680x0's Journal: RH9 to Fedora and back again.

So, expect a mini-review of Fedora here soon.

Well, I'm not sure if I gave Fedora a fair trial. Maybe I'll try it again, when I have more free time. I did like the graphical startup screen (when it switches to runlevel 5 during startup, a GUI pops up with a progress bar, and a button on which you can click to see the detailed startup messages).

I didn't like the problems I had getting logged into X/Gnome when I had my left-over home directory (with left-over .gnome directories and other stuff which dates back to RedHat 7.3). In some cases, X would lock up, to the point where I couldn't even switch to a virtual console. I had to ssh in from another machine, and run "shutdown".

I suspect that wasn't all Fedora's fault, as when I switched back to RedHat 9, I had some of the same problems. I really only got running again after mv'ing my home directory, and creating a new one from skeleton files.

Who is to blame? I dunno. Gnome? Metacity? Not sure... But I think the problem is that some stored setting (in a config file in my home directory) specifies something that no longer makes sense (non-existant window manager, background image that moved or no longer exists, etc.). Software should be robust enough to substitute some default setting for one that is (now) incorrect.