvement in desktop interface changes. It has incorporated into it the newly introduced Gnome3 Desktop that has lot many features to offer. It also has many a faults (that can however be overcome). On the whole, I felt that Fedora 15 is great and its worth migrating to.
The Good
Some of the features that impressed me was the Desktop graphics and usage interface. Gnome 3 has all the ingredients to make the people say 'Wow, blimey.' I read in an article that Gnome programmers wanted to try out new interface paradigms. This Gnome3 has been really great to work with.
Some features you'll find appealing is the, yet-to-come Apple OS X Lion like App-center. The workspaces which could be shifted in sideways in the earlier versions of the gnome as default, have been made to a top-to-bottom shifting type in this version.
The notification area that earlier used to be in the top-right corner of the gnome desktop has shifted downwards where the taskbar used to be there. This has come in for a mixed response. Some like it and some won't. But I personally feel it as a good move. You got the app-center to compensate for the taskbar thingy. Another good news that comes in with the gnome-3 desktop is that, a lot more things can be done just with the notification area. Like in empathy, you can chat directly from the notification area. The same goes with the IRC client's chat notification.
There seems to be a minimal hardware-acceleration support given to this version of Fedora. Another good thing about the app-center is the desktop search feature. Just as you type file names in the search bar of the search applet in the app-center, you see the recently accessed file lists popping up. Also, you have an option to search Wikipedia and Google in the app-center.
Fedora Desktop's Customization has never been so very easy with the UAC settings put up just on the menubar of the gnome3 desktop. It comes with Firefox 4, empathy 3.0 and transmission etc.
All the more great is the graphics, as i said earlier. Its fun to work with.
The Bad and overcoming the Ugly
Apart from the good, there are a lot many bad things about fedora I find . Especially for a person moving from Windows to a Linux like me, using Fedora can be a lot more annoying.
No-Auto mount feature for the NTFS Drives
As in Windows, where the drives auto mount in the Windows startup, drives doesn't get mounted automatically. You gotta click them, and the Os prompts for a admin password and only then you get to enter the drive. This makes you even more angry when directly after log on you try to access you files or playlists.
One way to overcome this issue is to edit the /etc/fstab file that tells the Fedora Boot to initialize the drives just after logon.
One way to overcome is to use the gui ' ntfs-config ' utility
install it in command line using :
su -c 'yum -y install ntfs-config'
you cannot just run it from the application menu. You run it only from command line as root. If you ever encounter a problem in fedora 15 installing it, like
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/hal/fdi/policy'
just create the directories hal and fdi inside etc and a blank file policy and it will work.
No Compiz !
Starting this version, Fedora has stopped its default window manager Compiz and shifted to the Mutter. That means, no more wobbly effects and bubbly graphics henceforth. But, there seems to be a way out of that, I guess though to replace mutter with compiz.
No Shutdown or Hibernate Menu !
OMG ! This is really frustrating. I was not able to shutdown and hibernate my PC directly from the menu given in the Menu. All I gotta do is to logout and then use the Shutdown option provided there. But, there is a workaround.
Try to install the
gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu
package from terminal that brings back the original back !
No Minimize
No minimize keyboard shortcut, Alt-F9 does nothing. But you can alter the keyboard shortcuts in the keyboard settings to bring it back ! Other way is to use the gconf-editor.
No Desktop Icons !
This is something glaring right straight at us, that we cannot use the Desktop user interface from now on. Especially for Windows users and Gnome 2 users. We can bring that back using the Gnome-tweak tool that can be installed from command line in terminal.
No Weather Applet !
Gnome3 also doesn't ship with itself the weather applet. It was always my favorite thing about the gnome desktop. Now, that it doesn't appear anymore is kinda irritating. One thing you can do is to install the alternative gnome desktop applet like the one I have.
Dowload this pakcage :
https://github.com/simon04/gnome-shell-extension-weather/tarball/master
Extract it in suitable place and type in the following commands in the terminal as root :
./autogen.sh –prefix=/usr
make
make install
If you encounter a problem like,
Making all in src
make[1]: Entering directory /home/dwarak/weather/src'
Makefile:426: *** missing separator. Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory/home/dwarak/weather/src'
make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
install gnome-desktop-devel.i686 from the Terminal that is required to include the necessary files to compile the makefile. The reason this doesn't happen is that starting from gnome3.2 the os assumes all the tab spaces to be default spaces in the makefile. This is something like kinda patch.
Use the following command to change your Location using
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.weather woeid your_woeid
Change Temperature Units by
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.weather unit celsius
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.weather unit fahrenheit
Your Woeid is the Where On Earth ID provided by Yahoo ! Geoplanet referenced by a 32-bit identifier.
Find yours @ :
http://isithackday.com/geoplanet-explorer/index.php
If you have anything more to add, please post in your comments.
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