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My Fedora experience


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After ditching Mandriva because they kicked Gael out (after consulting with many of the members here) I ended up with Fedora Core 5, it was then just released and is the first Fedora (or Red Hat) I've ever used.

 

Now it's been quite a few months since I've been using FC5 and I feel that it needs some first time user review.

 

Before Fedora I used Mandriva (Mandrake 9.1 was my first distro, but I switched at 10.0 CE), I had also used Ubuntu and Kanotix for a short while, and of course trying out other distros. So, I know my way around Linux, but am no expert.

 

I had read much boasting about Fedora's new Anaconda installer and it turned out to be quite nice, although I'd prefer more flexibility in choosing what to install. Because of that I ended up installing more than I needed. Also it has some weird dependencies, but that's the problem with Mandriva rpm's too.

 

As I undestand Fedora is Gnome centric, but I didn't have any problems setting up KDE and through using standart update I now have the latest KDE installed. That's quite refreshing after all the hassle with Mandriva and installing Thac's frequently quite buggy rpms.

 

About installing software: yum takes longer to install something than urpmi (and there is a valid reason for that) and the standart GUI package manager Pirut is very limited. I generally use konsole and yum command, but sometimes, especially when searching software, I use the gui program YUMEX (Yum Extender) and it is everything Pirut should be.

 

What I really love about Fedora is the "yum update" command, with that one line all the applications are upgraded to the latest/greatest, including, as I mentioned, newest KDE, etc. Of course with all the security and bugfixes.

 

What seems strange is that there have been imo too many kernel updates. 4 or 5 since the release I think

 

The standart menu is too confusing for my taste, I mean there is "Administration" "Settings" "System" "Utilities" and "Control center", imo they should all be below one menu "System" or two, but no more. It sometimes gets hard to remember where is what - it's not intuitive.

 

It lacks the beautiful MCC of Mandriva, but "System control centre" can be installed which basically is an application with links to system configuration utilities, which have to be installed seperately. Also there is no default partition manager, so I installed QTParted and it is very good, but the problem is that there is no really functional system administration tool from the start, it has to be put together from many thigs. Not really a problem, but I think Fedora should make something that looks and is similar to MCC, minus the bugginess of Mandriva GUI tools :P (they can trash config files).

 

All in all I very like Fedora Core, it is not a distro for a total newbie, but it is good. I know that some here have been having problems with Fedora, but I guess I just don't use the buggy places, so it's been a generally pleasant experience and what I've noticed is that with Fedora my pleas for help in this forum (the only Linux forum I use) are down to minimum. It seems that with Fedora Core I have 90% less problems than with Mandriva which seems a bit unrealistic, but that is the picture when I see my posting history.

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I agree 100%. Though i'm using FC4, but i don't think that there is a significant difference. After FC4 installation everyhing worked well and fast. I had some small issues, not shure they were bugs but solved them very fast. Updates are good, never had problems after their installation, unlike mandriva. I also find that fedora's Gnome is slightly faster that mandriva's one. URPMI is definitly better than YUM in terms of speed. In general, I prefer fedora only because it is less buggy and faster. Mandriva is still my favorite but I'm very disappointed of this distro.

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What seems strange is that there have been imo too many kernel updates. 4 or 5 since the release I think

 

This seems to be an added feature of the "bleeding-edge" distro. I'm not sure how "bleeding-edge" Fedora is, as I've only used FC4 briefly, but it did have quite a lot of updates, and more or less the latest kernels too - so I think it's quite bleeding-edge. Similar in some respects to Gentoo, although the kernel wasn't automatically replaced, like what you get with Fedora. You at least had the choice to decide to compile the new kernel from the source it downloaded.

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Hmmm... Many users, many different views and all are correct. Life/Linux is beautiful. :)

 

I know that some here have been having problems with Fedora, but I guess I just don't use the buggy places...
Neither did I. Your hardware apparently loves FC5 more than mine does and it seems you didn't download the broken rpms that I got and that broke my machine so marvelously. It's that simple. Sometimes, with fedora, you get a borken package the one dea and get a fix the next day. Sometimes you get a broken package and it takes more time to fix the now broken package. That's life. ;)

 

About kernels: You can exclude kernel updates from the update process if you want. Not every new kernel is an improvement.

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Solarian,

I loved reading your FC5-review very much. Its almost similar to mine. I used FC4 briefly, but I prefer FC5. And Gnome on Fedora seems faster then on Mandriva.

 

So thumbs up for your review. :thumbs:

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Yes, Gnome 2.14 is included in Fedora 5 and yes, Gnome 2.14 is by default faster than Gnome 2.10 due to the optimizations. I would only compare Gnome on both distros when Mandriva 2007 is out with Gnome 2.14. Until then, my judgment is out.

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By then FC6 will be out with GNome 2.16 :)

 

As far as kernels, fedora folks are very much security consious, so a lot of times it could simply be a security fix, or they try hard to fix bugs in hardware.

 

Also, 2.6.17 is in update-testing :)

 

Fedora Core 5 Test Update: kernel-2.6.17-1.2138_FC5

 

Also, smart is pretty cool if you haven't tried it out.

 

http://www.justinconover.com/blog/?p=14

 

Yum in rawhide/fc6 seems better too :)

 

Oh yeah, I think fc6 test1 is out...

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Both Mandriva2006 & FC4 have Gnome 2.10, Fedora's one faster.
Funny... not on my boxes though. But then Gnome 2.14 is faster in FC5 than in Debian on my boxes. I have some weird hardware, I guess.
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Yes, Gnome 2.14 is included in Fedora 5 and yes, Gnome 2.14 is by default faster than Gnome 2.10 due to the optimizations. I would only compare Gnome on both distros when Mandriva 2007 is out with Gnome 2.14. Until then, my judgment is out.

 

Cooker is already with GNOME 2.15.1 (or .2)

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