Fedora Core 2: Making it Work

Joe Barr writes "Linux.com is running a followup article by Ken Barber to his initial review of Fedora 2. This time he explains how to tame the GNOME and Fedora 2 problems he noted the first time around and get them both in working shape.."

Comments

awesome timing

[BitchAss]

I literally *just* finished installing FC2 on my lappy. I'm running 'apt-get dist-upgrade' right now :)

I'm pretty happy for the most part - it's more responsive than FC1 - the menus are very snappy. I'm having a weird problem - none of my mail clients will check an IMAP account - weird, non?

Unimpressed by Fedora 2

[suso]

I was rather unimpressed with Fedora and felt justified in my switch to Gentoo when encountering this horrible bug with fedora and parted upon installing it on my wife's machine. The first time I've ever had Linux futz up a Windows installation. How could they be so careless.

Installing FC2

[Zorilla]

One day, I was drooling over the screenshots of Bluecurve from Fedora Core 2 and finally decided to install it. After using Mandrake 10.0 (and currently SuSE 9.1), it seems I still can't get used to the extremely fragmented set of config tools that come with GNOME and the system.

I swear, there's three different menus synonymous with "preferences". Not that you could reorganize the menu to make more sense to you, it won't let you change it. I hope the system-config tools adopt a layout such as YaST and hope GNOME gets their act together and come up with some kind of control center application to replace the fifty bajillion different small config tools.

It's nice to see that the NVIDIA drivers are 4kstacks compatible. When I installed FC2, I had to use some custom kernel RPM from Joe Blow that used 8k stacks. ...I couldn't adjust tone controls on my emu10k1 sound card...

I think the straw that broke the camel's back in making me get rid of FC2 was that it powered both my hard drives off when doing a warm reboot, which basically means the disks spin down, the computer restarts and the disks spin right back up again. I couldn't find a single entry on a Google search on the topic. I even mucked through the rc scripts myself.

At least it looked good....

MP3 support

[Mr_Silver]

I understand the reasons they do it, I respect the reasons they do it -- but in all honesty, I think it's a pretty silly idea to make users jump through hoops so they can listen to their MP3's.

We complain about Microsoft bundling stuff within Windows -- but it's got to the point where a user expects a certain number of applications to come with the Operating System and I would consider MP3 support to be one of them.

Sure, I know it's a no-brainer to install it afterwards but if Fedora's goal is to encourage mass market adoption, then they should consider that an individuals first impression counts - even more so when something they take for granted isn't there from the beginning.

Re:The problem being?

[moorg]

So....If I understand the article right, to make Fedora Core 2 good, you need to install packages, change some gettings for gnome, and adjust the sound properties?

As long you don't quit on the spatial mode Nautilus as quickly as the author you don't need to make any changes.

Personally, I always rearrange the GNOME panels from the default Red Hat/Fedora layout to the default GNOME layout (Applications, System menu on the top panel). But that's my preference, and certainly not something I should shake a stick at the Red Hat/Fedora guys.

Perhaps the author would enjoy reading The Spatial Way then debate the merits rather than pull a "my desktop doesn't look they way it used it, it must be broke".

system bell problems

[pomakis]

I upgraded to Fedora Core 2 just yesterday (from Core 1), and encountered and resolved some of the known problems (such as IPV6 being enabled by default, etc.). However, there's another problem that I haven't managed to resolve yet. My system bell no longer works. If anybody else has encountered this and knows the solution, please let me know! I'd appreciate it very much. FYI, I'm using fvwm as a window manager, so KDE-specific solutions such as "Control Panel --> Sounds --> ..." are useless to me.

(Oh, and "xset q" shows "bell percent: 50 bell pitch: 400 bell duration: 100", so that's not the problem)

Re:Very Cool

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Don't just complain about the problems that you encounter, like it's some sort of major flaw in the system, which discourages people from adopting it.

But if the "default" install is messed up to the point where someone's going to have to boot back to Windows to get to the Internet to dig through numerous Google searches to just have to boot back to FC to start working on basic issues, isn't the adoption of "Linux" already blown? If the people that work on Fedora are "expecting" Joe Sixpack to use it, but the person can't even play an mp3 without "yum xmms-mp3" (not that that is hard, but how would Joe Sixpack even know how to do that without booting back to Windows and running a bunch of searches)?

I propose your logic is 100% backwards. Yes, it's REALLY DAMN NICE that the info is "out there", but should someone have to resort to digging through all that just to get their machine simply working when 90 bucks at the local Target later, they have a operational XP system? (assuming that they had a blank machine, of course, which they most likley did not)

Re:Getting it to work?

[Anonymous Coward]

That used to be MS argument about Windows flaws. "We don't control the hardware". Well, how about Pocket PC? MS controls the hardware spec and their software still sucks!

My experience with FC2

[DigitumDei]

Well having just installed FC2 myself and being a complete and utter n00b at linux, I have to say that as far as desktop readyness goes I was most impressed with FC2. The install wen't pretty much without a hitch, everything worked for my desktop purposes, and unlike any windows install, by the time the install was finished I had a full office suite. Incidentally I always have problems connecting my XP machines to the network properly (none huge, but enough that they don't connect first time), yet the linux box was connected and talking to the internet without me even setting anything up!

Now if I had been installing a machine for a secretary or office worker, I would have been essentially finished within 2 hours. Unfortunately this was to be my movie/music player, attached to my tv. Two weeks later I finally managed to watch a dvd without a glitch.

For a standard desktop install: FC2 - 1 XP - 0
For a multimedia box: FC2 - 0 XP - 1

Disclaimer, these are my experiences and obviously a different person with different hardware would most likely have a different outcome.

Better solution

[tedgyz]

Just boot into run level 3 (command line only).

No more whining about which desktop is best.

Now you can whine about which shell is best.

Personally, I was overwhelmingly thrilled with FC2. I was especially thrilled when I learned up2date was working, and free! I am a happy RH7.2 user looking for an upgrade path. I have found it in FC2.

Fedora closer to Debian than the old Red Hat

[bangular]

I think a lot of people are under the impression "Yeah, Fedora is just Red Hat under a new name". Fedora is a completely different beast all together. I wouldn't put Fedora in the same class as Mandrake or Suse. Fedora is muich more cutting edge/ development oriented. The type of crowd that actually should be using Fedora aren't going to have to boot back into Windows to read info about their problem. They will boot back into their other linux partition, mount the Fedora partition, chroot to it, and fix the problem.

isn't the adoption of "Linux" already blown?

Fedora is wrongly reccomended to those that haven't already adopted linux completely. Everyone really should stop using Fedora and Red Hat synonimously because they aren't. If you want to adopt people to Linux, reccomend Suse or even Mandrake. Reccomending Fedora is like reccomending Debian to a newbie.

Re:Fedora 2 - Slow DNS problem

[ceswiedler]

It's not an IPv6 issue directly, but disabling IPv6 fixes it. It's an interaction between glibc and Firefox which results in a lot of reverse-lookups. Disabling IPv6 is a workaround which happens to get Firefox to revert to older behavior which avoids the problem. See this.

Linux distro integration

[mcrbids]

Before you laugh, hear me out...

I think there's a compelling marketplace in providing integration services with a major Linux distro.

For YEARS, Linux has had good and proper dependency checking and network-based installs. (EG: Apt-get, up2date, yum) But, when I go to install America's Army, I end up with this weird binary thingamajig installer that's 100% in-house, and unique to that package.

Thus, to get everything working properly, I spend another 2 hours hunting down weird error messages with google, before I can get it working right.

And then, when an upgrade happens, I get to do it all over again. (sigh)

But, what if something like the Dag repository were to come up with something that allows a commercial or 3rd party vendor to:

1) issue a certificate for an install of software to a user,

2) easily download/install the software via Yum,

3) handle dependencies so the install is always smooth and quick.

Here's how I picture this might work: (I'll use yum in examples, any of the network-based installers would be fine)

A) I set up yum with this commercial repository by copy/pasting a few lines into /etc/yum.conf.

B) I buy XYZ product for Linux. I can choose to download a binary installer, or I can simply download a certificate.

C) If I choose the certificate, then I would issue "yum install packagename".

D) Part of the install process would ask me for the certificate to verify that I do, indeed have rights to install the package on this particular machine.

I think there's a tremendous business model here! I know I would almost KILL to have some packages install this way, and having this kind of service would be a boon to Linux adoption and deployment.