A couple of months ago I tore into the Fedora developers for how they were approaching the upcoming release of Fedora 7. It seemed as if they were going to forget about the users needs and basically tell them what they can and can not have. It looked like they were going to release a GNOME release, a Server release, and MAYBE a KDE release. That wasn’t looking too promising to me. So much so that I was looking to drop Fedora as my main OS. This was tough as I have been with Red Hat since 4.2. It was a ship I didn’t want to jump.

But this last weekend I embarked on an article about Fedoras’ new technology called “respins”. It intrigued me. On top of which I really had to at least give Fedora a chance to redeem itself.

So I downloaded the Fedora 7 live CD and, in about twenty minutes, installed the OS onto a hard drive. It was an install to rival the simplicity of Ubuntu. I was impressed. But not NEARLY as impressed as I would soon come to be.

After I had the OS up and running it was time to give Revisor a try. I fired it up and after a short time had my very own version of Fedora 7 ready to burn onto disk. I was just short of amazed.

This is a really serious evolution for operating systems. Revisor will take the art of installation to a much-needed new level. If you don’t believe me, give it a try.

So for dinner tonight I will be eating a nice helping of my own crow. I was very much wrong about where the Fedora developers were taking Fedora 7. In fact I am fairly confident that have made this user a life-long fan. If they keep pushing the envelope the way they are pushing it, and in directions that will make Linux the single most flexible operating system available (bar non), they will be winning over scores of new users.

Bravo to the Fedora developers. You have re-invented the operating system by allowing the individual to “invent” their own according their needs or desires.

And now it’s just a matter of creating my own different spins and waiting for the creative juices of the Linux community to get smoking to see what kind of flavors are cooked up. You can find a single location for Fedora respins at  respins.org.

Now it’s time for you to download Fedora 7 and start spinning!