HOME

If You Like Fedora, You'll Love Korora

The Korora Linux desktop is a solid computing platform that's loaded with options to suit a wide range of user needs.

Korora 23 final was released last month. It's a Fedora-based distribution featuring many user-friendly enhancements as well as a choice of five desktop environments. Fedora is the community version of Red Hat Linux Enterprise.

Unless you are looking for bleeding-edge desktop environments, Korora gives you all the top contenders. You can run Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE, MATE and Xfce.

I tested all of these Korora options and was pleased with how each one performed. I focused the "Look and Feel" portion below on the MATE desktop flavor because I was impressed with its integration in Korora much more than in other distros. For anyone unhappy with the current GNOME 3 style, the MATE fork is a refreshing alternative.

Korora Kudos

The Korora distro is a growing project started by lead developer Chris Smart about 10 years ago as Kororaa. Its name comes from the Māori word for "the little penguin." His purpose was to quickly reproduce a Gentoo Linux installation on multiple desktop machines. The distro started with just two flavors -- GNOME and KDE. Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce got added along the way.

Smart discontinued that project in late 2007 only to reintroduce it nearly three years later as a Fedora Remix. With the release of version 18 in 2013, he changed the project's name to Korora.

Korora offers a lot to like, starting with its installation. The process is effortless.

Using Korora is, too. Even if you are not familiar with Red Hat or Fedora, you can use Korora without any fiddling.

Common Factors

Although there's little to no fiddling involved with installing and using the distro, Korora does require a little special treatment if you want to include a few extras. That's because it has to comply with licensing agreements associated with the Fedora community.

For instance, proprietary software drivers such as Nvidia and packages like Google Chrome are not preinstalled. To get these items, use the Pharlap device manager in the Control Center of the Systems menu.

Korora's default applications include Mozilla's Web browser, LibreOffice suite, Shotwell photo manager, Audacious music manager, the OpenShot video editor and the VLC media player. Many other Linux staples are prepackaged in their related desktop versions.

For example, the Kdenlive video editor comes with the KDE version. MATE classics like Eye of MATE image viewer are bundled in that desktop. Many of the Linux applications you use in your favorite distro also are included in all the Korora versions.

Look and Feel

MATE has the familiar look and feel of the old-style GNOME but is infused with the advanced growth of the Fedora line under the hood. By default, the desktop has two panels.

Fedora-Based Sugar on a Stick Is One Sweet Desktop

The Fedora 23 Sugar on a Stick desktop offering is an unusually flexible computing desktop for children of all ages, school admins and organizations looking for the best bang for absolutely no bucks on existing computer hardware.

The Sugar environment is both a desktop and a collection of activities or apps that involve user engagement. Activities automatically save results to a journal. Users can add comments and share the activity instances with other users. Many of these activities support real-time collaboration.

As the name suggests, this Sugar desktop distribution fits on a USB drive, but you can just as easily run the ISO file as a standalone live session OS from USB or CD without making any changes to the hardware or removing the existing -- possibly outdated -- installed OS.

I spent years in the classroom using my own Linux-powered computers and providing students with open source software to facilitate their learning. That was before my school district got its act together by providing computers in the classrooms.

I found that most so-called portable OS offerings are well suited to student use in the classroom and at home. However, students not yet proficient with sophisticated computer use had a learning curve that slowed down their skills acquisition. The Sugar desktop is an ideal problem solver in getting technology and education on an equal footing for youngsters.

Getting Sugar to Go

Sugar is available as a desktop environment on GNU/Linux. Up-to-date packages are available for Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and other distros.

I took the Fedora 23 SOAS version for a spin, and I like the approach it takes.

It offers numerous ways of using it right out of the box. The process of downloading and running it seemed much more concise and successful than other distro options.

Fedora spins are alternative versions of the Fedora Linux distro. Fedora tailors spins for various types of users. The Fedora Sugar on a Stick spin is the variant of Fedora with Sugar on a Stick components included.

Start at Sugar's Hub

An ideal starting point to check out the culture around the Sugar environment is the Sugar Labs' website. It serves as a portal to get you started and access each of the distro options.

Scroll down the page to the yellow box and click on the link for the distro version you want to try. That takes you to another information page with direct download links for that Linux distro.

Sugar Labs is a volunteer-driven nonprofit organization affiliated with the Software Freedom Conservancy. Its mission is to support the Sugar community of users and developers. Its goal includes establishing regional, autonomous Sugar Labs around the world to help people learn with computers by tailoring Sugar to local languages and curricula.

Two Flavors of Fedora Sugar

Sugar on a Stick is the full Sugar environment that runs on any computer from a thumb drive. Sugar on a Stick requires a thumb drive with at least 2 GB storage and downloading ~650 MB. GNU/Linux Install is the full Sugar environment installed on a GNU/Linux computer.

Either way, the look and feel is the same. The home page shows the Sugar Neighborhood view. Here learners see their friends clustered around their current activities. This is a jumping-off point to join each other's activities.

Sugar collaboration works peer to peer, in a classroom or under a tree. The Sugar Journal records everything a learner does using Sugar. There is no need to remember to click a save button. The focus is on the activity, not the computer. The journal is also a place for reflection, where learners and their teachers can monitor progress.

Desktop Primer

The Sugar desktop environment is an open source project designed for interactive learning by children, but it has equally solid potential for older people who are not computer literate.