Initial Reactions to Fedora Core 5 164
Ki writes to tell us that he has put up a short review of Fedora Core 5 which covers the install and general first impressions to the new release. The author highlights several quirks in the installation and a few problems getting down to business, but overall the Fedora team seems to have made some very good progress.
Re:My initial reaction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Centos + Dag Wieers' repo [wieers.com] is a sweet setup. Dag, if you read this, thanks a lot for great packages.
Re:My initial reaction... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't. I do my real work on Debian stable.
I know it's a testbed, it's just shocking that it's at version 5 when it seems like only yesterday that it didn't exist at all. We are talking initial reactions here, right?
Re:My initial reaction... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know it's a testbed, it's just shocking that it's at version 5 when it seems like only yesterday that it didn't exist at all. We are talking initial reactions here, right?
Except when Fedora was announced, they were very upfront about what it would and would not be. This is not a general purpose distro. If anything, I'm impressed they've kept the schedule. And the Fedora works at all.
I'll go back to my Centos box though, it might not be as flashy, but if you're running Debian stable, you aren't looking for flashy either.
Initial reaction? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sheesh, what else?
An enormous amount of work has gone into it, and it is being given away for free. There might be some issues to get thru, but they WILL be fixed, and the updates made (again) freely available.
The mind boggles that people exist who not only look the gift horse in the mouth, but also denigrate it.
Use the stanton finley install notes here if you want detailed instructions on core 5 setup.
http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_5_installati on_notes.html [stanton-finley.net]
Wrong focus (Score:3, Insightful)
I stopped with Fedora Core 4, and went on to try Ubuntu 5.10 for my satellite machines that require a minimal disk with OS, and use NFS (for the home directories), NIS (for authentication), email (routing), PostgreSQL, DNS, gateway, etc. from my main server machines.
I usually start with a clean disk and just reload everything (this was one nice feature of Fedora). The last "stable" Fedore was Core 2 though, since then I found that there were just a multitude of little problems getting NIS, NFS, almost anything, to work.
I still like the Fedora way of installing packages and updates, so for a quick or specific purpose machine I will use CentOS, where I can expect updates well into the next decade. Fedora leaves me an orphan after a year or so. So I'm trying Ubuntu, which I have found that things are better tested and integrated. There's still a few "gotcha's" but for the most part I hadn't had to spend hours and hours trying to get NFS & NIS working. However, we'll see the true test comes when the next Ubuntu arrives. Instead of the clean disk approach, I will be using the full update capability, because Ubuntu just installs the minimum and requires me to pick and choose the packages I want or need.
Anyways, the bottom line is that I care diddly squat about how the distribution works! I care how well it integrates with the other Unix services like DNS, NIS, NFS, printing, email, etc.
In short (Score:5, Insightful)
Stuff that works very well for certain types of users may be incredibly annoying for other types.
For example, Ubuntu is designed to be very friendly to new users. As a power user, the first time I tried Ubuntu it was like bashing my head against a brick wall repeatedly. It's a great distro for many people, it's just *not* for me. (And IMHO, not for anyone trying to set up a server machine.)
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Gentoo is an excellent distro for experienced power users, but it's a nightmare for new users. (In fact, it gives those new users more than enough rope to hang themselves. New Gentoo users typically push their CFLAG optimizations to insane and unstable limits because they can and it's cool, in the end breaking their system. Those are the users that the "Gentoo is for Ricers" page targets.) This is why I use Gentoo but would not ever reccommend it to a Linux newbie.
Fedora Core is somewhere in the middle ground between Ubuntu and Gentoo. As such, it tends to be the distro I reccommend to new people who want a system that's reasonably easy to get started with but still allows you to become familiar with the "down and dirty" details of a Linux installation.
My thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good grief! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nvidia and ATI can't either. The drivers contain technology licensed from other companies (such as S3). And in many cases they'd be damn near useless without that technology.
DON'T BUY HARDWARE THAT ONLY HAS PROPRIETARY DRIVERS
In other words -- don't buy 3D graphics cards and expect them to work. Yes, I'm aware of the OSS ATI driver. I also know it sucks. Poor speed, poor compatibility, and poor stability. None of which have been improving.
Sorry, but your "take home lesson" is utterly and completely devoid of use in the real world. The reality is that proprietary hardware and software must be supported sometimes. Who that support should fall to is the next question, and right now nobody is willing to do so. Making it fall to the users just means that the users are likely to say "fuck this" and go to a solution where it is supported -- namely Windows.
Fedora doesn't create non-root users during instal (Score:4, Insightful)
And forget about the mp3/dvd stuff. Get over it. Fedora will *never* support this stuff without adding a 3rd party repository because of legal reasons. Ubuntu doesn't either, out of the box. Now arguably Ubuntu wins here because it's package utility will give the option to automatically add in the 3rd-party illegal (in the US) repositories straight away. Fedora might want to consider that.
Anyway, I find all the comments about how fedora sucks to be amusing. I find that Fedora fits my needs quite well, thank you. I don't use every version; I only upgrade once a year. I'm typing this on FC3 right now, which is working great. FC5 will go on soon. I'm kind of on an odd-number schedule. In my experience the odd-numbered releases of Fedora Core are the best anyway. I tried Ubuntu recently, and was impressed, but it won't replace FC anytime soon on my box. One good reason for that is that I maintain 10 or 12 RHEL4 boxes, and I need an environment that is similar for development purposes.
Re:Good grief! (Score:2, Insightful)