Slashdot Mirror
Fedora Core 3: Worth The Upgrade?
Chris writes "With new features such as SELinux, GNOME 2.8, KDE 3.3, Evolution 2.0, Remote Desktop, Helix Player, and of course Firefox, it may be worth your while to make the switch. At OSDir our screenshot tour of Fedora Core 3 takes you through boot, installation, desktop, taskbar, menus, configuration, and the new features of this new release. Our Core 3 screenshot tours have taken you through Test 1, 2, 3, and now the final release. Check it out."
There's a lot more to an OS than the damn window manager!
Well, don't download the DVD in the first place. Download the three CDs with the .torrent file that's provided.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Can anyone confirm whether or not this version still has the bug which makes NTFS partitions unbootable without some serious recovery work? I nuked my system with FC2 and would not like to deal with the same issues again if I decide to try FC3.
Also, have they got IEE1394 working yet? It wasn't turned on by default in FC2, I know, because of some bugs..
So where's the 1 CD version?
Surely they can do what Microsoft can with their bloated Windows XP?
Damn multi-CD distros not using the fact we're *gasp* usually connected to the Internet and can download what we want.
Seriously, this is the first thing I check nowadays when evaluating software. If the documentation is bad you can wasted days, weeks, months trying to resolve problems - frankly I value my time too much. So can those in the know profer some opinions on the quality of the documentation?
----
Since when is Windows XP equivalent to Fedora?
Windows XP doesn't give you:Now, if you would like to add to the windows XP cd the 4 that come only with office, you'll get a lot more than that.
Also, there are 1 cd distros: see Knoppix, for example. Not every distribution has to be exactly the same and suited just for you.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Damn multi-CD distros not using the fact we're *gasp* usually connected to the Internet and can download what we want.
Not everyone has high-speed internet you know.
much faster and seamlessly than most remote X window logins
Unfortunately (i.e. for Windows) that's not all someone wants from remote sessions. What I want e.g. is to allow many users concurrently logged on and using the machine through different X sessions, happily and joyfuly, and without needing to pay for a bag of licenses for being able to accomplish all this.
I'm not surprised they want to call that feature by the same name
Just a name won't buy them fame. What already has brought that fame was the possibility to have graphical truly multiuser remote sessions long before MS started to think about adding network support.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I guess this works for some people, but as someone who works with most of his machines remotely, Fedora is a giant piece of poo.
The symlink/script mess that is SELinux is not fun to play with when you are trying to install third party packages. Sure, your GUI tool may be nice, but I guess I have better things to do than to wait for a X window to refresh between the west coast and chicago.
It's a disturbing linux trend and bothers me quite a bit - many systems contort rc.d beyond comprehension - good luck writing init scripts that properly load on boot without having to run an obscene number of shell scripts and touch a few config files. gentoo has a whole damn bourne shell "replacement" for running init scripts. It's disgusting. And it's guaranteed to be different on every linux distribution, and often between releases as well.
And it seems, that a great deal of the work being done today is to make linux more useful on the desktop - strangely, I feel like I'm being alienated on the server.
I think that debian and slackware are the only systems left that have any sanity in the linux world.
Well, as someone who uses ARD and RDP a lot, X as a network protocol is long in the tooth by today's standards. It's just barely above VNC as far as network usage is concerned, especially because it was meant to render Widget sets like Motif and Xt and now it's doing GTK and Enlightenment.
Besides, terminal server has been out for years, if that's what you need.
Even more reason not to let them download whole CDs but only the packages they need.
Linux is not Windows
Theres a feature which works remarkably well under Windows XP, much faster and seamlessly than most remote X window logins. I'm not surprised they want to call that feature by the same name. Strange considering that network transparency is supposed to be X's strongpoint.
Odd, I consider it just the reverse.
Using windows built-in tools, it appears to be impossible to share just one application window.
Almost every linux/unix install has ssh, which makes it trivial to remotely launch an application over a secure connection, and that application's window will be a native part of the desktop as far as window decoration goes[1]. Ssh also makes it rather trivial to tunnel an x application through many firewalls.
Ne'ermind that X is multiuser. RDP is limited to one. X, without any add on tools, seems a lot more capable of client/server setups, while under windows you need additional commercial software to do so.
RDP has some nice features -- bandwidth usage is a lot more efficient, while under X even the low bandwidth proxy is not as efficient. And some people find it easier to setup then X.
Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. For what I use it for, X seems to be more "polished".
That is my opinion.
Slightly OT: Reading how windows is so much better then linux in the usability department only leads to my disappointment down the road. I end up using the rare MS Windows machine, and I find a cut & paste problem, or something ends up near impossible to do, etc. I keep expecting the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I find that windows is just another OS, still flawed in its latest release.
[1] Cut & paste beyond plain text is still a problem though.
I understand your feelings about RPM.....if I ever leave Gentoo, I'll really miss Portage.
the program being run can do VNC or RDP. VNC is more 'universal' and is prefered but RDP is available. RDP linux clients usually have little configuration options for some reason while VNC is very good on linux IMHO
I upgrade over the weekend, and now I can't access anything on the secondary IDE controller without major problems - my load average when I woke up this morning was over 230. This hardware has been perfectly stable for 2 years.
hdc: dma timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
hdc: DMA timeout error
hdc: dma timeout error: status=0xd0 {Busy}
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
hdc: DMA disabled
ide1: reset: success
hdc: irq timeout: status-0x80 { Busy }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
ide: reset: success
ReiserFS: warning: is_tree_node: node level 19789 does not match to
the expected one 1
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Besides, terminal server has been out for years, if that's what you need.
:) Windows "developing" (as in evolution :) ) pretty pricey terminal services solutions in the last decade won't make me switch my ways of thinking about the capabilities of *nix/Linux network solutions.
No, it's not
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Couldn't have said it better myself. We Fedora Core (1,2,3) users that are happy never, or seldom, complain.
We all use our distro of choise and are quite happy with it. If you're not happy with distro X then change to Y or Z. Don't blame the distro-maker for a distro that don't fit YOUR individual needs.
Remember that this is our strenth, not weakness; the flora of choise!
Whenever someone says this about a distro, it is apparent to me that they have nice shiney happy friendly hardware. So many times I have taken a friend at face value when they've told me about the sweet time they're having with some new random distro (Ubuntu, most recently) and so I go off and spend an hour installing it... and then a weekend fucking around with rescue disks trying to recover some semblance of functionality out of my Laptop From Hell.
Try saying this instead: It worked for me, but your mileage may vary.
Cheers,
Richard
a complete set of development tools
They're available as a separate download - the vast majority of Windows users neither want nor need them.
--
But most Linux users do...
But they were buggy as hell. The ant that shipped with FC2 was very very quick compared to a normally compiled ant, but sadly fell over all over the shop ;(
jh
Some people like everything and the kitchen sink. Its nice to sit down at a computer and have *everything* you need to just be there so you can get right to work and not have to worry about *anything*. It all just works. Also just installing everything makes installing other 3rd party stuff (like small little utilities that noone has heard about) later that may not be in any yum repositories much easier because you most like have everything that it depends on. Regardless, if your running a server you can always do the FC3 server install and you can have a fully functional server with lots of nice goodies and the added security of SELinux in less space then a cd can hold (Probably much less in cases where you only need to do one thing like run a web server). I've run many many distros over the years, including FreeBSD, and Fedora Core 3 has gone above and beyond my expectations, it is truly impressive and the best I've seen. Plus its so damn fast and responsive, Red Hat has out done itself.
Regards,
Steve
What's wrong with it? I'll tell you what's wrong from my perspective.
I'm a geek. I like to tinker, but I still want a working computer where I can run an installation program, and everything is configured for me, ready to go. I don't want to have to manually grab all sorts of packages to make my machine usable.
My employer develops embedded software in Linux. My manager pays me to develop software, not install operating systems. We're a small company and don't have time to have somebody roll something out for the developers to use.
Since I'm the software developer most familiar with Linux, the questions come to me when something doesn't work. Because of this, I gave Fedora Core 3 a shot, and it seems that the other developers like it. We're now standardizing on it, because:
1. I can show somebody else how to start the installer, and they can figure it out on their own (assuming a new PC, no special partitioning)
2. It includes everything we need
3. Everything (mostly) has a consistent look and feel
4. It's easy to keep up date (once apt-get comes out for FC3, if it's not present already)
5. For the most part, it just works! (Lindows doesn't work well, despite it's claims, as one of the developers found out.)
It just has to work and install the software that we need to get our work done.
-- Joe