The Linux Project XI Fedora: What's the buzz about?
Fedora Logo
Let me start right off by saying I am not even close to impressed with Fedora. As a matter of fact, considering the pain in the balls that it has turned out to be, that you are reading this review at all speaks to how well I have grown in being patient with a patently irritating system. Fedora's web site is (http://fedora.redhat.com ).
The foibles start almost immediately with Fedora. The standard installation set is five CD's plus a sixth "rescue" CD. While I can't blame Fedora directly, as I was downloading the ISO files, a SCSI hard drive that I had installed into the test system decided to give up the ghost. On it were three of the five ISO files, and a just recently installed hyper-sped up Slackware installation. I wound up downloading those ISO files all over on my main machine. Of the five disks created by these files, only three were needed at install time. While I figured such would be the case, I didn't want to gamble on my assumption.
Fedora is the free version of Red Hat Linux. Red Hat was one of the first Linux distributions available. One of the three distributions contained on my original Info Magic Linux disks (from 1994) was Red Hat. At the time, it was freeware. Such is no longer the case. Just a quick trip to the Red Hat web site (http://www.redhat.com ) and you will see that Red Hat expects you to pay more for their software than you would have to pay for Microsoft equivalents. All I can say is if Fedora is cut from the same felt as Red Hat, I'd rather pay for the Microsoft stuff. At least then, I'd know I'd get decent tech support for three years. Goddess knows what kind of support you'd get from a company that at one time dealt in free open system software. Also, the Microsoft stuff is sure to run a whole lot better out of the box than Fedora could even begin to hope to achieve.
Getting to the criteria, Fedora earns two stars for installation. I give it a low rating for two reasons.
Firstly, if all five disks weren't needed, why on earth force people to download the files and create the disks from them? It seems an incredibly unnecessary waste of time to me. My installation required only three of the five disks. I get the feeling that even if I had told it to install everything, I probably wouldn't have used all five.
Secondly, for a system that installs pre-compiled packages, installing Fedora takes hours to finish. Fedora provides a countdown clock to tell you how much longer you have to wait for your installation to finish. Don't trust it! It lies!
The first disk took almost an hour on it's own. The second took forty-five minutes. The last one I don't know how long, because I went downstairs to eat brunch. Suffice it to say, I was incredibly unimpressed with the time it took for Fedora to install. Even Debian didn't take that long to install, and the lion's share of the Debian system was installed directly from the Internet. I have no idea why Fedora took so long to install. Suffice it to say, I was left in a less than impressed state because of the time requirements.
From there, things only get more annoying. Once it is completely installed, it takes you to the Gnome desktop. Considering the time it took, I was sure it loaded BlackBox, FluxBox, FVWM, Gnome, KDE, TWM, Xfce, and every other known or unknown X Windows desktop that had ever existed. Nope, all that time, and all I got was Gnome; a cluttered, barely functional version of Gnome I might add!
This brings me to the second criterion, basic system operation. In this area, Fedora gets two stars. While it worked just fine on the Internet, which is one of the basic key points of the second criterion, attempting to install stuff that didn't get installed from the disks was almost a no-go. For some reason, Fedora sets up not just one, not just two, but three background update and installation programs. That renders you incapable of installing ANY new programs or updating the system. In order to get to the point where I could install KDE and the one hundred plus file upgrades, I had to go into the system and shut down those three different programs before I could get the package installer to come up and work properly. I can only imagine how the newbie would have balked at this juncture. I imagine that might have resulted in at least one computer doing a swan dive from the highest possible window.
Once I finally put the background programs to rest, it took a far shorter time to install KDE and some other programs. However, even that process wasn't trouble free. For some reason, the program came back telling me there was some dependency problem with one of the required libraries to install KDE. A few clicks on the "apply" button, and this glitch went away. Yet another glitch that could have sent a newbie into fits!
Once KDE was installed, it seems that Fedora mellowed out a bit. Obviously it did. I am writing this review under Fedora. It's a good thing the system can't tell what I am writing. It would probably implode if it did!
On the third criterion, device support, Fedora gets three and a half stars. It found, set up, and configured all the installed cards and so on. However, the libraries Fedora uses for the video card are problematic at best.
S3 Verge DX video cards aren't noted for their bulletproof nature. They have always had a sketchy problem with the way they access their video memory. This can cause white streaks to flash across the screen, especially when using the mouse, keyboard, or while the hard drive is accessing. All the other distributions tested up to now can seemingly handle the S3 Verge problems. Fedora seems to have a real problem in this area. While it's not as noticeable with the KDE desktop, it's incredibly annoying with the Gnome desktop. It's an incredibly glaring deficiency.
I am so glad it's Fedora and not Red Hat. I'd be royally pissed off if I spent the long dollar for Red Hat and it worked as badly as Fedora. It makes me wonder just how badly Red Hat sucks. I'll not spend the money to find out. Of that you can be sure.
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, 136 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, 863 comments)
on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 12:56:59 AM
