One difficulty with Fedora is multimedia support. Because Fedora is a 100% open source distribution, you won't find mp3 players or browser plugins like Flash, Shockwave, and RealPlayer; you'll have to find these on your own. Which is not difficult, just inconvenient. I do not fault Fedora for this; I would like to round up all the idiot Web developers in the world who design for Internet Explorer only, and vendors who still think Windows is the only game in town, and slap them silly. You are invited to join me.

Nautilus has an integrated CD/DVD writer that is nice for quick CD/DVD-writing chores. All you do is drag the files you want copied into the CD-writer window, which is under Places -> CD Creator. Then use File -> Write to disc. (Yes, scattering the commands all over different menus is awkward.) The options are limited, so if you need to tweak the settings you'll still want something like K3b, Gcombust, or command-line utilities.

All of my video cards were detected and configured correctly, except the lone nVidia Riva TNT2. I had to download the nVidia driver installer to get hardware acceleration. A nice feature of the system-config-display GUI is easy setup of dual-head displays, though it does not let you set up multiple dual-head configurations; you'll have to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and some startup files for that.

The installer configured both the trackpoint and the external USB mouse on the Thinkpad, which is a nice touch. It found all wireless NICs, and found the local access point without a hitch. Sound, no problem- it found both PCI soundcards and integrated sound. It detected and installed drivers for my old Epson 600 scanner, HP 6L printer, and Alps MD-5000 printer.

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