Quick Review of Fedora 17: Beefy Miracle

I just downloaded and ran the LiveCD of Beefy Miracle, Fedora’s most recent release.

Likes:

1. Japanese input methods and fonts come preinstalled.
2. Accessibility features available.
3. Generally polished interface
4. Feels mature finally.

Dislikes:

1. Stuck with fallback mode on unsupported video cards
2. Touch screen design for use on non-touch devices is stupid.
3. Lack of configuration options, right clicking on the wallpaper and panels does nothing.  There’s no way to change the default window manager theme which is over-sized and made for fingers not cursors.

Screen Death

Not blue.  Just dead.  My laptop LCD screen is trying to off itself.  I have backlight at the moment, but I don’t know when it will cut out again.  Looks like replacement is around 500 dollars. Blargh.  Pretty much have to wait till I get back to the US to do it anyway.

Model: IBM T42 Thinkpad

Symptom:  Intermittent loss of screen backlight.  Restores briefly after boot or sleep.  Previously showed pink hues immediately after boot/sleep that would fade over time.

Google says:  Common-ish problem among same model laptops, most likely problem: LCD screen is shot or some sort of inverter needs to be replaced.