I upgraded my test Fedora Core 4 to Fedora Core 5. As noted earlier, I was a little bit wary of the enhancements. Not because I don't like enhancements, but because of the overheads enhancements result in hardware requirements.

I shouldn't have worried. Really. After upgrading my installation on a VMWare session, I fired it up and found no significant performance degradation. Initially the installation and the kernel compilation took a long long time (more than 85 minutes, I didn't time it), but once the operating system was up and running, it was all good.

I observed (not too closely though) the boot up sequence and the OS behaviour and made some observations about the changes in the Fedora Core 5 OS.

1. The Fedora title in th text portion of the boot up sequence is now blue. It may be argued that why do we even bother about the colour. But for me, it demonstrates a marked break away from Redhat (for which the title was in Red).
2. The screen in the graphical section of the boot-up as also changed. No surprises there as Fedora is maturing into a corporate level OS and a stand-alone product in its own right.
3. The Login screen is totally changed. From the purple colour it used to bring up till FC4, it is now blue with the Fedora logo and the bubbly theme.
4. The Redhat icon on the start bar has been replaced by the Fedora logo. Again, no surprises here. But what is good is that Fedora finally got rid of the Date display in the system tray. Now it just shows time and the speaker. Well nothing against the date display, but it kind of looks clumsy (Of course the windows up-brining also is responsible for this feeling)
5. The <Open Terminal> entry has been removed from the Desktop Right click menu. This would particularly cheer the corporates and annoy sys admins and developers. Users don't need terminal to do their jobs and sysadmins and developers live on that. So it is a clear shift towards marketing FC5 as a enterprise ready product. I am sure there is an easy way to get it back. I just have to check and research it a little.
6. Another thing that I found missing was the <Run Application> from the Applications menu. I have yet to find it where it has gone. It was another useful tool for the Linux enthusiast, but not too useful if are an end user. However, you can do all you could do with the Run Application with the terminal, so I am not complaining a lot here. This looks to another gimmick to sell FC5 to the corporate crowd.
7. One cool feature that FC5 has included is the VoIP (Voice over IP) software. You can make voice calls over the internet using this software. I have not tested it out, but should be good. One thing you might want to be aware of. The application keeps on running in the background even after you seemingly terminate it. I am not sure yet if it utilises the same P2P technology as Skype, but you might want to be careful and not get surprises on this front.
8. One of the best enhancements I could find was all services are now logically grouped in the System menu. Till FC4 it was randomly (?) placed. I guess this will make the life of administrators easier.
9. What home users and administrators alike would like is that the Security level and Firewall settings applet is now much more user friendly. Instead of the <port:protocol> format, it utilises GUI to define which ports / protocols to open which takes out much of the guess work out of it.
10. Have you ever tried to shutdown or restart you computer with FC4 or earlier? You had to click on log-out and then choose the appropriate option. Well from FC5 it is no longer necessary. You can click on System and there you will find both the Restart and Shutdown options.
11. Another great enhancement in FC5 is the wireless support. Today's world is about being wireless and people will not use a product if it does not support wireless (even if you use a desktop that is chained to the desk or have a house that doesn't have a patio or a pool). I have not tested it, but apparently it is here and it works (http://christopher.aillon.org/blog/).

In conclusion, FC5 has come a long way from the initial release of Linux or even FC1. It is being readied for enterprise adoption by making it packageable and as it is being touted, FC5 is a the precursor or preview of the commercial desktop OS version that Redhat is planning to ship out sometime later this year. Redhat says that their product will be based on the Fedora core code and will contain some extras.

I am all for Fedora. It looks to a good bet for me to use even in office. I have added some screenshots in a folder one level up from here. I actually tried to get it uploaded here, but it was getting too clumsy. Take a look.