We've been covering Ubuntu for more than two years, receiving lots of great feedback on our work. Many of you asked us to expand our Linux coverage to include other distributions. Here's the result of those requests: Fedora 16 (code-named Verne) is our first step outside of Ubuntu/Linux.

We chose to cover Fedora because it's the first top-tier Linux distro to adopt GNOME 3 as its default desktop. Far from a mere upgrade to GNOME 2, GNOME 3 introduces the radical new GNOME Shell graphical user interface (GUI). This article is just as much about GNOME 3 and its controversial new GNOME Shell than it is about Fedora. Even more so, actually.