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."

Comments

Screenshot tour?

[fpga_guy]

Sorry, but screenshots are not what this is about. Let's talk about features baby, I want substance!

There's a lot more to an OS than the damn window manager!

Re:Screenshot tour?

[ajs]

It's not that FC is a bad distribution, per se, it's just that I fail to see anything particularly special about it.

Best endorsement of Fedora I've ever heard! Hey, if you want the shiny-things OS go buy a Mac. If you're looking for the logical successor to the free Red Hat Linux distribution (which was never "particularly special"), Fedora is your choice.

You CAN tweak the hell out of FC3 and get it to look and feel very pretty, but the important things to most long-time RHL and Fedora users are careful integration of new features combined with a smooth transition from previous releases. I get all of the above from FC3.

Re:Screenshot tour?

[Kingpin]

It should be the distro that "just works". I want an abstraction above my hardware so no Debian or Gentoo for me.

Ubuntu is just the next new kid on the desktop block - just like Xandros, it's a lot of promise, but lack of finish.

Although it's becoming fashion that we have to pay for Linux, I don't want to - so no Novell Linux Desktop for me.

FC is based on 10 generations of RedHat releases, in my book that counts for quite a bit - even if it takes a little time for the releases to stabilize.

I'll use it as a server OS, ie. no X. I don't have to pay. The installer is great. The packages plenty.

Re:Size?

[cerberusss]

I'm overwhelmed by the DVD size download

Well, don't download the DVD in the first place. Download the three CDs with the .torrent file that's provided.

Documentation?

[barcodez]

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?

Re:This article contains next to no useful info

[Erik Hollensbe]

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.

Re:Size?

[Taladar]

Even more reason not to let them download whole CDs but only the packages they need.

Re:Red Hat is apparently no longer cool

[RichDice]

There are no dark corners of breakage, everything Just Works(TM).

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