Fedora 7 internet works. A bit. Not much though.

[deano_again]

So I've just replaced Ubuntu "Feisty Dawn" with Fedora 7 (from a magazine cover disk). I liked Ubuntu. It worked right off the bat. Internet, software updates, the whole shebang, but the only problem was that the screen flickered horribly.

So on with Fedora 7. It looks lovely with the balloons and everything but it doesn't work very well. Specifically the Internet doesn't work. After two days and googling combinations of fedora, 7, internet, software updates, firefox and error, I've finally managed to get firefox working. I did this by switching off ipv6 using about:config in the URL. Great.

Now that just leaves getting the software updates to work. I've reinstalled the damned thing 3 times just to see if tweaking some suspect but of the installation options (ipv6 support, web server installation, firewall installation) would work but it still doesn't. So after 3 installs and two fruitless days of searching for advice I've given up.

I keep trying to update software and it still tells me that it can't do it because I don't have a working Internet connection. Oh yes I do. Firefox works, so does ping, so why is yum so special?

I even tried following some instructions regarding setting up ppp (pppoe-setup), and all that's done is extend the time taken to reboot before it eventually shows a message about /usr/bin/adsl-start line 215 1701 teminated, and carries on booting up. Then yum still fails, complaining miserably about timing out.

I have used Google but anything that it turns up either appears to be irrelevant or disguises its relevance beneath an avalanche of technical gobbledegook about which I neither know nor care.

From the above you may gather that I just want to learn about linux. Dip my toes in if you like, see what all the fuss is about, have a go on OpenOffice; and the Fedora 7 DVD box was really nice looking. Sadly it just doesn't want to talk to the Internet through my ethernet card, Netgear router and broadband. Unlike other, less fussy OS's such as Ubuntu and WinMe. I don't want to see a nasty old command line with lots of things like "#! su- | pppoe /usr/bin/god/knows/whatelse.conf". It bothers me.

So, to my question. Does anyone please, please know how to make the screen flicker go away in Ubuntu "Feisty Dawn"?

[tomcat]

You have to disable ipv6 system-wide in order to get yum working the same way that firefox does (btw: I had ran into the same ipv6 problem the very first time when I gave Ubuntu a try. Later I found out that lots of distros have the ipv6 problem and: it is related to routers that are not ipv6 capable. It is not the distros fault!)

In order to disable ipv6 system-wide, run in a terminal as root

nano /etc/modprobe.conf

(or use any other editor)
and add the following two lines
alias ipv6 off
alias net-pf10 off

Save with ctrl+o, then exit with ctrl+x. Check if yum works now.

Good luck. :)

[deano_again]

Thanks for that tomcat. I'll give it a try in the morning, although when I installed (the last time) I edited the options to not use ipv6 so I would have thought that would have been enough. This is one of the things I tried earlier (before getting firefox working using about:config) having found it on google. But one of the reinstallations may have befuddled it.

Anyway, the point is, couldn't a nice simple radio button be put in as part of the installation options to ask if the user has an ipv6-capable router/network card and to sort it out automatically. I'm grateful for the solution you've posted but it's (a) painful to find this sort of thing and (b) not nice to apply. Yes I can do it, but why on Earth is it such a fiddle. One question, that's all. In fact I suspect that it could be detected automatically in 99% of installations and be made to just work.

It shouldn't be this hard.

Thank you once again.

[deano_again]

Tried the above tom_cat and it still doesn't work. Still the same message when selecting software update... Can't do it because no working internet connection. And yet I can post this.

I updated the file. more'd it out to ensure I had saved the changes and rebooted my box. No banana.

I guess Fedora 7 needs a little more work before I can recommend it to my mother. She likes to put in a disk, select all the defaults have everything working nicely.

Thanks for trying.

[deano_again]

Well, I've re-installed Ubunto 7.04 after finding a way to fix the screen flicker issue. (it's now automatically installing updates for me as I type this) Fedora 7 is now history. A bad memory of 3 wasted days. Thanks anyway.

[tomcat]

Well, don't blame Fedora for not being perfect. It is a bit of a fiddle-around distro, that's for sure, but once it is configured correctly, it is a very nice distro to use (For me, Fedora is an intermediate to expert user distro, not a beginners distro). The thing is: We just started to troubleshoot. Not even 24 hours yet. Sometimes the solutions are obvious, sometimes they are a bit more complicated than they seem to be after a first, quick look. Now look at Ubuntu: It had the flickering, and still you haven't tossed it into the dustbin. ;) It also needs some fiddling around, 'cause nobody is perfect.

Anyway: It doesn't matter which distro you use, as long as the one you decided to settle on serves your purposes. Good luck with your (now fixed) Ubuntu. :)