Why I left others for Fedora...

[tomcat]

There are so many threads about "Why I left Fedora for <select distro>..." that I thought, I should let you know that I am back on Fedora 5. Okay, my one lappy still worked with FC4, but my main machine went through a journey recently. I was a bit frustrated with some packages that had broken on my box and had decided to give other distros a fair chance again. That was four weeks ago.

Ubuntu: Installer crashed repeatedly, then no option for setting up /configuring grub. Babababah! Felt strange, sluggish, slow (and I still hate brown...). Didn't survive three days on my box. :D

zenwalk: Umm... fast ... limited ... boring, display wouldn't run in 24 bit mode. :p

Arch: idiotic installer, weird behavior, too many broken packages, no working man pages for several apps, mounting and unmounting of devices partially broken. :eek:

Some weeks later, I want my Fedora back. Did a ftp-install and everything worked well. Yes, it is bloated compared to some other distros. But I love it somehow. It just works with my hardware. I feel at /home again. :)

Lesson learned: Never change a winning team.

[rossheth]

It has been said that FC5 was the best distro of this year. Having also done the ubuntu/suse/mandriva/etc shuffle, I wholeheartedly agree.

[sailor]

Yup, I have tried so many distros I can't remember them all...but FC seems to like my Desktop and Laptop better than others :D

[Omega Blue]

To each his own. Choice is what FOSS is supposed to be.

[Neolithium]

Even though I'm quite new to linux; I never liked Ubuntu; it was, like you said, ugly, and somewhat slow. Gentoo...don't get me started on that; the GUI installer didn't work; and neither did the text, they both hung at the very end. I tried Debian; but didn't really like that; so I came back to FC 5; just with GNOME (Never liked KDE anyway); and I've been loving it ever since.

Plus thanks to the people on this board, I learned to shut down a bunch of services that I didn't need; so I'm running a LOT faster than I could have hoped with this. In all honesty, Fedora has made me wish that I switched to linux LONG ago; instead of suffering with Windows.

Thanks all you developers! Everything is perfect, especially the easy GUI Installl!

[Omega Blue]

You tried Gentoo? That's definitely not something for a newbie :D

[Neolithium]

Yeah; I learned that the hard way; oh well. I'm learning tons from just this forum alone; but in either case, I don't see myself leaving Fedora anytime soon.

[Al3xanR0]

There are so many threads about "Why I left Fedora for <select distro>..." that I thought, I should let you know that I am back on Fedora 5. Okay, my one lappy still worked with FC4, but my main machine went through a journey recently. I was a bit frustrated with some packages that had broken on my box and had decided to give other distros a fair chance again. That was four weeks ago.

Ubuntu: Installer crashed repeatedly, then no option for setting up /configuring grub. Babababah! Felt strange, sluggish, slow (and I still hate brown...). Didn't survive three days on my box. :D

zenwalk: Umm... fast ... limited ... boring, display wouldn't run in 24 bit mode. :p

Arch: idiotic installer, weird behavior, too many broken packages, no working man pages for several apps, mounting and unmounting of devices partially broken. :eek:

Some weeks later, I want my Fedora back. Did a ftp-install and everything worked well. Yes, it is bloated compared to some other distros. But I love it somehow. It just works with my hardware. I feel at /home again. :)

Lesson learned: Never change a winning team.

Isn't Irony poetic? Every great community needs a paradigm there is no better time than the present.. Welcome home Tomcat :)

[schwim]

It's been many years since I've tried any distros besides Fedora. I use it exclusively now, and although I still run into problems and little bugs, it's nothing large enough to wonder how the other distros compare.

I often get the "greener grass" itch every now and then, but I'm growing as a person, and I've come to realize that I always break things and end up in a bind when I change just for the sake of change. If I begin receiving an electrical shock every time I log into my Fedora box, I will begin considering a change. Otherwise, I'm staying put :D

thanks,
json

[sultanoswing]

My first distro, earlier this year (linux n00b!) was Gentoo - what can I say, I've always liked to tweak! - and I got that running OK - but the need to consider compile-time options and flags for every piece of software was too much hassle in the end...still a good learning experience, and nice distro 'to get stuck into'.

Then I worked at a lab at the University of York, which had FC4 on all the machines in the building, and got to know my way around FC4 pretty well, and came to like Gnome over KDE, FWIW.

Then FC5 had just come out, so I put that on a laptop, learning how to get everything running (java, flash, firefox, fonts, mplayer etc.), and then on my home machine.

I liked (and still like!) the look of 1-disc distros, so gave Ubuntu 6.06 a whirl. I didn't mind brown (which can of course be changed, guys!) and the ugly boot loader (which can also be changed or disabled). I did love apt-get's speed - although synaptic's interface was a bit cluttered for my liking. Some of their packages e.g. Celestia and amaroK were slightly older versions, and although I could of course compile my own, the compile tools required some setting up, including wrestling with broken package dependencies.

So, it's back to Fedora, although I'm about to try Ubuntu or Gentoo as a USB-bootable distro as obviously the DVD-based Fedora wouldn't fit!!

[BrokenKingpin]

I have always had Fedora on my laptop, and it will probably be there for a long time to come. I have an older desktop that I use as a test box, which I use mainly for testing different distros. Lately it has had Ubuntu on it, and I am quite pleased with it, but nothing will be replacing Fedora on my laptop anytime soon.

[Dan]

It took FC5 to finally wedge me out of RH9 on the main production machine. But I'm already itching to playing with FC6, 7, 8, etc...

Other Distros I've tried?

Ubuntu -- (Yuck! Waste of a good CD-R)

xubuntu -- (Not bad in the live CD) I keep a copy in the laptop bag. Oddly enough, it has excellent hardware detection so far. Shocking, but my D-link 630 plus PCMCIA Wireless card came up immediately, and surfed without any further effort!

PClinuxOS -- (Again, not bad at all in the live CD) I keep a copy in the laptop bag (both major video versions and the generic one) Very handy to introduce Linux to disgruntled Windows users!

Vector Linux -- (Not bad in live CD) I keep a copy in the laptop bag. Nice eye candy for younger ex-Windows converts.

Mandriva One Live CD -- I keep a copy in the laptop bag. Has good hardware detection and setup is easy, but the default background is as ugly as a mud fence in the rain!

Knoppix -- I keep a copy in the laptop bag. The ubiquitous rescue CD!

DSL and DSL-N -- I keep a copy in the laptop bag. Handy rescue CD too!

G-parted live CD -- This one is as useful as another set of thumbs! I keep several extras in the bag, and distribute them enthusiastically!

Whitebox Enterprise Linux -- Installed on a backup drive for the laptop. Very basic, but solid as a rock!

Gentoo live CD -- I keep it around, but think it was kind of a waste of a good CD-R

FC4 -- Still keeping the CDs, although not installed anywhere right now.

FC2 -- Not ready for prime-time. But archived the CDs (I was NOT pleased when it killed my Win2K install!)

Sun Java Desktop2 -- Archived the CDs. (Nice eye candy, and Star Office 7 rocks! But YaST is NOT a favorite!)

With all that, to date, FC5 is still the weapon of choice here at The Tangled Web.

Dan

[rmasonjr]

Well, I am close to giving up on my first distro - FC5.

All I want is an FTP backup server for pictures, movies, music, etc. I will play with Tomcat and Java since I use J2EE/Solaris at work.
I have an old Compaq presario with an AMD chip with 512M RAM. I have literally installed FC5 at least 6 times now, and I have problems where I type 's' and I get sssssssssssssss
The gnome desktop locks up nearly every time.
ndiswrapper will not work until I get the devel kernel installed.

I have spent more time reading these boards than actually using fedora which is a sad statement in of itself.

I'm willing to give it a couple of more tries, but am seriously considering another distro...

[Dan]

Hi rmasonjr,

Sure sounds like you're at the ragged edge of frustration! Understood... Been there. However, If any of us are going to be able to give you any help, some more information is in order.

What CPU?
How fast?
HDD size?
Any other OS on the disk?
Have you tried another OS, such as Windows or a Linux Live CD distro?
Do you get any error messages on install or bootup?
Have you checked the contents of the startup log?
What about the keyboard? Sticky keys?
In other words ... INPUT! :)

Dan

BTW, It might be best if you start another thread with the above info in the installation section of the forum, and add a polite (but desperate) request for help!

EDIT: I'm still a newbie, but, on nothing but a hunch, I'd start looking for a hardware issue.

[rmasonjr]

Thanks, TangledWeb - I am frazzled to say the least :)
At this point, I think I know what I need to do to get running. I downloaded the latest kernel and am ready to install it so I can use ndiswrapper, but with gnome locking up and the keyboard issues, I just haven't gotten that far yet.

The CPU is an older AMD chip that is around 400 Mhz. This PC was working fine with Windows XP and when I installed, I formatted the drives (an 80G and 20G), so there's no other OSes on the box. The keyboard worked fine with Windows, so it can't be the keyboard. No errors in startup other than the occasional screen flicker.

Again, if I can just get things stable, then I can handle the rest - I've been using unix for about 13yrs but only as a software developer - the hardware stuff is handled by our SAs and I am recently aware and appreciative of the issues they face :)

Again, I anticipate only running an FTP server with a wireless nic card. This PC will likely live in my server closet with no monitor, keyboard or mouse attached.

Thanks

[Dan]

Frustration can sure do that. :)

However, it sounds like you've got an AMD K-6 chip. I suspect that's pretty close to the bottom ragged edge of the performance envelope required for FC5. I'm not sure of the numbers, so maybe a more experienced user can chime in, but I suspect you're going to have issues with the Gnome GUI just by hardware limitations. I wonder if you have nearly enough video RAM?

If it were me, first, I'd try the XFCE GUI. It's a lot lighter and may help. I think you can DL it from the repos using yum in runlevel 3, but again, I'm just a nOOb, so search the forum for the how-to. Also, if hardware is the issue, you can DL and burn a copy of DSL (Damn Small Linux) from another machine, and try booting it. That'll help you troubleshoot the rest.

A small caveat though. My AMD K-6 350 was stretched to it's limits and a little beyond on RH9, and whereas cooling had not been an issue in Win98, it became one in RH9. Check the fan and heatsink!

[EDIT] :Found these in the FC5 release notes.

6.2.1.1. Processor and Memory Requirements

The following CPU specifications are stated in terms of Intel processors. Other processors, such as those from AMD, Cyrix, and VIA that are compatible with and equivalent to the following Intel processors, may also be used with Fedora Core.

*

Minimum: Pentium-class — Fedora Core 5 is optimized for Pentium 4 CPUs, but also supports earlier CPUs such as Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and compatible AMD and VIA processors. Fedora takes this approach because Pentium-class optimizations actually result in reduced performance for non-Pentium class processors. In addition, scheduling for Pentium 4 processors, which make up the bulk of today's processors, is sufficiently different to warrant this change.
*

Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better
*

Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better
*

AMD64 processors (both Athlon64 and Opteron)
*

Intel processors with Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel® EM64T)
*

Minimum RAM for text-mode: 128MiB
*

Minimum RAM for graphical: 192MiB
*

Recommended for graphical: 256MiB


Dan


Come to think of it, I wonder if you need the GUI at all if you're just using it as an FTP and file server? Boot init3 and see if it's solid!

Also, do a search for Howtos by Firewing1. He's got an amazing collection of instructions on setting up about any kind of server you might want to use.

Here it is. http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=448977

[rmasonjr]

Yah - the secondary video card was found - it's a 32M video card. It actually was discovered by the installer, it just flickers avery so often, but it's not to big of a deal.

The keyboard thing is really ticking me off, though. Once I get it straightened out, it will be smooth sailing.


You're correct - a gui is not really warranted. I was just trying to use it to navigate around. It will be telnet and ftp when finished.

Thanks for the info and the link - I'll definitely check them out.

Apologies for hijacking the thread!

[Dan]

Not a problem, hope some of it helped! :)

BTW, How went the boot into init3?

Dan

We now return your computers to their regularly scheduled programming. :D

[rmasonjr]

Not a problem, hope some of it helped! :)

BTW, How went the boot into init3?

Dan

We now return your computers to their regularly scheduled programming. :D

going to try it out this weekend...
I actually made a little headway last night. I got the kernel source downloaded and ready to rebuild so I can get ndiswrapper work. I figure if I can get the thing on my network, the rest should be smooth sailing.

Thanks again!

[Dan]

rmasonjr:

Hey! I just went trolling around the forum and found several references to guys running the K-6 400 with less RAM without trouble. Several mention that it runs rather well. Doesn't look like that's the problem.

Dan