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OSNews Rates Fedora Core 1 Mild Disappointment
JigSaw writes "OSNews has reviewed the Fedora Core 1 Linux distro, but the author personally found lots of usability problems and bugs with the distro, making Fedora Core a trying experience. The writer puts the blame on poor QA of Fedora Core 1 done by its community, since Red Hat has shifted focus to Enterprise, with Fedora serving merely as a testbed for them."
... I mean how many distributions are perfect, the first time around. RHN is available up until April, which gives them a bit of time to sot things out, if they're expecting a big migration from RH to fedora...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
The community of dedicated bug reporters/developers has largely shifted to Debian. Most users of RH/Fedora don't want to file a bug report when they find one. They want it to be fixed long before they ever have the chance to find it. I know a lot of people who use RH, and none of them are inclined to file bug reports. The bulk of technical Debian users run unstable, and submit bug reports as often as they encounter problems. I think the reality of the situation is that the strength of the community isn't in RedHat any longer.
Those from the #fedora IRC channel on irc.freenode.net have started an unofficial FAQ.
I highly suggest browsing through the various issues others have had, before you decide to upgrade from RH or try a fresh install.
fedora.artoo.net.
It's something from RedHat. RedHat has had problems since the dark ages with x.0 releases, which is what Fedora basically is.
I'm having code compile issues because of the new linking setup myself. Code the compiled perfectly under RHL 9 blows up on FC1.... Can't say I didn't expect this to be a problem free migration. Reminds me of when RH first kicked out the glib updates... Code all over the place blew up left and right until everything else started updating.
Although is not RedHat Linux 10, its pretty good for a v1.0 ... 1.1 or 2 should be pretty kick ass.. at least I hope..
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - Me to the majority of Slashdot.
Why were you trying to compile things when using a binary distribution?
Another thumbs down from Eugenia Loli-Queru. This from the person who gave a sorta-review of Suse based on screen shots. Give me a break. Sorry for the flames but I stopped reading OSNews long ago because of her half assed ramblings. Let Ars or something get ahold of Fedora and then I'll know Im getting a well thought out review... good or bad. Next...
Have a Happy.
Well. Good thing you finally told me. Here I've been running Linux on my desktop for years, thinking it worked. Silly me.
I have never had any trouble finding pre-compiled binaries for gaim. Not when I was running SuSE, not now that I'm running Mandrake.
But no, I was wrong. You, with your two hours of NetHack, you have brought me to the light. It's back to Windows for me. Thank you, oh gods of astroturf.
My interpretation? Not having software installed != usability issues. Last time I checked, Windows didn't come with a compiler installed either... and to run AIM, you had to install pre-compiled binaries. But Linux must be unusable if your demo CD doesn't have everything you ever wanted to use pre-installed.
Doofus. Seriously. Your logic sucks ass. Think before you troll^W^W^W^W^W post, OK?
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
> since Red Hat has shifted focus to Enterprise, with Fedora serving merely as a testbed for them.
That was kinda my impression of RH9, for that matter.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is why people like me were bitching about Red hat's shift in focus.
Sure, Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be all but bulletproof and stable, but what about those of us who aren't using linux to displace Solaris or NT Servers?
What about those of us who want to do a little Gimping or serve our home LANs? At the risk of drawing the fire of the distro zealots, this is the precise reason why I switched to Mandrake at about the same time as RHAT's IPO.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
recompile using the mozilla nss and nspr libraries (there was a post on the gaim mailing list about how to do that) which is much easier to get to work.
Now, if anybody could find out how to compile galeon 1.2.x with Mozilla 1.4 or, better, 1.5 I'm all ears, I've tried the CVS version and no dice (and no, I'm not moving to Galeon 2, which is FAR less useable than galeon 1.2, I'm wondering if the developers actually -use- the thing)
-- the cake is a lie
I am using Fedora right now to write this comment. While some of the bugs mentioned in the article are valid points, I have no problems with multimedia playback, using yum and rpm.livna.org to download mplayer, xine and xmms-mp3 was quite painless. Perhaps the author should have subscribed to the fedora mailing list before he tried the distro. The RPM problem has been fixed, installation of ATI 3D drivers was painless.
I just want to give a big THANK YOU to the whole Fedora team. The release had its problems but I am happy with my setup!
Uh... yeah right, so this is my signature.
"Well. Good thing you finally told me. Here I've been running Linux on my desktop for years, thinking it worked. Silly me."
Don't brush off criticism like that. Whether he's trolling or not, this "no no it works just fine!" attitude is one of the reasons I don't want to switch to Linux. I don't like being treated like a lying asshole because I have a problem with a solution that's disgustingly obvious to everybody who's climbed the Linux learning curve.
"Derp de derp."
But I wish there were more people writing distro reviews. OSNews seems to be one of the few sources that get any play on here, ( heck, they may be one of the few sources full stop ), and it would be nice if we could get some variety of opinion / requirements / analysis from a variety of different viewpoints.
The gaming, productivity and utility software industries have hundreds of review sites spanning all over the web, and while I recognise that individual distro releases rarely represent as big a market impact to Joe Public as, say, the latest iD game, it would be nice to see a bit more heterogeny.
Just another thought - these reviews all seem to have to rush themselves, and rarely have time to evaluate long term issues or strengths that arise after a bit of persistant use ~ an example has been the recent rave reviews in the print media of Panther, which I adore, but had several showstopper bugs in .0 which nobody seemed to pick up on until they starting munching on user preferences for breakfast.
YLFIp.s. Worst run on sentance ever.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
i installed fedora late sunday night and have had good luck with it so far. It seems to be a nice operating system and i got all the applications I wanted to run going in a few hours. Even got Wanda the Gnome fish to work with some help from the Fedora chat room at www.freenode.net. Thanks for a good 1st run all you guys at fedora
This "review" is fundamentally flawed, because I have no idea where in the release notes or Fedora FAQs it states to do what she did to this box, this reads like a whine-fest because Red Hat did not fix her favorite bugs:
.71 to .72 right after you install your distribution, then Fedora probably is not for you. Or you could wait until updated RPMs hit the official repositories instead of grabbing Joe Bob's RPM build and wondering why your installation exploded.
a) So, the first thing she does is install a third party RPM and then wonders why it blows up in her face? How about the RPMs that came with the distribution? So, the install is brand new already broken in a VMWare installation.
b) Why is she using apt and synaptic? They don't even come with Fedora.
c) The RPM from Sun installs the JVM in all the Mozilla browser's (I didn't install KDE so I can't speak for Konqueror) and even integrates into the GNOME menu.
d) The well known limitations of Fedora's multimedia capabilities plague every linux distribution. It's not Fedora's fault that US laws suck. It's as easy to add multimedia in Fedora as it is in debian, you add one non-free source and you're done.
Here's a hint, if you're the kind of person that worries about moving from gaim
If she would have read Gaim's page, she would have learned that gaim needs mozilla's NSS and NSPR to get ssl support for the msn plugin.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
My understanding is that IBM currently recommends either SuSE or Redhat for its Linux customers, depending on where the customer is based. Given that lots of "big" customers have small offices in the boondocks, what are they going to recommend?
Small site typically equates to "we want it cheap, we want it reliable and we want it now. Even though we're part of a big company, head office says we have to keep our costs very low. If we don't we shut up shop". Once you add up lots of small sites, they actually carry a bit of clout in a large organization; you'd better be able to deliver a solution that fits their needs if you want to retain that customer. Quite often, a small site exists solely to service one big customer; global HQ wants to keep that small site happy.
Non-enterprise RedHat fit the bill perfectly for small sites, but SuSE might be too expensive given the lack of a download-only release. I'd assume IBM was hoping Fedora might be a good substitute for non-enterprise RedHat, but if not, which way will they turn?
You couldn't get anything to work right with linux, and yet you like Nethack? Thats insane. Linux is much easier to figure out than nethack.
First, AOL's Linux version of AIM bites. Its unavoidable --- you have to understand which apps are popular for what. Its the same in Windows, its just that you already have experience with it, so you know that you should use Winzip or whatever.
Second, why were you trying to compile? SuSE has binaries of gaim. Just start up YaST, go to the installer, and install the gaim program.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Eugenia is obviously interested in banging the same old drum again and again ..... some of these points were made to her the last time she reviewed RH9 and RH8 and yet she appears incapable of learning that RH is _not_ going to come with MP3 support until the IP situation is sorted.
... Debian is my primary OS in case anyone is wondering).
She was also told that she should use official RPMs and yet she continues to ignore thsi.
I used to look at OSNews occasionally, but I think I just won't bother as it's irritation without information.
(Oh yeah
Good job Fedora Core.
I would suggest you try Mandrake 9.2. It is by far the best linux distro I've ever used. It is extremely powerful (software installation is made easy by urpmi and urpmi-based tools, similar to apt-get), and it can run de facto "industry-standard" RedHat software with ease (since it was originally based on RedHat). And, as of the latest version (I've been using it for a couple of releases on my desktop system) it is quite user-friendly. The 9.x releases have been good, but 9.2 truly is excellent in the usability department IMHO.
It's strange to me how everyone is jumping on RedHat about Fedora. First how RedHat "abandoned the community" when they EOL'ed RedHat Linux, and how crying betrayal because what amounts to the 1.0 release of a new distribution has a few bugs? Take a breath, folks!
Fedora represents a shift to a new development model which is more community centric; of COURSE there are going to be problems with the 1.0 release. Is that a reason to bag the whole thing and declare it dead? Please!
I'm running Fedora 1.0 on a couple of machines. While there are a couple of quirks, I'd say that overall it's a fine distribution, and an improvement from RH 9.0. I'm certainly going to give it more than a week before I condemn the whole project! Meantime I'm going to reflect on the fact, that people seem to like to forget, that the whole OSS community owes a debt of gratitude to RedHat. RedHat has consistently failed to live up to conspiracy theories about "betraying the community".
See, Fedora is pimped out with all the latest stuff... but underneath the covers the system is cheap and sleazy.
I tried updating my RH9 with Fedora, and it totally trashed Mozilla. I go type in something in the URL... and Mozilla vanished!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Here are some sites with screenshots of Fedora:
t ml
http://www.dark-hill.co.uk/fedora/
http://anyweb.kicks-ass.net/linux/fedora/index1.h
Keep your eyes to the sky.
I've got Fedora Core 1 running at home, and soon will be upgrading the RH9 machine at work. Java and Eclipse seem to work fine (which is the major requirement for me). Fedora appears to me to be exactly what I would have expected from a "Red Hat 10" distribution.
/etc/hosts file, and as a result all my GConf stuff (I think) got corrupted to the point that Gnome couldn't start without displaying a few error messages every time. I added the entry manually, and would up having to delete all the gnome/gconf config data in my user account to make Gnome happy again. This issue ought to be easily enough resolved, and I'll be reporting it as a bug.
Now for my three issues:
#1. GTK/Gnome file selector *still* sucks. We all already knew that, and yes it's going to be fixed in the next GTK. But I wish RH had seen fit to do what the folks at Ximian did, and at least pretty up the existing one and make it somewhat usable. Those "Home" "Desktop" and "Documents" quick access buttons in the XD2 version make things much nicer.
#2. No menu editing. Again, it's a Gnome problem, and is due to be fixed in the next Gnome (2.6), I believe. Unfortunately I just read a mailing list posting indicating that they while they were fixing the menu architecture, they weren't all that concerned with providing editing capability. I'm not certain I understand what's going on here though, as I wish RH would just support the same menu-editing functionality found in Ximian Desktop 2. It's not great, but at least it's possible.
#3. Using the RedHat network configurator, I changed the hostname of the machine from localhost to something a little more personalized. It failed to add the new hostname to the
Other than that though, it's very nice. As far as I can tell, it's an all around improvement over RH9. I can't wait till these last few rough edges get smoothed out.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Actually no, Mandrake does not follow the standards for things like the filesystem. Mandrake rpms will not usually install properly on redhat and redhat on mandrake... some 3rd party rpms will but not all.
You'll have alot more trouble finding an apt repository for Mandrake as well. If you actually read through the book that comes with it and attempt to follow along step by step you'll soon find many things don't work as described, everything from packages that aren't in the default install to commandline switches/flags that are incorrect or don't exist. 90% of the howto documentation out there that applies to redhat stuff (which is a VERY significant portion of all documentation onthe web that is not maintained at the offical sources) DOES NOT apply as is in such a manner it can be followed by someone who does not already know the material or know which outside sources to go to for the correct info.
Lots of things won't work out of the box, the hardware detection is HORRIBLE, the installer is primative. Oh yeah, and the control applets are user friendly, but only because they offer so few options that 90% of users will never be able to get what they want working correctly.
Other than that, Mandrake kicks ass! Seriously RH9 was thrice the beginner distro that Mandrake ever was!
I count this more of a troll than what it's replying to.
Strike 1: Pre-compiled binaries. Two words which mean nothing to the average windows user.
Strike 2: Well. Good thing you finally told me. Here I've been running Linux on my desktop for years, thinking it worked. Silly me. etc. An asshole atittude instead of trying to offer the least bit help. Most people who've seeked assistance on an IRC channel is used to this.
Strike 3: Last time I checked, Windows didn't come with a compiler...M/i> For average Windows functioning, no compiler is needed. However for many basic operations in *nix, one is needed. Many programs are not distributed in binary, including drivers which are often required before the OS can even go online. Without a compiler being provided by the distro, the situation becomes irritating.
Strike 4: Doofus Insulting the potential *nix user. That's right, wonder for years about why no one switches, then when someone tries, insult them.
People, try to remember that the alternative environment is so mindblowing that problems which appear easy to you are brick walls to others.
.. I must respond ........ :)
.. and you want to try out WinXP on your computer.. There is no LiveEval version .. so you have to backup everything in your previous setup, install a copy of the new OS, sit through atleast an hour long OS install (if not longer) + download and find all of the apps to finish out the install (easily another hour if you have done it before) just to try it out..
So lemme get this straight.. you grab a SuSE LiveEval CD and are able to boot up, use it, play a game, toy around with the interface and decide within two hours that Linux is not right for you and are able to boot back to your previous OS without any distruption.
I am surprised that Windows people don't find this simply amazing. Seriously. Lets say you were running umm.. Win98 or W2k
Don't like it? Hehehe.. good luck getting back to your previous system.
In anycase, there are a lot of people that try out Linux and do not really seem to have a REASON to switch over. As a result (as in your case) there was absolutely NO effort to try and find out what differences there are between the two systems. You expected to boot into Linux and have essentially a Windows knock-off.
Needless to say, it takes much more than 2 hours to really understand a new system and start to really appreciate its unique features (and yes, a KDE based FOSS OS/distro has a LOT of great features) but for most people, there is a lack of acknowledgement on how long it truly took them to master their current OS due to the simple fact that MOST started out on some Windows variant and gathered knowledge over a long period of time.
A small disclaimer: I haven't yet upgraded by RH9 boxes to FC1, so I might end up reaching the same conclusion, but I can already see a bunch of red flags in that "review".
The box I'm typing on now began its life running Red Hat 4.2. It's been upgraded countless number of times, and it's now on Red Hat 9. And it's rock-stable solid. And the reason that it's stable, and functional, is precisely because what I've been doing, for the last six years, was the exact opposite of what this "review"er did.
Notice that she began having problems when she tried to hack together an upgrade to some application. Lesson number one when running Red Hat: do not install any software yourself. Always use rpm, which checks in, keeps track of, and maintains, all the inter-library and inter-application dependencies. Once you begin flinging random libraries and applications into the system, some of which may or may not overwrite existing libraries or files, you're well on your merry way to Linux's equivalent of Windows DLL hell, when you've got ten versions of the same basic library installed in fifteen different directories, and you now have absolutely no clue whatsoever what you end up running when you start a given application. Which randomly crashes, I wonder why?
By the way, the same also applies to other Linux distros too, I'm sure. They all use some kind of a package management system, be it rpm or apt. The same principle applies in either case.
My box is very solid even though I have plenty of custom software installed which I've compiled and built myself. But the key difference is that all the software was installed by rpm. Rach time I upgraded to a new distribution release, the installer correctly detected that I have an application that has a dependency on an older version of the library. The installer then proceeds to load a compatibility library, in addition to the new, incompatible version of the library. After upgrading, I then recompile all my custom software and install the new RPMs, whenever I have some free time. Everything still works in the meantime, because all the dependencies are correctly satisfied.
Eventually, I get around to cleaning out my box, seeing which compatibility libraries can be removed. When I try to remove them, inevitable RPM complains because I forgot to recompile some application that still depends on the old library. After doing that, and when nothing no longer needs it, it gets removed by rpm without a peep.
I also see that the reviewer grabbed some random third-party RPM from some dark alley (strike 1). Unsurprisingly, rpm refused to install it due to missing dependencies (strike 2). The reviewer tried to fix the situation by, once again, grabbing a bunch of third party libraries, and installing them manually (strike 3). End result: a big, recursive mess (strike 4).
I wonder why?
Sheesh, what exactly are the qualification to be an "OS reviewer", these days???
It's good that they are putting all their resources into the enterprise segment, specializing in servers mainly. This is where Linux needs to be. Spreading Linux (meaning resources, the people working with it) too thin at this point, between servers and desktops, is the wrong choice currently. We are in a battle with Microsoft mainly. Microsoft is the undisputed king of desktops. We need to keep making Linux the choice for server and back-office type applications as this is it's strongest position right now and the one place it really can compete with Microsoft.
Microsoft has, in essence, infinite money to put into anything it wants. It currently wants the server market, badly. If they can control this then they will can make communications propriety and fulfill their dreams of world domination, thus have a total monopoly over the desktop and server as they can make them integrate seamlessly and become the sole designer of all applications that require the server-client model and beyond.
Linux currently has a fabulous market share within servers and the fight must continue to make these numbers higher. Spending all the time and resources on desktop issues, such as ease of use just is not the fight to be in right now. It's a fight that really, at the moment or any time soon, cannot be won. The fight for servers can be won.
The developers and contributers to Linux and Linux applications should be doing everything we can to make Linux the de-facto standard on the server. It would be foolish to not recognize our great fortune with our position in the server market. This is why I think Redhat is not only making a wise business move, but also one that will help Linux in general.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
So I've learned to take anything that OSNews writes with a grain of salt, their articles aren't exactly up to any sort of journalistic integrity standards. So that probably biased me from the start.
I've been running Fedora Core 1 on my Thinkpad A31 laptop since last Thursday and I'm quite pleased. There were some hiccups because the upgrade from RH9 crashed hard, mainly because I had two many external RPMS installed (had previously upgraded to gnome 2.4 on RH9). So, after moving some data, I did a fresh install and it appears to work just fine.
Some of the great highlights of the distro:
Sleep on the Thinkpads work. I don't have to do the funky virtual terminal dance after my monitor goes off.
Speedstep stuff is part of the distro. This is also nice to not see my battery get sucked to nothing when I unplug it.
The wireless support is improved. Redhat-config-network works quite well for switching profiles between home and school.
Although it doesn't ship with stuff like MPlayer and a good MP3 player, rpm.livna.org has YUM and APT repositories to fix this no problem.
The revisions to blue curve are quite nice, it gives it a nicer look that isn't so sterile.
Supposed the NPTL backport improves Java app performance. Ecplise seems zippier, but it could be delusion. Actually, most everything seems a bit zippier, probably because the OS is no longer compiled for 386s.
Flash installed without a problem, no idea what Eugenia is complaining about.
Java works just fine in the browser too. Maybe she didn't read any of the documentation that came with her Whizbang GeneroBrowser 0.1rc2 or whatever she uses.
The issue is that Fedora isn't meant to be bleeding edge and she is thinking that it is. If you want bleeding edge use Gentoo. Personally I can deal with a nice middle ground between Debian and Gentoo and Fedora fits that nicely.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
I dont know what that guy was smoking but please let me have some.
My laptop has been a PITA with Mandrake 9 and 9.1 SuSE 8.2 and Redhat 8x and 9..
Install Fedora
ACPI works
Mouse works and it's shutoff button above it.
Broadcom 54G wireless works with Linuxant's driver
I couldnt be happier with this setup.
Now my only concern is one email on the list about patches for security will not be high priority and if you want quick patches to purchase RH WS or ES..
We'll I'm not using it for work just personal. And frankly redhat should still provide fedora patches especially security ones ASAP. Otherwise it will give MS more fuel for their security FUD.
now to order a pizza from the couch via my linux laptop!
...whatever supposed usability problems Fedora has, there's some great new technology behind it.
For example: they've got a new and shiny version of the glibc & NPTL. This threading support is worlds better than anything I've seen in other distributions or most other operating systems. I wrote a small test for C++-safe thread cancellation support. It failed on pretty much every system I tried. Only Fedora Core 1 and Tru64 passed. This is a behavior more hinted at than mandated by the pthread standard at this point, but realistically, no one would ever use thread cancellation in a C++ program if it didn't work the way it does in Fedora.
There are lots of architectural improvements like that always thrown into a new RedHat release, and I think Fedora will be no different. It leads to their problems with x.0 releases, but I think it's worth it.
In my mind, Fedora Core 1 is RedHat 10 - the name + the community. It even upgraded from my RedHat 9 installation. That's a dead give-away.
Where are you getting this crap from.
Fedora's leadership page clearly lists redhat employees as technical lead, and taking up all the positions on the technical committee. Just because the slashtrolls say redhat's ditched it doesn't mean it's true.
Cheers Koz
I, for one, wouldn't consider someone with a problem to be lying or an asshole. I've had plenty of problems with linux, and have clawed my way up the learning curve slowly but surely, and I still don't consider myself to have everything `working'.
But all things considered, I'm happy with my current setup. I don't use XP for anything except to boot up if I need to call my ISP for support (they don't know how to help you if you're using linux). But that's just me.
(Warning: Gentoo plug)To be honest, I didn't have a distro that really did 90% of what I wanted until I tried Gentoo. It's a little arcane to begin with, but their documentation *rocks* and I think I learned more in the three days it took me to set up my system :) than I had in the five or six months I had messed around with redhat.
I don't know, I guess I'm just saying that trolls or zealots with screwed up attitudes shouldn't prevent you from switching to linux. Someone switches to linux (I'm thinking desktop) when they can make it do what they want it to, and not before.... IMHO.
philcrissman.com.
I find that FC1 is not yet ready for the masses, but I arrive at that conclusion from a different angle than Eugenia Loli-Queru's--I'm using nothing on the system but what was supplied to me on the FC1 discs. I have no interest in doing things I can't do with non-free software (and a lot of things I can do with free software don't interest me either). I don't care about Flash or Java, and I'd rather play Ogg Vorbis files/webcasts than MP3s. I'm testing this on a 840.015MHz Pentium III (according to /proc/cpuinfo) with 768MB RAM.
Unfortunately, FC1 is still not something I can fully recommend to my friends who aren't so technical. I don't think it was a good idea to release the OS with the Add/Remove Software panel program not working and the RPM database being flaky. I keep bumping into problems with these two aspects of the system when I try to fix something in a way that can be easily removed or upgraded via RPM.
Some things I wished were a part of the default install for a workstation user include an OCR program (GOCR, for instance). I think OCR support is important and I'm not wedded to any particular OCR program, but GOCR (or JOCR) seems to be compatibly licensed and offer easy-to-use CLI access. With more users and more programmers, GOCR will become a better program for OCRing. The Add/Remove Software panel problem and the RPM database problem Loli-Queru mentioned make installing additional packages more difficult than they should be.
Other parts of FC1 I find mildly annoying, but not showstoppers: the up2date registration screen seems pointless to me now that it appears you don't need to register to get FC1 updates from the default location. I'm not sure why I was asked to supply an extant RHN ID or create a new one. To the uninitiated user, this could come off as peculiar to the point of wondering if their system is legitimate (at least until they see that updates are available to them). Focusing unfocused windows by clicking on their titlebar seems to make the window stick the mouse (and the cursor turn to the plus pointer). This was unexpected and not pleasant; because of this behavior I inadvertantly move windows a lot.
Unlike Loli-Queru, I would not have expected other packages to work seamlessly with FC1 out of the box (as Loli-Queru expected Flash to work). I figure those packages will come along as more people use the system.
One thing that could make bug reporting easier is if there were simpler categories in which to report errors. Novices are unlikely to know that something odd on the display (like the visual noise I get when moving windows around) is an XFree86 issue as opposed to a Linux kernal issue or a GNOME issue. To get helpful commentary from users, I think it would help to not have to know all the layers of a typical GNU/Linux installation. But this means more people crawling through bug databases reassigning bugs to the proper place. I'm not sure how to best handle the problem, but I think making bug database entry simpler and easier to do ad hoc is a step in the right direction.
Overall, it's an interesting system and I plan to give FC some more tries before I decide to go with another distribution. I'll continue to use RH9 or Debian as my day-to-day GNU/Linux distribution until FC3 or FC4 is out.
Happy hacking.
Digital Citizen
On the subject of filesystem "standards": Mandrake has always followed the RedHat "lump-everything-under-/usr" "standard" :).
On the RPM issue, I meant third-party, NOT system RPMs. RedHat's system rpms don't really work because it seems Mandrake has gone to a much saner Debian-style naming system for their packages, which basically makes urpmi (an apt equivalent) work better. Besides that, they are different distributions: you can't really expect many system-level rpms to be interchangeable. Any third party RPMs I've tried for Mandrake work (this includes things like Mozilla binaries, Sun's Java, codeweavers wine (long ago), and some other things I can't recall). I'm sure there are third-party rpms out there that don't work, too; but I haven't found any that don't also have source packages.
You say I'd have a lot more trouble finding an apt repository? That doesn't really matter; Mandrake comes with urpmi and their own large repository; which works just as well (or better; it's officially supported!). There are also other URPMI sources for Mandrake that provide anything else you'd probably want, this site will help you configure them easily, and pclinuxonline.com has a list of around 6 of them. No need to use apt, it's got urpmi!
As for docs, I haven't used them extensively but what I have had to use seemed up-to-date (though honestly I can't really make an informed opinion about this). I have always found the configuration panel to present a useful amount of options; it would be overkill to go much further than they did (and in some cases I think it could be simplified).
As for hardware detection, what exactly didn't it detect for you? (This is an honest question). Anyone I have heard talk about it says it has great detection, and indeed it worked perfectly on both my desktop and laptop.
I have used RedHat on and off between Mandrake (RedHat used to be my distro of choice). RedHat always seemed to be a little behind in terms of its software selection and user-friendliness (which was why I switched in the end). What was the latest version of Mandrake you have tried?
As a final PS: You seem to be getting pretty worked up over this. Did Mandrake do something to you? Relax, really; it's just a distribution :)
I downloaded the Fedora ISOs two days ago; I though "well, my company is evaluating buying RedHat ES for their servers and maybe I can still use Fedora on my personal computer or my laptop, so I can see what is comming" so I gave it a shot.
;)
Here is what I found:
First the good things:
- The installer is much better and gives you the option to upgrade from RedHat 9 to fedora.
- The Video configuration is much more responsive. It got some problems with my NVidia drivers, but it managed to start again without much effort (though the acelerated drivers were deactivaded).
- The OS is much responsive. The Java apps ran faster and i was able to run more things at the same time using the same equipment (Its an old 800Mhz 512MB of ram Dell desktop machine).
Now the bad things:
- I had to reinstall the OS without upgrading; Upgrading broke my printer support (though it got fixed after the reinstall). Also my old GNOME desktop configuration broke. If you can, install from scratch (I have my home directory on a different partition so it wasn't that bad).
- GCVS doesn't work with Fedora. There is a nasty compilation error that prevents it from compile.
- Mozilla is pretty unstable. It crashed today at least four times.
- Firewall builder has some compilation problems.
Luckily I'm the type of user that doesn't need the RedHat support for trivial problems, so their support is not appealing to me (I can survive buyin the WS edition for $179). But now with RedHat saying that they will not support RedHat on the desktop (use Microsoft Windows they say) makes me wonder how good will be WS for application development without an appropiate desktop support (how good or bad the GUI support like GNOME or KDE will be there?).
I'm used to browse the web, chat and read email from Linux; At my work I don't use Windows at all (got OpenOffice, evolution, Jedit and Vi to do all the stuff I require). It is sad to install a Windows license to later log on your Linux server to do development or to administer it.
Don't get me wrong here; I've been a supporter of RedHat in the past (bought their CDs, become a RedHat Certified Engineer), but what incentive I have to report bugs / contribute code / support a 'beta' distribution like Fedora if I'm not going to receive security updates (they state that kind of support is not guaranteed and if the broken app doesn't get a patch then it is removed from the distro).
RedHat needs to come with more information about WS on the desktop, a better support structure for Fedora (security patches, quality control) or their user base will probably move to another distro (why support two flavors of Linux, lets say RedHat and Suse / Debian when they offer support for the desktop and the server).
I wish Mac OS X boxes were cheaper, probably that's an option to consider
Jose Vicente Nunez Zuleta RHCE, SJCD, SJCP
Goddamn that is a smooth troll! But what the hell, I'll reply anyway...
Considering the manpower that Red Hat has devoted to Fedora (Which has gone UP vs. RHL), and the fact that they're trying to get "the community" involved more, this could actually be a good thing for Red Hat users.
They're not abandoning the enthusiast market, they've just spun it off into a not-for-profit so they can write off what isn't making them money. Think of it as RedHat Edge.
... And so it comes to this.
I don't think this is quite true... the "enterprise" includes desktops.
As a "enterprise" user I can say that RedHat isn't targeting us. A few weeks ago, looking forward, I would have liked to tell our IT guys that we could migrate off our dog slow HP and Sun boxes to new faster commodity hardware running RH. They might have bought into it for the $50/year or so that the personal "non-enterprise" RH editions cost, but not anymore. RH doesn't have personal editions anymore, it has "enterprise" with a bunch of server crap that we don't need or want (no we don't need 500 workstations each running an apache server, we just need a base workstation OS).
Sure RH has a workstation enterprise edition, but on the new 64-bit AMD hardware it rings in at $792/box!! Check it out
Sorry but at $792/box we are not even going to touch it. At $50/box/year mabye, over that - forget it. Not only that I wouldn't want to touch RH given the rate they EOL their OSes. Heck, I thought I was relatively ok with the 7.2 box I was testing stuff on. Like a blur here comes RH8 (which was a radical change), then RH9, then whoops EOL, sorry you missed it...
I'd recommend gentoo if you've been using RedHat on a basic level for a while (like I was) and you want to take this opportunity to challenge yourself a bit and learn more about how to really start configuring Linux.
They're new -and looking to add mirrors.
They seem to be focused on testing and integration - with caveats and solutions for problem dependancies.
You're running Debian stable, because you prefer the stable Debian tree. It runs great, there is just one problem: the software is a little bit outdated compared to other distributions. That's where backports come in. Backports are recompiled packages from testing and unstable, so they will run without new libraries (wherever it's possible) on a stable Debian distribution.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."