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Initial Reactions to Fedora Core 5
Ki writes to tell us that he has put up a short review of Fedora Core 5 which covers the install and general first impressions to the new release. The author highlights several quirks in the installation and a few problems getting down to business, but overall the Fedora team seems to have made some very good progress.
Umm, didn't you notice that Fedora is the development testbed? It's supposed to update quickly so new things get tested before RedHat gives them to paying customers. If you're doing real work on Fedora, I feel your pain. Switch your servers to Centos, and save Fedora for playing on your desktop!
Centos + Dag Wieers' repo is a sweet setup. Dag, if you read this, thanks a lot for great packages.
I think your best option is to read the comments at www.distrowatch.com and test them by yourself. The differences cover the package management tools, specific distribution tools, slightly different filesystem hierarchy and boot scripts, and finally the set of packages available for that distribution among others.
They could indeed borrow things from other distos, and they do. It's the entire point of collaborative software. However, each distrobution has its own particular style and way of doing things; ultimately, it comes down to user preference in most cases. For example, Slackware is your rock solid, never-fail distribution for servers and tinkerers; Ubuntu is your user friendly, easy-to-use distribution with great support for mom and pop; SuSE and RHEL are for corporate machines requiring easy administration and solid integration with existing technologies; Gentoo and LFS are for those intereeted in learning about the core of the system (and for masochists with lots of time).
It all boils down to preference and application. Successful approaches are shared for the good of all.
There are a few things you need to consider before giving Fedora a try.
1. No NTFS support: If dual boot, you will not be able to read your Windows partitions.
2. No MP3 support (it's been like that for a while.)
3. No support for propietary drivers: I've been told that this is more of a bug than an intended feature, but I haven't heard any certainty to support either side.
4. No ReiserFS
It's also missing the Tango Icons, Anjuta, and a few more apps. They aren't necessarily deal breakers, but with a 5 cd download, you'd expect them to be there. Lack of MP3 support is by design, although a lot of people really aren't aware of it. Items 1,3,4 can all be resolved by compiling your own kernel, but not everyone enjoys doing that, - and with a newly released distro, you probably shouldn't have to. I can understand no NTFS and MP3 support for patent issues, but why no ReiserFS?
Here is a link to one of the reviews that I came across. You should probably check the Forbidden Items List as well.
That's nothing... Gentoo's already up to 2006.0 .
I stopped with Fedora Core 4, and went on to try Ubuntu 5.10 for my satellite machines that require a minimal disk with OS, and use NFS (for the home directories), NIS (for authentication), email (routing), PostgreSQL, DNS, gateway, etc. from my main server machines.
I usually start with a clean disk and just reload everything (this was one nice feature of Fedora). The last "stable" Fedore was Core 2 though, since then I found that there were just a multitude of little problems getting NIS, NFS, almost anything, to work.
I still like the Fedora way of installing packages and updates, so for a quick or specific purpose machine I will use CentOS, where I can expect updates well into the next decade. Fedora leaves me an orphan after a year or so. So I'm trying Ubuntu, which I have found that things are better tested and integrated. There's still a few "gotcha's" but for the most part I hadn't had to spend hours and hours trying to get NFS & NIS working. However, we'll see the true test comes when the next Ubuntu arrives. Instead of the clean disk approach, I will be using the full update capability, because Ubuntu just installs the minimum and requires me to pick and choose the packages I want or need.
Anyways, the bottom line is that I care diddly squat about how the distribution works! I care how well it integrates with the other Unix services like DNS, NIS, NFS, printing, email, etc.
I hate sigs (especially yours which is a waste of my bandwidth)
Just to provide an alternative perspective, I couldn't disagree more. I've used Fedora since FC1, and have found it to be a useful, stable desktop. The reviewer's experiences in no way match mine, which have essentially been "stick the CD in, install and start using it". I've never seen any of the problems mentioned, and nor have I heard of anyone else having them. Sure, hardware detection issues can be an occasional problem for any distribution, but from what I've seen, Fedora does better than any other distribution I've used on that front. I guess he just got unlucky.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
"One size fits all" doesn't work for operating systems.
Stuff that works very well for certain types of users may be incredibly annoying for other types.
For example, Ubuntu is designed to be very friendly to new users. As a power user, the first time I tried Ubuntu it was like bashing my head against a brick wall repeatedly. It's a great distro for many people, it's just *not* for me. (And IMHO, not for anyone trying to set up a server machine.)
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Gentoo is an excellent distro for experienced power users, but it's a nightmare for new users. (In fact, it gives those new users more than enough rope to hang themselves. New Gentoo users typically push their CFLAG optimizations to insane and unstable limits because they can and it's cool, in the end breaking their system. Those are the users that the "Gentoo is for Ricers" page targets.) This is why I use Gentoo but would not ever reccommend it to a Linux newbie.
Fedora Core is somewhere in the middle ground between Ubuntu and Gentoo. As such, it tends to be the distro I reccommend to new people who want a system that's reasonably easy to get started with but still allows you to become familiar with the "down and dirty" details of a Linux installation.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
because Nvidia/ATI/whoever won't and the distro makers can't
Nvidia and ATI can't either. The drivers contain technology licensed from other companies (such as S3). And in many cases they'd be damn near useless without that technology.
DON'T BUY HARDWARE THAT ONLY HAS PROPRIETARY DRIVERS
In other words -- don't buy 3D graphics cards and expect them to work. Yes, I'm aware of the OSS ATI driver. I also know it sucks. Poor speed, poor compatibility, and poor stability. None of which have been improving.
Sorry, but your "take home lesson" is utterly and completely devoid of use in the real world. The reality is that proprietary hardware and software must be supported sometimes. Who that support should fall to is the next question, and right now nobody is willing to do so. Making it fall to the users just means that the users are likely to say "fuck this" and go to a solution where it is supported -- namely Windows.
Instead, as with Mac OS X, after the first boot you are *required* to make a non-root user before you can log in and actually use the computer. Apparently his motherboard problems prevented him from reaching this first boot stage.
And forget about the mp3/dvd stuff. Get over it. Fedora will *never* support this stuff without adding a 3rd party repository because of legal reasons. Ubuntu doesn't either, out of the box. Now arguably Ubuntu wins here because it's package utility will give the option to automatically add in the 3rd-party illegal (in the US) repositories straight away. Fedora might want to consider that.
Anyway, I find all the comments about how fedora sucks to be amusing. I find that Fedora fits my needs quite well, thank you. I don't use every version; I only upgrade once a year. I'm typing this on FC3 right now, which is working great. FC5 will go on soon. I'm kind of on an odd-number schedule. In my experience the odd-numbered releases of Fedora Core are the best anyway. I tried Ubuntu recently, and was impressed, but it won't replace FC anytime soon on my box. One good reason for that is that I maintain 10 or 12 RHEL4 boxes, and I need an environment that is similar for development purposes.
Yes. Proper package management is one of the most complex things in modern software if done wrong. Never compound it all by making a package cocktail.
Besides, it's not the package format that makes compatibility. That's trivial. It's the underlying tree of software, where everything is put and how that is difficult. By advocating a single, compatible 'format', what you're actually advocating is a single distribution. Which would be stupid and unworkable for reasons I won't go into here.
So there you go kids - never stray from your vendor's repository unless you really really need to. And then only if you know what you're doing.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.