I have installed Fedora Core 1 (Yarrow) to see what has changed between it and Red Hat Linux 9 and to get a feel for this new and powerful Linux operating system. For some people, the name Fedora will not be a familiar name, for others (Red Hat Linux or OS enthusiasts), Fedora could (In some ways) be considered to be the ‘new’ Red Hat Linux 9.x or 10 release, the not so long awaited sequel to Red Hat Linux 9, which came out in late March 2003. However, Fedora Core 1 is not Red Hat Linux 10 (as I try to explain below), and to quote from the front page of the Fedora Project website:
Introduction
‘The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project. It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc.‘.
In short, Red Hat has decided to focus strongly on the Enterprise market (follow the money, there is nothing wrong with that) and as a result has discontinued marketing or producing new versions of what many considered to be its ‘home user’ freely downloadable versions of Linux, but all is not lost, not by a long shot. Red Hat has not abandoned the home users (or free OS down-loaders like me), not at all, it is providing some of its expertise in OS development, tools and financial sponsorship to the Fedora Project
(http://fedora.redhat.com).
I do think it’s a shame that Red Hat isn’t doing any obvious marketing for Fedora, even the recent ‘end of support’ emails that was sent from Red Hat to RHN subscribers recently announcing imminent EOL of support for many of RH’s 7.x,8.x etc. OS’s did not mention Fedora even once, not even a URL. If you go to http://www.redhat.com you will see a graphical link on the main page to the Fedora Project, but it’s certainly not prominent.
To simplify things as much as I can, Red Hat does offer stable, corporate Desktop versions of Red Hat Linux (http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/ws/) which are available at cost, but come with phone based/web based support options, Fedora on the other hand is freely downloadable, will change often (every few months) and will have much more limited support options (for companies) due to its’ price tag and quickly evolving nature (think latest gizmos, latest add-ons). However, Fedora is already a strong community with IRC channels, forums and web-based support, so I think (and hope) it will be around for a long time to come.
Installing Fedora
I’d recommend that before installing Fedora Core 1, that you do a media check on your CDs, most people will ignore this and go ahead with the install, but you could be unlucky like me and end up half way through CD 2 only to get a file copy error which can slow your installation right down to a snails pace and which basically means you have to either download the ISO again or burn the ISO to cd again. Doing the media check will tell you at the beginning of the installation phase if your CDs are ok and gives you a bit more confidence in your media.
I’d also recommend that you take a look at the Release-Notes, to see if there are any known issues with whatever hardware that you are using, and if you are planning on upgrading Red Hat Linux 8.x, 9 to Fedora, then please do check http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/ and read the section which explains some post-installation issues for Ximian GNOME amongst other things.
Installing Fedora is a breeze, and it is so similar to Red Hat 8.0 and 9 installations that Red Hat users will feel right at home, featuring very easy to follow GUI screens that guide the in-experienced or experienced users from start to finish with ease. I chose to do the standard CD based installation, there are now graphical based FTP and HTTP installs, but I guess they would be more suited to people with fast internet connections, or lan based installations.
The CDs available for download are still 6 in total, although most of us will get by with just downloading the first 3 CDs only (thankfully) in order to install and setup Fedora. The last three are source CDs and you can easily distinguish that fact by the CD file name, for example yarrow-SRPMS-disc1.iso is the 1st Source CD and not needed for the ‘general’ user, instead download the following three cds from here or from your nearest mirror
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/1/i386/iso/
yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
yarrow-i386-disc2.iso
yarrow-i386-disc3.iso
When I installed Fedora Core 1, I picked the ‘custom’ option on the installation type screen, this allows me to choose ‘everything’ which as its’ name implies, installs everything included on the 3 CDs. It takes longer to install (approx 1-2 hours, depending on the speed of your computer) and takes more space on your hard disc (5.8 GB or so) but, I would recommend this option for new users, because it helps to avoid dependency or other errors at a later stage when compiling programs or installing various rpms. You can of course uninstall any of the packages you don’t require easily in ‘add/remove applications’ once the installation is done.
You can easily install Fedora as dual boot on your computer (just like previous versions of Red Hat Linux) if it has another operating system on it, just make sure that if you do decide to go this route, that first you must have the other OS installed, and second that you have enough space on a free unformatted partition for Fedora, and third, that you are happy to allow GRUB to take control of your boot sequence. You can also update previous installations of Red Hat Linux using the automatic update feature during the installation phase (it will auto-detect your previous install), however I have only tested this functionality on Red Hat Linux 9, so I cannot comment on earlier versions such as 7.x.
The Default Install – What is it like?
Booting Fedora Core 1 will at first look like any normal Red Hat Linux boot, you’ll see the kernel initialising but then, instead of being presented with a whole bunch of onscreen status initialization messages, you get a rather nice GUI screen with a computer icon and a status bar that shows the percentage of completed tasks in easy to understand format. That is a nice change and a welcome one, you can also, see all of the standard messages within this front-end by clicking on the ‘show details’ link. Very nicely done, and I only have two minor gripes about it, firstly, how about having the entire boot done in this graphical format (with the option for text based messages for those that want to see them), and secondly, do we really need to give Kudzu 30 seconds to ‘scan for new hardware’ on every boot? after all it does delay the boot process by 30 seconds especially if you have not added any new hardware, perhaps 5 seconds would be more appropriate. I’m sure some people will jump in here and say that Kudzu itself can be disabled or adjusted so that it doesn’t take 30 seconds, but that’s not my point. I just think a faster boot time would be more appropriate. Also, how about adding the extra gui functionality to the shutdown portion in Fedora Core 1 (it is still text based).
Once the system has booted, unless you specifically chose the text login option during the installation phase you’ll get a nice out of box experience (firstboot) which effectively asks you for user name(s) and to test sound output and so on, until after a few questions, you are presented with a very blue graphical login screen using Red Hat’s Bluecurve graphical greeter. It is nicely done, and has a clean polished professional look to it. After you have logged in, you will see what looks like a standard Red Hat 9 desktop in GNOME (gnome-desktop-2.4.0-1) with the bluecurve theme and with the little Red Hat clearly visible in the menu. However, you don’t have to look far for some of the newer changes under the hood. First off there is the new color scheme for the Bluecurve theme, I think it is gorgeous, and secondly if you click on the Red Hat and choose preferences, you’ll see a brand new option (to Red Hat Linux default install users at least) called ‘screen resolution’ and this little application allows you to change resolution in real-time on your desktop without needing to restart x. Very nicely done, but (there’s always a but) why couldn’t this screen resolution application be included as a listed function when you right-click on the desktop (alongside change desktop background for example), that would be very convenient and user friendly. In my tests I was easily able to change the LCD resolution on my laptop from 1400×1050 down to 1024×768 and vice versa with no display issues.
Still on the display theme, by clicking on the Red Hat and choosing system settings, and then ‘display’, I now have some new tabs listed in my display settings, Dual Head is now an available option for this ATI Radeon Mobility M6 video card, and that’s very cool, it sure wasn’t there in Red Hat 9. However, this added bonus, requires you to restart x in order to see the changes. That’s a shame, especially seeing as the screen resolution application mentioned above did not require this restart of x. So I pressed CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE to restart x and logged back in again to see the changes, all i noted was that the second monitor was showing exactly what was on my LCD so I went back into the display settings/dual head TAB and spotted a drop down menu. That drop down menu gave me the option of Individual
Desktops or Spanning Desktops. As the Individual Desktops didn’t seem to do anything for me I chose ‘Spanning Desktops’ and applied my settings, once again, I had to restart x for the changes to be seen. So I did, and nothing interesting happened. I kept playing with these settings for about 15 minutes and could not get ‘spanning’ or for that matter ‘individual’ desktops to work, perhaps it was just me or perhaps I messed up my installation, or perhaps my particular configuration was just not yet ready for this. Pity though, I was really looking forward to seeing this in action. I tried this on two different laptops, one with ATI Radeon Mobility M6 and the other with ATI Radeon Mobility M9, and I had the exact same problem with both.
If you chose to install everything like me, then you’ll have lots of applications, games, web browsers and various odds and ends to entertain you. You have apache version 2 to serve web pages, you have samba to access windows shares, you have CUPS to organise your printers for you. Mozilla is still the default web browser and is now version 1.4.1, which is very nice and easy to use. It doesn’t have plugins installed, so you will need to install JAVA (Mozilla 1.4.1 Java plugin HOWTO here – http://anyweb.kicks-ass.net/linux/tips/tip13.html), shockwave and so on, yourself. OpenOffice (the Office suite) is included and is version 1.1.0. Email handling is handled by Ximian Evolution version 1.4 and there’s even GNUCash to handle your financial needs. All in all lots of Office Software to keep you working away quite happily.
On the entertainment side, you have XMMS version 1.2.8 to play your audio files (winamp clone), and it does not have the MP3 plug-in loaded (a popup window explaining patent licence issues preventing the inclusion of the plug-in is loaded the first time you try and play an MP3 with XMMS), so you’ll need to fix that also. To fix the MP3 ‘problem’ you’ll need to get this file from here or here. Once you have downloaded the file, expand it by typing tar -zxvf xmms-mp3-fc1.tar.gz and you will now have three files. Copy the two lib files (as root) to /usr/lib/xmms/Input/. Restart xmms and all should be good.
Fedora has also bundled something called Rhythmbox version 0.5.3 to play radio station music and other types (vorbis). I fired it up and tried to connect to Digitally Imported (Netherlands) but it popped up an error ‘failed to create spider element, check your installation’. So I checked the properties for that stream, and they were listed as http://213.73.255.244:8000/, I copied and pasted that address into Mozilla and it showed me a U ShoutCast D.N.A.S Status page saying the stream was up and with 43 of 300 users listening, so why couldn’t I hear anything. It quickly dawned on me that once again I needed a plug-in to listen to these online radio installations, the help files included with Rhythmbox stated that the player plays MP3, FLAC or OGG/Vorbis files, but didn’t mention where I could add the ability to play MP3 streams. It would be useful if Rhythmbox included a message like the one in XMMS detailing that this MP3 support is not included, rather than having users trying to figure out what a ‘spider element’ is.
DVD playback software is also nowhere to be found on the entertainment (Sound and Video) menu, in fact there wasn’t one video capable player included in this menu, and that’s quite ironic considering it’s title. This was the same in Red Hat 9, and 8.0, and can be fairly easily solved by installing either xine or mplayer or both (once they are updated to work with Fedora).
Internet applications are abundant and there are lots to choose from, web browsers include Mozilla, Konqueror and Epiphany. You can chat online using GAIM (which even works with msn messenger after you have enabled the included plug-in), Xchat, Ksirc or Licq, you can remotely admin your other computers using rdesktop or using the vnc client (vncviewer). You can even install vncserver locally and remotely admin your Fedora box and it works very well. It’s nice to see this powerful software included by default (by choosing Custom install and manually installing it or choose everything as suggested earlier).
A basic Firewall application is included and it’s called lokkit (you can run it from the console as root, or click on the Red Hat menu, choose system settings, security level) and it allows you to Enable or Disable the firewall, plus to trust certain well-known services like WWW (http). To Customise ports you can start lokkit in a console and choose the customise option. There is no Internet Connection Sharing application included in Fedora, but that can be done manually by using iptables and a bit of know how.
There is a new login screen (Happy Gnome with browser) which some people will like, its similar to Windows XP’s user list (with photos) so you can impress your buddies with it, but by default this login screen is not picked (Bluecurve is the default), you have to manually set it up and it’s very easy to do so (system settings, login screen, graphical greeter).
Is Fedora Core 1 right for me?
If like me, you want to see how new and exciting Linux releases are doing, then you’ll probably go ahead and install Fedora as soon as you have downloaded it. Its fun and new and worth looking at, and I have tried it on 4 different machines so far, two of which are laptops. The laptops both installed fine but I was disappointed to see that ACPI support is still not turned on by default in this release, I guess it must be too buggy. What that means is that some new laptops with ACPI only BIOS’s will not report any battery levels in Fedora or show advanced power management features, you’ll have to read the Release Notes (check the kernel notes section at the end of the notes) to enable that functionality. APM based laptops will not have any problem displaying battery status.
The third system I tried it on has a Promise Raid SATA controller with an OS already on it, when I tried to install Fedora, it complained that it couldn’t find any hard drives, so I googled and found a Red Hat Linux 9 driver for the promise card, but…. that didn’t work with Fedora, seems I need to re-compile that driver within Fedora to get it to work. This was not because Fedora couldn’t handle SATA (it can) it was because it could not talk to my raid card and I didn’t have time to continue with it.
I even attempted to upgrade an existing installation of Red Hat Linux 9 on one system, and the upgrade went as smooth as silk. After the installation was completed I got a message in gnome telling me that my old desktop was linked via a shortcut on my new desktop. I did notice that upgrading Red Hat Linux 9 to Fedora Core 1 does not configure it to use the graphical boot feature, but a quick glance again at the release-notes tells you that you have to must install the rhgb package, and add the rhgb boot-time parameter to your bootloader configuration. To test this I went into system settings, add/remove applications, and selected the X windows system package details. Adding the rhgb (Red Hat Graphical Boot) package was not so simple, once I clicked on update it prompted for CD 1. I inserted CD1 and it popped up an error ‘Error Installing Packages – There was an error installing packages, exiting’. Clicking ok closed the Package Manager so I browsed the CD manually (/mnt/CDROM/Fedora/RPMS) and found the rpm (rhgb-0.11.2-1.i386.rpm). I copied that RPM locally and tried to manually install it. I logged in as su – and did rpm -Uvh rhgb-0.11.2-1.i386.rpm and it installed. Then I used vi to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and added rhgb after the line that reads:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
so that it now reads
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi rhgb
saved that file with :wq and rebooted, and voila graphical boot
If you do attempt to upgrade an existing installation of Red Hat Linux, then please back up your data first, I personally have not lost any data from doing an upgrade to Linux, however you don’t want to be the one who has to explain where the data went if something goes wrong.
For users who want MP3 functionality or video playback out of the box, Fedora Core 1 disappoints in this regard (much like Red Hat Linux 8/9 did), I would suggest that you uninstall the included XMMS version 1.2.8 and install the older 1.2.7 version (which has plug-ins freely available on the internet for MP3 support) until someone releases an updated plug-in for the new version. As regards xine (which I did attempt to install) your results may vary, but it complained about xine-libs dependency problems (wanted GLUT and SPEEK, and in turn GLUT wanted OPENGL which wanted……), so I gave up. I have not yet tested nVidia drivers (accelerated) yet but will do soon, I’m confident that nVidia will release Fedora Core drivers shortly.
Bluetooth hardware support has been updated but I didn’t have a bluetooth device to test so no comment. The kernel (2.4.22-1.2115.nptl) has been updated to include NPTL (as you will notice in the GRUB boot screen) and in Fedora’s own words ‘Fedora Core 1 includes the Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL), a new implementation of POSIX threads for Linux. This library provides performance improvements and increased scalability’ so I guess that new kernel will delight some and bore others.
I can summarise my experience with Fedora as being a mixed bag of emotions, in some cases it surprises pleasantly (resolution changing for one, and the half-gui boot up) but in other cases there is nothing obviously apparent about this release that hits you in the face with that WOW factor (GNOME looks essentially the same as it did since Red Hat 8.0 came out more or less). Yes there is the ability for up2date to use Yum and APT repositories but for users unfamiliar with that technology then is that really something to go ‘hey look what this can do?’ The very act of updating software is usually to fix something that is broken or to add new features or to apply a
security update, if the use of Yum could/can fix the lack of MP3 functionality (for example) then I’ll give it my thumbs up, if not, then big deal.
Please don’t get me wrong, I am not criticising Fedora, far from it, I really really like this distribution, I think it is very professionally done and worthy of a download and installation, however, there are going to be a lot of Linux newbies disappointed initially by the lack of included MP3 functionality and DVD/Video playback, and adding that functionality back will not be straightforward for those people (until clear and easy to follow HOWTO’s start popping up on the internet).
If you like to experiment with the latest cool stuff on the Linux scene then get downloading now. I’m sure that you will not be disappointed especially if you are an experienced Linux user from the Red Hat stable. If you are new to Linux then perhaps this is a good distro for you to play with, but I guess you’ll need to do some research on IRC and Google to get things working the way you want.
It’s up to you to decide Fedora’s future. I hope it’s a bright one.
Fedora Core 1 screenshots here and here.
by Niall C. Brady (c) November 6th 2003.
http://anyweb.kicks-ass.net
you could like seel this review it is so great! I’m sure applied to the right equation this could solve world peace and feed the hungry!
This review was both insightful and informative. Although I was definitely going to check out Fedora, I have a little taste of what I am in store for. I think anyone who is even thinking about giving up on Redhat should read this before they make their final decision. Oh and trying Fedora out would probably be a good idea too.
During the beta there were several third-party yum repositories available. By adding something like
[livna-stable]
name=Fedora Compatible Packages (stable)
baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/redhat/$releasever/$basearch/yum/stable
to your /etc/yum.conf you are then able to install the mp3 plugin, mplayer etc. with “yum install xmms-mp3” and so on.
Right now there doesn’t seem to be a complete repository yet for FC1. But at least freshrpms.net and livna.org are building their yum repositories right now. Freshrpms already have some packages available, but not all. With RH9 I used up2date, apt-get and rpmfind.net, with Fedora I’ve only needed to use yum. That’s a big plus IMO.
Also, Fedora installed flawlessly on my ICH5 based Intel Serial ATA motherboard, first distro to do so without putting up a fight.
Nice to see that your first concern for your new **SERVER** toy is its ability to play mp3… 😉 *shudder*
ACPI available in fedora by zapping it into /etc/grub.conf at the end of your ‘kernel’ line – eg:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
becomes:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi acpi=on
Red.
Is it just me or does YUM suck compared to apt4rpm.
After I installed Fedorra, i ran a few different yum commands ( after reading the man) and it kept wanting to download all the headers of available packages on the end server.
Fair enough.
But why a seaparate connection for every header. Why not one file with all the info.
I think I must be missing something…..anyone care to enlighten me.
( No I don’t use enlightenment )
I don’t think it’s good advice for new users to install everything, at least from a secutrity point of view, as it enables a lot extra services. “Personal Desktop” and “Workstation” have very sane defaults and people can add packages later if they need them.
MP3 and other multimedia packages are already available at Livna http://rpm.livna.org/ and a nice HOWTO for extra apt/yum repositories is here http://www.xades.com/proj/fedora_repos.html
Any chance of some screenshots for the new graphical boot?
>>Nice to see that your first concern for your new **SERVER** toy is its ability to play mp3… 😉 *shudder*
You are such and old school lamo its not even funny.
Hello,
for me i was again not able to get online with Fedora!
I configured my dsl connection, it says activated but i could’t still surf the web or ping websites.
I tried it at least now for 4 hours….
I alos tried it with the console and /sbin/adsl-setup.
This seems to work…but, look here…
[root@localhost]# /sbin/adsl-status /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0
Note: You have enabled demand-connection; adsl-status may be inaccurate.
adsl-status: Link is up and running on interface ppp0
ppp0 Protokoll:Punkt-zu-Punkt Verbindung
inet Adresse:2×7.2×2.2×6.1×9 P-z-P:2×7.5.98.1×2 Maske:255.255.255.255
UP PUNKTZUPUNKT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1492 Metric:1
RX packets:17 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:17 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:3
RX bytes:1426 (1.3 Kb) TX bytes:1682 (1.6 Kb)
[root@localhost]# ping http://www.redhat.com
ping: unknown host http://www.redhat.com
And i couldn’t surf the web…
I have no idea what i could try anymore…
Everything seems to be working smoothly with the exception of two areas. First, the tsclient does not seem to work. It segfaults everytime it is run. That never happened during the betas. The other is CodeWeaver’s Crossover stuff. It appears to work, but I cannot get anything to install. Is this a GCC version problem?
Any ideas?
Thanks…..
You don’t get it, I fear…
Rhythmbox and XMMS can’t play MP3 files, not because Fedora packagers are stupid, but because it is **ILLEGAL** (in the USA) to ship MP3 support in any distribution without paying for it.
As Fedora is still related to Redhat (which is a USA-based company), they can’t ship MP3 support out of the box. It has been explained thousands of times on various places though…
Now, if Gentoo ships MP3 support out of the box, great for you ! But if you’re based in the USA, keep in mind that you’re breaking the (stupid) law of your country by playing MP3 audio files.
For a few versions now, Red Hat has shipped without support for a few media formats. This has been done for legal reasons only; it wasn’t an accident or mistake, so there’s absolutely no reason to worry that other packages are going to be missing ‘necessary’ plugins. Additionally, the difficulty of fixing this problem is slight enough that it isn’t much of an issue at all.
Also, as a fellow Gentoo user, I think it’s more than a little misleading to say that things ‘just work.’ Things ‘just work’ if you happen to have your make.conf set up properly. Otherwise you have to wait another god-knows-how-long for your package to compile again. And there isn’t really any ‘out of the box,’ unless you’re talking about a GRP install, and that has its own problems. Fedora is a distribution for people who don’t have the time or interest to do something like build a Gentoo system, and for what it is, it works fantastically well. A few clicks and 45 minutes later, you have a (almost) fully functional Linux distribution with tons of software.
And by the way, the fact that Thompson and co. claimed that they wouldn’t sue anyone for using their patent on MP3 playback doesn’t mean that it is legal. It just means that they *claim* they won’t sue you. Nothing more.
Dude, I use gentoo on my main station and yes it is good, put I also play around with RH/SuSE & Slack for the most part so here goes:
What part of mp3 and other parts like xine aren’t included because of LEGAL reasons does NO one seem to get? Why on every single review from RH8-FC1 people complain about “theres no mp3 support”, HELLO, do we really have to explain this over and over?
Come on people lets stop complaing about something that will NEVER change. The .rpms are out there, if you want it do it your self. If you use Gentoo or Slack, doing it yourselve isn’t all that hard is it? Grabbing a rpm and installing it or even doing it from src? If your Elite enough to use “emerge” you should be able to run “rpm -ivh” or “./configure make make install” right? So stop complaing!
>> if you have Fedora, try this – It’s the ability to change your X screen resolution without having to restart X.
Niall, does this change the desktop resolution aswell as the screen resolution, like you can do under KDE in SuSE 8.2 (and presumably SuSE 9.0)? (i.e. it isn’t just a GUI for CTRL-ALT-NUMPLUS/NUMMINUS)
Also, which window managers / desktop environments does it work with?
TIA
I am not overly impressed by it. I have used fedora test1-test3. RPMS are still a problem. For the Home user… oh wait.. what did the CEO of redhat say?
besides the flaming , i do have a point. What makes redhat great it was the innovator of distros. RPMs have made life easier, in that fact, RPMS are now out of control. RPM Hell Anyone? Debs are not as much, but we still have a problem with software compatiblity between distros, even between dot releases. I think we need to build a better compatiblity before it starts hurting the community more. Before saying “debian has the best package manager” I will remind you of the fact, that software vendors consider debian the HARDEST to build a binary for, because the wide variety of a debian computers.
flame back on, redhat can proceed to die a quick death, hello to novell linux
There wont be dvd or mp3 playback in fedora for legel reasons as someone has already pointed out. So how about people stop in every simple review to give this 3 paragraphs!!
Anyway, if you actually want all the ‘non-free’ packages to be installable, then just use this repository:
http://rpm.livna.org/
“As regards xine (which I did attempt to install) your results may vary, but it complained about xine-libs dependency problems (wanted GLUT and SPEEK, and in turn GLUT wanted OPENGL which wanted……), so I gave up.”
The quote above is exactly why I gave up on RPM based distributions. I, like Mystilleef above, also use Gentoo. I’ve never had a dependency issue, and as he/she said, “It just works.”
The closest thing I have found to Gentoo’s Portage system in a binary-based distro is Debian’s apt or Arch’s pacman. Both of these systems have very good dependency checks. RPM is such a terrible system for packaging software.
Another thing I hate about RPM based distros is that there is no facility built into the distro to install software automatically. You always have to manually download or mount CDs to install software. With Debian, Gentoo, and Arch a simple command in a shell will automatically calculate dependencies, download the necessary packages, and install them.
>> if you have Fedora, try this – It’s the ability to change your X screen resolution without having to restart X.
Niall, does this change the desktop resolution aswell as the screen resolution, like you can do under KDE in SuSE 8.2 (and presumably SuSE 9.0)? (i.e. it isn’t just a GUI for CTRL-ALT-NUMPLUS/NUMMINUS)
Also, which window managers / desktop environments does it work with?
TIA
When you change the resolution, it changes the desktop resolution as well as the screen resolution. Like on Suse 9.0.
I have only tried it on GNOME/Metacity though.
Well i installed all the redhat versions up to 9 on my laptop and all worked with my xircom pcmcia card.
Fedora however fails to let me work with my xircom card.
with ifconfig it let me see my mac adress and an ipadress but no go
A little frustrating imho
About the “RPM hell”:
Never ever compare apples to oranges please.
Saying that using RPM to install programs can result in dependency hell is RIGHT. But saying that it’s RPM’s fault is WRONG.
Here is how it works:
RPM is comparable to DPKG. It’s just a tool to install 1 or more packages without trying to resolve any dependency. So, it can work but most of the time it fails.
Have you tried to install a Debian package using dpkg ? Good luck…
Now, Debian has APT, which is a dependency resolver for Debian packages. Until now, Redhat didn’t come with any dependency resolver by default. But since Fedora Core, it’s not the case anymore. Fedora comes with YUM, which is comparable to APT but works with RPMs. You can also install APT for RPMs if you prefer.
What does that mean ?
It simply means that you now can install packages on Fedora using the following command:
yum install blah
And you can updgrade a package using:
yum upgrade blah
So, please, no more bashing about how Gentoo and Debian are so much better for installing packages ! The debate is now officially over as Fedora has caught up.
“””
I begin to appreciate the distribution I use, Gentoo. What? Rhythmbox doesn’t stream radio stations??? :shocked: I didn’t need to fiddle with *anything* repeat *anything* to get radio stations working here.
“””
And, pray tell, how many DAYS did it take you to install Gentoo? I think I’ll trade some time here and there for a program I want to install rather than the regular Gentoo install…
Step 1) Download some stuff, run a couple commands, let it compile overnight.
Step 2) Repeat, ad nauseum.
Another thing I hate about RPM based distros is that there is no facility built into the distro to install software automatically. You always have to manually download or mount CDs to install software. With Debian, Gentoo, and Arch a simple command in a shell will automatically calculate dependencies, download the necessary packages, and install them.
Funny, apt for rpm does that on my redhat boxes… and YUM works too… And Fedora has them built in….
To release a ‘community version’ of their distro as a testing ground for new stuff to be put into the commercial version(s) of Redhat. In other words, let the ‘community’ do all the testing and hard work for you – that’s brilliant!
And I say that with no sarcasm whatsoever. Hell, if I were a hardware vendor and wanted my stuff to work in Linux, I wouldn’t even bother writing drivers for it – just release the technical information needed to write a decent driver and let hackers do it for me. Afterall, if they’re willing to do all that hard work for free, who am I do deny them ?
what version of Python is Fedora using … ? 2.3 any chance?
Why did i dump windows/gentoo in favour of fedora?
Ease of use. I get a distro that has almost everything I need. What I can’t get, I get of Livna or other repo’s. I run a LAMP server/workstation, and use software like XMMS to play mp3s, and other files. I watch DiVX and WMV media on totem (XINE) and mplayer.
The distro is *fast*. It beats Gentoo in terms of desktop speed/responsiveness/load times. No, don’t argue. I have it in front of me.
Spend 15 minutes doing this:
1. Get the Livna config into your yum.conf (30 seconds)
2. yum update ( however long it takes to download the headers – 10 minutes on my relatively slow DSL connection )
3. yum install xmms-mp3 mplayer-gui totem
Now stop and think: how long would it take to get a comparable install of Windows XP?
Install Windows : an hour (don’t lie to yourself)
Install applications and drivers : an hour to two hours.
Configure stuff : depends.
In that time, I’ve already started work on my next PHP based project, and am jamming to my favourite music.
If you start out being negative, you will not get very positive results. Sure, fedora needs more initial effort that Windows, but a damned lot less than other distro’s. I also like that we’re compliant with laws, be they stupid, or otherwise. I don’t want legal nightmares later on. What happens if we include MP3 support and they sue for damages? Think a little. Just a *little*.
`
It helps. And please, do it _before_ you open your mouth.
binary is nicer to have. If i need two apps custom compiled, I’ll hand compile them. I’d not want to compiled 3000 things for the sake of those two.
“called ‘screen resolution’ and this little application allows you to change resolution in real-time on your desktop without needing to restart x”
Wow. I’m underwhelmed.
Can someone please explain to me why changing X-resolution-on-the-fly is gushed over as being so great? It seems that every other review of a “new” distro stumbles across the “guess what! You can now change X-resolution on the fly!!” as though it’s some brand new, never before conceived of feature.
Huh? What about the simple <ctrl><alt> +/- combo to change X resolutions “on the fly / without restarting X” that has been working for me since circa 1993 on my first Slackware box?
I must be missing something fundamental…
–d
You are simplifying things. Livna has given me a reason to take a close look at Fedora from my RH9 box.
However, I also have to install some commercial apps on my linux box. (Games mostly for my workstation but Netvault client and some other stuff for server clients depending on what they will be used for)
You also have to configure stuff for linux too.
I love linux. Right now is the first time in three years I have not worked off of a Linux workstation both at work and home.
However, let us please not overstate its strengths and such.
Yet, Seraph I am very glad it works so well for you and you have inspired me to try using Fedora once I get permission to put Linux on my laptop here at work.
And, pray tell, how many DAYS did it take you to install Gentoo? I think I’ll trade some time here and there for a program I want to install rather than the regular Gentoo install…
Frankly, I can’t remember. It’s been many months ago. The basic installation must have taken 2-3 hours, if I’m not mistaken. I’m also glad I don’t have download 700MB CD every few months to upgrade my system. But that’s besides the point.
Step 1) Download some stuff, run a couple commands, let it compile overnight.
That’s a shameful misconception.
Step 2) Repeat, ad nauseum.
Don’t be silly. The fact that I can play radio stations, MP3, OGG, FLAC music format without the need to fiddle with anything is an excellent tradeoff for spending less than 2 minutes compiling Rhythmbox. In fact, while I was upgrading to Rhythmbox-0.5.4, I was listening to my favorite MP3s on Rhythmbox-0.5.3. No lost productivity whatsoever. Yeap, I couldn’t even do that on Windows or Mac. But I digress again.
I just think it’s silly to provide a music player without support for the basic or necessary plugins. I’d rather they didn’t provide an music player at all then. It just creates a ridiculous image for Linux. Then you wonder why your favorite Apple/Windows zealot rants about things “Just working”. The reviewer should have pointed out that this wasn’t a flaw with Rhythmbox but rather Fedora’s policy.
For more on the bluetooth support, see http://datadevil.papuaos.org/docs/bluetooth.php
The excitement is about the fact that until recently you could only do the following:
– change your resolution by modifying XF86Config and restarting X
– switch between configured resolutions using CTRL-ALT-+/-
That said, switching between resolutions didn’t actually update your desktop’s display. For example switching from 1024×768 to 800×600 resulting in _zooming_. But your desktop was bigger than your screen and you had to use your mouse to display some parts of your desktop that were “outside the screen”.
Now, you can switch resolutions AND resize your desktop so that it feels the size of your screen (not more, not less). To do that, you previously had to edit your XF86Config and restart X, which is not necessary anymore.
If you don’t see what I mean, just try it.
In fact, I’m not sure Windows comes with MP3 support. Last time I tried it, Windows 2000 couldn’t play MP3 out of the box. You had to install Winamp or some similar software to play MP3 files. I might be wrong though…
Anyway, it _is_ possible to provide MP3 support out of the box. You (your OS’ vendor) just have to pay for it.
If it’s really available out of the box on Windows, that’s because Microsoft accepted to pay for it.
Would you expect Redhat to pay for you to be able to listen to MP3 music on your free-of-charge iso download of Fedora Core ?
i was so hot for this release… i used redhat 8 and 9 exclusively, and recently i upgraded to severn 0.95, the latest beta release…
i downloaded fc1 and installed it on 2 computers:
p3 550, 384kb workstation. install hung at the end of the package installation. duh. install again, then it worked.
my compaq presario 2800 laptop (p4m 1500, 512 ram): tried to install, after selecting packages anaconda said that it could not transfer the installation image to the hard disk because there was not enough space… duh! install again, select “personal desktop” and did not change any selection. now it worked.
ok, so i thought, i just install the missing packages afterwards yand remove the stuff i don’t want.
well, turned out that the redhat-package manager can’t install any packages for me! it removes packages fine and it installs single packages… but it always fails when it has to solve dependencies and install more than 1 package…
so i had to yum the missing stuff… not good 🙁
otherwise, i’ll stick with fedora. it’s very nice…
regards,
marillchen
“I don’t think it’s good advice for new users to install everything, at least from a secutrity point of view, as it enables a lot extra services. “Personal Desktop” and “Workstation” have very sane defaults and people can add packages later if they need them.”
Actually none of the extra services are enabled by default. They are installed, but not turned on. I happen to agree with the author on this one, as he stated, it does prevent dependencie hell for the most part by going this route.
Does anyone know if Ximian Desktop will be available for Fedora? If not does that mean the only distro supported will be SuSE, or will Mandrake be added?
I just love to see people complain that Red Hat is “using” them as free testers. It’s a fully functional OS, probably the best they’ve ever released, and it’s all free software. Others, for example on the dedicated hosting forums out there, say “this is no way to treat your customers” — yeah, giving them a free OS but changing its name! Oh no! And most of them have never paid Red Hat a cent in the first place, so they’re not customers, they’re leeches. I’m totally fed up with all this talk of jumping ship from Red Hat. Obviously they let the gravy train go too long, and the recipients have become belligerent ingrates.
See, if RedHat decided not to pursue the desktop market, they could have just said “For us, it doesn’t make business sense to pursue that market, good luck to the others”. But no, they had to poo-poo on Linux-on-desktop in general, to raze the ground in front of their competitors.
Let’s see, who is trying to construct a coherent desktop Linux strategy? Lindows and Sun. These are the only companies that have a clue and a will to push Linux on the desktop. And RedHat HATES both of them. So, what does a RedHat exec do, when he his company leaves the Linux-for-desktop scene? Say “Linux on the desktop sucks, GO WITH WINDOEWS, FOLKS”.
Yeah, RedHat looks more and more like Microsoft, and it even helps Microsoft.
I’ve used Gentoo quite extensively, and I’m sorry to say that it does NOT “just work” when compared to RedHat (and I assume Fedora Core). Want an example? If you’re not exactly familiar with the inner workings of linux and what’s needed to provide what, just try installing a base system and seeing where you end up. Hell, try INSTALLING the thing (gentoo’s install, while original, is an adventure for anyone who’s unseasoned). The first gentoo boot will dump you at the command prompt (assuming you get that far…you’re a newbie, remember!). Now go on…emerge XFree86. Might wanna get a sandwich or something. Oh and before you go to bed, emerge kde. By tomorrow evening you should be in business. But wait…you didn’t emerge freetype, did you? Now your fonts are crapola. Hey man that’s fine. Just emerge freetype, re-emerge XFree86, and re-emerge KDE. Throw on a few extra apps for the functionality you want, add OpenOffice since it’s the only reasonably-featured office suite around, and you should be in business within a half a week or so! I do speak from personal experience, by the way. This is exactly what I had to do when I did my first gentoo install, and it took about a week and a half of tweaking and fiddling to get my desktop to the point of a default Fedora install. Oh! Try this: yank your soundcard or NIC and replace it with a new one. Check out gentoo’s reaction. Now recall, you’re no linux pro. How ya gonna solve this one?
By contrast, Fedora core gives you beautiful fonts and a fully-functional system in 20 minutes and a few easy clicks. Wanna replace your soundcard or NIC? No problem! When you turn it on, it’ll probe for new hardware and you’ll be on your way again in no time. Not to mention automatic mounting of media as well as hotplug support (something which I never could get working with other distros, though they claim it’s present). The media thing is a legal issue, and by no means is it a limitation of Fedora.
Now I’ll grant you this. To the seasoned linux vet, Gentoo just can’t be beat. Once you do get it up and running, it’s smooth as silk. Probably the best distro I’ve used in my life. Portage is the slickest package manager I’ve ever seen. However, when my hard drive crapped out and I had to redo everything, I just didn’t have the heart to go schlog through all those issues again. I’ve really developed an appreciation for the integration and automation that Fedora provides. It’s a “get out of my way and let me work” philosophy.
for me, I bought a Gateway to use to connect to my DSL modem. then I can just say that I am on a LAN and the gateway takes care of the DSL stuff.
Actually, the Sun Java Desktop is aiming to be a *corporate* desktop (direct competitor to RH Enterprise WS). Sun still wants you to buy a full Solaris for servers. Sun has not put half of what RedHat has into open source. I’ve heard great things about Lindows, but I’m not going to use it.
Why don’t people just face the fact? If you have a regular guy down the street who is completely new to computers, Linux is not for them! Windows/Mac is better for them, and Windows is usually the most economical because of hardware/computers compatible with Windows are cheap and available anywhere.
On Linux, you’re going to have to make sure that every new device you buy for it is compatible, I don’t care which distro you use. Red Hat was correct in their statement, and when he said “home user”, he did not mean you or me. He meant that ever popular Joe User who is completely new to computers and isn’t going to put so much work into making sure new devices are compatible and setting them up.
When RedHat/SuSE or Lindows can take a cheap digital camera (an iClick, not an Olympus), a cheap WinModem (Lucents are hard enough to set up if you know a good deal about Linux), etc., and work out of box, I might reconsider. For now, I’ll just keep Linux for myself, and recommend Windows to new computer users.
Mario, it isn’t about “building a coherent strategy” for desktop Linux. It’s about making a desktop Linux that’s polished enugh, easy enough, and foolproof enough to beat Windows at its own game in the home market.
Red Hat has not abandoned the desktop market. They’ve said Linux is quite ready for that market.
The home market is different. An OS has to be be damn near infallible to work in that market. Home users are on their own; there’s no company tech support unit.
Here’s just one example: My Fedora Core 1 install did not require me to configure X. It did it automatically behind the scense during the install, and it got it right. No Linux distribution has ever done that for me, and I’ve installed a lot of Linux flavors in the last several years.
On the flip side, my onboard soundcard is detected but Fedora seems unable to coax any sound out of it.
That’s two examples of necessary improvements before Linux is really ready to sell into the home market. I know what kind of monitor and video card I have, but it is unreasonable to expect non-technical home users to know that. And, it is reasonable for them to expect the OS to know. As I’ve heard many of them say, isn’t that what a computer is for?
As Red Hat says, Linux is a couple years away from being ready for the home market. It needs to be preceived as better than Windows, not just as good as Windows, before it can be viable there.
Well as it seems Fedora is not backporting much, or will- it`s just living on the bleeding edge, and will probably brake sometimes- well if you install everything anyways. And by the way Fedora could at least try to go the way wich is safer, backport some, desktop options could be upgraded xfree etc, and please try to limit services running, it`s like a flaming Windows 98. Slack/Debian/Gentoo etc are MUCH better to run if you know just a little- redhat/fedora has always been hell.
what version of python does fedora use?
Thanks
Anonymous says: “If you have a regular guy down the street who is completely new to computers, Linux is not for them! Windows/Mac is better for them, and Windows is usually the most economical because of hardware/computers compatible with Windows are cheap and available anywhere.”
Very true, but the situation goes beyond that. Everyone who buys a PC almost certainly has an OS — Windows — up and running when the machine is plugged in for the first time. Wht incentive do they have, then, to run out and buy Linux? None that I can think of, unless their geeky enough to take that risk.
Remember, Linux advocates are asking Windows users to stop using an acceptable OS that meets their needs and migrate to a different OS that may not meet their needs. Without a strong incentive, most people won’t do that. To wean people away from Windows, Linux needs to be perceived as offering something better that eases the risk of switching. Right now, it doesn’t. Being just as good as Windows isn’t going to cut it.
Even if PC’s weren’t preloaded with Windows, almost everyone would buy and install Windows anyway. Why? Because it works with their “stuff”, and Linux might not.
I’ve used Gentoo quite extensively, and I’m sorry to say that it does NOT “just work” when compared to RedHat (and I assume Fedora Core). Want an example? If you’re not exactly familiar with the inner workings of linux and what’s needed to provide what, just try installing a base system and seeing where you end up. Hell, try INSTALLING the thing (gentoo’s install, while original, is an adventure for anyone who’s unseasoned). The first gentoo boot will dump you at the command prompt (assuming you get that far…you’re a newbie, remember!). Now go on…emerge XFree86. Might wanna get a sandwich or something. Oh and before you go to bed, emerge kde. By tomorrow evening you should be in business. But wait…you didn’t emerge freetype, did you? Now your fonts are crapola. Hey man that’s fine. Just emerge freetype, re-emerge XFree86, and re-emerge KDE. Throw on a few extra apps for the functionality you want, add OpenOffice since it’s the only reasonably-featured office suite around, and you should be in business within a half a week or so! I do speak from personal experience, by the way. This is exactly what I had to do when I did my first gentoo install, and it took about a week and a half of tweaking and fiddling to get my desktop to the point of a default Fedora install. Oh! Try this: yank your soundcard or NIC and replace it with a new one. Check out gentoo’s reaction. Now recall, you’re no linux pro. How ya gonna solve this one?
As a gentoo user, it should be common knowledge that that freetype is an Xfree86 dependency. Now you and I both know portage handles these dependencies automatically, and more often than not flawlessly. If I’m not mistaken, Xfree86 wouldn’t compile without freetype. So I don’t know whether your experience was cooked up or it is just a halucinatory effect of compiling too many packages. 😉 I’ve yanked up my network card a couple of times. And Gentoo still just worked. What happens when you yank out your soundcard? Because, honestly, I have no idea.
By contrast, Fedora core gives you beautiful fonts and a fully-functional system in 20 minutes and a few easy clicks. Wanna replace your soundcard or NIC? No problem! When you turn it on, it’ll probe for new hardware and you’ll be on your way again in no time. Not to mention automatic mounting of media as well as hotplug support (something which I never could get working with other distros, though they claim it’s present). The media thing is a legal issue, and by no means is it a limitation of Fedora.
As a gentoo user, you and I both know that this is equally possible on Gentoo. Hotplugging is visited in the installation manual. It works for me. Same goes with automatic mounting of media. However, I hate to compile bloated kernels. My kernel is extremely streamlined. The media might be a legal issue, but I’d be disgusted to realise I couldn’t play my favorite MP3 when I launch, say Rhythmbox, as an end user. Especially given the fact that I can do it on Gentoo[A supposedly do-it-yourself distro]. You do see where I’m coming from, right? Fonts? I’ve never had to fiddle with them. Anti-aliasing, sub-hinting and all what not supported out of the box.
Now I’ll grant you this. To the seasoned linux vet, Gentoo just can’t be beat. Once you do get it up and running, it’s smooth as silk. Probably the best distro I’ve used in my life. Portage is the slickest package manager I’ve ever seen. However, when my hard drive crapped out and I had to redo everything, I just didn’t have the heart to go schlog through all those issues again. I’ve really developed an appreciation for the integration and automation that Fedora provides. It’s a “get out of my way and let me work” philosophy.
I don’t seem to get that from the review. I mean, if it was a ‘get our of my way and let me work” philosophy, why do you still have to fiddle with your music player to get MP3, OGG, Radio stations to work? Why don’t you have a DVD player that just works? Ummmm…hmmmm…legal issues. I bet you installing mplayer on Fedora will also be accompanied by a lack of support for importan pluggins.
To me it seems like an endless journey of compromises between fully functional packages, legal stories and packages just not working out of the box. Agreed, Gentoo takes a while to install. Which is understandable it’s a source based distro. But come on, music players should work out of the box. It is expected. Isn’t fedora the distro where everything magically works out of the box? So what do you do now that you have Rhythmbox with no Radio station and plugin support? Do you reinstall it? Recompile it? Or look for another binary? Ahem, aren’t we back to square one? What is the excuse you give to your Grandmother as to why here favorite mp3 just doesn’t work? Mention the word “legal” and she’d never jump back to Linux again. Like I said, if nothing else, just don’t install a subpar music player. This was the same issue debian had some years ago with mplayer, when people complained about how mplayer sucked. Not knowing debian were the guys who made it suck.
“You can chat online using GAIM (which even works with msn messenger after you have enabled the included plug-in)”
So Fedora is shipping a version of gaim that’s more than a year old? Since 0.60 you no longer need to enable protocol plugins, they are autoloaded when needed.
Gaim is up to 0.72 now.
On my Fedora Core 1 box:
[xyz@~]$ rpm -q gaim
gaim-0.71-2
“You can chat online using GAIM (which even works with msn messenger after you have enabled the included plug-in)”
So Fedora is shipping a version of gaim that’s more than a year old? Since 0.60 you no longer need to enable protocol plugins, they are autoloaded when needed.
Gaim is up to 0.72 now.
fedora final ships with gaim 0.71.
“what version of python does fedora use?”
# python
Python 2.2.3 (#1, Oct 15 2003, 23:33:35)
[GCC 3.3.1 20030930 (Red Hat Linux 3.3.1-6)] on linux2
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
>>>
# python
Python 2.2.3 (#1, Oct 15 2003, 23:33:35)
[GCC 3.3.1 20030930 (Red Hat Linux 3.3.1-6)] on linux2
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
>>>
I sincerely hope that can be remedied once I install it.
“On the flip side, my onboard soundcard is detected but Fedora seems unable to coax any sound out of it.”
Try turning on ESD via the GNOME sound control panel, and make GAIM use it. I had similar issues until I did that. Basically, GAIM was grabbing /dev/dsp and nobody else was getting any time out of it.
Just a guess, though.
-Erwos
People BITCH and COMPLAIN if something isn’t in fedora Core installations. “we want program X” “we want feature X”.
look. You want the new gaim? get the rpm. if you have the old one installed, chances are that you’re going to have the deps 95% of the time. and when the same one comes out in fedora’s updates, you’ll be uptodate already, and so will the deps.
another thing: i’ve not had to get ANY rpms and install them yet. all i’ve wanted was in the repos i have already.
http://www.xades.com/proj/fedora_repos.html is a good place for those looking for repos. you’ll of course need to import the GPG keys into rpm first:
rpm –import http://fedora.us/FEDORA-GPG-KEY
rpm –import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY
and yum update. ( this is assuming yum ). if you get yum complaining about GPG keys, look for the source site URL and go there. nothing a little brains can’t solve. if you’re using linux, EXPECT to have SOME problems. After all … it’s not like getting windows running doesn’t require SOME effort ( think funky drivers etc. )
after all … when was the last time an entire OS upgrade took 20 minutes, and one command. and was free.
I don’t mean to sound like I am a windows hater ( i use win2k3 ) and i quite like XP (stop snickering). i just prefer Linux.
Seraph, your post regarding your switch to Fedora was great! I have been using Linux for about 15 months now. I have used Mandrake and Redhat. I have stuck with Redhat since 8.0. Currently, my Linux machine (laptop)is running RH9 with package updates from a variety of repositories. My experiences with Linux and RH in particular have been GREAT!!!!
Not that long ago when I was an undergraduate student, my machine was running Windows 95. My system would get mysteriously thrashed every few months. It was HORRIBLE! It took me about 4-6 hours (it was a slow 486) to get my system back to the way I had it. I had to install the OS and every program individually.
NOW with RH Linux, I backup my personal files and any files that I may have added since the first install (themes, rpms, etc). If my system were to be thrashed NOW, I can simply put in the install disk answer a few questions about what software I want on my system and go have dinner. After the install I can use apt-get and have my system updated to the newest packages. How much simpler can it get?
I’m REALLY looking forward to using Fedora. I haven’t been able to get a decent transfer rate from any of the mirrors. Everybody and their mother must be trying to download it. I have my machine downloading the CDs as we speak. Hopefully, by the end of the day they will be done.
“I’m REALLY looking forward to using Fedora.”
If you liked RedHat 9, you will love Fedora Core 1. It’s like an extremely polished, updated version of it. As always, read the release notes, because you can install it in any number of fun ways.
The MP3 thing is definitely annoying, but you can’t fault them for trying to avoid being sued, right? I’d appreciate it livna could try to throw together a version of rhythymbox with MP3 enabled, though.
Not being able to play DVDs, of course, is not a surprise. You’ve gotta buy the DVD playing software for Windows, too, you know? Not that I feel in the least bit bad about using libdecss stuff, mind you, and I doubt the MPAA hates me for it, either, since I buy all my DVDs.
-Erwos
Anyone know if you can add new themes? With RedHat 9, every time I tried to install a new theme it would never show up in the list even though it was in fact being installed to ~/.themes
Great Review. Being a new person to linux, you hit upon all the issues I would have wanted to know about before I installed. Well thought out, and it also hits upon some poiunts that advanced users would be concerned about. Great review and insight into Fedora, keep it up.
As it used to work for me with Redhat 9, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in Fedora.
That said, your problem might be that you didn’t install full themes but theme compenents (Metacity themes, GTK2 themes or icon themes).
If you did so, they didn’t appear in the theme list because what they call “theme” is really a meta-theme. So, to clarify, what you have to do is:
– install you metacity/gtk/icon theme
– click on any theme from the list
– click on “theme details”
– look for your metacity/gtk/icon theme in the “window border”, “controls” and “icons” lists.
Hope this helps.
> Well i installed all the redhat versions up to 9 on my
> laptop and all worked with my xircom pcmcia card.
I hit the same problem. See http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=107221
But, to summarize here: Run
cardctl eject 0
wait a few seconds and then run
cardctl insert 0
to get ethernet up and running with the Xircom pcmcia card under Fedora 1.
> for me i was again not able to get online with Fedora!
Sound like the problem I had. What kind of ethernet connection do you have? If it happens to be a Xircom pcmcia card, see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=107221
RE:<<Very true, but the situation goes beyond that. Everyone who buys a PC almost certainly has an OS — Windows — up and running when the machine is plugged in for the first time. Wht incentive do they have, then, to run out and buy Linux? None that I can think of, unless their geeky enough to take that risk.>>
My first computer was a Gateway with Win98se, it ran ok, and when WinME came out my brother bought a brand new Compaq with WinME on it and that thing would BSOD & lock up on a daily basis, so i never bought WinME and decided to keep Win98se, then when Win2k was released everybody on the BBSs i would frequent would praise it as being robust and stable so i take a chance and buy Win2k, it was slower, buggier, would lock up when trying to install the printer driver (a good HP842C deskjet), Win2k is more of a problem than Win98, so i wipe win2k off my disk and run only Win98 (was dual-boot) and now i have an expensive Win2k coffeecup coaster, and go to my local computer store and buy my first copy of Linux (Redhat-7.1) it installed in minutes!!! and after install there were no having to install device drivers because it was already configured (Video, Sound, Network, Printer worked great too) so i say to myself this Linux is pretty darn good!!! and Redhat made a believer out of me, i tried other distros and they were a mixed experience some good some bad, i always went back to my first love (Redhat) Microsoft can go jump in a lake because i am not wasting any more money on M$-Kludgeware, besides i am just a home user, i make very little money off my computing skills part time, mostly for fun anyway, so i made the switch to Linux back in 2000 with Redhat-7.1 and i keep the latest Redhat distro installed for 95 % of my computing needs, now if Adobe would make Photoshop run in Linux i would wipe win98se off and be 100 % Linux, Gimp is pretty good i like it but there is a certain smoothness and quality of photoshop that i need, i am sure that commercial software companies can make a living selling Linux applications especially for those apps that can not be substituted, i prefer Microsoft NOT make any Linux software as i feel Microsoft would compromise Linux’s quality and security, but i would buy from Adobe, Powerquest, Macromedia, and most any other BUT the first time their software starts breaking and compromising stability and security then out you would go…
> Does anyone know if Ximian Desktop will be available for
> Fedora? If not does that mean the only distro supported will
> be SuSE, or will Mandrake be added?
Ximian Desktop currently supports Red Hat 7.3, 8.0, 9, and SuSE 8.2. See
http://support.ximian.com/cgi-bin/ximian.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.ph…
Note that Fedora isn’t yet supported, but neither is SuSE 9.0. I’m fairly certain Fedora will be supported in the future–even with Novell buying SuSE. (One of the Ximian developers told me that although they’ll probably be using SuSE more now, many of them would still be using Red Hat/Fedora on their home computers…)
‘Yesterday afternoon Miguel de Icaza, co-founder of Ximian and currentCTO, told me, “We are going to support Fedora, and we are going tosupport Red Hat. Remember, we want our software to be as widely used aspossible.” He added, “We are Linux vendor-neutral. We are going tosupport every Linux distribution because different markets have different needs. It just makes sense tobe vendor-agnostic and support every player in town.”…As to the void left by Red Hat offering Red Hat Network support only forEnterprise Linux customers, the Red Hat moves have created a goldenopportunity for Ximian to expand its customer base. Ximian’s Red Carpetprovides the same type of services as the Red Hat Network – high-speedlines for downloads and automated updates for security and bug fixes -for a comparable price. All Ximian needs to do to gain new customersfrom those abandoned by RHN is to support Fedora, and they say that’swhat they’re going to do.
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/11/03/2136258&mode=threa…
“The distro is *fast*. It beats Gentoo in terms of desktop speed/responsiveness/load times. No, don’t argue. I have it in front of me.”
Uhh…yes, I will argue. While I do not have my Gentoo box in front of me (I am at a library), I had it and my laptop (with its Fedora Core 1 installation) in front of me simultaneously at my desk last night for about an hour to do some responsiveness testing.
All I can say is, if your Gentoo installation runs slower than Fedora, you made some massive mistakes when you compiled it. Granted, my desktop machine is faster than my laptop by about 300 mhz (with equal RAM), but that doesn’t account for the fact that it took Fedora nearly THREE TIMES as long to boot as Gentoo, even with most of the default-enabled crap turned off. Not to mention the fact that applications take significantly longer to load (including Mozilla, OpenOffice, and Evolution), Gnome takes almost twice as long to start up, and switching between windows and virtual desktops is noticeably less smooth. Additionally, although I obviously can’t have the machines side by side, it really feels like the Gentoo install that was on my laptop before I installed Fedora was faster in all these respects as well, and that wasn’t even a stage 1 install.
Some of the difference in responsiveness is definitely attributable to the fact that I’m running a 2.6 kernel on the Gentoo box; but even when it was running under 2.4, it was significantly faster than Fedora. Also, my laptop Gentoo install used a 2.4 kernel.
Don’t get me wrong — I like Fedora. I think it’s polished, looks sharp, works quite well, etc. In fact, I’m probably going to leave it installed on my laptop, I like it so much. But it isn’t faster than a properly built Gentoo, not by a (extremely) long shot.
Hopefully I’ll find time next week to get a 2.6 kernel working with Fedora. That may change the way I see this issue, but I’m doubtful.
Chazwurth,
You really can’t compare the speed of a laptop to a desktop. Most laptop hard drives are considerably slower in performance than a desktop hard drive, which could easily be the reason for the large slow down. Also, laptops (at least the ones I’ve dealt with) tend to have slower speed RAM. All in all, I’ve never seen a fair comparison of a desktop to a laptop, you have to sacrifice something for portability. You even mention different kernel versions in use, so the comparison you are making is a moot point.
Don’t get me wrong, I think a properly configured Gentoo box is going to outperform other non-source based distros, assuming you go in and tweak your make.conf a bit, but not many people want to do that. I know I spent many an hour reading the forums to find the best compile options.
My cent-and-a-half (like it matters)
SMF
SMF,
Fair enough. I know this is only a subjective measure — but I’ve tried four different distros on my laptop, including RedHat (8,9), Debian, Gentoo, and Fedora, and Fedora sure as hell feels like the slowest I’ve run. Or at least in the same league as RedHat.
Ah well…now you have me really wanting to measure. Looks like I’m gonna have to fill up one of those free partitions on my desktop machine.
How do you want to measure responsiveness? Fedora certainly don’t has this slowness of Red Hat 9 anymore. The mouse is always responsive and I never had slow redraws yet, whatever I do (browser, ripping, music, Enemy Territory).
I’m very happy with this. Maybe my RH 9 setup was just borked, but I still used it for many months. =)
Nice work, Niall. Thanks for the XMMS info, too.
You have to fix the spelling and punctuation mistakes though!
–Noel
The most slowness I’ve experienced is in the boot process and in the time required to launch apps. Redraws aren’t terrible, but aren’t fantastic either. A lot of it is subjective for sure, hard to quantify, etc. It just doesn’t feel all that fast.
when i said speed/responsiveness … the responsiveness part should tell you that it’s *after* i login that i speak of. sure it boots slower. that’s a given, since it does all the probing in the world and has loads of startups apps.
but if my fedora machine which loads tons of ‘crap’ at boot, and is ‘slow and binary’ can load firebird in 1 second (at mst 2) … WHILE having all this ‘crap’ already loaded, running etc. … why do i need more speed?
btw, i mean responsiveness in this way: i have a fully loaded system. I am ripping a CD with sound juicer, playing music, checking (my LARGE) imap accounts, surfing the net with moz, wgetting a file, AND running yum to update stuff. i also have apache, mysql, php et all running along with an ftpd.
i don’t really feel that. my menus come out a tad slower, but that’s mostly true cause i have nice PNG icons everywhere. apart from that …. it feels the same at idle.
hint, hint: prelinking, NPTL, pre-emptive kernel (2.4.22-1.2061.nptl or thereabouts from my friends box as mine isn’t here right now).
you see … fedora gives you the stable, but cutting edge of most things. not quite bleeding, admittedly. but i think that’s a good tradeoff.
Thanks for the great article! You did a really nice job. I can tell you put some real time and thought into this. This is what the Linux community is all about!
Regards,
James Blaha
Jsut tried it, I love the improved blue curve, now you really cant tell KDE or GNOME apart easily.
However, KDE is still crippled on Fedora.
Foe example, no “recent items” in KDE menu or “network servers” or ability to shut down or reboot instead of just logout like in gnome. ALl of these things are easily possible. For example for network servers all you have to do is type smb:/ in konquerors adress bar and recent documents is jsut a check away, but it smore the under the hood changes that annoy me, such as not linking basic libraries to KDE applications that need them. =( Hopefully, in the next release when it willr eally be built by the community KDE will not be crippled.
Actually, I used RH 9 for a while, a few days under KDE/KDM. I found that you can change the KDM config file (probably can change this thru the KDE control center as well) so that a normal user may choose to shut down/reboot the computer.
Along with Win2000 I have been using different versions of Redhat, and have tried a few other distros as well. To me Rh9 has been the most useful one. I could add most of the software I needed and both Java, Flash, Real Audio/Video, Mp3 have been working sufficiently well. I prefer KDE, and despite the trouble installing truetype fonts, it has been working almost without flaw, and the need for Win2000 has been steadily on the decline.
I had anticipated that Fedora would give me all this and more. Installing is painless and, as with RH9, it recognizes all my hardware, both internal and external. However, maybe someone can tell me why these things do not work:
Real Player and Flash will no longer cooperate.
Installing truetype fonts is now very easy but in KDE/Konqueror font sizes or line heights are too large, messing up a couple of webpages with tight spaces between elements. (This problem seems to be the same as was for the KDE 3.1.4.)
I think I’ll return to RH9 and wait for Fedora 2. Or try SuSE 9, which seems to be more oriented towards the desktop. The Live-eval-9.0 is quite impressive.
Font problems are the same as with the KDE 3.1.4 upgrade for RH9 (It must be a Konqueror problem, not Fedora, because SuSE 9 with KDE 3.1.4 has it too, while Mozilla, in all three cases, does it right!)
I don’t know if its fedora’s or my monitor’s problem, my monitor was unprobed so i entered the Hsync and Vsync from the manual, the installation(fresh install) went smooth. After the installation i was prompted to reboot, the graphical boot-up was nice, i was prompted to create a regular user and all those post install stuff. Then I logged in, saw the GNOME start up. I was begining to navigate the menus when the monitor’s view shrunk, then kapooooffff!!!! Then I smelled some burned plastic/stuff coming from my monitor.
Kinda weird, i used the same Hsync and Vsync on this same machine with the RH9 install. Tsk!
“…To me Rh9 has been the most useful one. I could add most of the software I needed and both Java, Flash, Real Audio/Video, Mp3 have been working sufficiently well…”
From the 1st day rh9 released, I ve used it till FC1 was born. I see if you have trouble w/ ReaPlayer /FC1, then the same as RH9. coz’ I myself had to install rp8 /rh9 from source. Did I do with FC1 and it’s ok. All the rest (but Flash) I installed on FC1 and it is alright. installing mstruetypefontcore in FC1 is same as in RH9, and it works well on kde/gnome. However, I still think if you prefer KDE to Gnome, try Suse anyway. With me, linux is linux. Same. the selection of a Linux Dist is not for a religion but a habit and work.//end
Cracks me up reading these. MP3’s and nice desktops… Anyone that actually uses linux install this yet? If you want a pretty desktop or mp3’s (why is beyond me) then go get mandrake.
just wondering how the following things are in fedora:
1. screensaver “unlock” dialog. is it still the old style with the flames? or has it been gnome-ified?
2. why isn’t the menu editor enabled by default???
3. anybody tried it on an ibm thinkpad t30? just wondering if the modem will still work (i assume just a recompile of slmdm). also, hows the tpctl and tpb stuff work? nothing broken i hope.
I’m REALLY looking forward to using Fedora. I haven’t been able to get a decent transfer rate from any of the mirrors. Everybody and their mother must be trying to download it. I have my machine downloading the CDs as we speak. Hopefully, by the end of the day they will be done.
I started a bittorent download via cable (3meg down/384K up) and had all three disks in 1 hour and 43 minutes….
You complained about the 30 second delay that Kudzu adds to every boot. My experience is that Kudzu only waits 30 seconds if it is waiting for you to press enter to configure some hardware it hasn’t configured before. If you press enter and tell Kudzu to configure or ignore the hardware, it will take much less time on the next boot. During a graphical boot you will need to “show details” in order to interact with Kudzu properly.
I downloaded three days before Fedora Core 1 (1 night + half day of download !).
As always there is a lot of bugs (same thing as Redhat 7.1 to 9). I agree Fedora is the most polished redhat linux released until today. But I experienced the following symptoms :
1st symptom :
I login in KDE, then I insert a CDROM in my CDdrive. I get immediatly an autoplay (good !). I log out from KDE, then I loggin into Gnome. The CDROM is always mounted but Gnome hangs !!! difficult to see my gnome desktop ! the only solution who remain is Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, then Ctrl+Alt+F3. I get a full black console, then I unmount my CDROM from command line !!! this solves the problem.
2d symptom :
I have an ordinary PS2 Wheel mouse. I execute XFIG, the pointer of my mouse change of form like “X”; I do some elementary graphics with XFIG then I save my work and quit XFIG. The problem is that my mouse pointer stays with it’s “X” form for several others seconds until I open a new application like GEDIT or NAUTILUS ..
3d symptom :
When I reboot my computer i get the red message :
Failed to unmount mouse in console mode !
4th symptom :
I have 2 hard disks and three FAT32 partitions. I mounted them in FSTAB by adding lines like :
/dev/hdb5 /mnt/win_e noauto,user 0 0
I always used mouse right cliks in my gnome desktop to mount each fat32 partitions (and also fd and Cd). This worked fine in the preceeding redhat distributions (redhat 7.x, 8, 9). Now with Fedora Core 1 I AM UNABLE TO UNMOUNT FAT32 PARTITIONS directly using mouse right click menu in gnome desktop. I always get the message :”DRIVE IS BUSY ..”.
NVIDIA geforce drivers are unable to kernel compile in Fedora.
This is my experience with Fedora in the last two days.
Thanks
H. Ben
Morocco
is it just me or is there a bug in the media check?
i’ve seen a couple articles besides this one where media check on the second cd fails…
for me it was like this:
i downloaded the three iso images and verified their md5s…
i used something like this to burn each one:
cdrecord dev=0,0,0 speed=16 -v -pad -eject yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
i booted the first cd immediately after burning it, ran the media check and passed it…
then i burned the second and third cd using the same procedure…
i booted the first cd (again) and then gave it the second cd to be checked… the media check failed… it didn’t even go through the whole checking process… looked like it couldn’t run the check for some reason or something… the bar graph was at 1% for a little while before media check informed me that the media check failed and that the cd sucked, etc…
i gave it the third cd and the media check passed on it…
i found this rather odd (the fact that cd one and three burned fine but cd two didn’t) so i gave it the second cd again just to see and it passed the media check this time…
i haven’t tried the fedora distro yet cuz i’m wondering about this little issue… i imagine that the fact the cd passed the media check the second time around means it’s safe to continue with the install.. right?
anyways, this would look to me like a bug, or at least some sorta insect…
=)
i’m wondering if anybody else seen this behavior…???
must be a bug, i have problems running it too, if the MD5SUM works then just bypass the mediacheck and install it, i have and love it…
Anyone figure out why some people can’t get online with Fedora?
Just curious because I am one of the
“upgraded” to fedora and I was impressed with the desktop (very fast) and the graphical boot, but I will have to dump it if I can’t get online.
To get Nvidia drivers to compile (using the Nvidia distributed Nvidia-drivers-xxxx.run file):
Set the environment variable IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH to 1 (export IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=1) and re-run the Nvidia driver setup. It should compile and install on the 2.4.22.nptl kernel (it’s running fine on my GeForce 4 420 Go card).
Here is a better way to install the NVidia drivers:
http://fedora.artoo.net/faq/#nVidia
I just installed Fedora on my laptop today and I too had problems getting my Linksys wireless network card to work. I installed the wlan-ng drivers that I used in RH9, but it wouldn’t work. I uninstalled the wlan RPMs and tried getting my wireless NIC to work using nothing more than what ever Fedora came with. SUCCESS!! It turns out if I use the Redhat network program to set up my network, it detects my card. Unlike with the wlan driver, Fedora detected exactly what make and model card was installed. I simply setup my SSID and a few other options and I was done.
Moral of the story: I stumbled over myself in route to setting up my network connection. I shouldn’t have tried installing the RH9 wlan-ng drivers.
I don’t know if this was any help, but I feel your pain.
I am using Geforce 4 Go 440, the Fedora Core can’t display well, there have a line flash on the screen from bottom to up in the xwindows login section and reboot/shutdown section, i can’t see any word, just can see the line flash.
I have try to install the Nvidia driver, and change the XF86 Config.
After doing this, i can’t see the login screen, when it boot into the xwindows, i just see a many of line (blue, while) on the screen.
Have any suggestion ?
I have downloaded and installed Fedora and, to date, all of the programs simply work. This is a walcome change from other distrobutions I have tried, AS most seem to have a major feature with bugs which prevent full use. ( I have tried several dozen Linux distros in the last several years ). The only problem I had was with the downloads as it took sevaral attempts to get downloads which passed the MD5 check. As the author says DO THE MEDIA TEST.
Try setting the CC=gcc32 to compile the Nvidia driver with the same version of GCC as the kernel.
Be sure to get all of the kernel tools installed on load or you’ll have to use the shell to load the headers.
Does Red Hat package all of the software that they had in Red Hat 9 in Fedora? Are the important things like Apache, MySQL, Postfix, SSH, and even Samba working properly? Have they started packaging more development versions instead of stable versions? I know how the underlying configuration works in Red Hat 6.x, 7.x, 8.0, and 9 and it has changed very little over the years. Can I expect to find things where I always have before, or has everything been changed around?
These are the questions that I hoped would be answered when I read this article and the comments. I couldn’t care less what color the GUI login screen is, I could have easily assumed that MP3s and DVDs still won’t play with the distributed packages, and I know that people will make packages and/or sources available for anything like that I need. Hiding the startup sequence from me sounds more like an annoyance than a feature; something for me to figure out how to disable.
All in all, I found this article and your ongoing MP3 discussions highly uninformative. If my computer was nothing more than a web browser and media player to me I might feel differently, but I would tend to think that people who use Linux do so because they want more than that. Linux really isn’t, and probably never will be, an operating system for the clueless desktop user, so why would you write a review from that perspective at all?
Dear Bob,
Thank you for your Interesting comment. I can understand your desire for this information seeing as you are obviously not a ‘clueless desktop user’, however, _I_ do not use ‘things like Apache, MySQL, Postfix’ so _I_ did not cover them in my review. Fedora is aimed at the desktop market believe it or not, and not the server market (which I do believe the packages you mention are designed for aside from ssh/samba).
Like you, I also do not consider myself to be a ‘clueless desktop user’, I would strongly suggest that you spend some time researching Fedora instead of flaming others, and post a review yourself, perhaps describing the inner gotcha’s in
Apache, MySQL, Postfix, SSH and so on.
I’d be happy to criticise it and you the author, oops, I mean, post a comment.
cheers
anyweb
http://anyweb.kicks-ass.net/linux/tips