Top five reason to use Fedora

Here are my top five reasons why Fedora is such a great operating system, and why you should use it:

5. Updates are simple...

By running one simple command, 'yum update', all updates for packages currently installed on your system are downloaded and then installed/updated. If you are looking for a program, chances are it's in one of the repositories, just do 'yum install packageName', it will be downloaded and installed right then.

4. Easy / Straightforward installation...
You can select the type of installation you want, based on what you will be using the machine for.
The default is 'Office and Productivity'. Which would be a standard desktop installation, used for emailing, Internet, and typing documents.
The other options include 'Software development', and 'Web server'.
You can also add additional repositories,and add optional software you want installed during this stage.

3. Latest software...
There is a new release of Fedora every six months (roughly), which includes the most cutting edge software.
I started with Fedora 4, and haven't been disappointed since.

2. Great support forum...
Every time I have asked a question on fedoraforum.org, I have received a response within a day, most of the time within the hour. It is one of the best support forums I have ever been on, with very friendly and helpful people.

1. Its FREE...
It's free to download.
It's free use.
It's free to modify.
It's free to distribute.

So...
What distribution do you use?
Why is it your favorite?

Tropical storm Fay

Tropical storm Fay is still hanging around, here's a couple shots of our backyard:







...more to come...

Maybe I'll go for a swim later on...

Fedora Ambassador project

I'm finally going to have some time to get more involved with the Fedora Ambassador project. I am going to burn a bunch of the Fedora 9 live CDs and start spreading the word around town here, starting at the community college I attend.

If you want to get involved with the Fedora Project check out the link below, if your in the Central Florida area and want to help out let me know. I was also thinking about get a Fedora LUG going here in town.

Fedora Project

Firestarter Firewall

Firestarter is a easy to use firewall program with a GUI interface great for a personal, or business use. I currently use it on all my Fedora machines.

It is supported by both 2.4 and 2.6 Linux Kernels, and is available for Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Debian, Gentoo, source tarball, and source RPM
The latest stable version is 1.0.3, but you can download older versions from Sourceforge.
Download Firestarter

Management is very user friendly and can be done though the GUI or via the shell.
You can use it for internet connection sharing, controlling inbound and outbound connections, create whitelists and blacklist access policies, view traffic in real-time, and active connections, and see connections that have been blocked by the firewall.
Another great feature of Firestarter is that it can be used as a DHCP server.

Over all I think this firewall is great for the user that is new to Linux and firewalls, but its even suitable for the Linux pro! :)

Feel free to leave me your comments.

For more information see the Firestarter website:
http://www.fs-security.com/

linux, firewall, network security

Fedora

I've been using Fedora since Fedora 4, it was my first taste of Linux.
I've tried some other distributions but it is my favorite distro, by far.

If you don't know about Fedora you should definitely check it out:
Fedora Project

There is a new release every 6 months, with the latest in free and open source software, the installation is pretty straight forward, you can choose to set it up as a desktop or server or for development, and they have a great support forum:
Fedora Forum
(You can find me on there posting under biggsk)

If you have time leave me some comments on what your favorite distro is and why.