Fusion Linux

[/Zoran\]

Hey everybody, i don't know if you heard of Fusion already, this thread is aimed for those who haven't .

Fusion is to Fedora what Mint is to Ubuntu, sort of. It comes with codecs and flash installed, plus a large amount of applications. It's got GIMP 2.7 (which brings a lot if improvements), Blender, Inkscape, Avidemux, PiTiVi video editor, VLC, Banshee, Audacious, Handbrake, Sound Juicer, Artista Transcoder, Scribus, WINE, Chromium as the default browser (Firefox is there, don't worry), Compiz, emerald and tons of other applications.

Be sure to check it out
http://fusionlinux.org/

[TBABill]

I'm curious to know if Fusion offers users proprietary drivers during install or a repository configured (or easily configurable) to make them available post-install? And is there a location with a "how to" for users with nVidia, ATi, Broadcom and other proprietary devices to setup their devices if the distro doesn't do so for them?

[/Zoran\]

Any solution that works on Fedora will work on Fusion as well. I don't have the need for any additional drivers, except for my scanner which i download from avasys website, and it installation was very easy. But i have read posts of users who need drivers for their wireless cards and they are reporting that wireless worked out of the box for them, i read this on 2 places, it's possible that Fusion ships more firmware on the DVD. As for me, graphics are much better on Fusion than they were on Mint, they are probably using different drivers for my radeon card, because one game that i was really interested in didn't work properly on Mint, but it works fine on Fusion. That and the fact it has a vast number of application made me to switch over to Fusion, i hope you guys/galls won't hate me for it , i'm still here, just not on Mint...

[jroa]

Most of us distro hop now and then. I am currently on Fedora and I may have to take Fusion for a spin soon.

[lmintnewb]

I hate you !!!


Kidding, like Mint mucho. They are very talented folks, were my 1st enjoyable experience with nix. Forever have a place in ma heart. But we were ships passing in the night and will always have Paris !!! ( *gets all teary eyed ) Still promote Mint and it's definitely worth promoting. Great software ... plus have a mild addiction to the Mint forums and like the Mint devs n community, shrugs.

Distro looks interesting. Too heavy for my tastes I'm sure. With only 512mbs/ram n being too lazy to spend a couple bucks and take 40mins to upgrade this box doubt I'd mess with it. What's the default DE ? Gnome ... kde ? Somebody has to do fedora right. Gawd knows redhat won't. My understanding is they use it as a testing ground for their commercial stuff. Causing widespread borkage among the userbase and using them as guinea pigs. Thus the roller coaster with reg fedora ... Now it works great, now it's cr&p ... Now it works again, now it's broken !!! Keeping much of their linuxy goodness far away from the GPL n opensource community's clutches.



PS, why is it I find myself disliking the distro's that have made the biggest mark for linux in general ... Redhat ... buntu ? Dunno ... odd. Guess I'm just weird like that. One of these dys plan on returning to the Mint fold ... lmde baby !!! Buntu drove us apart ! ( *teary eyed again, sniffle. )

[/Zoran\]

Yes, that would be Fedora, i never actually used Fedora up until Fedora 15, and it seems ok, only thing that bugs me is shell memory leaks, with time shell can eat up quite a bit of RAM. When it comes to requirements for Fusion, 512 of RAM wouldn't be enough i believe, even though you can decrease RAM consumption by turning off unnecessary services, i decreased RAM usage on start-up to 160-170MB of memory, and i use compiz, AWN, emerald, see here:



I have 1Gb of RAM, and it runs smoothly, for 512 of RAM, LMDE Xfce would be great i used it and with tweaking i managed to decrease memory consumption to 85mb on startup.

[lmintnewb]

Running Mint 10 wasn't a prob resourcewise. Think end result after much tweakage n borkage n reinstallage was 125 gnome, 90 xfce n 60 fluxbox. Was the being buntu based. Have this bad taste where ubuntu is concerned. Not even sure if it's justified. Just don't like ubuntu, even a derivative of it bothered me enough to get rid of it. At the time bought some dvd's and proceeded to dl lmde with big plans for it.

Some weird reason couldn't get the RW dvd drive to work right n this comps so old no boot from usb n bios. Didn't feel like flashing the bios or going through the trouble of digging up a work around to install lmde. So started doing the light weight distro hop. Will definitely get around to trying Mint's debian stuff. Don't doubt it's fantastic stuff.

Would really like to see Mint come out with a distro specifically meant for old n neglected hardware. Super light, super Minterized as only Linux Mint can do linux. Many people in the world with dated hardware n low sys specs. Guessing that's what they are doing with lmde n etc. Plus getting away from buntu's here comes a new release, ready or not, buggy or not approach. Among other things ... all poss just my imagination.

They'd have their work cut out for em. Thing I'm using now, 43mbs at idle/boot up n now with FF 3.6summin running and a terminal. Drum roll !!! 95mbs. No shortage of user friendly full features either, shrugs. Will still be happy to try Mint's debian though. Bet it's fantastic ... and very linuxy minty.

Sure I could trim down fusion to run fine too. Just again ... have a budding dislike for RH too. Not as intense as the one for buntu. Probably cause I haven't researched them well enough yet. Though there's no law that says people shouldn't make a nice living off of the software they develop either. Maybe I'm a jealous, ignorant butthead. But tis how I feel about it ... sighs.



(too much coffee edit ) which is not to say fusion isn't kickbutt. Mint's buntu stuff is kickbutt too, shrugs. Plus with Mint 10 I had some weird bug I could never figure out. I'd boot up and the hard drive light would stay on ... Until/unless I suspended ... wait 10 secs for the drive to spin down and resume. Was odd n never figured it out. Same thing with buntu 10.10 tried that 1st almost made me give up on linux. Until Mint 10 saved my opinion of nix. At the time blamed it on buntu.

Since then installed summin else ( still installed ) that's debian based ... same thing happens. So must be summin to do with Debian I think now. Aggravating bug ... having to suspend/resume. Just this system I guess. But needless to say I don't boot into that install often now. This distro it doesn't happen, it's slackware based. HDD light boots up, goes out n stays out like it's supposed to with it.

[MALsPa]

What's the default DE ?

GNOME. And, it uses mintMenu, according to this review: http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2011/04/07/fu ... 14-review/

Fusion's DistroWatch page: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fusion

Looks interesting. I'll pass for now, since the KDE spins of Fedora 14 and Fedora 15 have been fine here.

[lmintnewb]

Thanks, noticed the gnome system monitor in /Zoran\'s post. Looked like kde on their website screenshot. Looks fine really ... MALsPa would be interested in your experience with fedora. Is the stuff I'd posted above true. Is it a hit n miss like I've come to believe with it ? Don't want to be unfairly smearing a distro if I've got it wrong.

Seems like some people say fedora is great ... when it works. And horrible, when it's not. Truth, fiction ... somewhere in the middle ? I mean there's nothing wrong with people getting something out of the hard work and software development they do ... aka: Redhat enterprise etc. Sheesh seem to recall stallman even suggesting ways to profit from linux. Though if the sitting on the advances they've made and withholding it for commercial purposes doesn't seem to exactly jibe with the gnu/linux philosophy.

I don't begrudge them making big $ on what they do. Sure they've earned it. The sitting on and withholding code from the rest of the opensource comm would strike me as a bit sleazy on RH's part though. Just an opinion, sure RH's CEO really doesn't care how I view things or what I think though, lol. Oh well.

[MALsPa]

@lmintnewb - Well, I don't know what's going on with RHEL and $, profit, code, software development, all that stuff you mentioned. Here's what I can tell you:

I installed Fedora 14 (KDE spin) back in December. Quick installation, but takes some time to set up and personalize. Of the distros that I'm running (or have run recently) that come with KDE4, Fedora did the best job, in my opinion. (Those distros are Mepis 11, PCLOS, and Scientific Linux. I added KDE4 to the main version of Mint Isadora, and that worked out well, by the way. Haven't tried two that have been mentioned lately as the best KDE4 distros -- openSUSE and Kubuntu.)

Fedora 14 turned out so well that I added Fedora 15 (KDE spin again) last week. Again, quick installation, took some time to set up. Looks great so far.

But I've read some of the same things you've mentioned -- hit or miss, inconsistent from one release to the next, that sort of thing. So I want to stick with it for a few years, through a number of releases, and see how things go over the long term.

[lmintnewb]

Thanks ... hearing from someone with hands on experience is a good thing. See so many things on the web. Always hard to know what's the truth otherwise. Admit I'm no nix guru ... anything close to being well educated on the subject. So really helps to get my bearings talking to someone like you. Don't want to go around unfairly smearing anything just based on a few anonymous sources etc.

lol ... no matter what, am sure fusion, pure fedora, Mint ... any other distro puts to shame what I could create. Oh well ... still am very opinionated. I reserve the right to be opinionated darn it !!! Sure fusion will make many people happy, shrugs. I have 1 install left max n am going in the opposite direction though. ... Getting good vibe off of CTKarch myself ... light, fast, stable linuxy goodness ... oh yeah ! Otherwise would be opensuse or PCOSlinux, if I wanted to explore beyond the great stuff Mint makes in the magic minty linux factory that is and out of the light weight areas into the middle and heavy weight linux installs.




More of my caffienated ranting folks ... sowwie. Don't worry ya only have to put up with me for 40 more mins. Then time to put da nose to da stone.

[MALsPa]

Sure fusion will make many people happy, shrugs.

I think there are a lot of Fedora users who would say, "Why use Fusion when you can have the real thing (Fedora)?" Just like some Debian users would say about Ubuntu, LMDE, etc. But like Debian, Fedora takes a little while to set up, and some people don't like that sort of thing.

I like how Fedora comes out right away with KDE, Xfce, and LMDE spins. Looks like Fusion doesn't have any of those.

[lmintnewb]

I see your point. Long time admirer of linux ... recent convert myself. This is the 1st time I've heard of fusion. The OP's happy with it though, shrugs. I've been focusing on ultra-light distro's. Linux is nuts ... so many distro's already n more all the time ? Crazy ... guess it's part of the attraction too though. So many people contributing and going diff ways. Buncha perspectives yada, yada.

Get what you're saying though. You seem to be a long time user and know whatcha doing. All us newbs to the linuxverse want ... well more like need the easy button me thinks. Getting to the point where think I could handle most things nix ( with the help of google and wayyyy too much time spent on the subject.) At least haven't managed to blow up this box ... yet.

It's an interesting subject for sure. Madhouse with so much going on ... I'm captivated now. Oh well ... have nothing against people sharing a find or people trying whatever they like. Like Mint a lot too. Would have no qualms recommending Mint to other nix newbs that's for sure. Amazing what all these opensource devs have been able to do with software huh. Tons of great stuff ... All pretty much does the same things.

One mans trash ... etc. Whatever makes people happy I guess.

[/Zoran\]

Wow didn't know about CTKarch before, it looks amazing, but currently i like to have a lot of tools at my disposal and Fusion provides me with that. I also have LMDE Xfce installed and it's unbelievable to me that it has such a low memory consumption, i see that CTKarch uses even less, wow. But then again LMDE Xfce doesn't have all the eye candy that i have added in Fusion's Gnome, and i would kinda feel bad if i added compiz and all that stuff to LMDE, to see an increase in resource usage . My config isn't that awesome, i mean i like it a lot, i only hope it lasts for ages to come i wouldn't change a thing, but i have a 1.6 Ghz dual core with 1GB of RAM with radeon x1650, and Fusion runs fine on it, so heck, why not. There might come a time when i 'll be interested in minimalistic installs, then i'll use CTKarch and other distros similar to it. By the way @lmintnewb have you heard of Slitaz, it's also a minimalistic distribution, .iso is only 30 MB large, if you haven't have a look at it, maybe you'll enjoy it better...

Currently Fusion only has 1 version, Gnome 32bit, unfortunately the team behind this distro consists of only 3 humans , i think it's only 3, so they don't have much time to create all possible spins and versions. I actually wanted to see Fusion Xfce version, but after i tried Fedora 15 Xfce i became turned off by the idea. The reasource consumption on a startup of a fresh system is almost the same as the main GNOME 3 editions, at least that's how it's with me. I don't understand what happened to Fedoras Xfce spin, but it's much bulkier than LMDE Xfce, i guess that the team over here that creates LMDE Xfce did some major tweaking in order to be so slick and light. Here is one long reply from me to, so that others don't feel so bad about writing TL;DR replies...

[lmintnewb]

lol ... if you beat me to test driving CTK would appreciate ya sharing whatcha find. It is supposed to be shockingly light n quick. Have 3 installs already and use this box for business. Too much important stuff on it right now for me to risk borking and having to unbork for now. Could upload my whole drive to Adrive too, hmmmm. Have backups on hand blahblah. Just doesn't seem worth continuing the distro hop with 4 perfectly working OS's already ya know ?

Also ... lol, yep ... slitaz is one of the 3 and really is a neat distro. My entire install is under 500mbs for it. Loads super fast, shuts down the same, very snappy ... No shortage of linuxy goodness either for such a tiny bit of software. Thing installs n updates in record time too, as ya can imagine. Can only speak on how it performs on this old comp though. Supposed to be fine on newer stuff too n have full support for wireless etc. One guy apparently devs that distro ! Exploder told me about it awhile ago, though appreciate it. Same for CTK I believe ... one man show behind it. Thank goodness for these people, lol.

I almost feel bad ( well actually do feel bad ) discussing all these other distro's on Mint's forum. Think we can all agree Mint's OS's are great too right ? Don't blame you either. If you're flirting with fusion and like it. Think that's what gnu/linux is all about ... freedom of choice for us eh ? Why did I use winblows all those years !!!?? WHY !? WHYYYYY !?!! D:

(edit) Slitaz only has like 3,000 packages in it's repo's though. Way I look at it, has everything I really need for a full system really. I mean quick browser, based on FF 3.5, scribus, openoffice or other office suite, gimp. Don't think they're the latest versions. Good enough to get the job they're supposed to do done though. I mean nothing is really lacking for general PC use ... blahblah etc. Just thought would clarify cuz you mentioned ya like having access to a ton of software.

[MALsPa]

I actually wanted to see Fusion Xfce version, but after i tried Fedora 15 Xfce i became turned off by the idea. The reasource consumption on a startup of a fresh system is almost the same as the main GNOME 3 editions, at least that's how it's with me. I don't understand what happened to Fedoras Xfce spin, but it's much bulkier than LMDE Xfce, i guess that the team over here that creates LMDE Xfce did some major tweaking in order to be so slick and light.

That's quite interesting; I wonder why Fedora's Xfce spin would be so much "bulkier" than LMDE Xfce. I don't pay much attention to a distro's "resource consumption." Maybe a lot depends on the kinds of things a person uses the computer for; or maybe folks notice that kind of thing a lot more with less than 2 GB or RAM? Seems to me that whenever I've added Xfce or Openbox or Fluxbox, etc., to a distro that came with KDE or GNOME as default, the sessions under the lighter-weight DE/WM are always quite snappy. That's why I haven't really tried much in the way of Xfce or other versions or spins, that sort of thing -- seems like adding it myself works out well.

[/Zoran\]

I think that if the Mint team didn't want us to talk about other linux distros they wouldn't have created this subforum, .Technically i didn't abandon Mint entirely, i probably shouldn't write that in my previous replies because i still have my LMDE Xfce install on the hard drive, but i really don't have the time or Internet bandwidth to continue tinkering on it. Yeah, choice is one of many things that's great when it comes to linux, but to me it's also a curse, right now i'm fighting the urge to try CTKarch, i have to ignore it, calm down Zoran, you have Fusion, it loaded with cool stuff, don't listen to others, go do something more productive....

@MALsPa I'll boot up my LMDE Xfce install and Fusion 15 Xfce install and post screenshots of RAM usage, i don't know why but it uses more, panel alone uses 15mb, thunar 20mb, it's frightening, maybe it's just me, i don't know.

[lmintnewb]

LOL ... listen to da lil angel on your shoulder telling ya to resist the distro hop Zoran. You and me both need to get something productive done. Sighs ... but it's so easy and more fun to endlessly discuss all things nix and compare notes !!! Oh well ... need a coffee refill n then hit the phones trying to peddle my services to the business community. Gotta love cold calling people. Dontcha love people telemarketing ? lol ....

It's worth their time ... If they don't hang up on me though. Ye gawds ... later guys, happy nixing. I'll try not to, but already know I'll be checking in on da forums as the hours go by. N you're right Z about the including this section. They might want to shut it down though. Sure Mint works very hard producing this great software. Not my choice though ... Guess Mint HQ knows they can hold their own with anything out there and beat plenty of em. Let's face it all the flavors of nix pretty much do the same things. Once again ttyl fellas.

[/Zoran\]

Well here are the screen's as promised

LMDE Xfce





Fedora 15 Xfce


They are basically fresh installs, in LMDE Xfce i disabled Update manager, mint upload services and bluetooth daemon. But since Fedora 15 doesn't have those anyway i think that these screenshots are a fair comparisom. It's almost double the consumption, maybe Xfce on Fedora is newer than the one installed on LMDE, Fedoras is 4.8.0, i can't seem to find which one is on LMDE i did a partial update and i lost some entries from my menu, About Xfce being one of them. I can see only in the panel that it reeds xfce4-panel 4.8.3 so i guess they would be the same version, i don't know...

[spider2097]

I did like the look & feel of Fusion when I gave it a whirl That's probably because of the Mint influence though After all, what drew me to try it out was the fact it uses Mint Menu and it's "We are to Fedora as Mint is to Ubuntu" claim. I enjoyed trying it out on the Live DVD, however given the small SSD (4Gb) on my netbook I wasn't able to install & give it an extended work out. As I mentioned in another thread though, it's a distro that's piqued my interest & I'm going to be keeping an eye on it