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

Very Cool

[XeRXeS-TCN]

That is the best way to do things imo. 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. Instead, work through your problems, and let people know that there are ways around the issues that you encountered. Every system has problems, but it is reassuring to people to know that many/most/all can be fixed, and that there are resources available to help.

Kudos to Ken Barber for writing this follow-up.

Re:Very Cool

[mccalli]

Instead, work through your problems, and let people know that there are ways around the issues that you encountered.

Most particularly, make sure you let the maintainers of the relevant package know your problems and also the solution if you found one. That way, the next iteration of the system might well have these problems sorted.

I've been taking that approach in a number of projects I submit feedback to, not all of them open source, and it seems to work well.

Cheers,
Ian

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:Very Cool

[the_crowbar]

Do you honestly expect Joe Sixpack to install Linux? I think the problem is not that we need to make Linux installable by Joe Sixpack, but rather that we need to get OEMs to install and configure Linux.

Have you ever met a "normal" user who could install Windows? Most installs of Windows are done by OEMs or from a specially tailored OEM install disc. If users had a special install of Linux that included support for all of their OEM hardware do you think they could install it?

I think a more widespread adoption of Linux will start with business. You will have IT depts that start using it and eventually replacing Windows with it. Once the more technically inclined start to use it at work they try it at home. There will be problems, but who cares? As more people start to use Linux the answers to their questions will be posted to forums, discussion sites, usenet, whatever. The same way that Windows help has become so common.

One last question: Why is there an impression that Windows is easier to install/fix than Linux?

My opinion is that most users know how to speak "Microsoft". i.e. They know how to formulate questions that are worded in the common language used to describe the Windows environment. Back when I worked on a HelpDesk and fixed 100% Windows machines I was able to quickly locate answers to my technical questions. Forward 6 years to today: I still occassionally fix Windows PCs, but the majority of my work is on Linux. I can fix problems in Linux because I know how to speak the "Linux" language. I can do a Google search and get productive results because I know how to search for Linux specific answers.(I know Google has a Linux Specific search, but s/Linux/MacOS X/ and the point still stands)

In conclusion, I don't think we need to make Linux so easy to install that Joe Sixpack can do it (he can already _use_ Linux), I think we need business to start adopting it. The masses will follow.

Cheers,
the_crowbar

Getting it to work?

[blanks]

"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"

Am I the only person who dosen't want to "get them working" and just want them to work out of the box?

Re:Getting it to work?

[thenextpresident]

Yeah, but it's not as easy as you think. Heck, even Microsoft can't do this with Windows. About the only company that does this is Apple.

Re:Getting it to work?

[FlyGirl]

About the only company that does this is Apple

Yeah, but to be fair, it's comparitivly easy to get software to work out of the box when you pretty much control all the hardware as well.

Not to say that that isn't a valid business plan, just wanted to be sure we're not attacking the fedora people compared to the apple people for failing to succeed at what is clearly a more difficult job.

Relativity

[Daengbo]

I liked this part:

Getting FC2 to a state of usability in a home or office environment requires a great deal more labor than I believe should be required. However, my complaints were put into perspective last week when I visited a classroom to start getting it ready for summer term. I walked in on a cursing, overworked desktop support tech who was griping loudly about the inordinate time it takes to install and patch Windows on a roomful of computers -- in an organization that will not pay for disk imaging software or an in-house Windows Update server. "You don't need Microsoft Office installed on these, I hope?" he asked through a fog of sweat and frustration. I acknowledged that I did not. Then he wanted to know if I needed HP printer drivers installed, with a cynical groan about how it would "only take a few more hours." I used to supervise people who support Windows on the desktop. I had forgotten how bad Windows really is. Suddenly my gripes about Fedora seemed petty

The problem being?

[lachlan76]

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? If you use Linux, you have to expect that you'll need to add programs, and change settings, just the same as windows.

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".

wow, quite a statement

[BigGerman]

" the best way to mitigate the myriad problems in GNOME 2.6 is to include KDE in your install"
Article with a built-in troll!

Re:wow, quite a statement

[ajs]

Indeed, but I'm starting to see the wisdom in this. Keeping KDE around is good for the user, but it's also good for Gnome. KDE came first, and from day one has always pushed Gnome to BE and to BE BETTER.

I like Gnome a lot, but I really hope KDE sticks around for the forseeable future.

Re:wow, quite a statement

[YankeeInExile]

I think it was a pretty low-level barb at the GNOME community from someone who prefers the "other" religion. And his quote, "I find myself far more productive in KDE than in GNOME these days." makes me think that he might actually move back and forth between the two camps based on the current feature-to-wart ratio.

Neither GNOME nor KDE are perfect. You pick the featureset that coincides with your personal philosophy or needs or free help-desk fount.

For years, when Unix newbies asked me, "What should I run, *BSD, or Linux, or ... " I would always answer the same: "Find a nearby knowledgable friend, and run what s/he is running. The ability to get advice from someone who has done it is orders of magnitude more significant than the fine details of OS internals.

Re:wow, quite a statement

[HermanAB]

No, that is not a troll. If you want to have an easy to use Linux system, then with Fedora, you have to select the 'Install Everything' option. With Mandrake, you have to select all available desktop managers and games, network client and network server options.

The reason for that, is that you then get all the libraries on your machine, making future installs much easier.

It is also important that you plug everything you got into the machine before you begin. If you want USB support, then you have to plug some USB device in before you start the installation.

All of that is pretty obvious to old hands...

Re:wow, quite a statement

[pyros]

Wow, you're totally wrong. All three available systems (system-config-packages, yum, and apt) resolve dependencies, so installing 'Everything' just to make sure you have all the libs you might need is complete overkill and a waste of space. If you can't convince yourself, then you could just manually select every lib, and leave out all the stuff you don't need on a home desktop (like all the rwho, rdate, rdist, rsh, rlogin, ypbind, NFS server, etc). If you don't have any Qt/KDE libs installed, and use any of the three mentioned installation systems, you could just, for example, run `apt-get install quanta` and it will install all the Qt/KDE libs for you.

Regarding the "plug everything in first" command, I haven't seen that hold true in a while. I haven't had anything connected to the USB bus on my laptops the last few times I've installed RH/FC, and plugging in a USB mouse later on always works (in fact I can hotplug it and have both the external mouse and the touchpad working simultaneously, with full wheel support and everything). Plugging in a PCMCIA WiFi NIC always seems to cause boot problems after the install because it tries to bring it up but it can't because the PCMCIA stuff hasn't been loaded yet. What difference do you think it would make anyway? The installer uses Kudzu for hardware detection, which is what is used every time the computer boots (unless you manually disable the service, in which case it's your own fault that hardware detection doesn't work after install).

GNOME / KDE flamewar

[scarolan]

Not to start a Gnome / KDE flamewar here but we have twelve users on linux workstations and they all do just fine in the custom Gnome environment provided with FC2. They all came from using Windows and there was not a steep learning curve at all. I personally find the nautilus spacial browsing really annoying though, and even moreso that the only way to turn it off is to dig way down in the gconf editor.

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?

quote of the article

[next1]

And with all of the work, it's still a lot less annoying than keeping a Windows system running

classic.

neat

[falkryn]

Nifty timing, since I just finished installing Core 2 on my box a few minutes ago. Not much in the article that informed me as such though.

I seem to notice an emerging pattern with Fedora releases though. RCs, avoid them all, they won't work properly, unless you really do want to do bug testing (not a bad thing). Final releases, avoid them too, at least for about a month or so. Let the updates filter in, and then you should be good. Plus, that gives a good amount of time for the 3rd party apt/yum repositories to starting filling up, which they seem to be doing rather nicely lately (though of course not on a par with debian, but good none the less).

Fedora 2 - Slow DNS problem

[fforw]

After installing Fedora Core 2 I had the problem that DNS queries out of Mozilla e.g. were rather slow (several seconds) while

nslookup www.google.de

seemed to work okay.

the solution to this problem was that FC2 enables IPv6 by default which led to the noticable delay. After adding:

alias net-pf-10 off

to /etc/modprobe.conf to switch off IPv6 everything was fine.

Re:Fedora 2 - Slow DNS problem

[molarmass192]

FYI SuSE 9.1 users, ipv6 is also enabled by default. Follow the parent poster's recs if you want to disable it.

KDE advocacy

[Alioth]

I note how he says 'switch to KDE'. Since RedHat 8's 'Bluecurve', I've always preferred KDE - the 'Bluecurve' theme seemed to work really well with it (and at the time, KDE had some vital features that Gnome didn't - for example, it gave you feedback when an application was launching: I tried my Dad with the default RH 8.0 Gnome install and he'd double-click large apps a dozen times and get many instances because Gnome didn't have the little application loading feedback that KDE has).

I don't know whether Gnome still lacks this UI feedback, but if it does I'm not surprised that little touches like that made the article writer use KDE instead. And of course, Konqueror is an excellent browser.

Desktop readyness?

[IamTheRealMike]

More like, how to get FC2 to the state this particular individual prefers it. Certainly some of the stuff in there is little more than personal taste and is definitely not a reflection on Fedora or Gnome.

I quite like spatial mode, for instance. I actually use graphical file managers now. Before with non-spatial Nautilus and Konqueror, I thought they were cute but never actually used them. The command line was far faster.

review? what review?

[doktorstop]

First and foremost, I am totally in favour of review, comparisons or anything that gives an insight into the different distros, compares them of just plain discusses them. With this said, does any half-page with a couple of screenshots deserves to be called a "review" and being widely advertized on Slashdot? Dont's think so. The author took the time to install FC" (great!), had a couple of problems (dont we all), did not even test anything else than Gnome and made this into an article? Now give me a break! Mentionning NVidia drivers was nice... a couple of allegetly missing programs - great! And ... that is all? I teach 7,8 and 9 grade students... any of them could write something like that, and to be fair, they wouldnt get more than "good" for this. For an article in LinuxMagasine.. this is a disgrace. "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.." (from Slashdot)... where are the explanations? Ask ten "Joe SixPacks" to install FC2 and run it for half-a-day.. you will get a noce combination of non professional users opinions... summarise the discussion going on on FC2 newsgroups.. you will get a long list of problems, complains and solutions.. but, for God's sake, don't just post a page of non-interesting, plain stupid "experiences" and call this a review! "

is it really for newbies?

[zogger]

I more think of fedora as a distro more for advanced or intermediate hobbyists than for newbies. It's close to being ready out of the box for joe everybody, but not quite there yet, and even then, if they follow their roadmap, will always have testing/unstable aspects to it, done on purpose. It's for people who don't mind and want to be beta testers, people in the linux enthusiast community. It's supposed to be one step ahead of the official redhat "stable" version, and even the redhat stable version is just now being touted officially as suitable for a corporate desktop with professional IT admins on staff, not for the home user, not yet anyway. I use fedora, and I know I'll have to tweak some stuff when I get it and install it. It's still pretty dang good though, I haven't run into any show stoppers yet with it,any that really concern me anyway, and I'd consider myself only barely above newbie status, especially on the command line and being able to diagnose and repair/modify things. Media playback for all the formats gives me the most grief. Fixing the MP3 "problem" was easy, geting other propietary media formats to work cleanly is another issue entirely. I don't have a lot of USB or wireless, etc, so I can't comment there.

Re:Unimpressed by Fedora 2

[Pros_n_Cons]

You do know there was a fix for that parted bug right? not only can you avoid it entirely on install but you can also recover the data if you already borked the tables. type 'windows fedora recover parted' (without quotes) in google. The first hit tells you how, Thats what I did a few months ago and it worked fine.

acrobat

[Pros_n_Cons]

I haven't seen anyone mention this and I read all the modded up comments but this part of the article:

"For some reason, Adobe's official Acrobat Reader binaries have never worked in any version of Fedora, at least not for me or my students."

Has a fix, DaG's repository has acroread on it. He said he configured yum sources though he must have missed dag which for me has some of the best goodies. uncomment :
[dag]
name=Dag APT Repository
baseurl=http://dag.freshrpms.net/redhat/fc$release ver/en/$basearch/dag
http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/freshrpms/pub/dag/redhat/ fc$releasever/en/$basearch/dag

Then type 'yum install acroread'

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.