Linux distros are advancing everywhere. Not only servers but also on the desktop pc and notebooks. There are wild discussions, if Linux-Distributions are ready for serious business work or personal use. This critical review will deal with two long awaited Linux-distributions, Fedora Core 3 and Ubuntus Warty Warhog. Why these two? Because both feature Gnome 2.8 and it would not be a comparision on equal terms to compare Gnome to e.g KDE. Also, both use kernel 2.6.8+ and have their very own theme for the default desktop. Bluecurve for Fedora and Human for Ubuntu.
1. Pre-Installation
I will test these distributions on the following machines: A 1,2 Ghz AMD Desktop PC with 512 MB Ram and a 40 GB harddisk, 16 MB ATI Mach64 Rage II graphics, Samsung 76E Monitor, and a CDROM drive and CDROM burner, both from Samsung. Network Connection is a Realteck 10/100 Ethernet card, connected to the ultimate test: a not so easy D-Link DSL 564t-Router. The second machine is a ESC 1,8 Ghz TM5800 processor notebook with 256 MB Ram and a 30 GB harddisk, a 64 MB Nvidia graphics card, a DVD-burner and again a Realteck network card plus a WLAN card that will not be used in this test, because there was no wireless Router available for this test.
How do you get the Systems? Both Ubuntu and Fedora are available via download. But unless you have broadband, downloading might be a pain. This is especially true for Fedora, which ships with four CDs plus a rescue-CD. Ubuntu uses only one CD, which is somehow more “user-friendly” but we will discuss this later.
For both systems, there is the alternative of ordering the distros online. Ubuntu will ship them to you for free if you cannot afford them and you can also get a live-CD, something that is not in stock for Fedora, but Fedora is (opposed to Ubuntu) available in shops in the “Red Hat Magazine” which features stable Fedora versions with patches included. It is up to the user to decide who the personal winner is, but in this review, this is a draw.
What do you get? – Preinstall
Fedora ships with 5 CDs, Ubuntu with one. Thus you get a big choice of apps you can try on Fedora, including alternative Desktops like the fast XFCE4 or the ultra-popular KDE. You also get software for running servers, compiling software or alternative Webbrowsers. Lots of choices. Ubuntu gives you a pre-selected package of tools and apps. You get a basic system but can add thousands of apps later via apt-get/synaptic, once the system is installed. The basic apps-selection in Ubuntu is very good and well thought, but the lack of choice is something that might upset some users that are used to “free selection”. For Server purposes, there are not enough tools included with Ubuntu, but for a basic office desktop, the package selection is perfect.
Due to the big amount of packages available during the install-procedure, Fedora wins in this category.
2. Installation
The installation was successful on both machines and no complications arose although the user-forums of boths systems report several problems. Especially Fedora seems to be more bug-ridden than Ubuntu. Users comlpained mainly of kernel-panics, media-file problems and networking woes. In Ubuntus forums, most questions related to software/media problems. So stability seems to be definitely better on the Debian based Ubuntu system.
Fedora installs with the Anaconda installer that is very easy to use. Point and click and you are done. The only thing that surprised here was the partitioning tool. On distrowatch, ReiserFS was mentioned as a supported filesystem. But the partitioning tool does not offer the option of using ReiserFS but only gives you the option of using ext2 and ext3 for Linux. The test on an already existing ReiserFS partition revealed that ReiserFS can be used IF it is already in place but formatting to ReiserFS seems to be impossible, which is a pity.
Ubuntu comes with a text-install (same as the “new” Debian text-installer) which is not bad at all. It gives you a lot of options for setting up your system although there is no package selection. The big plus here was the partitioning tool that worked extremely well and offered a lot of file-formats. You definitely get a bit more control in Ubuntu than in Fedora (or at least you have the impression) and it is a powerful tool if used by someone who is a little adept with installing operating systems but for someone who is completely untrained, anaconda would be a better installing-system.
Draw
3. First booting
Both sysmtems use grub as default for booting. Ubuntu has a somehow better “system-auto detect” than Fedora. Although Fedora detects a Windows ME partition and adds it to the menu, Ubuntu also detected Fedora and thus added Windows ME AND Fedora to the grub-menu. A big plus for Ubuntu.
Fedora looks like its predecessors and shows a nice graphical boot, while Ubuntu is bare naked. While Fedora looks “sweeter” for most users, Ubuntu definitely boots faster. A first login shows the “personal note” of both systems. Fedora sports the well known Bluecurve theme and with the new default wallpaper, it might be a bit too dark for many users but the Desktop is overall very polished, reduced to the important stuff and thus ready for your every day work.
Once you log into Ubuntu, you are not presented with one of the popular “blue” desktops but a earth colored “human” design. The Ubuntu desktop is more tweaked than Fedoras. the dustbin is placed in the lower panel, thus saving space, the other desktop-icons (Desktop, Computer,..) are removed and placed under the “Computer” section of the upper panel. This is an intelligent move because most of the time, windows are open and cover the icons on the desktop anyway. With the icons placed in the panel, you get a fast access to these apps even if your desktop is crowded.
Winner with a slight margin: Ubuntu
4. Exploring the system – Office
Both Dekstops ship with Firefox as default browser and Evolution as mail-client. Integration was done nicely in all aspects of the desktop. Also, both systems ship OpenOffice, the workhorse for any serious work. OpenOffice starts a bit faster in Fedora and features a nice bluecurve splashscreen. While the customizations done to OpenOffice like the language-implementation for the menu are optically nice, it all has a drawback: bugs are more likely to happen. And this is the big problem here. Fedoras OpenOffice crashes the whole (!) system everytime you start to use the spellchecker. This makes the officesuite hardly usable for everyday work.
An update to this bug is still on the waiting list. And talking about bugs: Fedoras “up-to-date” messenger informed instantly about new updates that were available from Red Hats mirrors to sort out bugs. Quite a surprise as twelve updates were already available on the very first day, Fedora was on the mirrors. But downloading and installing seemed to be tricky. The update tool crashed several times for no apparent reason. Same with using the “yum” tool from the command line. A look on the net revealed that the popular apt-get tool of Debian (which is used by default in Ubuntu) was already available for the new Fedora. Installing the rpm was easy and apt-get worked a lot better than yum. Selecting and deselecting software packages via the normal (out of the box) menu resulted in messages that nothing can be installed or removed. A bug? It seems so.
Ubuntus OpenOffice is rock-stable although it does not feature the language or graphical customizations done in Fedora. Evolution is usable and stable in both systems and nothing negative can be reported. All other applications, used in every day work are mostly bug-free (that is: no grave bugs were encountered on the notebook and the desktop during the ten-days test).
Advantage: Ubuntu
5. Media support
Here, Ubuntu really shines. Why? Because Fedora still does not give any mp3 or dvd or video support for end-users. While this policy is understandable, it is quite annoying for end-users who always have to tweak teir box in order e.g. to hear their mp3 collection. Many standard-rpms need to be replaced with the freshrpm repositories in order to use any media. The big question is: why does Fedora ship with tools like Totem or Rhythmbox at all, if they are almost completely useless? Ubuntu is better in this respect. Rhythmbox and XMMS worked out of the box, some videos could be seen, but not all. But there are more deb-packages available for download to satisfy absolutely every wish.
Something strange happened to the audio-CDplayer in Fedora. It told of a “nonexistent CDrom drive” and a rather quick exploration revealed that the audio cd is marked as /dev/cdrom, while the right entry would be /dev/hdd. But it took some time to find this quirk and correct it.
USB drive-support was quite good on both systems. No problems were encountered with digital cameras or USB-sticks, although some users reported problems with card-readers on both systems. Fedora had no problem with detecting 3 1/2″ disks, while Ubuntu had. The fstab file needed a little tweaking here, changing the “auto” entry to e.g. “vfat” but these are rather minor annoyances, if you know your way around in linux. For an untrained linux-user, such things will be a big reason for continuous frustration.
Advantage: Ubuntu
6. Administrating the system
Both distributions come with some gnome-tools for system administration. Thus they are easy to use and no big differences will show up. And indeed, they were easy to use, but again, there were some minor annoyances. Adding users in Fedora worked one time and didn’t work the next time. A search through the forum-pages revealed that several users had problems setting up new accounts. No real solution was available here. Ubuntu did not complain about adding new users.
When keeping the system up-to date, Fedora uses yum/up2date by default. These tools work quite well although up2date crahed sometimes, as mentiones before. Yum is more stable and also very easy to use but more difficult to “configure” once you want to add more mirrors. Ubuntus apt-get/synaptic package is way ahead in this respect, especially as it offers a lot more packages than Fedoras mirrors.
Installation and uninstallation of tools/apps was easy on both systems but nonetheless, it would be nice if Fedora would switch to apt-get in the future, as most users prefer it to yum and install it on their system.
Slight advantage: Ubuntu
7. Networking
Both systems (on desktop and notebook) were tested on a LAN-Router connection to a flatrate. The D-Link router is known to be fast but a bit quirky, especially with 2.6 kernels. Why that? there is a little problem with ipv6 and the kernel that rendered many systems almost useless on the net. Although webistes could be reached via ping from a console, websites did not show up. This grave bug does not occur on 2.4 kernels but as these are used less and less, it is a good test, how well these two distros manage to get rid of the bug.
In Ubuntu (2.6.8 kernel), webpagedisplay was nonexistent. The known way to solving this problem is to deactivate the ethernetcard, then add some dns values in the /etc/resolv.conf and then restarting the network. This seemes to work on the Ubuntu box. Websites were shown, downloads were functioning. But only for a brief time. After roughly 15 minutes, the connection was dead again and the procedure had to be done again. Very annoying. The only way to consistently solve this problem was to download (yes, apt-get was working nonetheless) the resolvconf, pump and dnsmasq packages. the pump package replaced the dhcp package and after this procedure, Ubuntu was working like hell. The network was very stable, no strange behavior appeared during the next days.
Fedora (2.6.9 kernel) had the same problem at the beginning. No web-page could be seen. But there was a small clue. In the Gnomes networking-tool, there is a checkbox to deactivate ipv6. After deactivating ipv6 and the networking card and after editing the /etc/resolv.conf, the systems was working well again. No packages needed to be downloaded (as in Ubuntu) and nothing unusual happened the following days. Maybe this ipv6 bug will be completely gone once the 2.6.10 kernel is out but until then, users need to do some tweaking with certain routers.
Slight advantage: Fedora
8. Conclusion
Out of the box, Ubuntu is the winner in this test with 6:4 points but that does not mean that Fedora is a bad distro. Both are well planned distributions that really make your everyday Linux-experience a pleasure and will likely lure many users to the Linux-world. And once Fedora adds a better media support, both distros are at equals. Ubuntu and Fedora are in certain respect the pace-setting Gnome distributions and from an end users perspective the distributions to beat (KDE-based distributions are a different matter).
About the author:
Fabian M. Schindler, 31, is a german free-lance journalist who is using Linux since several years for his everyday work after dumping Windows and MacOS8/9. He has extensively tested and used dozens of different Linux-distributions, like SUSE, Mandrake, Gentoo, or Slackware.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
Ubuntu vs. Fedora?
It’s easy to sum up for me:
Ubuntu randomly crashes on my box.
Fedora does not.
—————————–
Evolution doesn’t work properly under Ubunt (AMD64), but it does under Fedora.
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Lots of software is far more up to date in FC3 (having come out after Ubuntu), so…
It’s pretty cut and dry for me personally. I can’t use Ubuntu (because of the random hard locks only it has), don’t want to use it (because of problems with evolution and some outdated packages) so it’s easy for just to use FC3…
Some days I wish for the Ubuntu polished Gnome desktop with Fedora’s update to date and polished in other area feel, and it’s RPM package userland (much easier for developers like me to deal with).
Sorry guy but you can install Fedora with the ReiserFS on a clean system.
All you need to do is enter in
linux reiserfs
at the installation prompt.
No fuss. No muss.
Ubuntu is a nice distro, but I found it buggy. I filed more than 10-15 bug reports last 2 months, most of them critical. I still can’t use my mouse with it without removing the mouse from the PS/2 connector and place it back in immediately. Other distros on the same machine have not the same symptoms.
On the other hand, Fedora is even more buggy. And slow. And a memory hog. And irritating. But it has more preference panels to setup things and that’s nice.
For me, the winner, between the two, is Ubuntu (in general would be ArchLinux or Slackware). For a newcomer, Fedora might be better, because of all the pref panels.
Having just installed both FC3 and Ubuntu myself I have to go with the Ubuntu side. No problems with install / stability with either, but the messing around to find/add sources for audio/video to fedora was annoying, where as Ubuntu has the full range of debian packages available. Tracking Hoary rather than Warty as well and you get all the freshmeat you can want.
It is unfair to try to say “well, this distro includes media support and therefore it has an adavantage” when Ubuntu is not US based, while Fedora is.
Because of the legal problems surrounding MP3 patents, and other things it is very wrong to try to compare distributions based on which one decided to deal with a legal gray area and which one does not.
Instead, the fact that Fedora respects the laws of the country, and tries to not to entangle it’s users in legal troubles is a better advantage to me.
Additionally, you failed to mention that all the patent covered things you installed in Ubuntu are only through the unsupported restricted repository.
As it is, there is a legal risk for them even providing that.
Whether or not you agree with the laws or the legal problems, they exist, they are there, and many distributors are starting to be be careful about them.
So, with that in mind, this review would come out 5:5, a Draw.
For me it’s Ubuntu all the way– I find Fedora a mess– too many packages. And, I’ve said it a million times, Fedora has a 19-item menu. That’s insane. When I install my operating system I don’t wish to spend hours on making the menu at least a bit useable.
And I don’t really get why Ubuntu is the winner in multimedia support– both do not support mp3 and dvd out of the box, so it’s a draw for me.
Forgot to mention, Ubuntu wouldn’t even install on my other PC, a Linuxcertified laptop. Its new installer would freeze with a black screen. That’s obvious an installer bug that needs to be fixed…
“So, with that in mind, this review would come out 5:5, a Draw.”
Hey, it’s his review, stop being a bigot.
Mmm guess I’m one of the lucky ones again– Ubuntu installs without problems on both my x86 and my iMac…
Why am I always lucky?
Im really starting to hate these reviews, that makes the decision based on the reviewers PoV. Ubuntu coming on a single CD is not a bad thing for alot of people. So basically banging it for that and a restricted list of first install programs is moronic. Why you ask? Because that is the GOAL of the distro in question. It was put together that way, so then saying yea but you dont get everything and the kitchen sink option at install is just stupid.
Ubuntu can be used as a server but from a user standpoint you can see that wasn’t the first place that it was being aimed at. Its setup to be a more desktop centric distro, that means I dont need all the server stuff installed at that get go. Just like it was designed to be.
Instead of comparing two distros that have totally different goals, it might have been nice to see a review about what each one offers and let the reader decide which better fit them. Instead we get another reviewer telling us how “HE” thinks these distros should act and which one “He” thinks is better.
Of course the above is just my pov too. So most likely meaningless to all but me.
And RE: SadUbuntuUser if they switched to RPM I wouldnt be using Ubuntu anymore .. thats one of the reasons I switched to it .. apt-get and .debs. Again personal likes and dislikes. Sorry Ubuntu didn’t work for you, but I never had anything but problems with the Fedora’s while Ubuntu works without a hitch. Again personal opinions and machines differ =)
My take is use what works for you. Nice to see FC3 move to a standard Gnome desktop config though.
Anon E Moose
The patent arguement isn’t very strong. If patents really were an issue Fedora wouldn’t contained tabbed interface due to Adobe’s tabbed palette patent, which they have used against Macromedia in 2000.
While I will agree that the media support of Fedora out of the box is not great, Ubuntu’s is not a lot better. Many of my music files did not work with Ubuntu out of the box, and none of my video files did.
Luckily Ubuntu has a faq on their website that makes everything work geat real quick. My main question is why would Ubuntu pull out the media support on their default install, when they know most of their users are just going to install it anyway. Seems to me like a few idealist are hurting their main user base.
I have not tried Ubuntu, so I can’t compare them BUT…
I have tried and used Fedora 3 for the past week and let me tell you something. This is the MOST successful install, easiest to use Linux I have tried yet. I have tried Xandros, Lindows/Linspire(whatever), RH, SuSE, mandrake, and lycoris. Fedora 3 KILLS them.
The ONLY problem I had, and it is QUITE a problem… Samba did NOT want to work correctly. I could not browse, I could not set up shares. It seemed to me to be TOTALLY busted. Which confused the hell out of me. I have used and worked with FC2 for a bit now and that NEVER had a problem with Samba. Usually, I have problems with hardware, NOT Samba.
I did download the latest and install that. I was then able to setup shares but I still could NOT browse my local servers.
It was very irritating.
The coolest part of the experience for me was that it recognized ALL my hardware. (USB, Wifi, etc.) This was on a LAPTOP too… The wifi didn’t work, in terms of, being used but it did get recognized by kudzu, installed and init’d, BUT it would not locate my linksys WAP. This was not a big deal ’cause I think Wifi still sucks and is in it’s “growth” spurt. So, when it settles down, I’ll join. Till then I can run wire with surprising speed.
Can you tell I was impressed.
Later,
G
I can not stand the idiot-syncracies of an RPM based distribution. I tried to love fedora wit apt, but it was not the same.
thank god Ubuntu has brought modern packages to Debian.
now if Ubuntu would just work out a few usability kinks it will be awesome. I think though that it is a Gnome issue more than a distro issue,
it helps that ubuntu is single CD oriented
net installs are much better than cd installs. you only get the software you want or need.
yes., I know fedora has some kind of net install function, but i is hardly meant to be a primary way to install the system.
okay, to the ReiserFS: how shall i find out that it can be used in the fedora-install if i cannot read it anywhere before installing? not the best option for a newb. I searched for this info but never found it. sorry.
as to your personal installation problems: i know that the one or the other distro might not work perfectly on your boxes, but i ONLY give comment on the hardware i have used for this review. do not expect me to try every piece of hardware there is for computers.
also keep in mind that i have taken a deep look into the forums in order to see where most problems arose.
the mp3 thing: yes, you are right, mp3 is now unavailable on both, fedora and ubuntu. ubuntu only removed it from its main packages recently but you can grab it immediately from the mirrors. in fedora it is a bit more tricky (3rd party). so it is still a slight advantage for ubuntu. especially because of the audio-cdrom stuff.
to the legal-issues: not everyone who uses fedora lives in the us. so if there are people who are allowed to use mp3 and/or other stuff, why is it all kept from them and not even available from the mirrors. this is kinda weird imho. ubuntu has a better approach to this.
just my two cents.
Seemed like it took me forever to convince people there was a problem with the 2.6.8 kernel. As soon as I loaded it on a machine on our network I we saw issues.
sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0
that takes care off the imediate problem, and
echo “net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0” >> /etc/sysctl.conf
at a root prompt should take care of it for good. It’s been working for us. 🙂
Garret
The ONLY problem I had, and it is QUITE a problem… Samba did NOT want to work correctly. I could not browse, I could not set up shares. It seemed to me to be TOTALLY busted. Which confused the hell out of me. I have used and worked with FC2 for a bit now and that NEVER had a problem with Samba. Usually, I have problems with hardware, NOT Samba.
I think this is a GNOME/Nautilus problem. If you have KDE installed you CAN browse the network.
Fedora is nice out of the box. So is Ubuntu. Ubuntu uses deb packages. Fedora uses rpm.
Ubuntu is everything you loved about Debian only with more up-to-date packages and built for the desktop.
Also, if you want updated packages in Ubuntu, just use the hoary repositories. Hoary isn’t like rawhide. It is much more stable. For those that know Debian stuff, when people from that community say “unstable” you know that means “packages are updated a lot” more than “your computer will crash a lot”. In 5 months, when both will probably be looking at releasing an updated version in a month, a computer kept up to date with Ubuntu hoary will look a lot better than one left with the packages included in FC3.
Most importantly, the Fedora people have complained about the reviewer bashing them over not supporting things like MP3. Newsflash: Ubuntu doesn’t support MP3 either (although it can be installed from the multiverse repository).
I also like the emphasis that Ubuntu has on reusable work. Fedora really likes making its own tools. Ubuntu seems more committed to contributing to tools like Gnome’s new networking conviguration program. Being led by a group of Debian and Gnome developers, that sense of cooperation was probably a given.
There are nice things to Fedora. New users will appreciate the graphical installer (which is very comforting), graphical boot, and RedHat sponsorship (many people know the name RH and will be more comfortable with it than just any Linux distro). Fedora also has bluecurve (which I have installed on my Ubuntu installation). I <3 bluecurve. It reminds me of the Classic Mac OS with its platinum interface with blue/purple accents. RH also did a very good job with their icons. They’re beautiful.
For me, Ubuntu makes better decisions than Fedora. Deb over RPM. Standard tools over seperate ones. Maintenence of an up-to-date branch vs. upgrading only when a new release is ready. Things like that. Fedora/RH aren’t bad. In fact, compared to most Linux distributions which do little to nothing to give back to the community, RH/Fedora has given a lot back and generally supports better policies than most (like not including MP3 support).
“So, with that in mind, this review would come out 5:5, a Draw”
Ubuntu won 6:4. If you remove Ubuntu’s point for better media support it doesn’t add a point for Fedora. So in your opinion, Ubuntu still won 5:4.
IMO there is no comparison between the two in respect to media support. With Ubuntu I had support for dvd/mp3/Xvid/win32codecs in just a couple minutes thanks to apt-get. With Fedora I spent hours trying to do the same thing with marginal success.
Most of the media formats that are left out by default are restricted formats, IE: WMV, MOV, MPeg Layer 3, etc … Also keep in mind that not everyone needs to play media, some want a small server setup, or a plain vanilla workstation to run development off of. Like you’ve said adding support for restricted media formats is trivial, granted that you have internet connection.
I’ve tried Fedora and Ubuntu and I can say that Ubuntu wins hands down thanks to it’s debian roots. Fedora is great but it’s package manager coupled with it’s bloat really kills the whole experience for me. Ubuntu on the other hand is showing great potential for it’s rather young age.
Why I see so much about this out of sink season distro somuch these days ? what is ubuntu a rip off from debian ? ? Why would someone prefer Ubuntu over say Fedora/Mandrake/Suse/gentoo/Debian(I use Debain) ? ? I fail to understand so many such postings about every other distro that rolls out!!! DSL, MEPIS, UBUNTU, a b c de ….it goes on tired. Can these people put more effort in creating and managing current linux instread of forking out and wasting their time and effort. Talk realistically, do you think these ever evolving distros can achieve major market desktop share ? No not at all if they create so many distros, it is hard to patch, maintain for them. Given it is debian and you can use apt-get but why you need it ? You can just do sid install or upgrade woody to sid/sarge!!!! Dont get me wrong but I dont see any point in comparing all these distros with every new one that comes out unless it is *REALLY* something different like knoppix(when it came out it had extra ordinary support for hardware and live cd was cool!!!)
Andrew – where did you find that feature documented? The only way I could find was to use the rescue mode of the CD to get a command line, and manually fdisk/mkreiserfs, since it respects (albeit grudgingly) an existing reiserfs partition.
“Seemed like it took me forever to convince people there was a problem with the 2.6.8 kernel. As soon as I loaded it on a machine on our network I we saw issues.
sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0
that takes care off the imediate problem, and
echo “net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0″ >> /etc/sysctl.conf
at a root prompt should take care of it for good. It’s been working for us. 🙂
”
this is due to broken routers. not a kernel problem
http://lwn.net/Articles/92727/
Ubuntu is based on Debian Sid. Any patches that go into Ubuntu are also given to Debian maintainers.
As to why would someone prefer Ubuntu over (some list of distros), read the article Cool Guy and you’ll see why.
From http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/relationship/document_view:
“Many Ubuntu developers are also recognized members of the debian community. They continue to stay active in contributing to debian both in the course of their work on Ubuntu and directly in debian.
When Ubuntu developers fix bugs that are also present in debian packages — and since the projects are linked, this happens often — they send their bugfixes to the Debian developers responsible for that package in debian and record the patch URL in the debian bug system. The long term goal of that work is to ensure that patches made by the full-time Ubuntu team members are immediately also included in debian packages where the debian maintainer likes the work.”
I ordered some free ubuntu-CDs weeks ago. Does anyone knows when they will be shipped?
Want to test it… But my traffic-limit doesn’t allow me to download it.
Ahh yes, I understand this, but while everybody is fighting trying to force the router people to make the change, the end user suffers . . . hence the small fix.
Garret
Because I for one tried Debian and didn’t find it to be usable for me. It was stable after I waded through the long install. And telling people that going to an unstable branch isnt going to win people over.
Ubuntu is debian unstable based .. but its been stablized I guess you could say. It has polish without feeling ancient. Its a personal thing I would guess for most. This is the first distro I found that I liked enough right after install to say “OMG someone has got a clue” because it really is the distro I (notice I said I) have been looking for.
That said its not for everyone. Its not straight debian, its do have KDE but its not really supported and its not installed by default etc etc etc. There are alot of distro’s out there, because there are alot of different people out there that have different needs and wants.
Don’t get bent over why there is so much hype surrounding it. It feels revolutionary to alot of people that try it. Yes its just another distro but it doesn’t feel that way to those that love it. Embrace it just for the fact that everyone one of those users is also using a distro that gives back to debian. Its that many more users that learn the joy of .deb and apt-get. Rather than see it as a bad thing, try seeing it as yet one more way that debian is a great distro that has other great distro’s based on that foundation.
Anon E Moose
If your traffic limit does not allow you to download it, then keep in mind that you are probably going to be downloading a lot of additional packages because Ubuntu is only 1 CD.
I guess I should have stated the issue more clearly.
An issue arose with the arival of the new kernel. Not that is was the kernels fault.
Garret
I really don’t see how Fedora is slow. Seems faster than Ubuntu to me. Just use the prefs panel to diable services you don’t want running. I turned off the Postgresql server, apache, sendmail, etc, but never even noticed a speed up. I was very happy with the speed though.
There is a installation guide currently being reviewed in the docs list.
i’ve tried several other distros (suse, xandros, mandrake), but i find myself returning to fedora sooner or later for various reasons.
i’ve used red hat since v.8, and no doubt it is progressing!
however, there are still the following issues i want to see fixed soon:
– cleaning up/consolidating the menus.
– speed of openoffice
– booting time (afaik in progress)
– amount of memory needed (still too much compared to win xp)
– consolidation of the install tools (yum, apt, rpm, cd-installer, up2date)
– consolidation of the var. repos (the new install/updatetool should automatically choose the needed and working repos and mirrors near you!)
– the annoying fact that my pccard-cdrom still doesn’t get recognized although it did in rh8
– breaking up fedora in subsets, like 1 or max. 2 cds needed for a typical desktop installation.
– a live cd!
– acpi finally fully working (suspend etc.). in this regard, fc3 is def. a step backwards, because trying to install with acpi enabled gave me a kernel panic! now i have to use apm, and every time i pull out or plug in my power chord, fc3 simply crashes/freezes!
– well, and then there’s the notorious plugin-issue, but given red hats reluctance regarding this issue, i frankly have given up hope to see mp3, dvd etc. working right out of the box in fedora at all!
– oh, and the strange habit of the gnome people to remove or change features which worked well for most of the users (btw, could red hat pls return to their modified panel instead of the 2 geeky and unpractical default gnome panels!)
so in short, i would like to see more emphasis on quality/focus than on quantity – faster progress!
i hope ubuntu and others will increase the pressure for red hat in this regard!
> The only thing that surprised here was the partitioning tool. On distrowatch, ReiserFS was mentioned as a supported filesystem. But the partitioning tool does not offer the option of using ReiserFS but only gives you the option of using ext2 and ext3
FC3 _support_ ext3. Red Hat have developers which really understand ext3 and can _really_ support it. btw, Red Hat add ext2online_resize and ext3_reservation to Linux 2.6 . Again,
You can install FC3 with reiserfs with :
– “linux reiserfs selinux=0”
reiserfs does not support extented attribut.
Jfs :
– “linux jfs”
xfs :
– “linux xfs”
Do you think it’s a good idea to propose many FS to a new comer ?
> Ubuntu comes with a text-install (same as the “new” Debian text-installer) which is not bad at all.
Have you try the “expert” method ? It’s “horible” and not user-friendly (it the standard debian-installer) :
http://people.debian.org/~madduck/d-i/screenshots/
> You definitely get a bit more control in Ubuntu than in Fedora
Ubuntu does not provide grub password, changing disc order and no lvm support.
> Ubuntu definitely boots faster.
Does Ubuntu support zero-conf ?
Does Ubuntu mount nfs partition ?
Does Ubuntu probe new hardware ?
…
> OpenOffice starts a bit faster in Fedora and features a nice bluecurve splashscreen.
Fedora use ooo-build from ximian :
http://ooo.ximian.com/
> Fedoras OpenOffice crashes the whole (!) system everytime you start to use the spellchecker.
?
Not here.
> A look on the net revealed that the popular apt-get tool of Debian
apt does not handle epoch and does not support bi-arch (amd64 i386, needed for FC3 AMD64).
> it is quite annoying for end-users who always have to tweak teir box in order e.g. to hear their mp3 collection. Many standard-rpms need to be replaced with the freshrpm repositories in order to use any media.
False for gnome 2.8 (which use gstreamer).
You only have to install gstreamer-plugins-mp3 (rpm.livna.org).
> why does Fedora ship with tools like Totem or Rhythmbox at all, if they are almost completely useless?
Totem and Rhythmbox use gstreamer.
Need ffmeg and dvd plugins for gstreamer (Totem) ?
http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/pkg/fedora/3/i386/gst/RPMS/
To be honest, it does not work very well right now. It’s work in progress.
> Both distributions come with some gnome-tools for system administration.
False !
Fedora doesn’t use gnome-tools for system administration.
Fedora use its own system-config-* tools.
> Thus they are easy to use and no big differences will show up.
Are you serious ?
Fedora :
system-config-bind
system-config-nfs
system-config-boot
system-config-packages
system-config-date
system-config-printer
system-config-printer-gui
system-config-display
system-config-httpd
system-config-rootpassword
system-config-keyboard
system-config-samba
system-config-kickstart
system-config-securitylevel
system-config-securitylevel-tui
system-config-language
system-config-mouse
system-config-services
system-config-netboot
system-config-soundcard
system-config-network
system-config-network-tui
system-config-users
This tools are Fedora specific (gtk+ and python). All these tools are in the “applications”->”system parameters” gnome menu.
> Adding users in Fedora worked one time and didn’t work the next time.
> No real solution was available here.
There are two updates for system-config-users. Have you try them ?
http://fedoranews.org/blog/index.php?p=65
http://fedoranews.org/blog/index.php?p=99
> it would be nice if Fedora would switch to apt-get in the future, as most users prefer it to yum and install it on their system.
Not me.
> In the Gnomes networking-tool, there is a checkbox to deactivate ipv6.
Witch does not exist in Fedora …
I haven’t used redhat/fedora on the desktop since back in the dependency hell days, but I always hear that the installer requires you to have all 3 CDs (or however many there are).
Now I have broadband, but I don’t want to download 3 freaking CDs. Fedora is a Gnome desktop, so at least give users the option to install with one CD and apt-get/yum (whatever redhat people use) into whatever system they want.
I can’t compare to Fedora 3 or any other Fedora for that matter, but Ubuntu is the best desktop distro I’ve ever used.
The reason I dropped Debian for Ubuntu was its clean and polished. It has a 6 month release date. It stable on my pc. Its simple but yet you can do a lot of tweaking. Thats everything I want out of a distro. Now if its only possible to at least have new packages in the repos the same month they was released, then I will be 100 percent happy. I used FC2 so I can’t comment on FC3. But I would be biased anyway since I can’t stand rpms. And apt4rpm sucks for the lack of packages.
I found everything works great on Ubuntu, i haven’t run into any real bugs (and might I mention, i run Hoary Development) everything… just… worked.
I think one thing you failed to mention was that… yeah… fedora has 5 cd’s… but Ubuntu installs in ~15minutes, and you get a great “Home” users desktop.
The article was VERY well done, not putting a favor on one distro or another. Very good job!!
For people who just order cds don’t expect them anytime soon. I order mine maybe a week after they was offered and mine jsut shipped 3 weeks ago and haven’t seen them yet. It took a while to fine someone willing to stamped that many cds.
Personal desktop requires 2. the rest depends
ubuntu win against fedora 10 0
fedora have a bad name
it’s not good for office desktop
isn’t well supported and the community is simply virtual
on fedora you can’t decide how implement something
(for example mono ) simply you must accept what the redhat’s
employer want.
Ubuntu doesn’t include MP3 support by default either. Ubuntu is also a minimalistic distribution, which means you have to install a lot of applications over the web to match what you get on the other Fedora CDs. It’s six and two-threes….
Ubuntu is great, but it’s not all roses.
I can guarantee you that if you stuck someone with a Debian box that only had *dpkg* (the real Debian package manager) and debian packages, they would be just as frustrated as they were (apparently) with a RedHat system that only had RPM packages and the rpm package manager to manage them.
Now add apt4rpm to the RedHat system, and apt back to the Debian system? Guess what, they’re both just as freaking easy to use!
It is such a pathetic and tiring argument to say that Deb is better than RPM or RPM is better than Deb.
Both posess disadvantages and adavantages.
In fact, the *only* disadvantage that either *package format* has that actually effects the user is the fact that Deb doesn’t support bi-arch packages (AMD64/i386 as mentioned earlier).
From a user standpoint, once you have a frontend program like apt using the underlying package manager to manage packages on the system there is no *difference* as far as the package format itself is concerned and no real effect on the user.
The only difference lies in the contents of the packages or the distribution itself, and has absolutely nothing to do with the package format.
So, no more pathetic packaging wars please. Neither format ulatimately effects the user in any significant way.
You are also getting a very current and stable distro with upgrades every six months.
Also weather you use it for personal or business use its the same stable distro.
Besides the great free support you have the option for paid support as well.
And as was already brought out it basically is Debian.
“Also weather you use it for personal or business use its the same stable distro. ”
if this is a comparison to RHEL its invalid. RHEL has ABI guarantees and updates for 7 years
The article was VERY well done, not putting a favor on one distro or another. Very good job!!
thank you.
I had Ubuntu installed and found it to be quite nice. It also worked perfectly with my AMD64 processor. I have not tried Fedora Core 3, however after using Ubuntu for awhile, I read a raving review about MEPIS on DesktopLinux.com and I had to give it a try. I believe that review was posted here at OSNews as well. While MEPIS is not a part of this review, it flat out rocks. It comes with multimedia support on install, and everything I’ve installed works perfectly including Opera. ;D
I found MEPIS to be tremendously better than Ubuntu in many ways. As I said, I haven’t tried Fedora Core 3 but I really have no reason to do so because MEPIS does everything I need it to do and more. It would be very hard for Fedora to be better than MEPIS from what I’ve seen so far.
The review I read can be found here if anyone is interested.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3135712364.html
with only $100 you have complete coverage support just like
RHEL
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/paidsupport
> Ubuntu does not provide grub password, changing disc order and no lvm support.
The Ubuntu installer (d-i) does provide lvm support at install time.
> Does Ubuntu mount nfs partition ?
Certainly, but not by default of course!
> Does Ubuntu probe new hardware ?
Yes, via hotplug. That actually takes longest during bootup.
@Andrewg
> I turned off the Postgresql server, apache, sendmail, etc…
Fedora doesn’t run Apache by default, does it???
As taken from a recent blog posting (November 22nd) I made on my site:
http://www.nerdsyndrome.com
I have been doing a lot of experimenting as of late in order to determine which flavor of the Linux operating system that I wish to run for the next six months on my workstation PARSEC. The two main contenders were Ubuntu Linux and Fedora Core 3. Both are based on the new GNOME 2.8 desktop and both include a lot of bleeding edge open source technology. However, Ubuntu Linux proved to be a vasty superior OS for workstation use.
It is worth noting that this comparison between Ubuntu and Fedora is with regard to desktop/workstation use. Ubuntu probably won’t make a good server. For that, check out Debian Sarge, soon to be released, at http://www.debian.org. In fact, Ubuntu Linux is based on Debian, and uses Debian’s awe inspiring apt package management tool. Besides the reiserfs problem I had (see below), most of the problems I had with Fedora would not apply to a server system. In fact, Fedora may be much better as a server than it is as a desktop operating system.
Fedora does include newer technology for the most part, such as Xorg 6.8, Linux 2.6.9, and SELinux. Fedora also has a graphical installer called Anaconda which is nice to look at. However, there are two main problems when it comes to Fedora. The software repositories that feed it are nowhere near the same as the Debian-based repositories that are used by Ubuntu. Not even in the same league. Thus, especially when installing non-free packages, like nvidia drivers, libdvdcss, flash, java, mplayer, and mp3 support, Ubuntu Linux is a lot friendlier. We are not just talking a little easier, but orders of magnitude easier.
Penguin Power Redux
Fedora desperately needs an up-to-date non-free yum or apt repository that at least contains things like mp3 support and nvidia/ati drivers (within a few days to a week of a release, not a month later). I don’t mind fishing for DMCA (in the US) infringing packages like libdvdcss, but come on, make it easier to install non-free drivers. Considering that Ubuntu ships with the nvidia drivers in their restricted repository, and they also have a great Restricted Formats Wiki Page which has easy to follow instructions to install the other stuff you need for multimedia. To give you an idea how bad this is, consider that it took 30 minutes to get Ubuntu fully usable, wheras it took days to figure out how to get Fedora there, and I never fully did (see java and mplayer bugs below). This was the first big advantage that Ubuntu had over Fedora. Even with free packages, Fedora was missing applications like Bluefish. Inexusable.
Ubuntu is so successful this way, because they have many levels of repositories:
* main – the core Ubuntu distribution goes here.
* restricted – nonfree drivers and core libs go here
* universe – unsupported packages from the larger debian tree go here.
* multiverse – other non-free packages go here.
Fedora really needs to have something like this setup. The only nice thing about Fedora package management is up2date. This program will actually create a flashing red icon on your panel when there is security updates for the base Fedora distribution. This is a nice feature.
Ubuntu has inherited from Debian the best GUI front end for package management ever, Synaptic. With Synaptic, installing new packages is so easy that a computer novice could do it. Outside of the base Fedora system, the same cannot be said for htat OS. There is no GUI front end for the yum package installer (at least none that shipped with Fedora).
The other big problem area for Fedora was stability. Trying to install the nvidia drivers from the nvidia installer on Fedora Core 3 resulted in a hang. This required a workaround, which did solve the problem, until up2date installed a new kernel revision. Mplayer wouldn’t play Quicktime movies with the proper audio. I couldn’t get java to work with Firefox at all, it would crash the browser as soon as a java page was opened. When trying to use Reiserfs, a fresh install ended up with a corrupted /etc/passwd and corrupted /etc/group file, which meant I couldn’t create a non-root user. This OS was just plain buggy. This was annoying to no end.
Penguin Power Plushtux
I really wanted to like Fedora. I am a fan of their Bluecurve desktop theme. They have a nice bootsplash screen at bootup. They use all of the latest technology (especially Xorg). It has a lot of polish, as well as bells and whistles. Fedora supports KDE as well as GNOME, whereas Ubuntu includes KDE in its universe repository, but it is not integrated or supported. However, in the end, Fedora just isn’t as usable as Ubuntu is. This is unfortunate, because Redhat (the sponsors of the free Fedora project) have had three releases to get it right, whereas Ubuntu is still on their first release.
For those who may be wishing to try Linux, it is helpful to choose a flavor of the operating system that is relatively friendly to beginners. Despite the fact that Ubuntu has a text based installer, it really is one of the simplest versions of Linux that I have ever setup for desktop use. Check it out at