The new release of Fedora -- version 20 -- is here. Since I have a USB stick dedicated to such things, I brought down a couple of live desktops (GNOME and Xfce) to try.

All well and good, that is, but the Linux kernel shipping with F20 is the same 3.11.10 that I'm already using in F19.

But a look at the latest kernels in Fedora's Koji build system (which I recommend you visit often) -- shows that the 3.12.5 kernel is being built right now for F19 and has already been built for F20.

In my experience, a kernel shows up in your local yum update within a week after it first appears in Koji. It's not instant but does flow onto your system if you accept the update.

While on the subject of updates, the Yum Extender (aka Yumex) has proven to be a great way to maintain the packages on my Fedora system. It's quicker and better than PackageKit, and fairly equal to the Debian world's Synaptic Package Manager.

Getting back to Fedora 20, I'm not yet ready to run fedup to get the full update on my F19 system. Instead I'm waiting for the 3.13 kernels to start flowing into F19 proper.

What concerns me most is hardware compatibility, specifically display issues that keep my AMD-based laptop from resuming after suspend. I am looking to new kernels and display drivers to fix this problem. Full system upgrades are just window dressing that, in and of themselves, won't really help. That's what I'm thinking, anyway.

This handy counter tells you when It's here:

Fedora has great documentation. It's one of the many reasons that the Red Hat-sponsored community project's operating system is a compelling choice for your desktops, laptops and maybe even servers if you like to tinker.

The Power Management Guide caught my attention, and I used this part of the docs to install Tuned.

I'm not unhappy with the battery life of my HP Pavilion g6-2210us laptop. I get a whole lot more out of it than I did my previous Lenovo G555. But I'm always on the lookout for more optimization, and right now I'm focusing on the hard drive, which throws off more heat than I'd like (but not so much as to be a problem).

I installed tuned and made it run at startup.

There is an error in the F19 Power Management Guide in how to do that.

The correct command (run with rootly privileges) to make tuned start at boot is:

# systemctl enable tuned

The last two words are reversed in the docs. And yes, I did file a bug.

Korora is to Fedora as Ubuntu is to Debian. Got that?

That means Korora adds on all those helpful bits that a Fedora user just might want. Everything from multimedia codecs to Steam, Adobe Flash to VirtualBox -- you get it all in Korora, though most of it isn't terribly hard to add to "virgin" Fedora.

Just like Debian: There are plenty of things that ship in Ubuntu, but the halfway knowledgeable user with a little time on his/her hands can do most if not all of it on top of Debian.

But just like with Debian and Ubuntu, it's nice to have something like Korora to give us a complete out-of-the-box experience.

The only difference between Korora and Ubuntu? Nobody's ever heard of one of them.

Never mind that. In the next cycle, Korora is upping its game. The Korora 20 Beta builds are now available, and I'm happy to see that Xfce has been added to the list of available desktop ISOs, which already included GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon and MATE.

I'm downloading the Xfce and GNOME ISOs now, though what I'm really looking for is something with a 3.13 Linux kernel so I can put it through its paces on my still-needs-help-suspending AMD-running laptop.

My Fedora system has most of what is in Korora, though not Steam (don't care), Jockey (do care and WANT it) or VirtualBox (could be worth a play). But I've thought for a long time that Fedora needs its own Ubuntu/Mint, and Korora looks to be fulfilling that role very nicely.