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Red Hat Software

Journal heliocentric's Journal: Fedora Core 1.0 review 12

Journal by heliocentric

The introduction that follows is simply a means to explain the how and why for my testing this product. If this is of no use to you then skip ahead to the section on installation.

Introduction
So, a while ago a friend of mine was to bring over an old computer of his so I could upgrade my Linux computer. I love having a windows PC and a separate Linux computer. Typically the lesser of my two best computers is the Linux computer since IMHO Linux runs faster on older stuff than windows does. Plus, I'm still honestly (lately) a windows predominate user.

I hope to buy a new main computer soon and shift hardware around, but until money grows on trees this concept may remain only as a dream.

Well, said friend didn't show up for the big computer building fest in my basement, so the show had to go on. RecursiveGreen was over and he's my gentoo master. I wanted to play with gentoo and after I've tried it a billion times trying to get it and X running on an ultra sparc I figured I'd have all my friends over to play with a gentoo install.

Yes, my grand some total of friends would be RecursiveGreen. Shutupaboutit.

So, without this computer we made do on an old old 300 mhz Compaq piece of junk (pending donated computer is only a 500 mhz, other hardware donations are gladly accepted). I decided that said box would be a chew toy for all the various OSes I could find, but we'd start with gentoo. Gentoo install was moving along well (taking days to compile) until luvsbway came downstairs to visit me and she sat on the corner of the keyboard. Right where control and x are. Right as it was compiling the compiler. Thus ends that install.

Frustrated with not wanting to start over on gentoo I decided I'd test different OSes. To get a base line I installed Red Hat 9.0. I'll admit I'm a Red Hat fan and thus I've been using this distribution on my other dual processor Linux box. Being familiar with it already I was merely installing this for comparison purposes. I only kept it on for an entire day before I popped in the Fedora Core 1.0 disc to start the process.

Installation
Installation flowed just like a typically redhat system does. If you are familiar with how the installation has looked since like 8.0 then you will be right at home. Only thing of interest that I noted being changed is that now the system detects my wheel mouse prior to the installation software starting up. This is handy after I have grown so accustomed to the wheel in so many other applications. However, there is little need to scroll too much so this isn't like a life saving feature - just a nice touch that was needed for a while.

Another nice feature is after I select what packages I want to install the software tells me which of the three CDs I will need (I needed all three). This was nice for me since I only burned the first disc and was planning to wait and see what it needed. Now, while the first disc was installing I could happily burn the others.

Use
Hey, it works. Things are a tad slow, but that's because of the slow CPU I have in this box. I'm using fedora for web browsing and konsol'ing my way around updating things. I haven't tried any office products on it, but those should be the same regardless of OS that it runs on. Besides, I'm a weird coot and I only like a particular old version of StarOffice, so I won't even get into the new OpenOffice tools or whatever else is bundled.

X works fine on the hardware, but sound seems dead. This isn't of great concern at this point since I'm not planning to keep this system either with this OS or in general (read above about donated hardware). Thus, I won't be trying to track down anything special to kernel mod fix anything for sound. I'll burn that bridge when I get the More Better Hardward (TM).

There was a long delay in testing since I just had to move all of my computers around. My windows PC is a dual monitor setup and with Ksh finding a really cool toy I just had to make it look like a triple head - but better! I have my main windows PC in regular setup with the Linux PC to the right. Once I have a decently speedy Linux box I will be so happy!

Upgrades
So, of course, out of the box the up2date is busted. After fixing the pgp key (see below for fix) I can finally run up2date. But, it seems I can't get to the latest and greatest kernel, just patches to the current kernel and updates to everything else I have. This has been my experience with up2date - lacking. With things out there like gentoo's "emerge" I see the simple command line system to keep packages "updated" only as outdated. It was a nice advancement when it was new. It can still be of help for keeping a box going along happily, but with rpm repositories out there and other information about popular packages we should not remain stagnant with merely keeping up to date with our core system packages.

I can yum as well, but this isn't getting me any further than up2date. I honestly haven't yum'd terribly much, but I will keep playing with it. This is my first experience with yum, I don't hate it, but I honestly don't see it doing much more than up2date at this point. So far, the same can be said for apt-get (which didn't come with Core 1.0 and I had to roll it on there myself).

When RecursiveGreen typed, "emerge gallery" he sat back and waited and when it was all done he had a functioning gallery system on his computer. That's what I want. I'm just a silly end user and I want to act like one.

I've been trying to upgrade the kernel to 2.6.4 by rolling it myself, but I'm hitting a few dependency issues. Things that (with my understanding) gentoo's emerge handles for me.

Pine
Argh, pine. Love it or hate it, you have to at least respect that it is a thin mail client that does what it advertises. I like using it for root to check and organize the system messages. Yes, I actually read the system messages on my computers, and you should, too.

Well, it seems Fedora Core 1.0 does not include pine out of the box. Nor can I yum or up2date it. Oh how I long for the ability to just type "emerge foo" and have product foo running on my system.

So, I had to get the code and roll it myself. Not a pain at all to me, but since when has pine been a non-standard installation piece of software?

Since noticing the absence of pine I'm going to check around for other missing things that I have just come to expect in a UNIX distribution.

How to fix up2date
Just run these two commands on your system with root privilege.

rpm --import /usr/share/doc/fedora-release-*/*GPG-KEY*
rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY

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Fedora Core 1.0 review More

Fedora Core 1.0 review

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  • I've got a hard drive, CD-ROM, 233mHz empty box -- in short, a Linux box waiting to happen.
    Just trying to figure if I want to do KVM (since I don't have a monitor for it) or just set it up with a monitor and then telnet into the dude.
    But then I gotta figure if I go with Slackware or do I try the flavor of the month. (Fedora being the latest).
    Did gentoo twice. Once was enough.
    FreeBSD was, well, FreeBSD really.
    For kicks I may try to get a copy of BeOS I have lying around to install once. And then I'll wipe
    • I've got a hard drive, CD-ROM, 233mHz empty box -- in short, a Linux box waiting to happen.

      Sounds like a chew toy like mine, but not a power user box.

      Just trying to figure if I want to do KVM (since I don't have a monitor for it) or just set it up with a monitor and then telnet into the dude.

      I have a mix. I have an old 300 mhz computer that is my file server. It has samba and NFS. It is where it ssh to when I ssh home and all other Unix machines pull user files from it. It is great, and it is hea
  • Things are a tad slow, but that's because of the slow CPU I have in this box. I'm using fedora for web browsing and konsol'ing my way around updating things

    Things won't be helped by the fact that you're running KDE on an old box. KDE is inherently slow to start with. You might want to try a lighter weight desktop environment (older versions of GNOME fell into this category, but recently, they're as fat and bloated as KDE). Personally, I still with good old fvwm2. It does what I want better than any other

    • Of course, it's only as complete as the yum repositories it's given to work with

      And as it turns out, pine isn't in the main repository or in the livna.org one. You can get it from here [redhat.com] instead.

    • Things won't be helped by the fact that you're running KDE on an old box. KDE is inherently slow to start with. You might want to try a lighter weight desktop environment (older versions of GNOME fell into this category, but recently, they're as fat and bloated as KDE). Personally, I still with good old fvwm2. It does what I want better than any other environment.

      This is pretty much why I went with KDE. As you yourself pointed out it is faster than GNOME. The only place I disagree with you is that KDE h
      • As you yourself pointed out it is faster than GNOME. The only place I disagree with you is that KDE has always been faster than GNOME.

        Actually, no. I said GNOME was as bad as KDE, not worse. In my experience, KDE has always been slower. It's just that it used to be much slower, now it's nearly caught up :-) Like I said, I don't use either, so I have no bias...

        I also tried yum install gallery (to mimic my friend's "emerge gallery")

        All that means is that Gentoo has a larger application repository than F

        • I'm fine with being slow to update versions. For example GAIM came out on the first, and if it took another week to show up that is fine with me. But GAIM isn't in any of the yum/up2date repositories I have. GAIM has been around for years, this isn't a bleeding edge application here. Similarly with gallery, this is a popular web tool having had several versions. I'm fine with not having the latest greatest version, but again this isn't some tool I just crafted in my basement last night - it has an esta

      • See, there's the problem. Yum seems stuck taking the short bus to school unless take action to enhance it.

        Yup. Odd how Fedora started out (we're told) as a project to add packages to Redhat, and now has only about 100 packages...
    • Personally, I still with good old fvwm2.

      Not to beat a dead horse... but:

      Cannot find a package matching fvwm2
      No actions to take

      I guess I'll have to roll it myself. =^)

      Off to ./configre we go!

      Thanks for reminding me about this much thinner client (I'll have to go get the X11 devel stuff as I didn't pick that at install time).
      • Cannot find a package matching fvwm2
        No actions to take

        :-) I hadn't noticed. When RH removed it (in RH8, IIRC), I compiled up a version and stuck it on the filesystem I share between all my machines. I hadn't actually noticed that it wasn't in Fedora, 'coz it was in my path anyway due to the NFS mount. I did the same with rxvt, and am about to add nmh/exmh and ical, so I can keep all of my most used apps, no matter which distribution I'm using. Like I said, Fedora isn't perfect, but I also accept that my

        • (although I may step up to the plate as maintainer, to try and get them reinstated, if I can spare enough time

          Do so, and the world will thank you.

          We may also continue to make fun of your selection of gnome versus kde as well as other religious wars that are fruitless.

          But thank you nonetheless. =^)

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