So, as I wrote in my last entry I installed Fedora 10 on my main desktop earlier in the week and I have to say, I can really see it staying there. The reasons behind my switch over from Windows are too numerous to detail – predominantly Fedora 10 will be used as the bedrock from which RHEL 6 will be carved, moulded and created and I’ve been stuck in RHEL 5 land for a long time without keeping up with the changes that have been going on in the world of Fedora. The past few Fedora releases have been a little shakey (imo) however Fedora 10 got some special love with regard to bug tracking and resolution. And it shows with reviews coming in from left right and centre praising the release.

The main reason I can see myself sticking with linux this time around is due to the fact that there are now real, viable alternative apps for the “killer” apps which I use on a Windows desktop – the best example of this (as you’ve probably guessed already from the title) is Songbird. This is the killer app for me when it comes to music management on linux. As much as I hate Apple I have to admit, I do use iTunes on Windows to organise all my music. The last time I tried Fedora 9 I gave Songbird a spin, which back then was still in ‘beta’, i.e. pre-version 1.

As you can see Songbird v1 is very much like iTunes, from a layout perspective, however it far far excels, as it’s based on the Mozilla platform, it gains from the inherent web-based functionality which comes with including a web page rendering engine. The result is a completely integrated audio application. The best function (imo) is the ability for artist info to be displayed in the window, along with youtube videos, news and photos. Also Songbird takes the best from Firefox in that the application is highly extensible – for example the album art carosel you see at the top of the window is an extension, you can either choose to install it, or not. Customisation is key, and Songbird use it very very effectively. Songbird has all the functionality of iTunes and then some. I should probably add that I don’t have an iPod and don’t use Songbird to sync an iPod, however there is an extension available which will do that very thing. For more info you might want to read their version 1 release blog post which details the major features / improvements made recently.

Being cross-platform, I’m 100% certain that I will not be switching back to iTunes, since I’ll be able to simply port everything between OS’s. Sterling work Songbird – keep up the awesomeness!