Fedora 33 LXDE Spin First Looks

[Jason]

I've been using Fedora for a few days now. The Workstation edition uses the Gnome desktop. The one I downloaded is spin using the lighter LXDE desktop manager since I'm using a laptop with older specs. It's a Toshiba notebook with an i3 dual-core with a hyperthreading processor running at 1.4 GHz, 4 GB of RAM, an SSD, Intel 3000 video.

• The installer was full-screen and easy to use.
• Attractive - see screenshot using the default wallpaper. But that's the only wallpaper included at different aspect ratios
• No volume control on the taskbar. I found a way to add it later
• The program for updating applications is dnfdragora. It looks like Synaptic but looks more simple when first loaded. You also use it to install programs and when you do the groups are better organized than in Synaptic. See screenshot
• Lots of updates. Every day there's a new one and it's not a rolling release distro. It also feels slow and at times you think it's hung because there isn't always a progress bar.
• Comes with usual programs but they might be ones you haven't heard of - Midori, LeafPad, Gnumeric, Abiword, Osmo and Sylpheed. It also comes with a CD ripper and CD/DVD burner program for the 5 people in the world who still use them and an Instant Messenger for the nobody that IMs
• The file manager is PCManFM which has a dual-pane function, bookmarks and tabs. It also has a cool remote filesystem connector which is handy for transferring files to other machines online (SSH, FTP, WebDAV). The file manager has an oddity. Instead of showing your home drive when loaded, it starts in the root directory (/).
• The terminal program is odd. The Bash prompt isn't like most distros. Instead of showing the username and name of the directory, you're in it shows the Bash version (i.e. bash-5.0$) unless you switch to root. And lsb_release isn't installed which is handy for reminding you which release version of the distro you're using. I've never seen this before.
• The preference apps aren't unified (they're separate, not one control panel) and it's hard to find things but that's more of an LXDE issue. Under admin tools, there is only the Updater and Firewall.
• The desktop and browser performance is fine except when I switch between regular and full-screen movies on YouTube. There is a pause. That's more of a processor issue except... it was a much briefer pause in Linux Lite which uses Xfce if I remember. But LXDE is supposed to be lighter. Applications are snappy loading up almost instantaneously for the ones pre-installed. I'm using the Brave browser.
• My HP printer worked right away. Other distros required me to add it and usually added unnecessary duplicate (and broken) printers.

The issues I mention are minor though. I just like to point out the differences. Even with the snafus, I'd give it a solid B if only because of how fast it performs and how good it looks. Everything works and where it's odd, I've been able to make it better. I might keep this one for a while.

[fox]

The dnfdragora looks nice and appears to be well organized. I haven't tried Fedora for a few years. When I last did, it  worked well, but I saw no special reason to switch to it. I seem to recall getting a lot of updates, but none that caused problems. I didn't particularly like the wallpaper options, although one can always bring them in from outside. I can't remember whether the system fonts were satisfactory, but the ones on your desktop look good. I'll be interested to see your next report on Fedora, after you have been using it longer.

[Jason]

The fonts probably depend on the desktop environment used and you likely used vanilla Fedora which runs on Gnome.

I'll let you know how it goes.

[Jason]

Okay, two other issues. One shouldn't be hard to fix. The other one not so sure.

• Terminal doesn't have the autocomplete for paths and programs enabled - huh? Should be able to find online how to fix this
• dnfdragora (the software manager and updater tool) crashes when I try to change anything in the repositories

I think that Fedora is plain vanilla for everything. Features you take for granted in other distros aren't there or work differently.

Btw, I didn't add the repo for codecs and such. I wanted to see if I actually needed them and so far I don't. I'll post here if that becomes a problem. It does play MP3s out of the box, something long-ago Fedora distros couldn't do on a fresh install. But when I right-click an MP3 file, it loads up the player but not the file - weird. I have to add it to the playlist in the player (LXMusic). So maybe that's just an issue with that particular player.

If I keep encountering more minor issues like these, I'll probably go back to Linux Lite which just released a new edition last month or maybe Ubuntu MATE or Xubuntu. I don't understand why Fedora uses can put up with them but perhaps they fixed those issues in previous versions and even with upgrades they've stayed fixed.

I attached another screenshot to show off the programs it comes with and the look of them.