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Fedora 9 a Bit Behind the Curve On Installation

Posted by timothy on from the click-here-but-only-once dept.

bsk_cw writes "Today, many Linux users are getting blasé about the ease with which they can install Linux. Possibly, they've been spoiled by distributions such as Ubuntu, which is actually easier to install than Windows. Unfortunately, Fedora 9, the latest version of this community edition of Red Hat, was a bit too much of a blast from the past for Computerworld's James Turner." (Except for bits about the installation, the review is actually quite positive.)

36 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Shoot! by XanC · · Score: 5, Funny

    Imagine what Fedora 9 would have done to UbuntuDupe's hard drive!!

  2. Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by croddy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "actually easier to install than Windows" (!!)

    I'm not sure what rock he's been living under, but Linux has been a lot easier to install than windows for ages. Ubiquity, Anaconda, Debian-Installer... sure, the old Debian boot-floppies installer was kind of a pain, but when you want to get your OS installed quickly and easily you don't exactly reach for silvers from Microsoft.

    Lately I got a bit tired of Wine's partial support for Steam so I've been trying to get some kind of Windows installed on my system to run some games. It's been a comic horror show of 0000007B this, 80070241 that, swapping out different optical drives and dumbing down BIOS settings to try to get either the XP or Vista installer to not bluescreen or otherwise give up on life trying to copy data from the installation media.

    Thankfully, when I need a sane, easy OS to regroup and try to find out what the cryptic hex codes barfed out by Microsoft's fragile-as-glass, no-system-logs-provided installers, I only have to reach for one of my Linux discs to get things up straight away.

    And let's face it... if your goal is to quickly get a quality browser, IM client, office suite, and some basic development tools installed, you're going to have an easier time popping in an Ubuntu disc to get there even if Windows is preinstalled on the box!

    1. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by satoshi1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have never had Windows fail to install for any reason.. The only problem I have ever had with Windows is when I install Linux first and then Windows wipes out GRUB. Then I gotta find a GRUB ISO and figure out the GRUB commands to restore the bootloader (floppies? what are those? while I have a floppy drive still, I have a hell of a time finding disks, even at a tech school). So now I always install Windows first so it's all happy and in place and then let Linux have its way. Windows doesn't even have a clue. It's really best this way.

    2. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by croddy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, the hardware is all fine. Linux runs on it as solid as a rock. The XP installer apparently doesn't crash as long as I disable AHCI. Of course, it wouldn't install at all until my Windows-using friend helpfully reassembled my installer, being sure to include the SATA drivers that Microsoft apparently never cared to add when they updated their installation media. I guess you need a floppy disk drive if you want to do that at install time and don't care to remaster the damned installation media before you even have a system to work on.

      Well, then there's the Vista installation problem. The hardware's all definitely fine, with I guess the possible exception of the optical drive. Then again I would dispute that a chock-full DVD-ROM that must be read flawlessly from end to end in a single pass without any chance to retry a missed block is any kind of way to install an OS. I guess I'm just used to the Debian network installer.

    3. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by pembo13 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Installing Windows on most IDE/SATA interfaces cards requires a floppy. Grub does not require a floppy to reinstall, at least not for Fedora.

      --
      "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
    4. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by L0rdJedi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So your big complaint is that a 7 year old OS (SP2 was released in 2004) doesn't install on a device that was released 3 years after it was? And of course, that hardware wasn't widely available until probably a year or two later.

      Have you tried installing Red Hat 5 on anything modern recently with much success?

      Yes, it's so horrible that an OS from 2001, when floppies were still pretty common, needs a floppy to install a driver that didn't even exist at the time.

      Oops, I forgot, this is Slashdot. We're suppose to complain whether it makes sense or not.

    5. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by Shikaku · · Score: 5, Informative

      Super Grub Disk is a nice way to semi-automatically reinstall GRUB.

      It also teaches you the commands, and tells you what it's doing. Very cool little ISO file.

    6. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by kryptkpr · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have never had Windows fail to install for any reason..

      While the plural of anecdote is not data, I think I know what the GP is talking about and have experienced it myself.

      There are some known AHCI problems with a common ATI southbridge chipset which made installing Vista impossible unless you first disable AHCI (I assume this is what the GP meant by having to dumb-down BIOS settings).

      So, lets try XP I thought. Too bad it has no drivers for the sata controller at all, and I have no floppy drive. I ended up having to inject the controller drivers into the XP CD and re-burn it. The XP installer then saw my disk in IDE mode, but not AHCI mode..

      I gave up and left the controller in IDE mode.

      For reference, Ubuntu 7.10 had no trouble on the same machine.

      --
      DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
    7. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by swillden · · Score: 4, Funny

      So your big complaint is that a 7 year old OS (SP2 was released in 2004) doesn't install on a device that was released 3 years after it was? And of course, that hardware wasn't widely available until probably a year or two later.

      Damned right. If these idiots would just download a more recent release of Windows XP, with all of the updated drivers in place, they'd have no trouble at all.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    8. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by MMC+Monster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I never had a problem installing Windows 2K or XP on my machine either.

      That being said, I *always* had a problem getting them into a usable state once they were installed.

      Problems include:
      1. Having to install multiple service packs and other packages, often with multiple reboots.

      2. Searching for the right version of drivers for my hardware on the internet. (Why can't they just use repositories like debian?)

      3. Installing all the applications I generally use. (Again, central repositories make it much easier. They can even be used by proprietary applications with a validation on first run.)

      --
      Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
    9. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by croddy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      My motherboard manufacturer gave me the drivers on a CD. Which was smart, because they didn't include a floppy controller on the motherboard. The Windows installer runs from a CD. The only thing wrong with this picture is "Insert disk into drive A:".

      Microsoft doesn't update their installers until they become absolutely untenable. And a bunch of nerds who aren't even being paid for the most part are running circles around them.

    10. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by WK2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Windows never really failed to install for me. I've had other problems, like trying to hunt down drivers, having to disable drivers in order to get Windows to boot, Safe Mode failing, and Windows ME blue screened on its first boot.

      The main problem I have with installing Windows is that it takes so long. Why does it have to take 1 hour to install an OS? You pretty much just copy a bunch of files onto the HDD, right? Even on a slow CD drive that shouldn't take more than 10 mins max. And why does it ask me questions at several different parts of the install? It should ask them all at once. If it only took a few minutes, this would be forgivable, but if it's going to take an hour, I would at least like to set my options when the CD boots, and then let the install go on for the next hour while I do other things. I shouldn't have to babysit my computer. And why do I have to boot twice to install, once from CD, and once from HDD? And I have to answer questions on each boot.

      Microsoft could learn a lot from Linux about OS installs.

      --
      Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
    11. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by secolactico · · Score: 2, Informative

      Installing Windows on most IDE/SATA interfaces cards requires a floppy.

      I think SP2 slipstreamed into the install disk recognizes SATA and SAS. Or you could slipstream the drivers themselves, which I don't recommend to anybody who isn't comfortable mucking with inf files.

      --
      No sig
    12. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by sumdumass · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you get a good embedded sata controller like the one built in to modern nvidia nforce motherboards, each sata socket shows up as an standard IDE channel to the OS, allowing you to use it without specialist drivers (if you're not using raid).
      Surely you mean just in "real mode" (only at boot) and not all the time and durring "protect mode" operation (once the 32bit OS is running and the bias no longer controls the SATA channel) right? Otherwise you would lose a lot of the benefits of the SATA channels and possibly never see drive speeds close to their rated potential.

      I'm betting they just provide an int hook that a generic IDE driver can use until a protect mode driver gets loaded. I'm wondering if XP and Vista have the same problems of not getting the speeds of protect mode drivers when a single real mode driver is present like windows 9x and ME did? Or maybe they moved to a generic 32 bit IDE driver and don't piss around with it anymore except when looking for the kernel to load. Hmm.. I wonder if someone knows or if I will have to hunt it down for myself. Anyways, don't rely on the generic drivers for windows because they can't limit your hardware and give you a slower experience as well as sometimes BSODs in operation.

      XP's installer's insistence on floppy disks or slipstreaming for new drivers is a pain, but Vista's installer is a major improvement and takes drivers on any media during the installer.
      Year, XP's sort of sucked but I'm not sure Vista is much better. You set the driver CDs in a box somewhere and either lose them or they won't work in 4 or 5 years when you need to reinstall which means loading linux or at least using a bootable version to download the drivers and set it so the installer can handle it(extract-whatever).
    13. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by k33l0r · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That being said, I *always* had a problem getting them into a usable state once they were installed.

      True enough, Getting Windows installed isn't even half the work (though until Vista, it took at least 45 - 60 minutes).

      Once you had Windows running you'd have a tedious couple of hours installing drivers and updates, and of course every driver you install would require a reboot.

      I'm amazed that installing pretty much ANYTHING on Windows still requires a reboot.


    14. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by amorsen · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm betting they just provide an int hook that a generic IDE driver can use until a protect mode driver gets loaded. It's much worse than that. AHCI-controllers can emulate regular IDE controllers in hardware. Not some BIOS-INT-thing, but actual emulation. Most computers I have seen with AHCI-controllers run them in IDE-emulation-mode.
      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    15. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by ratboy666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And your experience is an anecdote. Here's mine.

      I am a Solaris/Linux user. Around two years ago, I decided to build a PVR (personal video recorder). I had heard good things about Windows XP, and the mainboard I had chosen had a note in it stating that "USB 2.0 function can only be obtained with Windows XP". And all the hardware (video input devices, video display) came with drivers for Windows XP. So I bought a copy of Windows XP (retail). Assembled the system, and attempted to load Windows XP.

      After loading from the DVD drive, XP booted. However, the DVD did not show up. I reinstalled. Same thing. I assumed that the DVD was defective, and replaced it. Same thing. Tried a CD. Same thing. Turns out I need a driver from the CD supplied with the mainboard in order to use the CD/DVD. How do I get it there? XP also doesn't recognize the network adapter (same deal, I need a driver). The drivers are too large to put on a floppy.

      I gave up on trying to use XP for this application, and installed Linux. At least it recognized the DVD and network "out of the box" (Fedora). I then put on MythTV (I had wanted to try a Windows PVR program, but, hey... Windows didn't work).

      I tried XP on another box. It also didn't work. Turns out to need a "hard disc driver". In fact, the only thing that XP works on (for me) is a VMware session. Hell, even Mac OS works there. And that's where that copy is running today (along with MS Office and some other Microsoft stuff -- development tools, and a laser printer driver).

      The only thing I conclude is that you must be a Windows XP expert. Or, that Windows XP came pre-installed. I understand that VISTA supports additional (modern) devices, but I am not going to pay hundreds more to find out it doesn't.

      --
      Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
    16. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by Daimaou · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, the problem is that a 7 year old OS ONLY supports floppy disks to install drivers when 7 years ago, CD-ROM drives were ubiquitous.

      It was a stupid design decision by Microsoft and has nothing to do with Slashdot readers.

    17. Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! by immcintosh · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because Microsoft do not write drivers, do not take any responsibility for them and only redistribute the ones they build onto the distribution CD

      That's something of a non sequitur. Ubuntu, Fedora, and all the rest also do not write the drivers. They do not take any responsibility for them. Yet the fact remains that their installations have much more complete driver support without all the hunting and fishing around. But still, their installation CDs aren't really different in nature from any Windows installation CD.

      the repositories contain everything because they have to - they are theoretically the only place you can install from ...
      That's not even remotely true. You can install software (including drivers) downloaded off the internet under Linux just like you can in any other OS. The repositories just make it easier and more centralized. If you want the very latest nVidia beta driver though (for example), you can get it right off their web site just like the Windows counterpart.
  3. Swap issues by kernowyon · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I actually had a look at the link! One of the issues was -

    Finally hit ctrl-alt-return to restart the window manager and found it had hung trying to mount swap off the fstab. For some reason, the installer didn't like trying to reuse the swap partition left over from the previous install, and it made something go pear-shaped during the initial boot.
    This is something which seems to plague some Linux installs - if I recall correctly, Vector Linux (or was it Puppy?) has a similar problem with re-using swap partitions which are also used by other installed distros.
    The fact that the author managed to get things going by telling the installer to repartition the drive seems to confirm this. It is a long time since I tested Fedora, so I have no idea if this problem is common with that distro.Luckily, most users will probably not have multiple distros installed and this should not prove an issue to them.
    Kudos to the author for reporting the issue as a bug though - that may help to get this sorted for the next release.
    --
    Awful UID - but I have been here ages...
  4. Reading the frackin article..... by phoenixwade · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "(Except for bits about the installation, the review is actually quite positive.)"

    I must have read a different article (whupps, sorry, it's slashdot, I know I'm not supposed to RTFA, backsliding again, I suppose)

    the first page was complaints about the installer, a paragraph or two that's positive about the performance, and then a complaint that you have to buy the enterprise edition for support, because you can't buy support for Fedora...

    Didn't do much for me as a review of the new Fedora, and it certainly didn't seem like the rest was "Positive".

    --
    A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
    1. Re:Reading the frackin article..... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 3, Funny

      ...and it certainly didn't seem like the rest was "Positive".


      0.001 > 0. Any questions? :)
    2. Re:Reading the frackin article..... by The+Master+Control+P · · Score: 3, Funny

      What about for large values of zero?

  5. Has Fedora fixed the packager manager performance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Last time I tried Fedora/RedHat I was totally put off by the performance of the package management system. Not only did I experience RPM-hell with dependency shit but it was slow as hell. I mean the package manager would sit there and bring my computer to its knees for a long freaking time.

    Not too good if you ask me. But hell who needs Fedora anyway when there are much better distros without that RPM crap.

  6. Re:Wait a minute...this is Slashdot by croddy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Are you kidding? We're definitely still allowed to bash Linspire!

  7. I guess he never installed Slackware 3.... by NJRoadfan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anybody remember THAT installer? There was no "back" option on most of the screens. If you screwed up, you had to start over from scratch.

    1. Re:I guess he never installed Slackware 3.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      What about the old Gentoo installer?

      You know, a webpage full of instructions.

    2. Re:I guess he never installed Slackware 3.... by mrbluze · · Score: 2, Funny

      Anybody remember THAT installer? There was no "back" option on most of the screens. If you screwed up, you had to start over from scratch. You mean you had to download Linux From Scratch if you decided you wanted a back button? I didn't know LFS had a back button.
      --
      Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
    3. Re:I guess he never installed Slackware 3.... by IrquiM · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's not like the installer has changed much since then either...

      but it's still easier to install than windows! ;)

      2 days ago, I installed slackware 12.1, and moved the raid from the older server... took me less than 1 hour to complete all tasks, and had a running server...

      All hail to the slackware god!

      --
      This is blinging
  8. Linux is much easier than Windows by sc0ob5 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Linux is MUCH MUCH easier to install than windows, it has been for many years. No layman that I know can fully install windows XP or Vista. Let alone trying to install it on a RAID partition. Not only that but you don't need to load a drivers for your video/network/raid/sound, surely that counts as part of the install process. Also the installer installs applications as well not just the OS so you have to consider that as well. I mean if your count the number of applications that can be installed in the installation then compare it with Windows and what you would need to do to get those applications I think it's pretty clear that a Linux installation even if you have to read a small blurb about what you are doing is so much easier, quicker and superior.

    Simple fact is that if you think it's hard you are either a Windows user or an idiot or quite probably both.

    I guess "installing" Windows involves taking the newly bought HP/Dell out of the box and plugging it in.

  9. Re:Make Fedora available on CDROM iso's by hmm_slashdot · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://mirror.umoss.org/fedora/releases/9/Fedora/i386/iso/ There's also a live CD.

  10. Re:Has Fedora fixed the packager manager performan by doktorjayd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    $> yum install [package]

    $> yum remove [package]

    yeah, i can see how your dependedncy hell transpired.

    ( heres a hint though, after yum works out all the dependencies, enter 'y' or 'n' to accept/reject the dependency resolution yum works out for ya...)

    oh, and theres a graphical tool for command line averse.

    the much shorter ( and accurate ) response to this A/C would of course be 'bullshit' :)

  11. Re:Make Fedora available on CDROM iso's by doktorjayd · · Score: 2, Informative

    try the livecd image.

    you can boot straight up into it, and theres a double-click 'install to hard drive' desktop icon.

    single cd image, and once installed, you can pick and choose additional packages from the public repositories.

  12. Re:That's not the ONLY curve Fedora's behind on by doktorjayd · · Score: 2, Funny

    heh,

    doesnt that just indicate more people have to do more searches for issues with ubuntu than fedora? :)

  13. Good documentation is more important by gzipped_tar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I know Fedora is not the easiest to install, but instead, let's look at the other side of the matter.

    Being a Fedora user myself, I walked through the install process in about ten minutes (excl. the time of merely waiting for file extraction/copying). And everything worked fine.

    Installing Fedora is not a click-through. For new users it may appear to be more intimidating than it actually is. But don't forget the old practice of RTFM. Fedora has an excellent installation guide available from their wiki. The guide is very readable even for new users. In the doc there are actually things a new user can learn useful knowledge, e.g. the basic ideas of disk partition and logical volume management. A scan through the manual also helps reducing the risk of data loss caused by mis-operation.

    Sadly, most new users don't know the value of a manual.

    Perhaps that's what Fedora differens from the *buntu families. Fedora is a desktop distro, but meanwhile it is always a testing distro; it isn't even meant to be very stable or user-friendly like the *buntus do. You'll have to be a little tech-aware. If you don't feel like reading through a few man pages to find the answer, then consider something else.

    --
    Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
  14. Re:Is this guy serious? by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Vista includes a lot more drivers on the disk, because it's a new release, so the drivers actually existed when the disk was pressed. You can load drivers from cd or usb pen during the installer (no more needing a floppy drive!). It asks all the questions at the start. It doesn't spend years loading drivers for hardware that hasn't been used in 5 years before starting. You only boot once to install. It even installs faster than XP did.

    I'm not surprised Windows ME bluescreened on you on it's first boot, it was a pile of crap.

    Hunting down drivers for non-standard hardware you'll still have to do, but Microsoft includes a surprising number on the Vista disk and Windows update.

    NOTE: Despite the much improved installer, MS hasn't lured me to actually installing Vista on my main pc. It took me ages to get XP set up to behave right, I'll be damned if I'll switch now.