Linux.com

I've had no problems with FC4 (64-bit version on an Athlon 64 desktop) myself, though I did just add in the Livna respository to the yum setup to pick up some of those aforementioned multimedia bits'n'pieces (fortunately, the Livna folks provide an <a href="http://rpm.livna.org/configuration.html" title="livna.org">RPM </a livna.org> that you install and it updates your yum setup - no editing of yum.conf by hand or anything).

Strangely enough, FC4 actually came through for me with an XviD video I was trying to play - despite installing the codec in Win XP, WMP and Real Player refused to recognise the format and Quicktime did actually play it, but the audio was full of white noise! Guess which piece of software played it perfectly - yep, mplayer in FC4 no less...

I would still say that FC4 starts up too many services that 99% of desktop users would not require, plus the removal of some significant packages from even the DVD media (yes, they're in Extras, but you have to remember to download them separately) are a bit of a downer, but I still think FC4's pretty good.

I would like to see more work done on Anaconda myself - it seems to offer not much more than, say, Red Hat 8.0's Anaconda did. The Disk Druid stuff needs to be made a lot more friendly (any newbie who went into the "manually set up partitions" section of DD would be absolutely stuck on what to do), updates should be applied as part of the initial install (OK, they can opt out from that if there's no net connection or they're on dial-up) and not left to be optionally done by the end-user on the desktop if they even bother taking notice of update icon.

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I too found that Fedora Core 4 was fine. I'm running it on my Compaq Presario M2013 laptop (Centrino). Everything works nicely for me though.

I dont understand though, why the author mixes Livna with FreshRPMS when that mixture is known to have <a href="http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/FAQ.php#D" title="wieers.com">problems</a wieers.com>. If you are using FreshRPMS, you should be mixing it from other 3rd party repositories that conform to <a href="http://www.rpmforge.net/" title="rpmforge.net">RPMforge</a rpmforge.net>. These folks make an extra effort to make sure that they are compatible with both Fedora Core, Fedora Extras and each other (FreshRPMS, DagRPMS, DriesRPMS, NewRPMS and PlanetCCRMA are all members of RPMforge).

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I too found that FC4 was good, but with a big PROBLEM.

Even though OO is beta it had a flaw that locked up my PC so severly that I had to ctl-alt-backspace to free it up. I went back to FC3

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I don't understant people using Fedora when you got Ubunutu, Kubuntu and Debian Sarge... I think these are stronger products

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you have to say WHY.....

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Here is why I use Fedora:

1. Out of the box my video works
2. Out of the box my audio works
3. Out of the box Extras is setup and ready to go. I have access to a lot of software with the yum command.
4. Security and bug updates for ~ 9 months, not security only.
5. I plug in my compact flash reader and Fedora automounts it and I get a nice prompt asking if I want to import my photos.

Here is why I don't use Ubuntu
1. Didn't recognize my video card out of the box and had couldn't get it to configure. xconfig didn't even come close.
2. Universe software may or may not be maintained and isn't supported by the core developers. Fedora Extras is supported and bug fixed.
3. I only get security updates for 18 months. If there are bugs I generally have to live with them.
4. Ubuntu and Sarge don't automount my compact flash reader.

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I don't understant people using Fedora when you got Ubunutu, Kubuntu and Debian Sarge... I think these are stronger products

You thought wrong then. Ubuntu, Kubuntu are jokes. They are toxic waste to install and get running. Debian is much better than those two, however it still sucks side of Fedora. Just on the security patch issue alone is enough to not consider it. Besides, I don't think any of them (that you suggested) consider their distributions a "product." Why do you? For that matter Fedora isn't really a product either. RH doesn't support it. In fact in FC4 they announced they were releasing most of the control they have over that distribution. That is why it isn't as good as it was in the past. Too many cooks in the kitchen I think.

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Debian security is fine. See the DistroWatch.com article <a href="http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20050711#2" title="distrowatch.com">http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20050711#<nobr>2<wbr></nobr> </a distrowatch.com>

That is why it isn't as good as it was in the past. Too many cooks in the kitchen I think.

I felt that their 6 month release schedule was too quick to deal with all the problems that might arise. They have mentioned about moving to a 9 month release for FC5. I would move it to a 12 month release so that all bugs & issues could be sent to<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/dev/null.

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I think 9 month might be good, but going all the way out to 12 months destroys the whole purpose of Fedora, which is to be a "bleeding edge" distribution.

If you don't want the disruption of reinstalling your entire system every 6 months, then just skip every other release. I've done that on several systems. I think they support releases for 18 months before they go to "legacy" status, and even then, they are supported in terms of security updates. Also, don't upgrade to release X until it has had a couple of months to settle out. Most of the worst bugs are stabilized after a couple of rounds of patches. That would at least give you something a little more steady to work with.

Otherwise, if you are really interested in stability, then go to one of the other very fine distributions which have that goal. You won't have the latest and greatest features, but then that's the price you pay.

Fedora ain't for everybody. I really like it, but then I've always had a fairly high tolerance for pain...

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Core releases are supported until the first beta of two versions later. So two was supported until betas of 4 came out. Three will be supported until betas for 5 come out. Core is usually officially supported support for 6 to 9 months depending on release cycles. The legacy group then takes over and provides support until the distro is 18 months old.

"As additional Fedora Core releases become EOL, we will provide support for them based on the 1-2-3 and out policy, providing for roughly 1 year of additional update support for each release. This provides an effective supported lifetime (Fedora Core plus Fedora Legacy Support) of approximately 1.5 years."

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"Ubunutu" and "Kubuntu"?

I've never even heard of these, and they sound like you just made them both up.

Anyway, stronger how? Fedora Core is the only distro I've been able to find that does what I want.

This is what I want:

I want to get my computer working in under 3 hours, without having to compile anything for any reason, so that I can just get to using MSN, Gimp and Firefox and the other little programs I use.

I do NOT want to spend 9 hours on a fucking computer so I can compile everything so I can get 3% faster compile times.

The computer should work for you, not the other way around.

However, If I was building a server, I'd definately want something small, customizable and dependable. I'd probably go for Slackware or something, do a minimalist install and then compile everything myself.

That'd be kinda fun, actually.

Next time I have a few days of free time, I'm gonna do something like that.

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you should try simplyMepis (www.mepis.com). It's a liveCD to see if everything works (usually does). then you can install to hdd. I've installed alot of apps but never needed to compile anything.

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The article exposes problems with the ALSA system, and it is likely that choosing another distro does not solve.

Please ALSA people, offer simpler access to common questions from your home page (your faq must be reached through wiki and does not include lots of real faqs).

Also, important issues with Intel HDA (the integrated audio in many modern Intel motherboards) and their different chips still remain.

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Fedora is the bleeding edge testing environment for Red Hat(tm). You can expect to tweek it a little to make things work sometimes. This is an evolving operating system, constantly changing, not something that's been under development for tons of years (Debian) or really even based on a stable distro (Ubuntu). This is a monster that is being constantly poked and probed, tweeked and messed with. If you want more stable, I suggest Debian, Mandriva (Mandrake), or maybe one of the RHEL work-a-likes.

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"seem more like a polished test release than a stable operating system."

That is the definition of what Fedora is supposed to be. It is a testing ground for technology that will eventually make it into RHEL. Don't expect stability or extensive testing. Along with the recommendations in the other comments, I would suggest Xandros 3 Open Circulation or SUSE.

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This is total crap, and I'm tired of having to listen to it. Fedora is not just some "testing ground" for RHEL. It's a full-blown quality distribution in itself. It's not as if the thing isn't meant to be used.

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I have been using various linux distributions for about 10 years (remember Yggdrasil?).
I finally settled for Mandrake/Mandriva.
This is the first one that got (2-3 years back) every bit of hardware recognised and working on about 6 different desktop and laptop configurations (with a *little* work in configuration files for the latter, I must admit).

This distro uses recent versions, but I have typically not come accross bugs.

I have had difficulties with previous versions of Debian, but I will try the latest one!

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I am very glad they used the OpenOffice 2.0 beta instead of the stable 1.1.x release. The 2.0 beta is as stable as 1.1.x version and three times the product. I've been running 2.0 for over four months and I've yet to experience a single crash or other problem.

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Big thing with the 2.0 Beta (which has been absolutely rock solid for me) is a huge improvement in the MS Word compatibility As parent poster noted, even this "Beta" quality release is more stable than 1.1.3. I have several MS documents what would consistently crash every version of 1.1.x that I tried, but opened fine under the 2.0 code.

I have yet to find anything that works better under 1.1.x than it does under 2.0.

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I too think, that it was a great idea to include OO 2.0 beta.

I am using Linux daily and I need an Office Suite<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... Excuse me, but OO 1.1 was shit<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...

OO is heading in the right way and the beta is very usable as you also noticed. So the Fedora guys had to choose between Linux with bad Office and Linux with good office suite. This beta is better than OO 1.1 and this is what counts<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... and is very stable too.

For me , they have done absolutely right<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;)

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I am having trouble using the wizard to create a database/table. The options look simple, but the final finish button spews out an message-less dialog saying error. Otherwise OO2.0 looks fine. Something is unstable with this beta.

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Apt-RPM is unsupported as Yum and up2date are the primary package tools.

Freshrpms and Livna are not the default, but third party repositories. The author added them manually.

SoundBlaster audio is without problems here.

Tux-Racer has been replaced with ppracer in Fedora Extras. Other packages have been moved into Extras, too.

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You didn't have Sound Blaster problems but that doesn't make the author wrong.

He still had soundblaster problems wether you did or not.

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Oh no...not again. Not another one of those reviews...

I really can't get why people think that Fedora Core should be as easy to use like SuSE or Mandriva and as stable as Debian. C'mon...FC is packed full with the latest of what Linux and the FOSS community in general has to offer. Of course there would be problems, that's one of the things you can be sure about FC.

Some people complain about the lack of speed of FC4. Have you noticed that it was compiled with gcc4? You can't expect to get full optimization with a compiler as new as gcc4.

Some other people get angry about not being able to play MP3s right from the start. Well...

* Use ogg, or...
* rpmbuild --tb --clean --with alsa --with mp3 bmp-0.9.7.tar.gz (how hard can this be).

I have almost 10 years of experience with Linux and I used most of the mainstream distros and I came to this conclusions:

* Fedora Core is not for newbies.
* Fedora Core is not for production enviroments.
* Fedora Core is not very stable at first, but it gets upgraded very often and some of these upgrades really improve the situation.
* Fedora Core is not the fastest distro around.
* The FC developers sometimes make huge mistakes.

but...

* Fedora Core is fun to use. You get the lastest technology available and you learn a lot by using it.

and...

* If you're looking for stability: use Debian (whoohoo! X.org made it into Sid!).
* If you're looking for ease of use: use Mandriva or SuSE.
* If you're looking for speed: use Gentoo (and good luck with that.)

P.S.: Yes, Ubuntu is great, but for now it's not more that a Debian unstable with a nice gnome theme. If you call that user friendly...

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A lot of people seem to be pushing Suse.

I've seen a lot of people annoyed with Suse for one reason: too many different ways to do the same thing.

Do we need more than one mixer?

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I had RH8, ran it for YEARS without problems, but wanted to upgrade so I could use GTK 2.0 programs and other programs depending on dozens of new libraries that I didn't really know how to install, especially not without cluttering up my system.

So I tried SuSE... And it never, ever worked with my NVidia card. I could not get it to go with the official drivers, at all. I had no 3D support! And the config programs weren't that great and it had plenty of other problems. Random, basic programs crashed.

Of course, I didn't know the half of what I was missing til I tried Fedora Core 3.

FC3 worked, solidly. Rarely ever does anything crash, it's much much faster and it's just plain better. And my 3D works.

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Bang on job, I havent even finished reading this topic but I have to say you're as close to dead on as one could find. I do not consider myself an avid linux user, nor an expert. I have however, been playing in the *Nix world for many/many years now, and have never found a distro/product/whatever as fun and realistically easy to use as Fedora. Yum kicked the pants off of up2date and apt, configuration is a snap (albeit ive found some less than normal installation paths for some common items), it's very foregiving (and I break stuff a lot!).

Ive ran my own non-production server farm at home for many years, ive used, MS Ad server(S), *nix variants, and ill leave the bulk to fedora.

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I'll add my agreement here too.

Funny you should mention YUM. I've used up2date pretty consistently in the past, and aside from its constant hanging up when in GUI mode, I could usually get it to work. Beastly slow, but generally effective -- until I tried to run it from behind a firewall. BIZZZT. No dice. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to work. It would download the updates that were available, but couldn't actually get to the files. I actually got to the point of mirroring the updates site on my home box and burning them to CD so I could hand carry them in to work.

Uh, then I tried YUM. Good Lord! Why did it take me so long to figure out that you can just do "sudo yum update", and it'd work every time?? I can use it to install new packages too, which I never figured out how to do with up2date. Much faster too.

Now, I'd like to find a nice GUI to use with YUM, but until I find one, the CLI works just fine.

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> Now, I'd like to find a nice GUI to use with YUM, but until I find one, the CLI works just fine.

# yum install yumex (it's rigth there in extras)

For FC5 people are already working on a more advanced frontend called PUP (for updates), and also a new Package Manager.

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I think I didn't quite wrote what I was really thinking. Most of the production servers I run actually *are* FCs (mostly 1, 2 and 3).

I said that I wouldn't recommend Fedora Core for production enviroments, because sometimes you have to deal with some of the newer stuff (like SELinux) without much documentation.

I also had my share of troubles compiling software that isn't quite gcc4 ready yet. An easy example? Mplayer. Obviously this isn't Fedora's fault, but other distros don't run into these kind of problems sticking to the good old gcc3 (or 2.95). Good thing that FC4 also comes with gcc3.2.

Upgrading between FCs can be a real pain. Usually I just backup the configuration and user's files and install from scratch. Every time I tried the yum way I ended up with a more or less screwed up system.

If I'm the one that's going to be managing the server, I use Fedora, no doubt about it. But when it's a server for someone else I always recommend Debian. It's a rock solid distro.

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Just a few points.

* Fedora Core is not for newbies.
Why not? Its still got the best installer going of any 100% OSS distro and is very easy to get up and running. There are many guides on adding multimedia components to it.

* Fedora Core is not for production enviroments.
That's just stupid. Plently of people myself included use it at work and have been using Fedora releases in "production environments" since it came out. Up to you if you want to put a distro that isn't supported for a long period in your Fortune 100 company but that doesn't mean it isn't possible.

* Fedora Core is not very stable at first, but it gets upgraded very often and some of these upgrades really improve the situation.

I'd say that qualifies for possibly one of the past releases. Companies like Mandrake and even the supposed paragon of stability Debian have had serious problems out of the box.

* Fedora Core is not the fastest distro around.
FC4 is actually quite snappy on modern hardware. For more speed use something like XFCE. I agree that there are speed differences though. That's why users should experiement.

* The FC developers sometimes make huge mistakes.
So does everyone else. Some companies like Mandrake in particular have made huge major blunders in their releases. Heck the latest Suse has problems right of the box as well.

As a server Fedora works as well as ANY linux distro out there. If you've really been using linux for 10 years then you'd know that when it comes to servers Linux=linux=linux. They'll all get the job done. As far as desktop use goes, well your mileage may vary. If you want the easiest to use right from the start distro buy a computer with Lindows installed. Its proprietary but it will work with no effort(I don't recommend doing that btw as at that point you might as well just keep using Windows). If you want to use Linux as a desktop then all distros have their quirks. If you want a completely free and open source distro that has a great installer then you could do worse than Fedora.

Anyway just wanted to point out that Fedora isn't as bad as you make it out to be and many people including myself have found it to be a workable distro for both server and desktop use.

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Ok...I'll try to explain my post a little more.

* Fedora Core is not for newbies.

Every new FC release broke the proprietary NVIDIA drivers installer. On FC4 SELinux was to blame. Also I don't think the "trash-bug" is very user friendly.

* Fedora Core is not for production enviroments.

What I meant with this is that when Fedora Core doesn't give enough time to the 3rd party software to catch up with the newest features. I can give hundreds of examples where a new FC "broke" (I know it's not the right word) compatibility with an older program. That's just unacceptable for a production server.

* Fedora Core is not the fastest distro around.

On the fastest machines you can barely notice any difference in the responsiveness of the system. I have to agree though, that Gnome seems a lot faster. But, although the boot time was reduced it 's still too slow compared with the boot time of some other distros.

I'm a regular XFce user, but since I'm a sucker for eyecandy, I try to use KDE now and then.

I don't agree with linux=linux=linux in servers. That's just a very old perception. The times when all the distros where very much alike is long gone. I had to manage a lot of servers with a lot of ditros and they can be quite different. A lot of my friends have Debians on their servers and they never had as many problems as I did.

Once again, I'm not saying that Fedora is bad. I love Fedora, I use Fedora and I'll continue to use Fedora on my servers and my workstations. My point is that if someone is willing to try Fedora, he/she should be aware that "some assembly is required"<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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Gentoo ruleZ!
It is the best linux I've ever had. It is not easy but you can learn a lot.
Worth trying<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;-)

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the review is ok as far as it goes, but the problems cited are all desktop-ish in nature. my application area is servers, anyone have any comments on that? i have an IBM X330 in colo running FC2 that's working fine, and a backup X330 that i want to install FC3 or FC4 on for testing and eval -- so are there compelling reasons why FC4 is unsatisfactory for this?

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Anyone tried to get Oracle working on FC4 yet? In particular, I'm interested in 9i. Mostly, you have to get the old GCC compatibility libs to make sure it works, but I don't know how much you lose if you do that.

On the other hand, what kind of crazy nuts are we trying to build SERVERS on Fedora???<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;-)

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i think we're crazy people who had been using the old redhat linux going way back (i started with 4.2) and find switching over to be more work than soldiering on (i can't answer your oracle question; i use informix at the day job and postgresql for home projects.)

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About the Open Office Beta issue... a person who is worried about stability wouldn't be using Fedora Core 4 as their operating system. They would be using RHEL or CENTOS if they were really worried about it. The author is dead wrong that Fedora is considered as stable system. In fact, it is quite the opposite... it is considered a test bed for new technologies.

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FC4 is not as exciting or as stable as it should be. I have been having issues with Firestarter and IPtables, etc... Then Gnome (2.10) has decided that extracting compressed files into a directory is too simple and now has it extract into some weird directory and then you have to drag-n-drop from that; quite ridiculous if you ask me. The other annoyance is using virtual desktops and Nautilus, now every time I go to open my home directory, it keeps pointing to the other window I already have open, I hate that feature.

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Fedora Core is not exactly "bleeding edge" but it tries to be close. If you want something stable that has a Red Hat look and feel, then look at cent os either version 3 or 4 depending on your needs. Yes there are newer versions of a lot of software, but if you need to make something work consistently nothing beats a truly stable system.

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I've experienced most of the same problems as the writer of this article plus of course, the incredibly profound way in which the package manager of gpilot has allowed gpilot to become so... evil. I mean exorcist evil. Although I have never had any problems with DVDs and what not. In fact, I just used Fedora Core 4 to rip a family guy DVD. I now store it on my hard drive, and I tell xine to use the ISO file like its an actual DVD and it works fine. Mmm.. Now I can watch Brian Violate Seabreeze over.. and over.. and over....

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The fedora team does not include the proprietary multimedia codecs by default for all the obvious legal reasons. They are now, just as they have always been, easy to install from a third party repository. I had just about every imaginable audio/video codec installed and working hours after FC4 was released. I have it installed on 3 machines at home and a great many more here at work a lot of which have various Sound Blaster cards, and not a single one has had any sort of sound quality issues. I did have a problem on an Intel board with integrated ac97 audio, but worked that out easily enough.

Fedora was never meant to be a distro for the user that just switched from windows. It is (my opinion) for the experienced user interested in using and testing out the latest available in open source software (hence OOo 2.0, and i believe it's perfectly acceptable that they included a late beta in FC4).

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I know, I know... I clicked the link. I knew what would be on the other end, but I couldn't help myself. That fedora icon got me. A strange form of addiction - I keep hoping that someone will actually write an OS review that is worth reading! Someone who shares my experiences.

I was wrong. I won't do it again. So, here's my review.

FC4 works fine. Thank you everyone for getting the latest releases of gcc, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, Perl, Eclipse, Ruby and Apache stably working. Thanks for the latest GNOME and all the wonderful things OSS developers have provided me. I appreciate your efforts greatly!

up2date and yum work fine for me. For an alternative, check out Smart Package Manager - looks like they do an even better job of determining and handling dependencies.

As for OOo 2 beta - the FC guys explained that it was so stable, they felt they could include it in this release. Obviously, the above author and I agree - why waste more time talking about the author's FUD.

Regarding multi-media... with proprietary formats, we're at the mercy of the manufacturers - their management decisions regarding porting app's, codecs and licensing costs and policies are what we must live with (or write our own code). For the most part FC3 and FC4 do what I need for video and audio.

FC3 and now FC4 continue to work well for both work and play all day, every day.

Enjoy computing.

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This review is so low in quality that Newsforge shall not have published it. The complaints center on a "beta" OpenOffice and multimedia codecs which are not part of the Fedora Core 4 proper but third party packages. How can you blame Fedora for something they did not make? And it is well known that Fedora Core itself contains only Free Software so it is of no surprise that by default proprietary codecs are not supported. And the reviewer cannot even list one concrete problem with OpenOffice.

The reviewer shall have obtained some proper training in reviewing products first before trying to do this again.

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I think that Fedora Core provides an excellent basis for a solid, usable system. I would not necessarily include it automatically for use on production systems, however, I would not necessarily discount its use either.

As a desktop system, Fedora Core provides leading, often bleeding, edge software. From my recollection, at least two of the four releases so far have had fairly significant issues that were not uncovered until after the release. On the other hand, they were promptly fixed and incorporated into timely updates.

Fedora Core is not for those who are unwilling to test, and it is not for those who are unwilling to provide feedback and regularly update. However that does not necessarily make it unusable or unreasonable, because the base system provides rather easy tools for maintenance and upgrade at little cost (just the cost of a good network and your time and effort).

For those who just want a system that immediately works, this may not be for them. However, most things usually do work, and the amount of work required to make things operate smoothly is not huge, but it's not zero, either.

For developers and testers I recommend Fedora Core. For enthusiasts I recommend Fedora Core. For people who do not enjoy regularly testing and modifying their system, I do not recommend this software, even though it may get the job done. I recommend SimplyMEPIS for those who want a simple experience, and I recommend Linspire and Xandros as other alternatives.

for the true tweakers in the group, I recommend Libranet as a great alternative to Fedora Core. It is more stable than Fedora Core and provides access to either stable or bleeding edge software, but starts with something that works.

Fedora Core is a viable choice, though. All of the weaknesses mentioned in the article can be easily overcome. There is an active forum and developer mailing list and many online resources available.

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I like the fact that FC is becoming more and more "core" OS, moving the stuff into extras. I hope OOo will be in extras someday too, and we will have a pure Core without hard-to-control 3rd parties. I'm used to install and maintain my own bunch of productivity software. We must admit, there are so many programs for Linux nowadays, that it's impossible to include everything to satisfy everyone's tastes. The stability can be achieved by tuning and patching of the system, even cellphones and motherboards have a firmware stability upgrades!

 

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Word of advice for those looking to have multiple streams of sound going through your card at once like Esd can. Grab my friend's asound.conf from <a href="http://binaryshadow.org/asound.conf" title="binaryshadow.org">http://binaryshadow.org/asound.conf</a binaryshadow.org> for a working dmix. It should help with any of the problems anyone is having. As far as video to sound lag, the NVidia drivers shouldnt allow that and if you were using an ATI radeon (older) then DRI would be the solution. Fedora is bloated imho. Doesn't matter which core you chose, nothing beats the smaller fingerprint of 7.3, which is long dead and buried.

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I've been using the fedora series at the office on my workstation for the past year and a half. In my opinion fedora 4 is an excellent operating system for a workstation environment, I still have yet to test it as a server. When it first came out, I was unimpressed by the lack of multimedia packages, however within a couple of weeks more and more packages have came out enabling me to use it as a multimedia station as well.

As far as stability is concerned, Fedora 4 is by far more stable than buggy fedora 2. It also surpasses Fedora 3 by a few yards. I believe it is comparable to the stability of Fedora 1.

Video is a little buggy especially with xine. Seems like the audio just doesn't sync right. I've been using MPlayer with out any problems.

Beep is excellent for playing my mp3's with its MP3 support. Although essentially the same as xmms, I haven't seen mp3 support available for xmms yet.

Well, that about sums it up for me I'm happy with fedoras' new release and with the constant updating of packages it'll only get better

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You would not have this problems if you would have installed Gentoo Linux, yes ok, compiling the kernel editing config files and etc. I know what you're thinking, but at the end the system is literally perfect, in your case if you want an easy installation go into the direction of ubuntu maybe.

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This is such a nasty bug that I'm surprised that it wasn't addressed in the betas, which have this problem too.

If the author found this bug in the betas, why didn't you "address" it to the developing team? I hate those people who have done nothing but criticizing others. Don't even touch Linux if you are not ready to contribute!

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I'm not the author, but as a Linux newbie occasionally I experience crashes/bugs, too. But I don't know what to do.

Could you recommend a step-by-step guide for Linux newbies on what they should do to report bugs?

Sorry I'm so clueless, but there's probably a lot of people like me.

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Regarding the comments on multimedia, yes I think it's a shame that Xine or Mplayer aren't included in the disro, but really, it's a piece of cake to get Xine!

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I really wish people would stop using things like "it's not for n00bs" to excuse something for sucking.

And, having said that, here are my thoughts on it all.

I'm using Fedora Core 3, and it's going to be a long time before I upgrade. I ran RH8 for multiple years before I switched up. Why? Because it works.

It works fast, it runs all the programs I need, and it's just... Perfect.

And if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I don't know how good FC4 is, but I do know FC3 was good enough that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna stick with it for a while.

About the review: FC is and always has been marketed as 'bleeding edge'. There's nothing wrong with it having something marked as 'beta'.

Lots of things here are marked like that anyway.

How long as WindowMaker been out? Almost a decade? It's still version 0.92 though. But does that really ~mean~ anything? It's not a 1.0?

It's just semantics. Don't be bothered with semantics.

As for the author's Soundblaster problems, I wouldn't be too quick to throw stones about it. Linux has always had spotty sound support. In all my 6 years using this system I have never, ever seen MIDI actually work even though I've tried hard to get it to on many occasions.

And multiple programs still can't play sound at once. I think Windows could handle that "advanced technology" back in, you know, 1995. What was that, like, 10 years ago?

The only way to get it to is with one of those sound daemons that adds a significant and noticable latency to the sound unless you have a fast enough computer.

And of course, fast enough means 50 times faster than you need for a Windows comptuer to do the same thing.

When I started, my 75mhz Pentium couldn't do it. It couldn't run a sound daemon without major lagging. Sure that's an old chip, that was a long time ago, but Windows could do that fine on the same CPU!!!

It's 10 years after Windows95, I'm using a default FC3 install, and if I go run XMMS and then go to a website with Flash, it will stall for a minute before giving up and just won't play any sound.

This isn't a major problem, my point is just that Linux's sound drivers are definately not it's strong point. Don't get too defensive about them, it's not worth it.

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FC4 is not for novices, but it is a great product. It is very easy to install and use as an end user. More skills are required to customize and update it, but that isn't an insurmountable obstacle for a technical person. For multimedia support, check out CCRMA at Stanford.

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<a href="http://home.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc4-tips.php" title="gagme.com">http://home.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc4-tips.php</a gagme.com>
<a href="http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc4.shtml" title="mjmwired.net">http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc4.<nobr>s<wbr></nobr> html</a mjmwired.net>
<a href="http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_4_installation_notes.html" title="stanton-finley.net">http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_4_installat<nobr>i<wbr></nobr> on_notes.html</a stanton-finley.net>

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As others have said...

Fedora will never be stable. It's not supposed to be. It's bleeding edge.

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[QUOTE]It's 10 years after Windows95, I'm using a default FC3 install, and if I go run XMMS and then go to a website with Flash, it will stall for a minute before giving up and just won't play any sound.[/QUOTE]

Bizareeeeee...I'm using FC2 on 2 computers. I just tested the above comment on an older laptop - 192mb pent3 Compaq Armada E500 ~ sound card from around 1997 - anyway, I played music on "music player", had Bob the builder going on Firefox (FLASH) and clicked on the gnome "task bar" icons that goes beep or blop!, and all three noises happened without any delay,WHATSOEVER - don't know what's wrong with your machine but it ain't happening on my old pig.

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FC is 50%-like server distribution and 50%-like desktop distribution. I do belive that developers should concentrate on one of these directions. Otherwise they are following early-microsoft steps.

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I believe the idea of Fedora is a testing ground for Redhat. Right? It's going to have bug, that's what you are for to find them and report them so they can be fixed before those features are added into RedHat Enterprise Linux

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I believe the idea of Fedora is a testing ground for Redhat. Right? It's going to have bug, that's what you are for to find them and report them so they can be fixed before those features are added into RedHat Enterprise Linux

Lots of complaints about multimedia in the preview, right? So, do you think RH will "fix" those features before they get "added" to RHEL? No? Me neither<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...

 
FC has shorter lifespan and more bleeding edge stuff than RHEL. If those aren't qualities you appreciate, RHEL is probably better for you. But the fact that FC makes up the basis for RHEL doesn't mean it's less stable than other distributions equally up to date.

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A testing ground, that I can accept, but they seem to be rushing out a half-cooked distro. Perhaps it serves me right to run a "beat" software and having high expectations. The truth is, FC is best run on servers and for devel work. It would be too much of a hassle to run for a multimedia desktop.

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I think they have lost it completely. I'm still running Fedora Core 1 since 2,3 & 4 all have major problems. About 30% of my applications won't run under any version past 1. I had trouble with sound, video, USB ports, DVD writer, etc. with all versions after 1. On the other hand, my FC1 workstation has been up for over a year with no problems....

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You are correct because FC1 was essentially Red Hat 10...a polished, near-enterprise OS. My first experience with Linux was Red Hat 8, then 9, then FC1. I tried FC2 for a while but got tired of stuff breaking all the time after an update/security release. The other comment someone made is right on...FC is a playground for Red Hat Enterprise devs. End/home users should understand this before using it for their everyday usage. I recommend Debian or Suse Pro.

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Sorry guys, but you're off your rocker. I've used Redhat and Fedora for years and FC1-4 are great stable OS's for both desktops and servers. I have had none of the issues you have. Furthermore, I work with a number of other users of Fedora as well as SuSE and Debian and Fedora performs as well or better than those. cjs

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I'm glad to hear you haven't had trouble with FC2-4, but in fact it IS the development/test branch for Redhat... GO READ THEIR SITE if you don't believe me.

With that said, Fedora is a good DEV distro and even though their may be a few groups that don't run into issues the issues nevertheless are still there.

If you want an Enterprise Desktop then you should buy Redhat desktop (if you've got to stay with RH-based distros). I've heard SuSe pro is pretty good too and will personally vouch for Debian's Sarge. All these distros have issues but as a whole they are more stable than FC from v2 on.

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To be honest I love Fedora Core 4. I am a linux newbie and have only used Fedora Core 3 then I upgraded to Fedora Core 4 without a hitch. I have learned everything I know about Linux with Fedora. I have had some issues, but every issue I have had has been due to me being new. I did a few searches for problems I was having and found where my mistakes were, fixed them and everything worked perfectly. I found both v3 and v4 to be extremely stable and easy to work with. My sugestion is: If you are having problems look at the operator first, read, learn and fix. Worked for me<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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This has to be the shortest review I've ever seen. It's even shorter than some previews. I did a wordcount and it came to 593 words.. Sheesh.

Note to author: I don't know whether you intentionally wrote such a short "review", or it was edited, but next time, do try and be a little more verbose..

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Ubuntu is more stable and more polished than FC4?? He has to be kidding! Ubuntu doesn't work with multiple sound cards and there isn't a workaround for that, ubuntu can't install GCC right, ubuntu can't detect CD-ROM drive mounts if it's life depended on that... What rock is he living under? FC4 may have it's glitches but compared to Ubuntu, it is clean as a whistle.

And by the way, that isn't a review. That is a post-install rant. I've seen more in-depth reviews and with imensely more information in Usenet newsgroups.

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I hate you.

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"What rock is he living under?"
"that isn't a review. That is a post-install rant"
I'm not sure what it was I said that set your soul on fire there, but lets get a couple facts strait.
First a post in response to a review does not have to be a complete review. Read through this thread and you'll note that many posts including yours are not a review. As to your anti Ubuntu nonsense: 1. Ubuntu 5.04 comes with the GCC compiler 2. I have now done two installs of Ubuntu 5.04 with zero sound card issues 3. Ubuntu not only detects cd roms but also DVDs. I conducted a little trial with Ubuntu 5.04 on a Pentium III with 256 meg RAM. In just over 4 hours I installed: the base OS, Flash Player, PDF viewer, Azureus, Multimedia codecs, xine, realplayer, Goobox cd ripper, Nvu, Gnucash, Scribus, Frozen Bubble and Supertux. Everything has worked so far including DVD playback and nobody on Ubuntu forums is whining about how Ubuntu has no access to proprietary codecs. It just works. That's why I'm installing Ubuntu 5.04 or Xandros (Xandros was even easier to get working) over Fedora Core 4. "Polished?" I define polished as a system that works the way it's supposed to. That's my prerogative. Leave me alone now to crawl under my "rock" and watch a DVD on my Ubuntu system while you parse code diagonally to get your printer to say "the little brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs back."

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You should 'taste' DEBIAN

|m|r|o|w|a|g|
<a href="http://lody.katalogi.ath.cx/" title="katalogi.ath.cx">http://lody.katalogi.ath.cx/</a katalogi.ath.cx>
<a href="http://linux.mrowag.w.interia.pl/" title="interia.pl">http://linux.mrowag.w.interia.pl/</a interia.pl>

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You can automount in Fedora just as you can in the others you mention. autofs should have been installed by default - "man autofs". cjs

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About 230 MBs of RAM were used on a clean, default load (according to "free", just after the OS loaded -- no major cashing has occured yet)



Any sane OS will grab and use free memory for cache and buffers, and release it to applications as need arise. Exactly what you have running on your "clean, default load" is not for me to try to guess, but you can try to use `top` to check how much memory is used by user apps and kernel, and how much is utilized as buffers and cache (as opposed to just let memory go to waste). If the system is running with lots of free RAM you've just put more memory into it than the OS knows how to put to good use...

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Anyone tried Pixel image editor with Fedora? Together it seems a bright future for web designer or graphician...

<a href="http://www.kanzelsberger.com/" title="kanzelsberger.com">http://www.kanzelsberger.com/</a kanzelsberger.com>

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FC4 is playing mp3, ogg, mpg, wmv and streaming internet audio just fine at my house (and it does
real audio too). I listen to streaming audio via rhythmbox on it.

Mark

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Not that excellent. Not that bad.
Allow all distros to evolve.

Fact is all distros are more of less the same.
Winning on some areas, losing on others.

Only blind zealots can't see that.

I was forced to go for Fedora Core, because nothing with work properly (ATI Graphics Card) on a Samsung P28. Playing 3D OpenGL games was just a no-go area. Most distros had even issue with font-rendering, and colour-blending.

Before I was avoiding Fedora Core like the plague.
But it has been the perfect candidate so far. And believe me I went through 20 distros or so.

Font rendering is beautiful with Bitstream Fonts. How the hell they get the drivers to work out of the box? I can play very fast 3D Games, no problem (as long as I dont attempt the mistake of install ATI proprietory drivers or even Fedora own FGLRx modules). All GL screensavers work well and fast.

There are other nice stuff straight out of the box also. Which would give you a headache in many distros.

And then there are things that gives me headaches to get working on Fedora.

The conclusion is: it hardly matters the distro.
You little wanking nobodies: blinding defend your distro-cult because you haven't had the time and patience to go through a second learning curve.
How idiotic.

Ubuntu is no greater/worse than Fedora which is no greater/worse than Mandrake which is no greater/worse than<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... you get the picture.

Grow up you puny toddlers.

Instead of joining forces, respecting each others camp and trying to learn from the difference, you club like hyennas going "my is better than yours"

I am sure Linux doesn't need your tunnel-vision attitude.
The zealots are always the one running back to Microsoft.
Do us a favour - go back to where you belong: Windoze ME ME ME.

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Flaming? Whats with that? I would generally expect any Linux person to understand that linux is complicated, and everyone has a preference, flaming people because they don't like one distro over another seems silly, they are just reviews of what those people found important, I am a Linux admin and fan since more years then I care to comment 8), I use nearly every distro and many different versions of them, Mandriva (heh I hate that name) RH, Gentoo, all sorts of systems, truth be told some versions work great for some purposes, I had no problem with FC3 for my mail gateway, FC2 for another mail gateway, FC1 for multimedia, RH9 for raid support, Mandrake firewall for a firewall... And about 20 some odd other servers for 20 some odd other purposes, While I agree whole heartedly, that distros mean nothing, I also know that some tasks are harder with certain distro's, so instead of flaming someone who you feel doesn't give things a shot, try what they are doing, and if you get it to work, then, by all means, PLEASE tell them how its done.. Show off how smart you are by providing answers and not flames.

Thats my two cents, oh and yes this is annonymous, not because I fear flaming, but because this will likely be the only time I post here, or at least feel like posting here, and only because when I was new I used to participate if forums, and when I got flamed it only irritated me, it never provides anything usefull in the post, much like this post I am writing, so in an effort to be somewhat usefull I offer this,

Linux is an OS where different people came together to provide a Function, in this they made no garuntee it would be perfect for a particular purpose, It is most helpfull to decide WHAT you plan on doing with it before you randomly go installing a distro, in otherwords if your going to use the system for a specific purpose look around to see whats availible for linux first often you will find that certain applications work or have binaries for certain distro's, If your not afraid of programming a little bit, then grab the sources install the OS and compile them for that kernel, if you get it working great, share your binaries with the person who owns the source should they choose. That way, you are contributing to the movement. The easiest way to find out about a distro is, think of a task, google search for that +linux +RH or +mandrake, or whatever, if you find an RPM it is likely going to be easier, if not, well... Try at your own risk, linux isn't for the faint of heart, you use it to learn and do very cool things, if your not willing to try I suggest windows... There is nothing wrong with windows, it has a purpose...

Short and sweet is nearly ALL operating systems have a purpose or are better for some tasks then others, even Windows 98/ME are still usefull for people with very specific tasks, and ALL operating systems through programming can be made to adapt to more then one pupose...

PC gaming? Windows XP is one of the most solid for current state of the art games, User friendly and having one of the widest support platforms for hardware (Tho it also has some of the lowest quality components availible to it)

Servers systems? Most Linux variants do an excellent job at being stable platforms!

Stability and Flexabilty while still being a more mainstream system with more support and less bugs?? Well MacOS X is pretty neat there...

See a purpose? What if you have an old DOS application that your company still uses?? Think that doesn't happen any more?? I know of several. Well Windows 98, and with the right fixes ME, provide that, ME has more current features and is more up to date, it also has a number of draw backs...

Temper your comments with a little wisdom, And help people in need, be Brilliant!

And no I can't spell, I am not an english major.

Thanks!

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"the little brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs back."

I'm glad you are not a printer engineer or my Q & U could be shafted and you would never know!

The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog

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You keep metioning RedHat, but remember this is a community developed distro based off the RedHat releases. Lots of things have nothing to do with redhat and that will become more evident in later versions. Some thing such as support for mp3 for example may happen but not because RedHat bent under pressure but as Fedora becomes more and more a product of the Fedora foundation which (correct me if I'm worng) would be similar to debian ie. non profit organisation a lot of proprietary stuff will be included out of the box.

Fedora is not for newbies who want to use the desktop. It's for enthusiasts. I use FC1 for many servers and FC3 for 1 very important specific server because of what they offer me. But this is a distro that requires experienced users willing to tweak find bugs and report them.

Your memory addumptions are also incorrect. I know because apart from my laptop (Sager NP6160 p4-2ghz 512mb 40 Gb Synaptics TP) I've installed thin on both 128 Mb and 256 Mb machines in test environments.

Fedora is redhats experimental testing ground. Some use features others dont and help get them resolved wich helps the RHEL releases.

I have only 1 request for FC5 ie. i586 compiled RPMS. Personally I use x86x64 on my home machine but with the power of the servers in existence that is where Mandrake won out in the past and Gentoo also.

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Sadly, FC is good for almost everything else except for multimedia. It is always a pain to get anything mutimedia running.

Also, I still do not understand why it still does not allow auto mounting of partitions? I mean, Mandriva does, SuSE and Debain clones do, so what's their problem?

True it will just take about 10 to 20 seconds to mount partitions and make it stay via fstab, but if they are serious about making it on the desktop they need to learn to play nice with Windows, which incidentally they don't.

Until then FC will just be a geek's toy and making it on the desktop? Don't think with its current track it's going.

Eric

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FC4) is the fourth release of Red Hat's open community project and was released a few weeks ago. I tried both the DVD and the CD version for x86, on the LinuxCertified.com laptop, model LC2430. This is a 2.8 GHz P4, 512 MBs of RAM, 1400x1050 LCD, Intel onboard AC97 sound card, National Semiconductor NIC, 40 GB drive, combo drive and an ATi Radeon 9200 Mobility 64 MB.

All previous versions of Fedora have worked out of the box in this configuration, but it seems that the latest versions of the kernel has a bug with certain LCD displays where the installation screen won't initialized and load without beforehand adding the "nofb" or the "vga=971" command in the kernel configuration line. The latest Ubuntu and Debian seem to have the same problem too.

Anyways, that was just the first hardle (easy to solve), the next one was to make the system install from the DVD. It wouldn't work, not even after 3 burns (installation would die at random places), but the CD version worked flawlessly. Anaconda, the installation program for FC4, is maybe the best installer today, in any operating system. It is both powerful, and easy to use. Fedora has also made some massive steps towards making booting faster. FC4 booted much faster than any previous version, still though, not as fast as more lightweight OSes, like BeOS, FreeBSD or even other distros like Arch and Gentoo. Nevertheless, I am satisfied on the booting speed and optimizations done on FC4's sysinit.

FC4 But I wasn't as happy with the memory consumption. About 230 MBs of RAM were used on a clean, default load (according to "free", just after the OS loaded -- no major cashing has occured yet). I find this requirement huge, it means that computers with 256 MBs of RAM will swap heavily after only a few minutes of using the system (e.g. after opening Firefox and Evolution or OOo alone). The specs mention that minimum requirement is 192 MBs, but this is unrealistic for the default number of services that are loaded. I had to go and unload some services before I could see the RAM usage go down to a much better 140 MBs (but I don't expect new users to know where to look or what to disable, so I still find this poor). And btw, why can't I kill completely 'eggcups' (it keeps respawning) which takes so much RAM, and I don't even have a printer in my house? There are other, smaller bugs in there too, but I won't go into detail on them, i will only mention the big ones.

Regarding the overall feel of the distro, FC4 has now moved to the traditional Gnome look: two panels, one on top and one on the bottom. Additionally, it now uses the Clearlooks theme by default putting into sleep the venerable Bluecurve theme. I much prefer Clearlooks to Bluecurve, but I find it weird that after so many years Red Hat was trying to make KDE and Gnome apps look similar with the use of Clearlooks all this effort is going to the bin, as there is no Clearlooks port to Qt installed. On the bright side of things Fedora feels pretty spiffy. I have witnessed gnome applications loading faster than the same app would on a competitive so-called "lightweight" distribution, on the same machine. I am sure that Red Hat engineers did some work on making the system feel more responsive, and this work is commentable and easily spotted, not only when compared to previous versions of FC but also when compared to other distros.

FC4 comes with some new features, like native support for XEN, OOo 2.0-pre beta (looks sweet), SELinux's targeted policy that has been active since Fedora Core 3 has been improved to cover dozens of more daemons. There is now Integrated Clustering Technology, an open source clustering file system that allows a cluster of Linux servers to share a common storage pool. There is also GGC 4.x with a rewritten optimisation infrastructure and improved support for a native Free Java software stack. This includes parts of OpenOffice.org 2.0., Eclipse, and Apache Jakarta, among others. Speaking of Eclipse, it runs natively on GCJ, but it is pretty slow to load and operate, and it has visual bugs too (check that menu in the shot). However, it is very impressive that it actually runs on this Free clone of a java virtual machine.

There are some more parts in the distro that dissapointed me though. Firstly, there is no support for Synaptics in the Gnome preference panel. If that was not bad enough, the actual defaults of Synaptics used are dissapointing, it's too sensitive and the horizontal wheel is enabled making your interaction with Firefox very poor, because it is unexpected to have Firefox going back and forth in history just by using your touchpad. I would have expected Red Hat to include some sane defaults in there, given the fact that most of their engineers use laptops. Oh, yes, I forgot, Red Hat uses mostly IBM laptops internaly, which they don't have touchpads. Go figure.

The second problem I have with Fedora, and it's been there for more than a year, is its "Add/Remove Applications" utility. Well, if you try to make a big install with many packages, it would return errors to you, like in the screenshot. And if you do manage to go around them, towards the end of the installation it would tell you to swap CD1 and CD2 after 1 package has been installed. This was a terrible user experience. I had to swap CD1 and CD2 about 30 times, in less than 5 minutes! Obviously, their package manager needs to be more intelligent.

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I to have very mixed feelings about Fedora Core 4. On a machine running Core 3 I upgraded and Samba, network printing, file sharing, applications all worked except for the screen saver which is not a big deal. I then installed Fedora Core 4 on an older Dell Pentium II. While most everything worked, I couldn't get a printer to work on the parallel port to save my life. I also find the release to be very unstable compared to Ubuntu and Xandros. A disappointing release overall from Fedora.

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1) Fedora can't include anything with MP3 or DVD support, because those formats are patent-encumbered and can't be used in free-software distributions.

2) "apt4rpm" is the confusing name of a project only tangentally related to what you meant, which is "the apt port which works with RPM". The later is still available in Fedora Extras, but the preferred app is "yum", which is functionally very similar (and better in many ways, not the least of which is that it's actively developed).

3) it *is* a preview version of openoffice.org, and it wouldn't seem right to remove the warning. When the final version is out, there will be an update. I believe the hope was that the final *would* be available, but with a calendar-based release schedule, you get into situations like this, for better or for worse.

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fc4 is a disappointment, simply put. fc2 is still my fav--the 3rd installment was a nightmare -- esp. for MP3 playback..

saddly, windows is still the only OS that fully supports my soundblaster audigy 2 platinum pro series sound card, which gives it a purpose in life--even if its shortlived (dual-booting was a blessing)

I was hoping to see some improvements in the overall performance, but found none there. stick with fc2 or another distro -- fc4's a waste of time -- especially if you're looking to listen to a lot of mp3.

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I would to learning on linux fedora core 4 I hope that you can give me the instruction of this.

vrith@conservation.org
Best regared
RITH

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