“Normally I don’t review early test releases of software, but the opportunity to test drive Fedora’s first distribution based on the 2.6 kernel was too irresistible to pass up. The conclusion: Bravo, Red Hat!“
Review of Fedora Core 2 Test 1
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
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Bravo, now could you fix the freaking Radeon drivers you included RedHat? I just love installing Fedora and having the graphical installer work, only to boot into X and have it freeze on startup.
NO auto detection usb key
NO auto mount disc fat32 in desktop
NO install rpm soft in 2 clicks mouse
etc…
Fedora is for expert (DEVIAN) or final users?
Hi
Fedora is not a desktop linux distro. its has no requirement to automount fat32 or usb drives. however rpm is easy enough to install. it has now a active community around it. once fedora starts accepting volunteer package we will have to see how far it goes.
Jess
rpm -U foo.rpm == 0 mouse clicks
>Fedora is not a desktop linux distro
What would you call it then – a secure server OS?!!
>>Fedora is not a desktop linux distro
>What would you call it then – a secure server OS?!!
LOL!
I was suprised that a ntfs automount was not included in Core 1. Never tried a USB drive. All the other distros I used before had those features.
My USB keyboard isn’t configured .
The system hangs during boot up.
It deserves its alpha status.
It will be an adventure for them to ship it on time
Dewd – what do you mean “ship it on time?” Fedora isn’t a product that they’ll be shipping! For the love of $diety, go read their homepage. http://fedora.redhat.com
*slams head into desk*
“redhat is used in enterprises and web servers which runs only linux.”
this is true of redhat enterprise edition but not the workstation version. in fact, if your case were true, redhat never would’ve packaged its OS up and sold it in retail stores like staples.
go here: http://www.redhat.com/software/workstation/
redhat clearly states, “Red Hat Professional Workstation is a complete suite of tools for the power desktop user.” you can’t really argue with that.
I just don´t get it, maybe someone would clear this up for me. If you have an OS where:
-The mouse is not correctly set up.
-The fonts are not installed.
-The sound card won´t work.
-The pc speaker won´t work, either.
-The SELinux stuff won´t work, either.
Why the bravo??.
I know, this is an early release, but anyway, I am afraid that Fedora 2 will be as disappointing as Fedora 1, at least for me.
I am sorry. I didn’t mean it literally. Let’s see if they will release it “when it’s ready” then
The speed improvement is 11%, not 112%.
((914 – 816)/914)*100 = 10.7% –> 11% faster than before
or FC1 was
((914 – 816)/914)*100 = 12.0% –> 12% slower than FC2
Math degree. Can’t help it.
Now see what you made me do? I’ve got to correct myself.
or FC1 was
((914 – 816)/816)*100 = 12.0% –> 12% slower than FC2
[i]
With Fedora Core 2, Red Hat catches up with Debian and Gentoo by shipping SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux).
[i]
How are they catching up to Debian? last I heard Russel Coker who works for Red Hat is the one packaging Debians SElinux kernel. Unless they mean Adamantix but thats a fork, Kinda like saying someone caught up to Debian when they’re talking about lindows or xandros.
I’m also disappointed the Fedora SElinux stuff is broken, It is one of two “stop ship” products in the distro, you’d think they’d need as much testing as possible. Oh well no biggie I guess aslong as it makes in next time.
This is the first test release, aka beta, of Fedora with the 2.6 kernel, I don’t know aobout you guys but i have mandrake 10.0 beta 2, and the RC1 was just released. Mandrake 10 uses both kernel 2.6, and kde 3.2. though it is still buggy, I expect that from beta.
I must admit, the reviewer was a little too gung-ho for a test distribution which obviously has problems. Then again, it’s unfair to bash a test release too hard.
However, like him, I imagine that the problems will be fixed quickly enough. I recently moved my sound system to ALSA under FC1, and it was a very tricky thing to do. (incidentally, the FreshRPMs alsa packages seem to be broken. Check snd-seq-oss with 2166 – gives me missing symbols on insert). No surprise that Red Hat hasn’t fixed the problems yet.
The fonts problem is weird, no doubt about that. Screw up in the RPM scripts, I guess.
Interestingly, disabling the PC speaker is something I don’t mind. For some reason, my motherboard (Epox nForce2) plays the speaker through the onboard sound system unless you specifically turn it off. AND IT’S LOUD!!!
If things are really too bad, Red Hat will just push the release off. No big deal.
-Erwos
Looks promising on my rig. I don’t have sound working, but it seems like linux is headed in the right direction from a performance perspective. Kudos to the respective developers of the 2.6 kernel, KDE 3.2 and Gnome 2.5. Keep up the good work!
FC2 test1 has major issue’s. It doesnt work yet. How can you review FC2 Test 1 and say Bravo?
et has the “apt-get” but faaaaar away from debian ( even unstable) in terms of beeing stable, and upgradeable.
Redhat has done some strange things to their rpms, read here:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5718031355.html
Debian also change some settings, but that`s in a good way
I see why people like fedora- easy to install ( well final versions should be) nice grapichs and grapichal tools etc. but on a server I would not even considering using it. take my ads 2.1 server redhat. It has some nice uptime, but some strange settings
From what I have used it, the past days, I am very happy with this test release. I have tried a bunch of distros, always coming back du RH/Fedora.
Of course there is something to clear up in a early release like this – but I am pretty confident that the final release will be a good one.
HI
“redhat clearly states, “Red Hat Professional Workstation is a complete suite of tools for the power desktop user.” you can’t really argue with that.”
No arguements. The workstation is meant for the power users who can very well mount a fat32 partition without the help of anaconda (redhat installation). so that complaint about redhat doesnt hold good
Jess
I’ve been using Fedora Core 1 on my old PC, a K6-2/400 with around 400 mb of ram. It’s been a few weeks now, and I haven’t had any big problems. The updates work great and there’s alot of info out there.
I’m looking forward to the final version of 2 in April and won’t be testing out this test release. I’m still new to this Linux thing using it full time, to go and play around like that. LOL.
I really wish people would stop saying this. Has anyone here or anywhere had a system crash from doing server work? Samba, Bind, apache, etc. The only major bug Fedora had for me was when I shut down the box on SMP kernels every 1 out of 10 times the file system would unmount uncleanly (fixed), If a ‘server’ needs to be rebooted twice a day Than you’ve got bigger problems than what distro to use. More like what new admin should we hire. Debian is rock solid but old. If you need something new you upgrade to ‘unstable’ or ‘testing’ and are in the same posistion as Fedora anyway.
Where can I get the wallpapers that are included with the distribution? I want to use them on Windows.
Thanks.
>>Fedora is not a desktop linux distro<<
That’s strange, its on my desktop now and is a perfectly good desktop distro – I’m currently listening to an Oasis album on it and typing this – proved itself an adequate desktop distro so far for me…….
Check out /etc/init.d/readahead in FC2 test 1 – yes, the
start() function there backgrounds the readahead binary 4 times (3 for stuff in /usr/share and 4th for the contents of /etc/readahead.files). From the source of readahead.c, I can see that it makes a readahead() call for the contents of every file listed, which reads it into page cache. What I can’t understand is why it’s needed – when a file is first accessed, isn’t it put into page cache (if there’s space available) anyway?
If there is a benefit, I decided that it’s kludgily done anyway, so I’ve filed a Bugzilla report on it – see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=115752
You might not think it’s important at all, but *every* FC2 system will background this binary 4 times during booting by default, so it needs to be a) beneficial to do so and b) as efficient as possible.
“I checked the XF86Config file and, sure enough, it was running in 24bpp color, which was stressing my card to the limit. I had some trouble getting X to accept my changes – changing it directly in the XF86Config file was unacceptable; I had to do it via the same Display GUI.”
Normally its people like me complaining that having to edit an ini file is unacceptable and EVERYTHING should work from a GUI config panel
This guys got things all the wrong way around!
You missed the joke! The _real_ joke was saying “Bravo” despite just about everything being broken.
Sound didn’t work. Loading modules didn’t work. ACPI didn’t work (well). I realize that it’s a pre-beta, but damn, how is it possible to break so many things between releases?! DragonFly (in contrast) is pre-beta as well, and it runs very nicely!
I’m at a loss…
Because this is a major upgrade, the new 2.6 kernel among others.(which will cause user pain for many months to come). There is also the switch to ALSA, which will take time to settle. Most the problems are not Fedora specific… If noone uses/tests new stuff how are bugs/issues going to be found ?
Oh, if loading modules doesn’t work (it does here), then naturally will neither ACPI, sound, network, lots-of-stuff..
After playing around for an evening, I eventually went back to FC1, since I couldn’t get the binary drivers for my Radeon 9600 to build, and therefore couldn’t get dual displays running.
Hopefully that’ll be fixed by the next release, when I’ll switch back over just for Gnome 2.6 and the new Evolution.
Not nearly as major as DragonFly is to FreeBSD 4.8. Seriously, when you think about it, the Fedore folks have really dropped the ball.
“Debian is rock solid but old. If you need something new you upgrade to ‘unstable’ or ‘testing’ and are in the same posistion as Fedora anyway.”
Alternatively, download a backport (from e.g. http://www.backports.org) or use apt-pinning (http://jaqque.sbih.org/kplug/apt-pinning.html) to selectively upgrade just those packages that provide the needed functionality.
Hi
”
>>Fedora is not a desktop linux distro<<
That’s strange, its on my desktop now and is a perfectly good desktop distro – I’m currently listening to an Oasis album on it and typing this – proved itself an adequate desktop distro so far for me…….
”
Get some sense people. Fedora is not targetted towards home users. You and I can run it at home. Thats irrelevant. Fedora is not meant to be used as desktop system. I am pretty comfortable with it using it as such but you dont expect it to mount fat32 partitions for you because it doesnt cover that segment. Its not a failure on its part to do so.
regards
Jess
Everyone needs to realize that this is a _roadmap test_ release. It is not released for the public to install and have it “just work” like one might want. To say the least, this is a compilation of what is current. It is Test 1, meaning the _first_ release targeted for testing purposes. It is not targeted for end user or server purposes, even though it is available to be installed and used as such.
If a failed install is encountered, the next step is to interact with the development process; so don’t complain about the failed install to the general public, and stress how really terrible this “new release” is. Not interacting, is, of course, your own prerogative, but complaining that it didn’t live up to your expecations is rude to say the least.
I don’t see how anybody could possibly confuse this definition; it (“Fedora Core 2 Test 1”) is the first thing you read!
I had the same thoughts reading through the comments. This “milestone” is for bug reporting. Something for something. But, you sound like you’re from Redhat?
I downloaded and installed on a blank disk and have had no problems whatsoever. It just looks good and very promising. I also did an up2date. It was extraordinarily large and left kernel 2.6.2 and the final KDE 3.0 among others.
I tried BitTorrent for the download for the first time. Sure it is fast and technologically a great idea (packet switched file transfer). I also tried downloading from Redhat. That was even faster. It appears to me that Redhat have opened up all valves to get this milestone out.
I burned the iso’s (about 2Gb) to a DVD using
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2003-October/msg00…
It works. You’ll need the anaconda run-time (for the checksum).
I’m downloading FC2 Test 1 right now with bittorrent … I’m getting 475 KB/sec … and I will have all 4 CDs in about 1 Hour 25 minutes…
I will try the DVD ISO burning script as well…
From what I’ve seen thus far they are heading in the right direction, but have a ways to go. My Gentoo boxen are still way ahead in the key areas. And Im using 2.6 kernel on all my Gentoo boxes as well. Now if only Gentoo would do binaries
Well, I’m just posting this not to whine but to get an answer that most newbie don’t know. Where do I report problems with installation of Core test 2? My sound driver doesn’t work, it reports errors when it attempts to insert the sound module. Also, I still have no idea how to get my wireless card working, can anyone steer me in a good direction on doing this in Linux? Also, my laptop display seems to be out of sync. The screen has fuzzies running down the right side of the screen as if the monitor didn’t work right. Thanks for any help or advice someone can give.