Enhanced Fedora Fusion Linux 14 Mere Weeks Away

One of the main complaints with Fedora is the lack of proprietary drivers and multimedia support. That's where Fusion comes in. Fusion Linux aims to ship all the best software that will make for a superior desktop experience. The upcoming version, based on the new Fedora 14, is estimated to be about two or three weeks away, but early testers can try the release candidate announced today.

Fusion's guiding principals are: (1) beyond upstream, and (2) multimedia out of the box. Beyond upstream means to expand Fedora beyond what upstream projects provide. According to Fusion, Fedora developers don't usually venture too much beyond the upstream project specifications. This can make for a conservative and old fashioned desktop experience. Fusion is said to be inspired very much by Linux Mint and its community.

According to the announcement, Fusion 14 will feature GIMP 2.7 with single window mode, Firefox 4.0 beta, Thunderbird, K3B media creator, PlayOnLinux game installer, Dropbox, Chromium, mintMenu and DockbarX, VLC, Blender, Inkscape, and a nice selection of games. Fusion is completely compatible with Fedora, which means lots more software can be installed from Fedora repositories.

While this release candidate might have a few bugs crawling around here and there, the final release will certainly be one to test.

The project maintains a blog, where many announcements and behind the scenes glimpses are recorded; a user forum, where one can get help or chat; and a mailing list.