The first thing anyone considering using Fedora needs to know is this is not a safe, sane Linux distribution. It's not meant to be. Fedora is the test bed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and is also the replacement for Red Hat Linux, with two major differences: there is no commercial edition, and it is intended to be a community project, rather than solely a Red Hat product. This is the playground for Red Hat engineers and random volunteer developers to go nuts and try out wacky new things, and users get to play along. It has a fast release cycle of 2-3 times per year, with shiny new things in every release. So you should expect a few bumps and lumps.

To smooth out some of lumps, be sure to run up2date right away. Most of the updates are minor, but one is a showstopper--you won't be able to use the Nautilus CD-writer without the udev update. And for goodness' sake read the release notes. They are crammed with useful information and solutions to problems.

So what is Fedora good for? It is a good desktop Linux, and it is suitable for non mission-critical servers. For non-programmer users who wish to participate in Linux/Free/Open Source development, Fedora lets you test the latest greatest features and contribute useful feedback.

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