Kororaa has been mentioned a number of times here before but if you haven’t caught up with it before it is a Fedora Remix that includes as standard all those extras most people add to their system. The latest Kororaa release is a beta based on Fedora. I should stress that the beta part applies to the extras added to Kororaa as the Fedora part is right up to date as it includes all the updates up to the release date.
I’ve been using the Kororaa beta 2 64 bit KDE on my laptop for a little while and can report it is generally good. I had a couple of issues initially but once sorted I am liking the new version.
First problem was I was starting Conky using a short script that I had installed in KDE’s Autostart. The script caused the system to lock up. Not sure why but when I removed it everything ran as expected. I simply put Conky in Autostart as an appication and it works. The script simply delayed the startup to allow the window manager to load. I think it was a carry over from the time I used Compiz on xfce and it isn’t needed any more.
Second problem involved getting the services I needed for my Conky to run. The method of managing services in Fedora 15 has changed from earlier versions as a result of the introduction of Systemd. There is good documentation on the changes on the Fedora Wiki. After I found that I had almost everything working
I have a nvidia graphics card on this laptop and I’m using the free nouveau as opposed to the closed proprietory drivers. It is working with Kwin’s Desktop Effects which it never has in previous versions. There are some differences with the look of the screen and some effects aren’t as smooth as with the nvidia driver. But I will keep nouveau for a while longer at least. One problem with not using the nvidia driver is that nouveau doesn’t report the state of the driver, temp etc. so I will need to change my Conky setup to get that working.
This is the first Kororaa or Fedora that I can say I actually like the splash screen, I haven’t replaced it yet. I usually customise the splash screen and the kdm screen too. Blue is not my favourite colour.
All of these comments are Fedora system things and not Kororaa specific. One thing I did use was Kororaa’s Add / Remove Extras tool to install Flash. It also can install the nvidia or ATI graphics drivers and may be expanded to cover other things later. It worked well although it installs the i686 flash and not the 64 bit which has had some security problems and has never made it past beta. Another advantage of starting with Kororaa was I didn’t need to install many of the packages I usually add. They are all there after the installationis finished. I restore my data, configure a few options and I’m ready to go.
I would recommend Fedora 15 but if you want all the features of Fedora in a ready to go package try Kororaa.
Techodyssey 