For the fourth criterion, look and feel, Fedora gets two stars. The initial Gnome desktop is very cluttered for no good visible reason. There is nothing that shows up on the upper task bar that isn't also accessible through the program menu. Considering the dearth of installed programs that come with Fedora out of the box, it's not like you are going to have to negotiate through an overloaded program menu to get to the word processor.
When I upgraded to KDE, things didn't get much better. I have come to expect three icons to show up on the KDE desktop: Home, system, and trash. Of these three, only "trash" showed up on the desktop. In order to get to the other two, I had to click on the "start" button. Even then, home and system didn't operate as I have come to expect them to work under all the other distributions tested so far. The Samba system which is usually under "system" wound up having its own little program icon, and a different program as well. This was yet another irritation because one of the many tests for look and feel is how easy it is to connect to other systems on the LAN. I did figure it out, but it wasn't nearly as intuitive as the other Samba iterations I have encountered as a part of The Linux Project.
As far as look, the standard Fedora wallpaper is pretty imaginative. It contains a stylized letter "f" enclosed in an infinity symbol (like the logo above). These "infinite 'f's" are hooked together in a double helix making it look like a Borg ideal of digital DNA. Eye catching, yes; however, considering the numerous annoyances with Fedora, I wish they'd have spent more time fixing some of the more glaring and irritating bugs and less time creating nifty digital DNA graphics. Given a choice of form or function, when it comes to an operating system, I'll pick function any day. Obviously, Fedora's programmers and checkers don't put such a high value on function. Once again, this makes me question whether Red Hat is even close to being worth the exorbitant price they want for it. I get the feeling the answer is no.
For the fifth criterion, overall impression, I give Fedora two stars. I have read of many people who swear by Fedora. I am not even close to impressed. There are far too many petty annoyances and serious irritations that come with Fedora. Whether it's the unnecessarily long installation time, the numerous background installation programs preventing software installation and upgrade, or the crappy video card libraries, Fedora has far and away too many bugs for my taste.
I could understand some of Fedora's shortcomings if it was all contained on one installation CD. However, I can think of three distributions that were contained on only one disk that are far more functional and infinitely less buggy than Fedora. I could understand Fedora's shortcomings if it was a recent software offering from a new kid on the block, so to speak. However, Red Hat has been making Linux distributions since Linux first existed. I know! I have the evidence right here next to me on that old Info Magic CD with Red Hat. I could understand the bugs if this were the first version of Fedora. However, it's not. This is version 6 "Zod".
Frankly, I don't understand why Fedora sucks so badly. Considering all that it has on its side, I should have spent the last hour and a half heaping mounds of praise on Fedora. Obviously, that's not the case.
Considering the friendliness and operability of distributions such as Ark Linux, Vector Linux, and Ubuntu, I can't recommend Fedora to anyone, newbie or geek. There are far too many bugs and irritations that would offend both newbie and ultra-geek alike. As a matter of fact, this install of Fedora is the second one I did. The first one was sacrificed pretty much as soon as the system rebooted after installation.
The three upgrade and install programs running simultaneously I spoke of above spelled doom for the first set up of Fedora on the test system. However, I figured it was hardly fair to slap the crap out of Fedora without giving it a fair trial and hearing. Now that I have done that, I can say with real conviction that there are so many other functional and friendly Linux distributions out there; Fedora should only be considered as a last resort. I'd sooner recommend Debian. At least Debian has excuses for the time it takes to do its installation. Besides that, once you get Debian installed, you can install and update software packages without having to shut down three other automatically started programs. Debian may be unstable and buggy, but at least you can load programs that help mellow it.
What else can I say? Fedora is one of those distributions that I will be happy to fdisk into oblivion as soon as I get ready to set up the next distribution. It's the only system with pre-compiled software packages to go on that list. As a matter of fact, once this article was finished and sent to the main machine to be stored, I deleted Fedora and replaced it with Ubuntu. I needed to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
Good-bye Fedora. If this is the best that Red Hat can do with its free open source system, I shudder to think how badly Red Hat proper sucks. I ain't about to spend two grand to find out, either!
First of all, Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are entirely different animals. RHEL is a proven, stable, fully-supported system. So the projection of how much it would suck is superfluous. Fedora, on the other hand, is a bleeding-edge, free, unsupported (at least officially) system, designed for pretty much the latest hardware. In effect, you're a beta tester. Things that work out well in Fedora are later incorporated into RHEL. If you have problems or gripes you should jump on the Fedora user's forum and/or file bug reports against the applicable components. Red hat is, to my knowledge, the only Linux company that uses this two-tier model.
So what hardware are you using? You can always d/l an earlier version of Fedora or RH if your box isn't up to it. I''ve never had a current RH distro take anything close to "hours" to install on a current machine. Apparently it doesn't include a DVD burner, relatively rare not to find today. Also, nobody "forced" you to download and burn the 6 ISO's, the docs pretty clearly state you only need the 3 "core" disks (I'll bet the KDE desktop you clamored for was on one of the "extras" disks, though). I prefer to burn the DVD ISO.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by having to shut down three programs to do an update. By default "Pup' is running, a GUI tool, very easy to use, but I prefer to shut it down and use "Yum" at the console. I've never had a problem with Yum not resolving dependency problems, unless the Yum configuration file doesn't contain mirrors with the "extras", but it's documented all over the place how to fix it if not.
It's not surprising you and I disagree so sharply on Fedora. Another distro you reviewed had no disk partitioning options, to your glee. Just start it up and let 'er rip. That is completely unacceptable to me. Fedora will do automatic partitioning if, for example, you select the "workstation installation", but it's not the only option.
One thing I do hate about the default Gnome installation is the two tool bars, top and bottom. I merge them into one bottom one immediately (upon creating an account), takes me all of two minutes.
I've tried Mandrake, Suse, Debian, Corel (back when they were doing Linux) and have always come back to Red Hat. For Linux Newbies Fedora is probably not a good option and for someone who expects an OS just like Windows but free it definitely isn't.
by
Maxwell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 275 comments)
on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 4:13:00 PM
...to check out the rest of the series, you would know that Fedora is only one of many Linux distributions I tested. You can review as many of them as you'd like. I have given glowing reviews to some, and not so glowing to others.
The Linux Project was a way to pass on information to the newbie who might want to think about entering the world of Linux. All of the distributions were rated as to my opinion on how they would affect the new Linux user. I feel my rating system was fair. I feel that I gave plenty of explanation along the way. I feel that my commentary on the world of Linux from the eye of the newcomer was both informative and helpful.
If you disagree with my evaluation of Fedora, that's about what I would expect. I'll not sit here and quibble over points about who was using Linux first, or which distributions you have used as opposed to the ones I have used. If you hated the review of Fedora, you are going to absolutely loath the reviews of Gentoo, Lunar, and Solaris.
Such is life!
The test system is listed in the first article of the series. It is still alive and kicking, albeit with a chip upgrade, and new DVD ROM's. It has also recently had a hard drive upgrade as well. It runs Windows 2000 and Slackware 11 as a dual boot. It set up all the other distributions tested in an admirable fashion (except for Gentoo and Lunar, but I'll get to those).
If Fedora is so good, why did the Samba Icons keep shifting. One minute, they would allow me to access the rest of the systems on my LAN. The next minute, they were completely non-functional. If this is their idea of "bleeding edge", it's pretty fucking pathetic if you ask me!
If Fedora is so good, why include THREE programs to update it? Why not just make a choice of one, and let that run? Sounds like shitty planning to me.
As for set up time, Vector Linux took the least amount of time. It was followed in fairly closely by the Ubuntu variants. Next in line were the PHLAK variants. Next in line was Slackware. After that, it was Debian. Fedora was eclipsed in time taken to install by only one other "made from pre-compiled programs: Solaris. I am not even going to count the cup-o-soup distributions. That review hasn't appeared.
I find it pathetic that a system that's included on CD's (Fedora) takes longer to install than a system that was installed by way of the Internet (Debian). If you think that's cool and groovy, you can install Fedora all day long. Personally, I prefer an operating system that makes my computer operate to the point that I don't want to throw it out a window. Fedora sucks in my opinion, and I'm not ashamed to say it, or defend my opinion.
As far as Red Hat, the rules I set up for The Linux Project were that it must be FREE and freely available by way of the Internet. Obviously Red Hat, SuSE and others DO NOT QUALIFY.
If you don't like my sideways condemnation of Red Hat, then send me a copy, and I'll gladly put it on the test system. I still have plenty of old hard drives sitting around that I'd be willing to waste on an install of a system that, in my estimation, violates the very ideal of Linus Torvalds and the GNU project. Same thing with SuSE.
If you don't like my review of Fedora, why don't you do the same thing I did? Get an old system just sitting around collecting dust, clean it up a bit, and start installing Linux distributions. It's easy and it keeps one out of trouble.
The Linux Project is what it is. It is my opinion about the ease of installation and use of Linux distributions from the point of view of the new user. If, as you say, Fedora is a bleeding edge system, then it stands to reason that it's not suitable for the newbie. If it is not suitable for the newbie, then it is going to get a bad review! It wasn't and it did!
What more needs to be said?
Blessed be!
Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 860 comments)
on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 12:56:59 AM
2 comments
How would you rate this?
You must be logged in (if signed up) to do ratings.
It's free to signup! And easy. And takes just a minute or two....
Must Read (
Well Said (
News (
Touching (
Funny (
Supported (
Interesting (
Inspiring (
Valuable (
