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My Fedora Core Review


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I am really sorry to disappoint you all. I have some bad experiences with FC2. Installation is great. Problem is with new security restrictions. I have couple of machines at my place. Using one FC1 as nis server. I had some problems to set my nis users as sudo. Everytime when I need to tweak something in the system, I had to go to terminal. login as root and than change. What is the point of having UI then.

Since my home folder is on the server, linked via autofs from client machine, I constantly have problems with shutdown of machine. Automount shutdown service takes ages and always fail. That causes some crashes on shutdown. I do not like the approach of shutdown only as root.

One of client machine is Toshiba Satellite. That one I can not even shutdown. It always comes to point (VFS: Busy inodes .... Self-destruct).

 

Overall, I rollback to FC1 since I didn't have any problems with it. It just work perfectly.

 

Sorry again for bad news.

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Well, my very first Linux experience was with Fedora Cora 1. I wanted to install it to hdb, and it asked me if I was sure about it. I agreed. Then it formatted my hda. +/- 110 GB lost.

 

I was "a bit" upset, but I gave it a try. After installing everything, I got several surprises: no mp3, no divx, no flash, no java.. at least I got s3m, xm and it support :). Well, I thought, this is linux after all, is a good way to learn how this works.

 

Anyway the following 3 things were what made me leave Fedora (and almost give up linux):

 

- Buggy: the linux kernel may be stable, but using gnome or KDE with Fedora was a real pain. Every day I had problems with a lot of programs (and since I was completly new to linux at the time, I didn't even know how to kill them). This fact alone was about to make me leave linux. Even now, I see linux as extremely buggy software, where everything is half-done, a world of a lot of hacks but no real arquitecture. A lot of things are a copy of some other program (in the CLI from unix and in KDE/GNOME from Windows). This may sound very strong but please, prove me wrong. I really want to change my mind on this.

 

- Slow: compared to Mandrake 10 official, Fedora is really, really slow. To name a place that I specially hated: when you were scrolling down a web page, it was far, far from the smoothness of XP. It was choppy.

 

- Ugly fonts: I inverted a long time trying to solve this, with a limited sucess. Again, moving to Mandrake 10 official solved the problem.

 

I'll stick to Mandrake unless someone could provide me with a faster and more stable distribution (and Gentoo is not an option. I just don't have the knowledge to use it)

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I had some bad experiences with FC2.

The installation went fine .... well not really it messed with the MBR and I wasn't able to boot WinXP. I fixed that thx to the solution on RH's site.

 

It was quite buggy, Netscape wouldn't work right plus other little annoyances. I had to install NTFS support myself. Being a total Linux n00b at that time I was missing the "cd.." and "urpmi" commands (I had some contacts with MDK 9.2 in the past).

 

Anyway it seemed quite boring to me, I dunno why. It had a positive effect too: its Kernel had no problem with ACPI so this encouraged me to go to the next step: install MDK 10. This showed me that Linux could run just fine with my hardware. I always wanted to have a Linux box but because the Mandrake (9.2) kernel caused problems (no network, no internet) I had to renounce at that time. Poor support helped to discourage me. Thx to the great support I received from this board I managed to fulfil this dream of mine.

 

I don't think I'll ever go back to FC because I think MDK is a better distro. :cheeky:

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- Buggy: the linux kernel may be stable, but using gnome or KDE with Fedora was a real pain. Every day I had problems with a lot of programs (and since I was completly new to linux at the time, I didn't even know how to kill them). This fact alone was about to make me leave linux. Even now, I see linux as extremely buggy software, where everything is half-done, a world of a lot of hacks but no real arquitecture. A lot of things are a copy of some other program (in the CLI from unix and in KDE/GNOME from Windows). This may sound very strong but please, prove me wrong. I really want to change my mind on this.

 

Hey Red Hat don't care so much about Fedora because it's free. They get nothing from that. They have their "professional" servers to improve and develop. That's why I dislike Red Hat.

Mandrake on the other hand offers a decent FREE OS. Though Mandrakesoft is known for its weird decisions I kinda like their business plan.

The Linux CLI is superior to any other shell in the world. Unix was great at it's time but it was lacking some important elements, plus it was proprietary and very expensive. Linux not only took (I'm refering to the ideas not the software which was written from scratch) the good things from Unix but improved everything and added lots more.

KDE is supposed to look more like the Windows desktop to make it easy for the n00bs to learn Linux. You can use WMs or other Desktops if you don't want to feel like in Windows.

I don't think Linux software is extremely buggy. First of all think of the people that work on that software without being PAYED. Think about all those hours from their lives that they dedicate to what they believe in - FREE SOFTWARE. I haven't experienced many Linux distros but I can tell you that MDK and Knoppix are not that buggy. At least they don't have as many bugs as Windows. M$ programmers are payed and they still make a lot of mistakes. You should thank those that code so well without receiving salaries or join the movement yourself. Put your talents to good use or support in any way you can the Open Source. Help with the programming, make a donation I dunno. That helps improve the software.

 

And remember post all your problems here. You will get an answer sooner or later.

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I don't think Linux software is extremely buggy. First of all think of the people that work on that software without being PAYED. Think about all those hours from their lives that they dedicate to what they believe in - FREE SOFTWARE. I haven't experienced many Linux distros but I can tell you that MDK and Knoppix are not that buggy. At least they don't have as many bugs as Windows. M$ programmers are payed and they still make a lot of mistakes.

 

First, don't get me wrong. I value the effort of the people who work in the different projects of Linux, and if I'm spending long hours learning to use it, is because I also like the spirit of it. I'm looking for some way to contribute in a way that is enjoyable for me. I'm a programmer and I do know the hard work that means to develop such a huge project as Linux as a whole. Every day I I find new related projects and think the same: it's really incredible -so few people, working in such great undertakings, in their free time- and almost keeping up to pace with giants like Microsoft or Sun.

 

But it's buggy. As a friend of mine says, it's BBB software: buggy beyond belief. And, reading code and reading developer's forums, I'm starting to think it's "patch oriented programming". It has, by far, more bugs than XP and has less functionality. If you are speaking of Windows 95, 98, Me, you are right: they are crap. But Windows 2000 and XP are real solid programs and state of the art architecture. Windows has problems, the most important by far is security, but it's rock solid in almost every aspect.

 

It doesn't need to take Windows to compare with. Other free projects have a different approach and get different results. You see, the first program I ran after installing MDK 10 was KDevelop. I wanted to know if it was a good candidate to develop (I used the nightmare called Anjuta in Gnome, and well, I think I don't need to say anything about it). I ran it and selected a template, then it crashed. After reporting the bug in the KDevelop forum, I got a reply telling me it was already known and could be solved in a future version. Well, I placed the class tree window to the left and the help to the right and it crashed. Again, I posted about this and got a reply telling me it was being addressed. When I restarted later Kdevelop it completly forgot about how I had arranged it. I posted again and got a reply telling me it was also a known bug. It won't be fixed in the near future. After other problems I checked the bug list to avoid posting known things. And man, it has one of the largest bug list I've ever seen :)

 

It's the same history for other programs: Kopete, KNode, Karamba, etc, etc, are incredible: they seem to never have been tested.

 

Take another open source project, like Eclipse. Each 6 weeks you get a new version. And the Eclipse project is not only the IDE, it's a huge project: it includes the widgets, the environment, EMF, etc. It's fantastic. Of course it has bugs, but by far not so many as you are used to see in Linux and certainly not so evident. Yes, it's true that Eclipse has an architect like Erich Gamma working on it, but what about linux ? It must have also great architects, doesn't it ?

 

And remember post all your problems here. You will get an answer sooner or later.

 

People is, without question, the best part of linux. And comunities like this one are fantastic (mandrakeusers.com is extremely friendly - I'm thinking on trying other distros, but this forum is one of the things that keeps me using mandrake).

 

I think Linux has a great future, and I hope to give my grain of sand to build it. But it has problems, and the huge number of bugs is, in my limited view of it, the worst of them.

Edited by mistinthenight
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It doesn't need to take Windows to compare with. Other free projects have a different approach and get different results. You see, the first program I ran after installing MDK 10 was KDevelop. I wanted to know if it was a good candidate to develop (I used the nightmare called Anjuta in Gnome, and well, I think I don't need to say anything about it). I ran it and selected a template, then it crashed. After reporting the bug in the KDevelop forum, I got a reply telling me it was already known and could be solved in a future version. Well, I placed the class tree window to the left and the help to the right and it crashed. Again, I posted about this and got a reply telling me it was being addressed. When I restarted later Kdevelop it completly forgot about how I had arranged it. I posted again and got a reply telling me it was also a known bug. It won't be fixed in the near future. After other problems I checked the bug list to avoid posting known things. And man, it has one of the largest bug list I've ever seen smile.gif

 

It's the same history for other programs: Kopete, KNode, Karamba, etc, etc, are incredible: they seem to never have been tested.

 

Anjuta ? never heard of it.

This is the beauty of Linux - you have a lot of programms to chose from. Try another program for development if you don't like KDevelop. I'm just a newbie when it comes to programing (I only know basic C++, you know simple stuff, no sockets, no raw sockets etc and Fox Pro) so I don't know too much. If you think Kopete is buggy than use Gaim. It's far better and I haven't noticed a bug in version 1.0. Switch to GNOME and use gdesklets instead of Karamba.

 

Don't forget to update your packages. This helps to eliminate bugs and other annoyances.

 

I have been using Linux for 2 months and I still don't think it's buggy. And yes I am pretentious. Web browsing, instant messaging, networking, cd-burning, multimedia, etc they all work excellent. Even my GNOME desktop looks better than my WinXP one (thx to BVC's themes).

 

And, reading code and reading developer's forums, I'm starting to think it's "patch oriented programming"

 

Actually that is M$'s approach.

 

First, don't get me wrong. I value the effort of the people who work in the different projects of Linux, and if I'm spending long hours learning to use it, is because I also like the spirit of it. I'm looking for some way to contribute in a way that is enjoyable for me. I'm a programmer and I do know the hard work that means to develop such a huge project as Linux as a whole. Every day I I find new related projects and think the same: it's really incredible -so few people, working in such great undertakings, in their free time- and almost keeping up to pace with giants like Microsoft or Sun.

 

I think Linux has a great future, and I hope to give my grain of sand to build it. But it has problems, and the huge number of bugs is, in my limited view of it, the worst of them.

 

Then join the effort. If you say you are a programmer help fix those bugs. Go get the source, fix the bug and release a patch if you want to help the community.

 

People is, without question, the best part of linux. And comunities like this one are fantastic (mandrakeusers.com is extremely friendly - I'm thinking on trying other distros, but this forum is one of the things that keeps me using mandrake).

 

I'm glad we agree on that one.

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Guest duncangareth
I know, but it's still irritating in general.  If I had a win95 or 98 program - say Quicken 98 - it would work on either win, and also on win2k.  Now I'm not saying winblows is better - I hate it and don't use it anymore.  It's just nice if you have a program you like, such as a 3rd-party game, to be able to use it beyond the next distro......

 

If you are going to compile from sources and you want the resulting binaries to run on a variety of Linux platforms, what you need to do is create static binaries. These contain their own library functions and tend to be larger files.

 

This is not a simple procedure, since you also have to compile static versions of all the relevant link libraries as well. Generally, you can identify which sort of library file it is by looking at the suffix:

 

libjunk.a static

libjunk.so dynamic

 

Static binaries have the following advantages/disadvantages:

 

They are more portable.

They are bigger.

They sometimes run faster.

They use more RAM since each instance uses all the memory required by the library functions.

 

I hope this helps.

:joker:

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  • 4 weeks later...

so i put an install of fc1 on an old laptop just to do it. i had mandrake 10.1 (which i really loved, it really is a fast distro) and read that for my old laptop, fc has some of the ibm thinkpad tools built in.

 

so i installed fc and installed the fluxbox rpm. everything except fluxbox launching is fast. i had to read around for yum. i also had to find the commands (they are there in my ultra small install) to bring networking up.

 

i don't know what the commands are for wireless networking. i know that ifup-eth0 is the command to bring up the ethernet connection. but i don't know the packages for iwconfig.

 

the big thing is that the install is monstrously huge. my mandrake install was right at 1 gb. this is already at 1.6 nearly.

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