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I don't think anyone wants to get into this KDE vs. GNOME debate. But since the author mentioned it, I want to express my experience that, since IIIMF works with GNOME better than with KDE (this is an understatement since I have not been able to use IIIMF under KDE), I am sticking with GNOME.

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regarding the KDE vs GNOME debate, I think I can summarize it in a sentence:
KDE = features,
GNOME = estetical.

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how about kde=bloat=M$=non entirely free since it uses 'QT' ( and you know what i'm talking about)
gnome=practical=sufficient=good looking=100%free everywhere ( which is one of my main motivations for using it)

either has advantages over the other as anyone rooting for either could profess to but gez lets stop this whinny war shall we and just stick to the facts.

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Disclaimer: I used to work for Red Hat
CounterDisclaimer: I am not an engineer, but I used to play one on TV

I agree that the only way to attempt FC3 is the clean install. I tried an upgrade, and it stumbled right outta the gate. I then tried the clean install and got all the way to a complete install with no trouble.

However, things got tricky when I tried to include Japanese Lnaguage Input (I live in Tokyo) under the IIIMF. In short-- no go. I conversed with some Red Hat engineers about the issue, but in the end, I retreated back to FC1.

I am going to give FC3 another 2-3 months to cook, then give it another shot.

Dave Jenkins
<A HREF="http://www.openasia.org/" title="openasia.org">Open Source in Asia</a openasia.org>

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Hint: When you write for a 'Tech' site like Newsforge, you don't have to exagerate the headline to get people to read your article.

Fedora is a neat distro, sure. But it isn't anywhere near a whole new level for linux. It's flakyer than Sid for starters.

Something like Ubuntu is taking things closer to a new level, but it isn't there yet either.

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I'm getting soo tired of all the "'yourdist' sucks, 'mydist' is better".

Saying "Fedora is flakier that Sid", "Ubuntu is more 'new level' than Fedora" without specifying a single detail smells mostly like FUD to me.

What's with this urge to always trying to advertise 'someotherdist' as superior at any given opportunity?

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and so the first journo to make an outrageous headline claim is correct?

The comment was about the silly headline.

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So what about Ubuntu makes you think it's taking things to a new level? I downloaded it and tried it - I was much less than impressed...

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Something like Ubuntu is taking things closer to a new level, but it isn't there yet either.

I know I'm breaking a rule responding to you but why not tell us what is so revolutionary about Ubuntu? What does it have Fedora doesn't? I know of 3 things I find significant about Fedora: Selinux, exec-shield and stateless linux. That looks to be a much more "new" future than does a super sudu or apt-get. Fedora has everything else Ubunto does (apt-get too infact)

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yeah but does fedora come with out of the box readiness to install programs without having fo fiddle with things ? ( and I dont mean just on the CD's..from internet like ubuntu>synaptic: I'll verify that soon as I install it )..proving ubuntu should be leading linux into the future not fedora with its buggy OS..oh but sure SELinux is kewl..shame the surrounding OS is buggy to be IMO untrustworthy for my important data. I have not had one odd error using ubuntu for the last several months so<nobr> <wbr></nobr>..no thanks fedora ( Ill leave it to you beta testers whom dont have important data &/or extra partitions to play with ).

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If you are European you are out in the cold with this one - no more TV!

Where is desktop printing?

I could go on

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FUD?

Desktop printing is there. DVB and lirc are available from other repos. Try http://freshrpms.net, Dag or one of the others.

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"
And finally, GNOME 2.8 sucks less than 2.6 did. But now that I've discovered the vast superiority of KDE, I doubt that I'll ever go back to GNOME.
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You know, this is going to cause a flamewar between the two. Why would he even put this in his review. Kind of STUPID if you ask me. Like I said back at OSNEWS, use your friggin head buddy.

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Uh, because it's SO true, these days?

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Both GNOME and KDE suck. I've never really understood the "war" between the two user camps as there's almost no difference between them at all. Thankfully Fedora has been including Xfce as a third desktop option. Xfce just blows the other two out of the water. No, it's not perfict, but it's loght years ahead of the other two.

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i keep switching back and forth between xfce and fluxbox. xfce has some sweet features, but I don't necessarily use them, so I stick to fluxbox with a slit with gkrellm... Not to mention the new fluxbox can remember the workspace/dimension/position/etc of all your windows.The one thing I really miss with xfce though is the slick sticky notes<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;-)

I agree with you fully though, looking at the two, I don't see much difference between KDE and Gnome. They both have a desktop, a bottom bar with a foot or a K, and they both are so bloated with features that I would never use.

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Your mentioning of fluxbox reminds me of something I've been doing for quite a while. On most of my systems I set up either mwm or vtwm as the window manager for the root account. After all, what is root going to be doing on a box that can't be done using sudo? If you've actually logged onto your box as root you're likely doing some major system work. All that gui junk just gets in the way.

But that's just my opinion. What the hell do I know.

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It's unfortunate that the article links to my FAQ, but the author apparently did not read it himself.

He describes a few repositories as the Lone Rangers, while in fact a few of the most prominent repositories have formed RPMforge (this is actually quite clear from the FAQ). The repositories that comprise RPMforge build their packages from the same source-base (SPEC files) and in an open matter. There's a lot of interaction with the community although the project currently does not scale to allow every individual to commit directly. In fact, fedora.us does not allow every individual to commit either and after 2 years does not have the infrastructure to scale. Which indicates the current problems Fedora Extras has...

The author also implies that fedora.us has a higher quality and better policies, but I wonder why he concludes this. This is in fact what fedora.us themselves are saying, but there's no metric to conclude this. In fact I would argue that a smaller dedicated group of packagers has a more consistent policy and a stricter way of working. The quality, coherency (and simplicity!) of SPEC files are directly proportional to the quality of the package.

Furthermore the RPMforge project goals are wider than only Fedora's. We provide packages for x86_64 (which fedora.us/livna.org currently does not), ppc, alpha, sparc. We support older distributions as well as Enterprise Linux, Yellow Dog and Aurora Linux. We're also directly involved in other communities like cAos, CentOS and other RPM based distributions. For that alone we have a much larger and divers userbase that is contributing.

The author also implies that the ommission of AtRPMS on my FAQ contradicts statements of AtRPMS. Come on ! What's your point ? I do work together with all other repositories that are interested in cross-compatibility and I do work together with Axel. Read my FAQ, I merely state which repositories I use myself, nothing else is implied with that. The fact that has been ommited from this article is that fedora.us/livna.org is not interested in cross-compatibility and in fact is actively working towards breaking compatibility to force people to choose. fedora.us is the only repository that refuses to allow cross-compatibility or even communication with other members of the community.

Something the article could have mentioned is the new Smart Package Manager that is the first tool that allows to use _all_ repositories in a very smart way. It avoids conflicts, allows users to control what package they want for what distribution and in fact gives the user control. It does not force the user to choose one over another, it allows users to pick what they need. You can find the Smart Package Manager RPM package for FC3 at:
<A HREF="http://dag.wieers.com/packages/smart/" title="wieers.com">http://dag.wieers.com/packages/smart/</a wieers.com>
and it comes pre-configured with 13 (!) repositories, even with fedora.us and livna.org, although fedora.us is not yet active. Smart has been designed from the bottom up by Gustavo Niemeyer, the same person that ported apt to RPM based distributions.

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I tried to install FC3 on a laptop (Compaq Presario 722US - it has neither the Intel nor the nVidia graphics) that happily ran Mandrake 10.1 Community. FC3 couldn't detect my video card correctly (which Mandrake had no problem with) and when it got to the post-install configuration steps, the display was mangled to the point where I could not accept the license agreement because the buttons were invisible and unclickable using the mouse or keyboard. Without accepting the license, your only choice is to remove the software which is what I did.

I suppose I could try it again on another machine, but Mandrake works right out of the gate, so why should I?

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I tried Fedora Core 3 on my Gateway box 750mhz Athlon 256mb RAM 20gb hard drive. Everything worked great except the sound. It made a costant and loud hissing sound through my speakers, so instead of wasting my time trying to figure it out, I reinstalled Mandrake 10.1 Community. Now everything works the way it's supposed to.

Oh, I almost forgot, my computer dual boots with Windows 2000 and FC3 only gave me 3 seconds to choose and the interface for the bootloader was not friendly enough for my wife, who has no desire to become a computer geek. The bootloader choice I'm sure I could/should have changed but for some reason didn't. I will accept the responsability for this one, but not the sound. That should have been automatically and correctly configured on install, Just like it is in Mandrake.

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Personally, I am losing my faith/like for RH based distros. RH has become pretty arrogant and it shows in some odd places like drivers included in the distro.

I currently tried to install FC3 on an older 4 CPU PII Xeon system that had a PCI DPT SmartRAID controller in it. Now, the EATA_DMA driver has been a fixture in Linux kernels since the 2.2 days. Somehow RH hasn't included it with any of it's products since RH9. That includes AS and ES. Now I understand that you can't support all hardware forever and old hardware has to drop out somewhere, but it seems to not have rhyme or reason other than personal preference for the RH boys. I checked, the EATA drivers are still in the base 2.6 kernel and deliberately taken out by the RH boys.

Here is what really p*ssed me off. They still have support for Adaptec 1520 cards. The 1520 has been out of production and official support as long as the SmartRAID cards and is an ISA card no less! As a matter of fact since Adaptec purchased DPT, the Smart series controllers are officially an Adaptec product.

They also still have drivers for a boat load of old ISA cards including 3C509, SMC Tiger, NEC, DEC just to name a few. They even have drivers for cards that never really worked well and are as scarce as hen's teeth like the old Compaq EISA RAID cards that haven't been supported by Compaq since the old Proliant 1000's and 1500's. Those were 486 and Pentium systems!!!

Hey RedHAt! Your arrogance is showing and it is costing you. You just drove away a loyal user since the 5.2 version. Don't think I am just another cranked off hobbyist either. I am an IS manager for $900M/yr business. We currently have 50+ licenses of AS under support. Novell has been hounding us to switch to SuSE and offering us some pretty sweet deals to switch. They will get their chance now.

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They are arrogant because they still have support for really old hardware?

You make it sounds like Red Hat dropped your hardware just to spite you heh. Does Mac OS-X still support my Apple II GS I have in the closet? NO? THOSE BASTARDS!

You sound a bit too, hmm whats the word...passionate to be an IS manager. You sound closer to the regular IRC idler of a certain distro or two.

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Why post here? Shouldn't you complain to RH? Like anybody reading here cares if you are a $900M/yr IS manager or a $9/hr worker.

Apparently RH is making good returns on their current business model.

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I'm sorry but what a jerk. Do you really think that Red Hat employee's are going to read your rant and care? The surest sign that someone is lying when they try to brag about how important they are.

An IS manager for almost a billion dollar business? Cough...Umm ok. And a whole 50 server licenses. I'm sure Red Hat will go under without you...And I'm the senior Purchasing agent for Johnson and Johnson and we just spent 5 million on Red Hat contracts...

Anyway grow up and stop trying to act so self-important. It just makes you look silly.

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No, I think I see their point. It might not be communicated the best, but I see their point. I too have seen increased arrogance from RH and RH support. I see a lot of driver issues as well. Mostly drivers that work in other distros and are either querky or just plain won't work in RH. I personally like opinions that give a view into other peoples experiences with products. Maybe not so whiny though.

And by the way, all you jokers cranking on them for hinting at their company size. I noticed all of you jokers got a plug in for your own egos. I think they were trying to make a point. You guys are just stroking yourselves.

Hypocrits

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You forgot to mention they hava great community support.

http://www.FedoraForum.org (Largest Fedora Support Forum)

http://www.fedorafaq.org (Nice FAQs)

http://www.fedoranews.org (Great resources)

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I have been using Evolution for my email for quite a while now. It always seemed to me that every version increase would lose some feature or function that was great. Over all it keeps getting worse and worse as the versions go up. Now FC3 ships with Evolution 2. The UI changes are really bad. The problem is that it's trying to look and act more and more like Outlook. Outlook just plain SUCKS! However, I have been sticking with Evolution because it has, by far, the best spell checking of any application I've ever used. And my English spelling is really that bad as to need this. So all in all it's been ok.

There has always been one small problem with it that's become insurmountable. Every time Evolution connects to the IMAP server the app will hang. It'll sit there un moving and unresponsive until it's done talking to the server. As the version numbers have been going up the length of this hang-while-talking has increased. I can only guess that this is also part of the Outlook cloning process.

Yesterday I got completely fed up and gave Thunderbird a shot. While it has some issues with functionality (not lack of, just different) there is absolutely no hanging or waiting in it. At all. I am not forced to wait the up to 5 minutes it now takes for Evolution to finish doing whatever it's doing and allow me to read email. What used to take hours now takes minutes. I'm not exaggerating.

So now I have a dilemma... If I switch to T-bird I will lose my spell checking and also my address list. Oh, BTW, the utility evolution-addressbook-export that is on FC3 does not work at all for CSV format. When I try it I get a funky binary output file full of 0x0A characters. Right now it seems to me that the balance point has finally shifted. I need to be able to read my email and if that means switching to T-bird and redoing my address list by hand and sacrificing a little spell checking then it's worth it.

Oh, and to try and give this rant a little bit of topicality... I upgraded from FC2 to FC3 and have had no problems. I don't use GNOME or KDE (Xfce all the way) so all of the changes are "under the hood" for me (with the lone exception of Evolution).

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Firstly Outlook 2003 does not suck. It has many UI design features that greatly improve over traditional mail clients (eg the three-pane viewing layout). Further Outlook does not hang when connecting to IMAP. Evolution however however tragic does. Anyway just switch to thunderbird. Evolution uses the aspell library to do the spellchecking and there are plugins available for thunderbird that use this exact same library. So you shouldn't have to lose these features.

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> Outlook does not hang when connecting to IMAP.

No, it doesn't. But have you ever tried to use it with Exchange over a WAN? MAPI sucks beyond belief and Outlook will often hang in the middle of work. The difference is that when Outlook hangs like this your whole system will hang waiting for it to get moving again. Gotta love Windows.

> Anyway just switch to thunderbird.

I bit the bullet and did. So far it's not been to difficult a transition.

> Evolution uses the aspell library to do the spellchecking and there are plugins available

> for thunderbird that use this exact same library.

This is good to know. I'll have to try and hunt down the extensions for t-bird. Thanks.

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I've experienced the same disappointing IMAP hangs. I switched to Thunderbird. It's spell checker is not at good, but at least it doesn't hang.

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KDE is simply heads and shoulders above GNOME.

I see no reason for Fedora/Red Hat to persist in making GNOME the default anymore when KDE makes a better impression for Linux on the desktop.

 

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If KDE was the only Linux desktop, I would stop using Linux.

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We won't miss you. Goodbye.

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Redhat has a vested interest in Gnome, much like SuSE has a vested interest in KDE. That being said, RH's main market is not the Desktop. They are primarily a server distribution. While Fedora is a suitable *base* for a desktop. It is no where near perfect for that role. So Gnome will be default because RH works with Gnome, their utilities are GTk based and quite frankly they don't care what DEFAULTs gives the user the better experience. Feel free to login into KDE whenever you want.

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The simple fact that there are KDE vs GNOME wars means that there are significant numbers of people on both sides of the issue, each with their own passionate feelings towards one or the other desktop manager. Quite frankly, I picked one because it was the default at the time, and have stuck with it ever since, not so much because it is "better" or "worse" than the other, but simply because it does what I need it to do, and I see no reason to go through the trouble of switching. It has its problems, but then, I'm certain I'd have just as many problems with the "Other" one, only they'd be different, and I wouldn't have learned all the little workarounds, or design patterns it uses, or what curious corners the developers had stuffed this or that critical function into. For that matter, I know people who still use "TWM". What friggin' difference does it make???

Use whatever desktop you like, and quit bellyaching about other distros that default to something other than your personal favorite!

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Since 2.4 Gnome does give a bellyache. Before that I would defend Gnome as a great desktop. Now, the way things are going, I can see myself giving KDE a shot a few Gnome releases down the road. We long time Gnome users need rescuing.

• Whatever happened to enlightenment?
  
• Is anything happenning with the GoneMe Gnome fork?
  

Gnome has become a bland corporatized, choice free and user input challenged desktop.

After many years of using only Gnome. I have now installed KDE alongside it. How many more choice-free diminishing option releases of Gnome ca I take before I switch?

We'll see.

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That's a different issue. If you've picked one desktop, and find that it is changing in ways that you don't like, then by all means, complain to the developers! Better yet, see if you can contribute in some meaningful way to the development. Also, remember that, with any complex system, there times when the developers make a conscious decision to make fundamental course changes in a design, which usually results in a period when it feels like everything is broken... until the new design pattern propagates through the system.

If that doesn't work, then try switching. There's got to be some threshold of pain beyond which it makes sense to go through the learning curve of throwing away all the tools you are used to and learning new ones.

What drives me nuts is people who say, "Desktop [A] RULZ! Anyone who is still using desktop [B] must be a WEENIE. Any distro that defaults to [B] is STOOPID!"

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Amen, brother!

I use both desktops and have gone from a 100% KDE user to about 70/30 ratio of GNOME/KDE. The fact of the matter is that there is much to like and much to gripe about with both environments. The really dumb thing is that -- with the proper libraries installed -- I don't have to give up the UI that I feel like using at any given time in order to run any app designed for the other environment. Linux is all about choice. It's not about picking "winners." Grow up!

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The really dumb thing is...

That I said having choice was a dumb thing. What I meant to say was somthing like this:

The really dumb thing is that -- with the proper libraries installed -- I don't have to give up the UI that I feel like using at any given time in order to run any app designed for the other environment -- and yet people still insist on "my desktop is better than yours" types of "playground" behavior.

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If you guys are focused on picking winners here then choose windows. They have a 90% desktop market share.

Put it this way:

KDE is like Windows UI
GNOME is like Mac UI

I wish some Windows or Mac users can come on here and debate which desktop is better. It's definitely not KDE or GNOME.

My girlfriend really knows nothing about this crap, but when I booted up knoppix to do some reiserfs maintaince she found the UI (KDE) to be someone childish, told me to switch users. I dont know maybe its just knoppix.

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Fedora Core remains buggy and unpolished out of the box, with exensive workarounds required. They deliver a Gnome desktop by default, but hide it's beauty and elegance by making it look like KDE... then they take out important functionality like menu editing. They require four CDs to download, even if you want basic functionality you still need three. And if you want add ons... you've got the choice between the unpolished freshrpms repository or the fedora extras project which doesn't even exist for FC3 yet -- and even for FC2 they have very poor package selection and usually older packages to boot.

How is this a new level? The flaws I have listed have existed since FC1 yet they have still been left unaddressed by FC3. However, they have been addressed by Ubuntu, which I am now using instead of Fedora. Ubuntu is what Fedora could have been, indeed what it should have been in the first place. In the end, Fedora is best described as a buggy technology preview for RHEL, a product that gets the proper QA and polish that a distribution needs to be usable.

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Just so you know through your whole rant I kept waiting for you to plug Ubunto. Thanks for not disappointing me =) Good luck on your crusade of FUD

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Yeah, well I suppose it is predictable. I used Fedora for nearly a year and was delighted when a new distro came out that had all the advantages of Fedora (from my perspective) but not the disadvantages of Fedora (again from my perspective). My "crusade of FUD" is simply an observation of how Ubuntu fixed my major problems with fedora that I listed above.

It's true though, I can't really think of any scenario why someone would prefer to use Fedora over Ubuntu. But just because I can't imagine it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist -- I'm sure some people with different preferences have good reasons for choosing Fedora.

And finally -- hopefully these similar projects challenge each other to address their shortcomings. Hopefully Ubuntu will gain a graphical installer, graphical bootsplash, and a modern xorg server... and hopefully Fedora gets a streamlined package set, more available quality packages in fedora extras, and more attention paid to QA. Because they are both GPL they should both benefit from each others' work.

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Ubuntu: Free. GNOME default (no KDE, last time I checked -- has this changed?). Fits on one CD. Crappy installer. Nice distro once you have it installed. Lots of packages available. Easy to update. Smart Package Manager not available, yet. (Should be available, soon, though.)

Fedora: Free. GNOME default (KDE and XFCE optional). Fits on four CDs or one DVD. Very good installer. Nice distro once you have it installed. Lots of packages available. Smart Package Manager available. SELinux.

I've run them both and like them both. But, I have chosen FC3 and have found it to be fast and stable -- a big improvement over previous releases and my favorite distro yet! While I wouldn't exactly call it "polished," it has not been buggy for me in the least.

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And yet it detects all of my hardware perfectly and run great on my office systems. Go figure.

Kudos to Red Hat for contining to improve an already fantastic Distro. Sorry Red Hat bashers but most of us like Fedora as it makes an excellant desktop.

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People will always have different preferences. I honestly haven't used fedora so I will not say anything negative. From google I've found both FC3 and Ubuntu have “project utopia” out of the box. For me as a windows user (hopefully a former one soon), that is definitely what linux needs to absolutely blow windows out of the water as a desktop. It's hal + udev + dbus + gvm so you get some real plug and play in gnome (as opposed to supermount messing with stuff I guess?) Anyway it works fantastically (in Ubuntu [amd64 ver] which I dual-boot) and I'm sure FC3 users are enjoying it as well. So anyway relax people, these type of distro's are leading the way for linux to really take hold in the desktop market. Yes I'm sure other's contribute as well, like Mandrake, Mepis, etc feel free to mention them. Just stop the inane arguments and negative comments<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:P.

My 2 cents,

BFA

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I just installed the newer redhat-release rpm package and modified the yum.conf and yum upgrade, reboot and no problem. Did this the day FC3 released and has been running without problems.

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I upgraded 1 laptop and 5 desktops from FC2 and had few problems - yum.conf was the worst.

All of these originally had RH8 - and all were upgraded to RH9, FC1, FC2 and FC3 without a clean install.

My Laptop is a triple boot with windozeXP, simplyMEPIs and FC3. I only use windoze to download patches, simplyMEPHIS for apt and debian - but I use FC3 all the time using oo, java, eclipse, perl, php, mysql, mozilla, and konsole from the gnome desktop. I just tried XFce and I think I will like it.

I will let you know when the accumulated upgrades begin to fail.

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I upgraded 1 laptop and 5 desktops from FC2 and had few problems - yum.conf was the worst.

All of these originally had RH8 - and all were upgraded to RH9, FC1, FC2 and FC3 without a clean install.

My Laptop is a triple boot with windozeXP, simplyMEPIs and FC3. I only use windoze to download patches, simplyMEPHIS for apt and debian - but I use FC3 all the time using oo, java, eclipse, perl, php, mysql, mozilla, and konsole from the gnome desktop. I just tried XFce and I think I will like it.

I will let you know when the accumulated upgrades begin to fail.

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