If you want to see the future of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), you need only no farther than Red Hat’s community Linux distribution, Fedora. In its brand new release, Fedora 16, Verne, Fedora comes with multiple cloud and virtualization improvements.

Of course, what most Fedora users, as opposed to RHEL system administrators, will be interested in is that Fedora now supports GNOME 3.2 as its default desktop. Good luck with that. For me, GNOME 3.2, like GNOME 3.0 before it, is a failed interface. I’m not the only one who doesn’t care for the GNOME 3.x line. Linus Torvalds, Linux’s founder, finds GNOME 3.x unusable as well.

Fortunately, you’re not stuck with GNOME 3.x. Fedora 16 also comes with the far superior KDE 4.7 interface. One area where both desktop Linux fans and system administrators may find equally interesting is that Fedora includes an advanced version of Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments (SPICE)-based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

More >