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Initial Reactions to Fedora Core 5 164

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the always-seem-to-have-a-long-road-ahead dept.
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.
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Initial Reactions to Fedora Core 5 More

Initial Reactions to Fedora Core 5

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  • Holy crap! They're up to 5 already? Slow down guys. Nobody wants to upgrade systems they use for actual work that often. There's something to be said for stability.
    • That's what CentOS is for.

      http://www.centos.org/ [centos.org]

    • Re:My initial reaction... (Score:3, Informative)

      by chill ( 34294 )
      Holy crap! They're up to 5 already? Slow down guys. Nobody wants to upgrade systems they use for actual work that often. There's something to be said for stability.

      The initial idea was Fedora was the testing ground for Red Hat Enterprise and that for actual work, you'd use RHEL and not Fedora. By its very design Fedora is supposed to be a fast-moving, cutting edge distro.

        -Charles

    • Re:My initial reaction... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by the_maddman ( 801403 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @02:30PM (#14965682)
      Umm, didn't you notice that Fedora is the development testbed? It's supposed to update quickly so new things get tested before RedHat gives them to paying customers. If you're doing real work on Fedora, I feel your pain. Switch your servers to Centos [centos.org], and save Fedora for playing on your desktop!
      Centos + Dag Wieers' repo [wieers.com] is a sweet setup. Dag, if you read this, thanks a lot for great packages.
      • If you're doing real work on Fedora, I feel your pain.

        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?
        • 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?

          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

        • Heh... (Score:5, Funny)

          by temojen ( 678985 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @02:56PM (#14965969) Journal
          That's nothing... Gentoo's already up to 2006.0 .
        • My initial reaction to your comment is that you're way the hell out in left field. Everyone intelligent already knows that Fedora is a clusterfuck and you should stay far away from it. Then again, everyone with a clue knew that about Redhat around version six...
        • Basically, it's really hard and arbitrary to do OS versioning. In software, there's guidelines in versioning. If the API changes and might break stuff, that's a new major number. Significant features might also get a new major version number. Its not so easy with an entire OS. Fedora doesn't really have an API that would change. A distribution doesn't generally make huge leaps and bounds between releases like a piece of software might either. Sure, the numbers will eventually get up there, but so what? Is "
        • ubuntu is also debian. It installs cleanly, recognizes all the hardware, and has a great initial setup. Afterwards, use synaptic to install anything missing. I don't know how deb compares to ubuntu, but I have dumped RH/Fedora for good. You'd think that all linux distros would be created equal, but they're not. Not by a long shot.
      • The IP address for them doesn't exist, or at east that is the error all the torrent clients on 4 networks on 2 different backbones all tell me.

        I HATE installing an OS on multiple CD's...
    • Two words: Windows Updates

      (actually, with three other words: Windows 2003 Server)
    • up to 5 already? Slow down guys. Nobody wants to upgrade systems they use for actual work that often.

      Ubuntu's releasing new editions every few months, are they also in the same 'stability' boat as FC? I run Kubuntu on one of my machines, and it's great. When the update comes out in a couple months, I'll update, just like most rational people do when updates come out for their systems.

  • Good grief! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @02:29PM (#14965665) Journal
    I've never used Fedora (CentOS 4 is the most recent Red Hat-ish distro I've installed) but -- this sounds awful! What seems like a clueful reviewer struggled to get it to work with Nvidia graphics (you know, that obscure hardware maker that only a handful of Linux users need to worry about). And comments like:
    I have installed and used Fedora since FC1 and have had frequent problems with anaconda in the past, so luckily I was prepared for these new glitches. I simply rebooted and selected the text mode installation, which went moderately well, although in the background there was jumbled text error messages saying something about an nv_raid error , but figuring after the initial probe the o.s. should boot up fine, I went through with the installation and ignored the scrambled error messages.
    and:
    Another strange caveat was that the installation did not ask me to make a regular user account. After the installation completed and I rebooted, I had to login as root and manually make the regular user account.
    and:
    Therefore next step was to figure out how to get mp3 and other audio codecs to work in FC5. Just because I like to use bleeding edge software and I was not interested in installing the older gstreamer-0.8 plugings from livna.org, I added the RPMforge repositories and disabled Livna. Then I installed gstreamer-plugins-bad & gstreamer-plugins-ugly via terminal and now I can listen to my music in Amarok, Banshee, and Rhythmbox.
    are part of the success story!?!

    • Re:Good grief! (Score:3, Informative)

      by 0rbit4l ( 669001 )
      This is par for the course regarding Fedora. I've had the misfortune of having to install it on testbed machines at work, and it is the ultimate example of beta software. That's fine, I guess, for people who like to play with a beta OS, and RedHat made no bones about the fact that this is what they were doing with Fedora. That's all well and good - I just have no desire whatsoever to use a rickety, unstable system whose tools (like, say, "ifconfig" on FC4) segfault on me.

      • Re:Good grief! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Tet ( 2721 ) <slashdot AT astradyne DOT co DOT uk> on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @03:03PM (#14966035) Homepage Journal
        This is par for the course regarding Fedora. I've had the misfortune of having to install it on testbed machines at work, and it is the ultimate example of beta software.

        Just to provide an alternative perspective, I couldn't disagree more. I've used Fedora since FC1, and have found it to be a useful, stable desktop. The reviewer's experiences in no way match mine, which have essentially been "stick the CD in, install and start using it". I've never seen any of the problems mentioned, and nor have I heard of anyone else having them. Sure, hardware detection issues can be an occasional problem for any distribution, but from what I've seen, Fedora does better than any other distribution I've used on that front. I guess he just got unlucky.

        • I have seen the problems the poster complained of, but ONLY in cases where I have ignores the install recomendations.

          If you use the graphical default installer and you do not have enough memory, it will not complete. Using the text based installer corrects the problem unless you are running under 128megs of RAM.

          There are a couple of motherboards that have problems. Almost every version of Linux has problems with these systems due to hardware quirks. Almost every one I have encountered has been documented
        • I've used Linux since before there were distributions, and I know how to read documentation - in my opinion, Fedora represents a backward move in usability and functionality, and it's getting worse as Fedora goes on. (I totally agree that FC1 was pretty usable and had far fewer flat-out broken things in it). In recent versions, far too much stuff just doesn't work - compilers, broken libraries, etc, etc. They seem to bang together the latest bleeding-edge version of whatever is available from the respect

    • Re:Good grief! (Score:3, Informative)

      by crush ( 19364 )

      What seems like a clueful reviewer struggled to get it to work with Nvidia graphics (you know, that obscure hardware maker that only a handful of Linux users need to worry about).

      Certainly more clueful than you appear to be (if you're on the level). Nvidia is always going to be a pain in the ass for anyone that runs a FOSS OS. As it happened this particular glitch was due to a glitch with the default kernel and non-gpl drivers. Use closed hardware, then be prepared to do the work to support it, becau

      • Re:Good grief! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @03:33PM (#14966342) Homepage
        because Nvidia/ATI/whoever won't and the distro makers can't

        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.

        • 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.

          The proprietary drivers for those cards sure do. However there are pretty decent drivers for older Radeon cards:

          Open source 3D acceleration is available on all Radeons up to and including the 9250 (rv280). The 7800/rv200 and below are supported by the radeon DRI driver; the 8500 through 9250 are supported by the r200 DRI driver. B

      • Huh?

        Is SuSE FOSS or not? 'cause on SuSE the only thing you have to do to install an Nvidia driver is run "system update", and click on "Install Nvidia driver" in the list of available updates.

        One X-server restart later, and you've got working OpenGL. What's so tricky about that?

        And Super SuSE includes Nvidia and FGLRX RPMs.
        • The answer is that the Nvidia drivers could very easily be supported by/installed on Fedora and other such distributions. They aren't because of philosophical and political reasons, not technical ones.

          Those reasons being "we don't ever want to deal with anything that isn't open source."
          • Supporting broken proprietary drivers is a very technical issue. Choosing to spend developer cycles on other things than doing free work for companies that don't give a damn about linux is a healthy and sane reaction. It is entirely possible and easy (if you've got a clue) to run nVIDIA's or ATI's lame closed drivers with Fedora Core 5. Just don't expect to get the benefits of community help if you do it. Fedora Core tracks the upstream kernel aggressively and nVIDIA et al are not willing to allocate su
        • No, SuSE is not pure FOSS software. They include quite a few non-free, patent-encumbered bits.

          Redhat has made the choice not to include those things in any distribution they ship, including Fedora. There are a couple of reasons -- RH wants the corporate market, who as a general rule aren't going to worry about MP3 support in a desktop OS. Also, their main market is servers, not desktops. You don't need a NVidia (non-free) driver on a server. If you need X to work enough to configure something (and I

      • Re:Good grief! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by miscz ( 888242 )
        What pain in the ass are you talking about? There's no excuse for nv driver not working, it's enough to get X up and running. Nobody expects proprietary driver to work out of the box but the "reviewer" stated that Fedora just f---ed things up.
      • DON'T BUY HARDWARE THAT ONLY HAS PROPRIETARY DRIVERS

        You forgot the last part:
        "where there is a viable alternative."

        If you want decent 3D acceleration of any kind you either buy ATi or nVidia. There are no longer any other serious competitors in this area.

        Don't rag on nVidia - as has been said here before, they can't OS their drivers because of licences from third parties. They are the ones we should be talking to.

        • Fair comment. The caveat about "where there's a viable alternative" is very true. That means evaluating exactly what one's 3D needs are and then seeing if there's a FOSS solution. If there isn't then welcome to a world of pain dealing with the drivers. I know, I've had to support desktops for chemical engineers that need the stuff.
          • Your situation sounds interesting.

            Did you find some kind of resolution? Did you manage to find another 3D card with FOSS drivers or are you still battling the closed-source ones.

    • I really don't think this person's experience is representative of the communities.

      Anaconda: I've never seen a problem with it, and haven't had to use the text mode installer in years. At least, not when I didn't want to.

      User accounts: It's true that this isn't done during the installation. The first time a Fedora or Red Hat OS boots up, it will ask you to add a non-root account or configure the system for "network login" (LDAP, NIS, winbind, or Hesiod). You don't have to "log in" to perform this step,
    • Another strange caveat was that the installation did not ask me to make a regular user account. After the installation completed and I rebooted, I had to login as root and manually make the regular user account.

      And yet when that happens in the Windows XP install, we (rightly) slam it as a really, really bad idea...

    • Fedora doesn't create non-root users during instal (Score:4, Insightful)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @04:15PM (#14966704)
      Instead, as with Mac OS X, after the first boot you are *required* to make a non-root user before you can log in and actually use the computer. Apparently his motherboard problems prevented him from reaching this first boot stage.

      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.
      • The reviewer was not prompted to create non-root users because he did a text install, which booted into runlevel 3. Runlevel 5 (graphical mode) runs firstboot, which gives you the option to create users, setup ntp and other stuff.

    • clueful reviewer

      The "clueful" reviewer ignored the error messages and bitched about it not coming with mp3 software even though it is well known and well documented that Fedora leave out the mp3 software due to weird US patent laws and it being a US distribution. If you want to complain about something in Fedora then complain about something that is actually in Fedora and not deliberately left out for legal reasons. As for manually leaving out the user account generation - that sounds like a problem for a

  • ...all seems well. The fonts seem a bit nicer, for what that's worth. Not sure about the new eye candy (rotating thingies around the cursor), but, hey.

    Mostly I'm hoping that this problem [jabber.org] is fixed. We shall see...
  • I've updated my main development box and I really like it so far. The only issue I had was getting the Nvidia drivers installed, however after a little bit of research even that was quite easy. I'm currently in the process of installing it on my laptop and that has also gone fairly smooth. Practically, everything has worked by default and the only issues on the laptop so far have been that I had to use ndiswrapper to get the wireless drivers working, which I also had to do under Debian and Ubuntu, and th

  • Jumping the gun... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shrapnull ( 780217 ) * on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @02:54PM (#14965945)
    The author seems to have jumped the gun a bit on the install, since the NVIDIA issues were announced almost immediately after the release, and subsequently have been queued for immediate repair.

    As for his comment that due to these issues it may not be the best starter disto, I agree, but only because Fedora is a testbed product, created to directly fill the void left by RedHat going to a subscription-only model for RHEL. CentOS is more stable by building RHEL from sources. In Fedoraland you take STABLE releases with a grain of salt.

    My FC5 install went without a hitch this morning, and it let me create users after first boot (don't know why his didn't).

    I actually like the new fonts and eye candy. The only visual *yawn* is that the Bluecurve icons are still there, and I've never been partial to them.

    Compared to RHEL4 on the same system, FC5 is MUCH snapper, but I had my usual issues of smartd failing and having to use a PCMCIA wifi card instead of my built-in Intel (Thinkpad T43p).

    Overall, the install worked and the system looks and responds great "right out of the box" (as well as any other distro or better).
    • Handy tip I learnt the hard way. I had a problem with FC3 (this should really be fixed by now - I did file a bug). The installer allowed me - unfamiliar with linux but confident and willing to learn to partition my system myself to install with / and /swap, WITHOUT a /boot partition. This I later learnt is quite important, and it's absence fucked stuff severely, most noticeably not running the first-boot stuff, meaning I didn't create a user. When I first turned it on and I could not login. I reinstalled.
    • Intel wireless 2100, 2200 and 2915 are working just fine in FC4 and FC5. You only need to download the firmware for it, because it is not legal to distribute with Fedora.

  • Beware! (Score:4, Informative)

    by c_spencer100 ( 714310 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @02:54PM (#14965947)
    There are a few things you need to consider before giving Fedora a try.

    1. No NTFS support: If dual boot, you will not be able to read your Windows partitions.
    2. No MP3 support (it's been like that for a while.)
    3. No support for propietary drivers: I've been told that this is more of a bug than an intended feature, but I haven't heard any certainty to support either side.
    4. No ReiserFS

    It's also missing the Tango Icons, Anjuta, and a few more apps. They aren't necessarily deal breakers, but with a 5 cd download, you'd expect them to be there. Lack of MP3 support is by design, although a lot of people really aren't aware of it. Items 1,3,4 can all be resolved by compiling your own kernel, but not everyone enjoys doing that, - and with a newly released distro, you probably shouldn't have to. I can understand no NTFS and MP3 support for patent issues, but why no ReiserFS?

    Here is a link to one of the reviews [beranger.zoom.ro] that I came across. You should probably check the Forbidden Items List [fedoraproject.org] as well.

    • Re:Beware! (Score:3, Informative)

      by thule ( 9041 )
      4. No ReiserFS

      Oh really? /lib/modules/2.6.15-1.2054_FC5/kernel/fs/reiserfs/ reiserfs.ko

      It looks like it's there to me. You can easily install FC to reiserfs by putting reiserfs (or XFS) at the boot prompt.

      Isn't NTFS support a little shaky still? I know reading works pretty good, but writting is still incomplete.

    • Re:Beware! (Score:3, Informative)

      by codergeek42 ( 792304 )
      (1), (2), and (3) are all solved by a simple Google, which leads you to the unofficial Fedora FAQ[1], which has simple instructions that one can easily copy/paste into a terminal (which, by the way, they explain how to start and use somewhat).

      (4) is due to the fact that Red Hat is on the forefront of Ext3 development, and will not support ReiserFS due to the fact that, quite frankly, it sucks. It lacks proper SELinux support[2], it fragments easily, it and been unmaintained upstream for a long time.[3]

      [1] h [fedorafaq.org]

    • Re:Beware! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Alioth ( 221270 )
      Adding support for all of those things is just a single command away - add the Livna repository (which contains various media packages, NTFS modules and nvidia/ati RPMs which get upgraded along with kernel upgrades). The current binary driver issue is a bug (and will be fixed shortly).

  • Initial reaction? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by deacon ( 40533 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @02:54PM (#14965951) Journal
    Thanks!

    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]

  • Has anyone else noticed that yum sucks? It's just plain slow. apt-get or rug are a lot faster. Is there no way to switch away from yum or simply make it do whatever apt or rug do to be so much more responsive? In general it's just not very user-friendly though. Maybe more so than apt is but less than rug. If we're going to use yum then lets make it work a little better.

    Of course I wonder why in this day we are still using multiple packaging systems. It'd be great if at least the big two, Debian and RedHat,
    • apt for RPM doesn't support 64-bit architectures that need both 64 and 32-bit applications. As a result Fedora has deprecated apt (much to my chagrin, since apt works with my proxy and yum doesn't....)
      • Huh?

        Smart supports 64-bit architectures, and mixing of 64-bit and 32-bit applications/packages. Smart also supports apt-rpm repositories.

        I use it all the time ;-) I honestly had no idea that you couldn't mix them. Take a look:
        http://labix.org/smart [labix.org]
      • That's the kind of little imperfections that I'm talking about. Package management is a pretty mature technology now. Rather than doing your own thing with new features why not build them into one standard package management system. Use dev forks for experimental features rather than reinventing the wheel. Better to pool your resources and make one really good package management tool. IMO the only reason for alternate package management is if you're doing something very different like Gentoo.
    • Use apt for rpm. I have a giant repo list if you'd like ;) It works great - a lot better than apt ever did for me under Debian.
    • You're just being silly. In my experience yum is easier than apt-get (by a tiny amount), faster than apt-get (often by a large amount, but usually not noticeably so, and there are cases where apt-get is faster), and much smaller than apt-get (I like small software, as it's easier to fix--I once patched an early version of yum to re-add authentication support because I needed it and it took all of two hours to do...I couldn't even begin to grasp the apt-get 200k+ line codebase in two hours...I also suspect

      • Yum has its problems.

        #yum install ghostview. THINKING PARSING THINKING UPDATING THINKING 5 minutes later NO matching packages, nothing to do. Crap.
        #Yum search ghostview. Oh!!! Here's ELEVENTY BILLION DIFFERENT PACKAGES FOR GHOSTVIEW, NONE OF WHICH ARE ACTUALLY THE PROGRAM. Goddamnit.
        #yum info ghostview. No matching packages.
        --Google ghostview. Package is called gv. Oh, that explains it. No problem.
        #yum install gv. THINKING PARSING THINKING UPDATING 52 of 72812 files parsex UPDATING REPOSITORY.XML 5 minutes
        • exactly my feelings as far as yum goes ;)

          not so convinced on emerge though - it's definitely got its good points, but poor uninstall handling kills it for me.

          I like being able to do things like apt-get remove libgtk+ on Debian to remove Gnome entirely. Last time I looked you couldn't do that in gentoo. You'd have to do it the other way round - uninstall everything you'd explicitly installed that used libgtk+ and then let libgtk+ get cleaned up.

          I also find the emerge tools to be kind of slow. Not yum slow,

        • From man yum:

          -C Tells yum to run entirely from cache - does not download or update any headers unless it has to to perform the requested action.

    • Re:yum sucks (Score:4, Informative)

      by labratuk ( 204918 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @11:28PM (#14969368)
      Is it really so hard to do that?

      Yes. Proper package management is one of the most complex things in modern software if done wrong. Never compound it all by making a package cocktail.

      Besides, it's not the package format that makes compatibility. That's trivial. It's the underlying tree of software, where everything is put and how that is difficult. By advocating a single, compatible 'format', what you're actually advocating is a single distribution. Which would be stupid and unworkable for reasons I won't go into here.

      So there you go kids - never stray from your vendor's repository unless you really really need to. And then only if you know what you're doing.

  • Wrong focus (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rkowen ( 135560 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @03:02PM (#14966024) Homepage
    After browsing through the article, I find that most distribution reviews focus on the wrong aspects ... talk about the "spiffy" new interface, and "cool" looking this or that. In this case the login manager and the desktop, etc. What a waste!

    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.

  • My thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by matt me ( 850665 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @03:18PM (#14966193)
    Fedora Core itself is a *great* distro, imho one of the best, and in many ways *technically* better than Ubuntu 5 (I'm holding out for ubuntu 6 to be THE killer linux - fc5 will hold me tight until then). Unfortunately Fedora's real problems are not bugs on CD, but problems with the project and community. There is none. The official website says nothing, rarely updated more regularly but to quietly change a digit after a new release. Look today and you'd never know a cracking new version was released yesterday. Compare with the GNOME.org page!! That's what I like. Sell yourself! If Fedora Core 6 wants to take back some of the sprawling ground I forsee Ubuntu 6 will have stormed over (perhaps in an early firefox way), the project really needs to pull their socks up in this respect. These are the major gnome distributions equating to the old red hat v debian. Certainly anyone starting with Linux today would choose Ubuntu over Fedora Core. Their website is an friendly warm inviting smile not an empty cold wall. Yes there is fedoraforums and fedoranews and the project wiki, but I don't feel like I'm giving feedback or get any special kick from using this system. So yes I still love my perfect Fedora, but I want more!
  • Has this changed? I tried it on a Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop. It has a i686 architecture/chipset and nvidia card.

    However, while things such as yum are excellent and it had all necessary drivers (except nvidia but that's propietary, have to download, same for all distros) the system is slow and heavy.

    I read that that's because the distro is optimized for i386, not i686. Anyone can tell me if this has changed in FC5?
  • It would be great to have suspend2 (aka hibernate) support. When I'm not using my home computer I want it to use zero power but still be able to leave all my applications and documents open.

    Score: 0 (-1 offtopic, +1 interesting)

  • Advanced Fedora may be, but Ihope they fixed their installer. I tried it a few weeks ago from the beta, and it took forever to get anything done.

    After asking me a lot of extraneous questions (a more confusing install than even Debian's installer), and then afterwards, it would present me with a screen explaining what it was going to do (e.g. generate the package list), and then prompt me to click 'Next' to start it. It would then do whatever it needed to do, and then present me with another screen telling m
    • Advanced Fedora may be, but Ihope they fixed their installer.

      No, no, no, no, no! That's, "Advanced Fedora may be, but fixed, I hope, their installer they have." Yoda-speak right can you do not?

  • Personally I didn't think this review was worth the read... does this guy actually know anything about linux? Fro example he states:

    "Basically a new kernel was required because of a glitch with the default kernel and non-gpl drivers."

    Yes - nVidia have non-gpl drivers which is why they're not included in the distro, however a new kernel is NOT required to install them. When installing the nVidia drivers they install script will try and download the driver module for the correct kernel via ftp, if ther

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