Fedora Core 3 Test2 was released today, and so here’s a chance to preview the software. I’ve been eager to try out Gnome 2.8 and KDE 3.3, so I tried to install them on my Core 2 box, which resulted in a severe package dependency crisis, so since Test 2 was released today I figured I would just reformat and install it for kicks, and to get my KDE 3.3. Screenshots from FC3-T2 can be found here.Installation
As you have probably already guessed, not much has changed when it comes to the Anaconda installer. No change is really necessary because it works, however making it more “graphically pleasing” would have been nice, but since you’re only supposed to see it once, I suppose it really doesn’t matter.
As I have said, the installation is pretty much the same. The only changes I have noticed were a new screen for SELinux (Which is set to “active” by default) and for some reason the “First Boot Configuration” is set to 800*600 by default which is just plain ugly on my monitor, but a few screens later you can set your resolution so that’s only a minor problem.
Nothing has changed when it comes to how long it takes to install, Fedora Core 2 took about a half hour and so did FC3 Test 2.
There have been a few package changes that I have noticed, such as the removal of Chromium (which was my favorite game, it’s a shame to see it go, but I’m sure I can install it later) and Firefox instead of Mozilla which is an improvement, I guess.
Usability
I decided to play around in Gnome, for the sake of this article. This is not Gnome 2.8 as I suspected, instead it’s one of the Gnome 2.7 test releases. If this is any indication as to what Gnome 2.8 is going to be like, I am dissapointed because there aren’t enough changes to justify such a big jump in the versioning number, it looks like it should have been a “point” release. The “all windows in new windows” type of browsing is set to the default in this release as well, which I just don’t like. (I could argue about the over-estimated “spatial browsing” but that would be another article).
Something in this release makes everything look VERY smooth, in fact the screen looks much more smooth than any other Linux I have tried yet. I don’t know what causes this, this may be due to the new xorg, but whatever it is, I like it. In fact, it adds ALOT to this version. In addition, I was treated to brand new Fedora wallpaper which plays on this “clearer desktop” as if the folks at Fedora put the wallpaper in to show off.
When it came to Fedora Core 2, I was very much dissapointed. (See my review of that here). In Fedora Core 2 my main problems with it, were the “hissing” issue it had with my sound card (which was a bug since the FC2 test releases, but so far isn’t apparent in this version) that was never fixed, the Nvidia soft freeze was another issue, and FC2 was just not stable for me.
What is SeLinux? (And recompiling the kernel)
I have no idea what SELinux is. I know that it has to do with security, so I left it enabled because I am a big fan of security. However, the first thing I do when I install a new distro is recompile the kernel, which I did here as well. So now I wonder, do I still have SeLinux? (If my memory serves me, it’s in the kernel).
The main reason I recompiled the kernel is for the sake of avoiding the notorious “Nvidia soft freeze” where the screen stops completely but you are still able to move the mouse. Previously, I resolved this problem by recompiling the kernel, disabling Nvidia Riva, 4stacks, and framebuffer which always did the trick before. So due to this, I really don’t know if SELinux is still installed (can someone please tell me?) but I don’t trust the Fedora kernels because of that nvidia problem.
A Very Solid Test Release
The FC2 test releases, to me, were almost unusable. To be honest, I expected the same here. Surprisingly FC3 so far seems to be very stable, this is probably the most stable test release I have ever used. In fact, it even detected my windows drives straight out of the box (In Gnome’s “Computer”)
which no other version of Fedora/Redhat did, however there is still no ntfs support by default. (Another reason I just recompile the kernel). FC3 T2 is also much faster (to me) than FC2 was.
In Test 2, there is no MP3 support. I think that the Fedora group should reconsider this, because it’s annoying. (Maybe they should put a disclaimer you would have to click “I agree” on). Still, distro’s like Mandrake support MP3’s and NTFS out of the box, and they’ve never gotten in trouble, so why shouldn’t Fedora support NTFS and MP3’s?
Closing
I know you all are probably thinking it’s silly to review a test release. It probably is. However, I am very impressed with Test 2 and think it’s very solid despite the “testing” status it’s in. There are a few shortcomings, but few, which is ironic considering Test 2 of FC3 has fewer shortcomings than FC2 Final! (And even more ironic, this has become my main desktop despite it being beta). This is definitely a step in the right direction. If any of you try it, I really hope that it works as great for you!
Anyone had luck with VMWare? I get kernel panic after the reboot (after the post install)
I think the screenshots themselves on linuxbeta are from vmware itself (I might be wrong though).
I’m currently so happy with my Fedora Core 2 installation I’d rather not wipe it and start again – is there any straight-forward way to upgrade these things cleanly and easily when Core 3 comes out?
Looking forward to Gnome 2.8 and other goodies…
In Test 2, there is no MP3 support. I think that the Fedora group should reconsider this, because it’s annoying. (Maybe they should put a disclaimer you would have to click “I agree” on). Still, distro’s like Mandrake support MP3’s and NTFS out of the box, and they’ve never gotten in trouble, so why shouldn’t Fedora support NTFS and MP3’s
One reason: patent issue. Since Fedora Core 2 is free, Red Hat cannot include mp3 support without paying license fee so they choose to not include it. This is a minor issue since you can pratically download MP3 support for other repository.
Looks almost the same as FC2. Hope that this means that they have spent the time on increasing stability of the OS (Not that FC2 was all that bad)
NTFS is no reason to recompile the kernel. I just download an RPM from http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/downloads.html
Since its a test release you probably have to build the RPM yourself which takes a sec.
Not sure about nvdia problem.
I too would like some cosmetic changes but developers seem to be really hammering on internal features like Selinux, Kernel stuff, etc. My guess is after the RHEL 4 release, GUI will be the #1 priority. They’ve snatched up many desktop developers for something.
I was hoping for a little more. Compared to Suse and Mandrake it still has a lot of work to do. The one thing i find very annoying is you have to click the icon of the cd drive and hit eject, you cant just hit the drive button. Both Suse and Mandrake can do this and a few other things that make usability much nicer. Fedora is not bad at all and i used it for a good deal of time. But if Fedora wants to be taken seriously as a viable alternative os to windows it has to have these little things to smooth it out. Overall very stable with a few nice new features.
Why is Tomcat removed? What replaced it? Or no alternatives anymore?
I had to recompile the kernel because there are no ntfs rpm’s at the time I wrote that.
Seems you missed to write about your impression of KDE in the story?
Test releases are for developers and testers only. The only purpose of a test release is to rule our bugs before the stable core is released. If you do not intend to investigate and reporte issues, test releases are not for you. Use a stable Core release.
You mention that you recompiled your kernel, in a test release, come on! How can you help investigate issues if you have a different kernel? You issues may be easily resolved, but the developers are busy. If you’re going to be using a test release, do testing, do bug rapports, subscribe to the fedora-test mailing list, help in!
If you don’t intend to do that, stay away from test releases.
And Read the SELinux F.A.Q: http://people.redhat.com/kwade/fedora-docs/selinux-faq-en/
As for the points in the review. Some of them are valid. But questioning the GNOME release schedule or complaining about the lack of Mp3 support is silly. The Red Hat people have explained this over and over. Because of US law, even linking to a page that holds intructions on how to install mp3 support may make Red Hat face legal action. Stop complaining about this like it’s something the Fedora Core developers have done to make life harder for you. This will never change. Adding support is easy, and explained in http://www.fedorafaq.org
And remember, a lot of people read reviews before they install something new. If you keep telling people to recompile their kernel, a lot of new Fedora users will think that’s how it’s done. It is not. You do not have to recompile your kernel in Fedora! There are special issues that may require this, but you mention no such thing. Again, test releases exist so that we can all help in testing the Core release, and rule out the bugs in the core release. Using a lot of stuff which is not in Core will make your testing effort completely useless.
In Core 2, which is the stable release everyone should use, support for nvidia cards is excelent. They work with no 3d-acceleration out of the box. If you want the accelerated drivers, use the instructions from http://www.fedorafaq.org/#nvidia
NTFS support is handled by installing a kernel-module, see http://www.fedorafaq.org/#ntfs
Mp3 support is handled by installing a plugin to your player of choice. See http://www.fedorafaq.org/#xmms-mp3 or http://www.fedorafaq.org/#rhythmbox-mp3
disable the LWM just /boot / and swap.
In Test 2, there is no MP3 support. I think that the Fedora group should reconsider this, because it’s annoying.
Dude, read the announcement some years ago. MP3 is removed due to the patent issue brought by the Freinhoffer institute (spelling not checked).
On the other hand, why Fedora BETA brings som much atention from all the early reviewrs, while FreeBSD is there out with 5 betas and not a single comment?
Well, my review of FreeBSD in the same lines as this one:
OH! i installed freebsd and everything went fine.
Is there any way to edit menus via GUI instead of editing desktop files in /etc/applications ?
This article is full of clueless rants and explanations. The author should at least inform it self a little bit. For example GNOME has alot of new stuff[1], like 4 new applications, usuability improvement especially in the network field.
The problem of recompiling Fedora kernels when using an nvidia drivers was due to a problem in the drivers not the kernel, thus it was solved and there were already two drivers release which are fully compatible with 4stacks.
Another thing, why does he asks what SELinux is anyway? Why not RTFM instead of dedicating a full chapter begging for an explanation?
Finally the mp3 and ntfs support rant is such a void one because it can be enabled with a simple apt-get install… Oh well just wasted my time.
[1] – http://gnome.org/start/2.8/notes/rnwhatsnew.html
do i need all 4 cds for a desktop install ?
Just to clearify, mp3 is patented but contrary to popular belief NTFS isn’t. Just do your patent search or ask Microsoft. However, interestingly FAT32 do have 6 patents what actually Fedora ships.
BTW, software patents are also void in most countries.
I thought the Lame mp3 enc was OSS ?
I would like to test the latest NVIDIA driver on Fedora Core 3
test 2 beta in order to do some experiments with online gaming
VS SELinux.However none of the 4 cdś contain the kernel-source.
like i said before i really like fedora … but then again i eat my own crap
The fact that an encoder is Open Source has nothing to do with being patented or not.
Software patents are on IDEAS and Algorithms, not on implementations (implementations, that is software packages, are protected by copyrights, not patents).
If you implement a patented idea in opensource (or not), or if you use such software, you are infringing a patent (if you live or work in the USA) even if you have a perfectly good copyright on your work.
Bye, Renato
It’s difficult to take this review seriously. The reviewer’s admitted ignorance of key attributes of the Fedora project damage his credibility.
SELinux has been a part of the project for a very long time. The fact that this test release doesn’t ship with Gnome 2.8 is clearly explained at the Fedora site.
And, as others have pointed out, this is a test release. It is not meant for general use.
The review doesn’t tell us much about Fedora, but it certainly tells us something about the reviewer.
>I thought the Lame mp3 enc was OSS ?
Well, yes. So are most linux mp3 players. That doesn’t make them not subject to patent issues.
> I know you all are probably thinking it’s silly to review a test release.
No, it’s not silly. But it’s silly to review something without any research at all.
> Something in this release makes everything look VERY smooth
It’s the new shiny X.org and GTK/GNOME.
you can of course ADD mp3 capability into fedora core with a quick web search and a download of an rpm… but why bother ?
redhat/fedora leave this capability out because of patent issues that have not been cleared up…. so….
leave fedora core the way it is and convert your mp3 collection into ogg format.
this is a genuine open standard.
juvenille article…how old was this guy? Like 15? He doesn’t know what SELinux is, but yet he can compile the kernel? A simple google search would have turned up this information. I am going to have to swear off coming here as the quality of the writing and information is unacceptably poor.
What really annoys me is that every reviewer of RedHat/Fedora distro still mentions the MP3 playback problems. This issue wa s beaten to death and explained thousands of times on every possible forum, yet every review still bashes RedHat for that decision. I find this really stupid.
…as long as you have some bandwidth.
Just go to http://kde-redhat.sf.net and use APT or YUM.
If you have no idea what I´m talking about, maybe this will help you:
http://www.pycs.net/lateral/stories/31.html
Why does Fedora insist on having that 19 (!) item “start” menu? It’s just plain usability hell! I’ve always liked the overall look and feel of Fedora, but I just don’t want to spend so much time on making the menu at least a bit useable. They should really clean that up, it’s been bugging me for a long time now.
Why does Fedora insist on having that 19 (!) item “start” menu? It’s just plain usability hell! I’ve always liked the overall look and feel of Fedora, but I just don’t want to spend so much time on making the menu at least a bit useable. They should really clean that up, it’s been bugging me for a long time now.
If you have very few top level menus, then your sub menus are going to be longer, or you are going to have to start using even more nested menus. So that is a straight compromise. The whole screen is there to be used. And the stuff is categorized properly, so no problem.
I this article was really written by a hukan being, this would not have benn necessary.
You can easily write a script that checks for new releases and automatically generates a review according to the following scheme:
1.) Half a page about installation and whether all hardware was recognised
2.) If the desktop is Gnome, moan about spatial browsing and how silly it is, or about how slow everything is, brownie points for whining about button order.
3.) If the distribution is Fedora or Res Hat, rant about mp3 support for at least 2 chapters. Make sure to include clueless proposal to let the user click on some “I agree”.
4.) Bring up several points that users who are unable to use Google had problems with in previous releases (i.e. dual boot problems), state that they still aren’t solved.
5.) Critisize that there’s nothing new altogether, but that it looks nicer.
6.) To bring in something positive, mention that it seems more stable.
7.) Make sure to bring in some beatiful examples of PEBKAC and blame the distribution for it.
YOU CAN DO IT TOO! Go to distrowatch, pick a distribution, follow these guidelines and write your own review! Instant success guaranteed!
Sorry if I continue with this, but, why other distro can ship with those so discussed packages and Fedora can’t? Debian is, correct me if I’m wrong, a free distro as Fedora, but all mp3, avi, divx and whatelse you want can be installed from contrib and non-free repositories.
I think that Fedora don’t want to do something like this, at least for the moment, or they really CAN’T do this? Why?
Well, get one of the contrib repositories for Fedora and install them. It´s the same thing.
I suggest DAG´s, AT and freshrpms.
Imho this thing are relative good in Mandrake and SuSE.
Not neccessary too many levels, but at this moment IMHO there are too many items in RH menus.
So, let’s rehash the old mp3 thing another time…
Mankdrake is french based, so until the EU passes the swpatents AND france implements them they can do whatever they want.
SuSE has been german based until novell’s acquisition, and has shipped commercially licensed softs (like the DVD player).
RedHat (commercial) i think actually HAS mp3… it surely has java, which is not normally redistributable as well.
As for Debian… I think they are accepting the risk, given the fact that they are a non-profit organization, and so they are not really a good target for lawsuits: who do you ask money to?
Fedora is officially sponsored by RedHat, AKA the biggest target among pure linux resellers.
“If this is any indication as to what Gnome 2.8 is going to be like, I am dissapointed because there aren’t enough changes to justify such a big jump in the versioning number, it looks like it should have been a “point” release.”
This *is* a point release. 2-point-6 to 2-point-8. And yes, there have been plenty of changes to warrant this release.
I’m not sure what the author is talking about when saying gnome doesn’t seem much different. I’m in my first boot of FC-3 at the moment and I notice quite a bit.
You know how every release someone always says “its faster!” or whatever and you try it out and its the same darn thing? Well Not this time, It most certainly is MUCH faster. Gnome on FC2 took me around a minute to load. first boot loaded so (fast 10-15 seconds) it was like it was already in memory. (is it?)
I just opened it and only tried a few apps, but if you were a Fedora user you’ll notice a few new things.
Also no Transparenty or shadows I can see from Xorg, I’m about to go look into why not, old ver? not compiled in?
Transparency affects are in their infancy so don’t expect them to be enabled by default. To do so would be suicide since a lot of systems probably won’t work well with them.
I know it’s a setting somewhere, just look around the net.
Why does Fedora insist on having that 19 (!) item “start” menu? It’s just plain usability hell! I’ve always liked the overall look and feel of Fedora, but I just don’t want to spend so much time on making the menu at least a bit useable. They should really clean that up, it’s been bugging me for a long time now.
This would not be such a problem if their Gnome implementation wasn’t broken so that the menu entries
can be edited the standard Gnome way. Hopw they fix this
in FC3. I’m a bitt tired of editing textfiles by hand.
Is there any way to edit menus via GUI instead of editing desktop files in /etc/applications ?
In Gnome this is supposed to be done by Nautilus (Unfortunately broken in FC2). In KDE this is done
by kmenuedit, a program that Red Hat by tradition
omit from their KDE rpms.
As both Gnome and KDE is supposed to follow the freedesktop.org recommendations this really should
be a fixable problem.
how exactly are you supposed to transcode mp3 to vorbis without an mp3 decoder?
besides, doing so causes a loss in audio quality. I encode all music I have in uncompressed format to vorbis or flac; music that is supplied to me in any other compressed format I keep in that format to preserve the best possible sound quality.
“Sorry if I continue with this, but, why other distro can ship with those so discussed packages and Fedora can’t? Debian is, correct me if I’m wrong, a free distro as Fedora, but all mp3, avi, divx and….”
a few things
– patents do not count in every country, most of them apply to the states.
– (almost) none of the free downloadable distros ship those plugins, the paying versions do. I suppose the distro vendors pay for those licenses through the price you pay for your cd set.
– the distro’s that do ship them are either in a region where the patent doesn’t apply or like taking risks.
– debian doesn’t ship patented stuff, that’s why everything goes through debian-legal first and that is why you need to add marillat sources to debian for that stuff. It’s basically the same as adding freshrpms to fedora.
– red hat is an american company (mandrake is french, suse german and debian is not a real company) so red hat is most likely to get sued, so i support them being cautious.
i guess that’s enough for now, stop bitching allready.
here’s the real deal.
The institution that owns the patent on decoding MP3s – the Fraunhofer Institute – has made an undertaking not to take any action against those who supply software MP3 decoders free of charge without taking out a license. This is not a legally binding or irreversible undertaking.
SuSE, Mandrakesoft and the Debian project have made a decision to trust Fraunhofer’s undertaking. This is an easy decision for the Debian project, as it is not a commercial organisation, has little in the way of financial resources, and taking an action against it would be nonsensical. For SuSE and Mandrakesoft it’s a harder decision, but they have decided that the benefit of including the feature is greater than the risk that Fraunhofer will decide to ignore its undertaking and enforce its patent.
The physical location of the suppliers makes no difference, as all three provide their software in the U.S.A. They are thus subject to legal action for patent infringement in the case of that software; the fact that SuSE is located in Germany and Mandrakesoft in France is irrelevant. If they only *distributed* their software in Germany or France, that argument would apply.
Note that none of the Linux distributions provide MP3 *encoders*. Fraunhofer also has a patent on MP3 encoding, and it has provided no undertaking not to sue those who distribute free MP3 encoders.
… mono and/or dotgnu going to be embedded in a distribution???
The first one that depends on Mono will probably be Novell’s desktop offering.
But Mono is already available in Debian SID and Ximian provides packages for many distros.
I have no idea what SELinux is. I know that it has to do with security, so I left it enabled because I am a big fan of security. However, the first thing I do when I install a new distro is recompile the kernel, which I did here as well. So now I wonder, do I still have SeLinux?
The main reason I recompiled the kernel is for the sake of avoiding the notorious “Nvidia soft freeze” where the screen stops completely but you are still able to move the mouse. Previously, I resolved this problem by recompiling the kernel, disabling Nvidia Riva, 4stacks, and framebuffer which always did the trick before. So due to this, I really don’t know if SELinux is still installed (can someone please tell me?) but I don’t trust the Fedora kernels because of that nvidia problem.
Ok, let me see… “I have no idea what i’m doing, but i know i’m ‘fixing’ things, because in my case ignorance is not a limiting factor. And by the way, i feel entitled to not trust such-and-such software even though my knowledge in the field is an amazingly good aproximation of zero.”
(sigh)
This is so typical for the recent trends in the osnews.com “reviews”. I told to myself a while ago to stop reading these pseudo-informed, half-backed, inept imitations of a review, but whaddayaknow, some other news site links to osnews and here i am, reading this “article”.
Sure thing, osnews.com confirmed my pre-conceived ideas pretty quick.
From now on, i’ll look at the URL of the review before clicking on it.
Why bother publishing this crap to begin with? It’s pretty shameful even for Joe Blow type of blogs.
osnews.com became the “technology” website with the lowest standards i’ve seen so far. I feel uneasy that i use the word “technology” in conjunction to it.
I remember, back in the day, when osnews had stuff that was actually sound from a logical perspective, pretty well informed (in the average spectrum, but hey, there’s a place for that as well) and quite informative.
How come all the computer engineer wanabees gravitated towards this website and literally swamped it into ineptitudes? Is there no control over what gets published and what gets rejected anymore?
What happened to this website?
P.S.: The URL autodetection in the second header (“Email address or full URL of homepage”) does not work. No matter what i put in, it’s always interpreted as an email address.
Fraunhofer’s undertaking, of course, is not binding on Fraunhofer today, and it certainly would not be binding if Fraunhofer or its patent was acquired by another business. In other words, Fraunhofer can sue anyone of mp3’s anytime they wish. Given that RedHat chose to protect its core business and its stockholders rather than to side with Linux fans who will amost certainly never buy a RedHat product, I’d say they made the right decision.
Mono: Mono needs to be available for more distributions. Mono packages are available at http://www.go-mono for Fedora, Redhat, and SuSe. Source is there, too, but it isn’t easy to build a full Mono suite. Developers have also compiled packages are also available for Debian and Ubuntu.
(My guess if that SuSE will become the reference platform for Mono, if it isn’t already (The best way to install Mono is to use Ximian’s Red Carpet, which is available for SuSE 9.1, and not FC2). Still, given Mono’s relationship with GTK and Gnome, and the difficulty involved in getting a current Gnome version running on SuSE, I wonder what all those ex-Ximian but current Gnome and Mono developers are using at Novell.)
To enable all the “eye candy” that comes with Fedora Core 3 Test 2 or better is pretty simple. You need to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and then add the lines in
Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
EndSection
and also add in render acceleration depending on your videocard. Nvidia cards need the driver option added
Option “RenderAccel” “true”
metacity has been compiled with support for xorg so then to finish everything off simply get the xcompmgr program from freedesktop.org’s cvs and then ./configure, make and make install it and your set. Ive been using 6.8.0 with the latest composite and its crashed on me only once. Renderaccel has a few bugs but i submitted a bug report and their main nvidia developer responded saying that they hoped to have the render accel bugs fixed in their next release.
I had to recompile the kernel because there are no ntfs rpm’s at the time I wrote that.
Even if that was true, you can still rebuild the src.rpm of 3rd party kernel module rpms (such as NTFS).
Or you “don’t trust” custom-rebuilt src.rpm’s either? :-)))
I’m not bashing you because you wrote a review, i’m bashing you because you ventured, like, light-years outside your competency zone. That’s not admissible in a review.
it’s also already in Mandrake and has been since 10.0.
I appreciate the help but its too late. I updated with up2date and my system broke, judging by the errors SElinux isn’t refined yet. I’m quit disappoited at how such a horrible SEpolicy was uploaded.
Shame on me, and I’m even a member of the Club (not that I use MDK). Simple oversight
I found this review to be somewhat lame. Here is my review:
Fedora Core 3 Test 2 (FC3T2) Review
Used bittorrent to download the iso’s, leaving the client running so that I could help others download, using my Fedora Core 1 (FC1) machine. Used cdrecord to burn 5 CD’s, 4 discs plus a rescue CD.
Hardware: Pentium II 400 MHz, 512MB Ram, Nvidia 64 MB AGP video card, 3Com 3C905B PCI ethernet card, Creative SB AWE64 ISA sound card, Microsoft USB optical wheel mouse, 60 GB Maxtor IDE HD, Acer 24x atape/ide CDRW, Epson C80 printer.
Installation: Best Fedora install experience yet, smooth and no errors. I chose the Personal Desktop package group which required CD #1 and CD #2. I accepted all defaults which included enabling SELINUX, however I chose not to install a bootloader.
After the installation completed I rebooted into FC1, added an entry to my /boot/grub/grub.conf for the new FC3T2, and rebooted again.
First boot into FC3T2: Noticed the new “starting udev” process which creates extra nodes. I then saw a couple of disturbing messages “KDSKBENT: Invalid Argument Failed to bind key 255 to value 1733”, I’ve never seen this before.
I then had some weirdness on X startup, it appeared to take two or three tries, and the First Boot program failed to run, leaving me at a GDM login screen.
I logged in (as root, perhaps I missed creating a user during the install or was supposed to do so during First Boot which failed) and was greeted by a quite nice looking Gnome desktop. I especially like the new background.
First thing to do was to create a couple of user accounts which I did using the GUI tool.
Next I went into the menu and selected System Logs to see if there were any problems. I found several problems including FirstBoot failed, register_security failed, vesafb: probe failed. I’ll look more at this and see about putting into bugzilla.
I then checked and found that the network was configured properly so I launched Firefox and started surfing. I like Firefox and am glad it was added for this release. No problems, it’s a nice browser. I downloaded a pdf, saved to the desktop, clicked on it and it opened in gpdf.
I tried to see if my old ISA SB AWE64 sound card would work with the kernel (2.6.8-1.541), but no such luck. This sound card works with FC1 and older 2.4 kernel based releases but not with the 2.6 kernel based Fedora releases. Ah, probably time for me to buy a nice new sound card, or better yet a new pc.
I tried the nautilus file manager, opened a directory on another partition filled with images, and noted that the “view as image collection” option was gone. Nautilus seemed quick, worked fine.
My Epson C80 printer was detected during bootup, I did not have time to try it out. I don’t expect any problems with the printer, it has worked well with cups in other FC releases.
I decided to check and see how the system was running so I launched the System Monitor program. System Monitor showed that I was using 137MB, at the command line I ran “free” which showed I was using 514MB plus some swap. This was not a good sign. I next ran “top” and it showed that my CPU was maxed out with the prelink process consuming up to 95% of my cpu.
At this point I had to go to sleep, so I shut the system down.
Summary: Best fedora core installation process yet. Nice Gnome desktop and apps. Lot’s of new stuff and a few problems found which will probably be fixed soon.
I think Alsa should support that card, but most distros don’t do autodetection for ISA cards any more, as there’s few of them out there and trying to autodetect ISA can cause problems on some systems. Previously the tradeoff was worth it, now it’s not any more. Anyway, I don’t know if Fedora packages Alsa or alsaconf, but if it does, run alsaconf and you may be able to set up the card that way.
prelink is a one-time process which will speed up application launch in the future, having it is a good thing. When you run it it *does* use a lot of resources to do its thing, but you shouldn’t need to run it again.
system monitor I would expect to be more accurate. Something saying you’re using 514MB is probably counting memory being reserved as swap space since no process is using it, a standard Linux practice.
Jeremy LaCroix wrote:
> The FC2 test releases, to me, were almost unusable.
> When it came to Fedora Core 2, I was very much dissapointed.
The problems Jeremy had with FC2 didn’t effect me at all. In fact I think it’s the best distro I have ever used (and there is quite a few on that list).
I almost feel as though I should write a review of FC3 when it comes out, especially if I have no problems. The public should know that with any OS; some users may have problems with hardware – which can usually be fixed with a little research. But for the majority of users – there wont be any problems. In otherwords YMWPV (your milage will probably vary from Jeremy’s)…
And yes, I have 2 nVidia cards and Xinerama 🙂 I must remember to save a copy of xorg.conf 😉
It’s disappointing to hear that Mozilla is going. At work and home, I always have Mozilla Navigator and Mozilla Mail open. My mail resides on a FAT32 partition, so regardless of whether I am in Linux or Windows, my mail folders will be available. I think I will remove Evolution and FireFox and install Mozilla on FC3. Choice is good!
Why can’t Fedora detect that I have a DSL modem and active connection and then prompt me for a username/password, display a connection status icon in the bottom right corner bar, and away I go?
Why can I still not edit icons and menus by right clicking on them and selecting “edit”?
I’ve used Red Hat since 5.2 and then went to FC1 and even tried FC2. But then one day I decided to try out Slackware for the hell of it. Actually the very first copy of Linux I ever used was a CD of Slackware 3.6 back in the mid-90’s somewhere. It was tough setting it up so I switched to RH. I got lazy over the years using Red Hat’s and Fedora’s GUI tools. Things worked most the time but sometimes the GUI tools would mess up the config files and I’d have to hand edit them anyway. Earlier this year I decided to give a Slackware 9.1 a try figuring I had enough experience to handle the less hand holding it does.
HOLY JUMPING JESUS ON A POGO STICK!!!
Slackware was AWESOME!!!!
Not much later Slackware 10.0 came out and I did a clean install of that on my Pee Cee and my Dell Inspiron laptop.
Geez, I even got wireless working in no time on my laptop with some D-Link PC card and ndiswrapper.
The funny thing is that I look at my Pee Cee and laptop and what they’re running and wonder how people can think that Fedora Core is more for desktop use than Slackware. Are you kidding me? Fedora always felt so clunky compared to Slackware. And things are just set up more simply and cleaner in Slackware. The KDE menus are still kind of messy in a RH/Fedora kind of way but still less cluttered. Not too mention NO RPM HELL! Sure, I used apt-get on Fedora but geez, slackpkg and/or swaret are just as good if not better.
Anyway, I switched to Slackware and the way things are going, I’m never looking back (especially to RH and Fedora). Yup, I’m a switcher…
Now, can I be in a commercial like that stoner, Ellen Feiss?
Enabling composite slowed down FC3t2. At least on my test machine with P4-2.8, ati 9200 SE, 512MB.
But, without composite extension…
I was able to play 4 movies simultaneously 1RP (large format), 1 mplayer (xv), 2 mplayer (sdl) while browsing and using computer like nothing is happening underneath
Features not mentioned:
PrintUI in g2.8 is simply beatiful (but not all applications are using it)
Speed is rocking, feel is better than ubuntu. Reason is probably x.org
System tools are unfortunatelly still RH, not gst, thus not so beautiful as ubuntu
btw. updated from up2date [with a lot of trouble and a little love it all worked out] (there is g2.8, ffox1pr and other goodies, with buggy selinux update, this one should be skipped)
Flash
selfinstalled with ffox1pr
Java
need a little love but it works, ffox1pr failed installing
RealPlayer works, but mplayer rocks
Windows Network in Nautilus doesn’t work, empty (ubuntu worked)
ssh Disk mount doesn’t ask for password and this is the reason why this is not working, same experience on Ubuntu so this is probably g2.8 feature
If composite wouldn’t show such slowdown I would try Sun3dDesktop-lg
summary:
Looks like Fedora will be really beatiful distro. But if ubuntu stays gnome only (at least as setup is concerned) and gets x.org there’s a lot of chance that I would swap distro on my personal computers
Comparing with ubuntu (comparision made by avid fedora and redhat user),
Install
ubuntu took a lot more troubles to install but that could be irrelevant, most of the problems were opteron and xfree based. Fedora just worked
Feel
Fedora seems faster than ubuntu on much faster machine, but that would be probably xfree and x.org feature
System feel
Ubuntu is more consistant, RH tools seem too out of date, not gnome-ish and fedora has way too much things that are in the way
Installing packages
After getting familiar with ubuntu, ubuntu seemed to have more featurefull repositories than fedora (fedora has too trashed rpm-s on very different places many times one clashing with another)
Multimedia
Both are mp3-less, fedora features helixplayer while ubuntu features totem
What to use
I don’t know, but I’ll use FC3 and wait for ubuntu to get x.org
Nobody asked you to promote Slackware on Fedora Core topic. It becomes tiresome to hear some posters ranting another distro that has nothing to do with the topic. Don’t want to contribute in Fedora Core, simply don’t post.
Hi Chip,
I’m not completely sure but I think the reason is gnome system monitor shows the RAM usage without the cache and buffers. Last time I did the math it seemed correct to me. Would you verify this?? and if this doesn’t work, please, file a bug report.
My experience with FC2 was great although I don’t use it on regular basis. Contrary to what you say, the thing that surprise me the most was that RAM consumption is very low, I started lots of heavy (really heavy) programs and it was very difficult to make it swap. I have 384MB on an Athlon 600Mhz.
I started: OOo (all of them), Evo, Mozilla, GIMP, Gnumeric, AbiWord, Planner, Epiphany and others that I dont remember. At the end it hardly swapped. I hope this kind of behaviour is still present in FC3.
For all those who are having issues with GNOME (and KDE, for that matter) in Fedora you might want to look at Xfce4 http://www.xfce.org as an alternative. It’s shipped with Fedora now and is, in many, many ways, superior than either of the other two options. Having the choice of three major desktop environments now is quite nice. Linux is just so much fun.
>Software patents are on IDEAS and Algorithms…
Patents are (supposed to be) issued for inventions not ideas and algorithms. Your comment gives a false meaning to the term.
“Enabling composite slowed down FC3t2. At least on my test machine with P4-2.8, ati 9200 SE, 512MB.
But, without composite extension…
I was able to play 4 movies simultaneously 1RP (large format), 1 mplayer (xv), 2 mplayer (sdl) while browsing and using computer like nothing is happening underneath ”
You need to make sure you have RenderAccel enabled for your videocard. this will make a big difference for your performance.
People who “have no idea what SELinux is” should not write reviews.
It is obvious what his preferences are, certainly not GNOME. FedoraFAQ explains how to get MP3 support also, so his only major complaint is fixable with a little knowledge.
It seems these days, anyone with a computer, and too much time on their hands can write a review and have it published somewhere.
I just simply HATED those sponsored links in this article.
If this is what is to come, it means the end of the world as we know it (ie: web hypertext links). I clicked on 2, and then stopped using those links.