I installed the Korora 21 x64 Cinnamon beta 2 weeks ago and was blown away by how nice it is! Earlier this week I downloaded the Xfce edition just to see what it looked like and try from the Live DVD. I was stunned at good it looked and ran. I have never been all that crazy about Xfce but I liked the work I saw so much that I went ahead and installed it on my spare hard drive. It's now been a week and I now really like Xfce!
The Korora developers wrote in their road map that they wanted to work on the user experience in this release cycle. They certainly succeeded in my opinion! Everything looks elegant, Plymouth is simple and clean, the default icons are very modern and attractive, the greeter is simple and clean, all this makes the transition to the desktop look very nice. Finally, developers with good taste in artwork! The Fedora base used in these editions is fantastic!
A community member asked about the Mate edition that had been dropped this release cycle and now the Mate edition is in the works! The developer was nice enough to share some screen shots of the work in progress and give some details about what he was doing. It is looking just as amazing as the editions I have tried! Korora uses applications that fit nicely with the look and feel of the particular desktop environment too. There are a lot of applications by default but no duplicate functionality, I really like this.
I have never been all that good at picking themes, icons and such but have admired the work others do with their desktops. With Korora I actually feel like my desktops are on par with those that are good at making the desktop look so good. I discovered some applications in the Xfce edition that I had never really tried and now love. I spent most of last year distro hopping and now I am content. I joined the Korora forum to thank the developers for their hard work. I found the developers participate on the forum and are terrific people to communicate with.
Words can hardly express how impressed I am with Korora 21. My desktops look amazing, all my hardware works perfectly and the default applications are just what I need. I would never have imagined myself liking Xfce so much let alone use it on a daily basis. My distro hopping days are over! Almost forgot to mention, all multimedia playback works out of the box in Korora. I did have to turn off the flasblock add-on in Firefox to play YouTube videos first though.
My hats off to the Korora developers and the fine quality of work they are doing!