I downloaded and installed the KDE version of Fedora 13, on this Sony RA840G (2.8ghz cpu, 3gb ram) PC, but to be honest it has been rather buggy so far. Below is what happened, the best i recall.
I found and ran the KPackageKit updates, and while it was still doing so it gave me a 3-4 sec. system tray popup that it was done and i needed to restart, but the message disappeared before i could read it all. I did restart, and ran the Software update again, and the same thing happened, but this time i ignored it and installed all the updates.
As Fed 13 does not include either Firefox or OpenOfice (critical for me) by default, I ran KPackageKit again and found and installed Firefox, but OpenOffice is all spilt up into different modules, mostly language ones, so i only installed the actual word processor. I then went back and found java, but KPackageKit hung for a long time, and would not close.
I had to log off and on again, and then tried to install new wallpaper, but while some installed, one was not listed along with the installed ones. Installing it again required overwriting the previous jnp, but it still was not listed. I went on the web and found one that i used with this monitor under XP and installed that, but it was very blurry from what i could see. During this procedure Plamsa crashed, and i sent an error report, though it said i would have had to install more things in order to for it to be of much use.
Later, as i could find no Desktop icon in the Taskbar, i had to minimize Windows in order to see the desktop, and inadvertently clicked on the ? button on a Konqueror window, which ended up freezing the whole system, except i could shut down KPackageKit, but nothing else on the Taskbar worked, and i could not even right click and choose Leave. Using the PC power button did bring up the shutdown options however, and i choose Restart. It did so, but after login i only got a blinking dash in the top left which went on for over a minute before i physically shutdown and reboot.
I later was able to install Java for OpenOffice, but Flash would not install in Firefox, so i searched and found instructions here (http://www.fedorafaq.org/#flash) which required running commands which worked, though it said at the last, “WARNING: I can’t open dir /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins-wrapped”.
However, sound does not work, either through the integrated mobo or through the Logitec USB phones. Kinfocenter says “Audio is not enabled in config,” and Kmix, which is the only thing i found that might offer GUI configuration, fails to load whenever i try to do so.
I did find System Settings, of which there is two, the more extensive one being under Settings>System Settings in the Classic menu, which was very useful, but I also could not change the clock from UTC to EST, which i option i missed on this last install.
Also, while i do see “Computer” under the KickOff Menu (but not in Classic), i do not see the whole drive which Fed is installed on (just Root in Dolphin), KDiskFree does work, but if very basic, not with a Windows type right click and properties and its many options. Nor does Fed detect and show a USB device which is plugged after Fed loads (and Kwik disk also crashes on loading). An icon to show the desktop would also be useful.
So that is my experience thus far, and it has been a learning one, so i thank God for that.
Once you install those repos, I reccomend installing yumex unless you want to stick with PackageKit.
I think I know what the deal with the sound might be. I had issues with Fedora 12, where it looked like all the sound stuff should have been working, and in fact, if I went to a program to play MP3s, it looked like it was working, but ... no sound. Fortunately the fix for this is pretty easy if you installed Gnome as well as KDE. You simply logout and log back in under Gnome, then select the volume icon up top, unmute it, and turn the sound up. I have no idea why the KDE sound program didn't turn on by default, but that was how I fixed it. Log out and back in under KDE and you're all set.
Normally, when I do a new system load with Fedora, when I get to the point where it asks which package groups I want to install select the button for "customize now", and go throught and pick all the things I want, and deselect what I don't want. Makes it a heck of a lot easier to get the Openoffice stuff and lots of other stuff as well.
I didn't notice before that you're installing this on a 64-bit box. Flash is problematic on all 64-bit systems from what I understand. I eventually gave up trying to get the adobe flash plugin to work correctly, and just installed gnash which suprisingly enough, works for most sites. Personally I hate flash anyway, so I just don't visit the few annoying sites that don't work for me.
If you want to have a fairly trouble-free multimedia experience, you'll want some packages from the rpmfusion repos.
Here's a list of everything I have installed from rpmfusion on my home box. Some of them, you probably won't need, but it's my motto these days that it's better to be safe than sorry...
yum install a52dec audacity-freeworld faad2-libs ffmpeg ffmpeg-libs gpac gpac-libs \
gstreamer-ffmpeg gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly k3b-extras-freeworld \
lame lame-libs libdca libdvbpsi libmad libmimic libmms libmpeg2 libquicktime \
live555 mencoder mjpegtools-libs mozilla-vlc mplayer mplayer-common ogmrip \
opencore-amr subtitleripper thunderbird-enigmail transcode twolame-libs \
vcdimager vcdimager-libs vlc vlc-core xine-lib-extras-freeworld xmms-faad2 \
xmms-mp3 xmms-mplayer xvidcore
I haven't seen the issues you describe of USB devices not being seen. As a matter of fact, USB devices have been one of the most trouble-free things I've found in Fedora over the past few years. It's seen everything I've tried to plug. Saw my printer, and installed the correct driver on install actually.