New to Fedora: Are beta versions usable?

[pilotgi]

My first experience with Fedora 9 beta was that the dvd disc check took over an hour. When it was finally done, it said the disc was ok but then I got an error when I clicked continue and I had to start the install over.

After that all the windows rendered extremely slowly and my mouse cursor was very erratic and slow. Two hours into the install I was still at less than 50% complete so I quit.

Then I downloaded the Fedora 9 KDE live cd and loaded it. This seemed to work ok so I clicked on the install icon and installed it to a partition on my hard drive. Firefox wasn't installed so I tried to find a way to install software but didn't have much luck. I clicked on the add/remove software selection from the menu but when I entered Firefox in the search field, it searched for several minutes without returning any results.

I read that Fedora uses Yum for software installs but I couldn't find Yum anywhere on my install of the KDE live cd.

My hardware is new. I have an Athlon X2 processor and 3 GB of DDR2 ram. I have a GeForce 8600GTS PCI-E graphics card and a 200GB SATA hdd.

I also downloaded the dvd iso of Fedora 9 beta twice, one from bittorrent and once from one of the mirrors. Both of the md5checksums from these downloads didn't match the md5s that came with the files.

I have six years experience with Linux and I've never experienced anything like this. Any ideas?

[bob]

KDE distros use Konqueror as the default browser. You can open a terminal and use yum either in CLI mode (sign in as root ... su - ..... password.....then 'yum install firefox') or in the gui version (yum install yumex). At that point, you'll find Firefox available in the repos.

BTW, strange on the download of the DVD. I had no problems with downloading and installing it. Of course, with a beta, you're probably better off installing minimal packages since the updates are intense and the more there is, the more breakage can occur.

[marko]

another source of confusion: in F9 Beta, Firefox is frequently called
"Minefield" because it's a test version of Firefox 3

[pilotgi]

Using Yum from the command line worked for installing Firefox. I don't know what you mean about 'yum install yumex'.
Of course, with a beta, you're probably better off installing minimal packages since the updates are intense and the more there is, the more breakage can occur.
I don't know what you mean by this either. I downloaded the dvd and began the install but it was so slow I gave up.

I downloaded another dvd image to install and the md5sum didn't match either. When I tried to install it, it booted ok and it detected my video card correctly. Then the screen went black and nothing happened after that.

[bob]

Yumex is the gui version of yum, where you can do searches for available packages a bit more easily. It's the equivalent of Synaptic to Apt.

Now what I was referring to on the minimal package installs is this: It's a beta, things break. If you install a bunch of packages from the DVD install that you don't really use and one of them breaks, you can have a reinstall. Also, there are HUNDREDS of updates several times a week at this point. The fewer packages, the fewer updates.

I grabbed the Gnome DVD from one of the major mirror sites and used ftp for the download. If you've got a working beta that you're satisfied with, why bother now? If you like Gnome, then I'd jump back in and try again. Remember that you're using sha1sum values with Fedora, not md5sum so that might have been the confusion as they are definitely NOT the same.

[Demz]

Using Yum from the command line worked for installing Firefox. I don't know what you mean about 'yum install yumex'.

I don't know what you mean by this either. I downloaded the dvd and began the install but it was so slow I gave up.

I downloaded another dvd image to install and the md5sum didn't match either. When I tried to install it, it booted ok and it detected my video card correctly. Then the screen went black and nothing happened after that.
the yum install firefox will just install it if it wasnt chosen during the install when you installed fedora

[fluxam]

My experience has been that any one version of any one distro can be great on one PC and useless on another.
Fedora 9 beta 1 64-bit works like a dream on this Vaio notebook (nVdia 7400 mobile), but the kernel kept crashing on my desktop AMD64 -- seemingly related to the Racal RT9500 Linksys wi-fi PCI card.

[marko]

pilotgi

yumex is a graphical front end to yum, it makes it much easier to
pick and choose a set of packages out of a large bunch that could be
updated. Maybe it would help if we knew which linux distro you used
for six years, how they do updates are pretty different.

>I downloaded another dvd image to install and the md5sum didn't match either

Well, if the sha1sum doesn't match then there's no point in trying to install,
you're using a suspect iso image. Either damaged or wrongly setup at the
server. Did you use an official mirror? Make sure to only use mirrors
listed at

http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/9-Beta/

and ditto for torrent, go here: http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/

also instead of using the original Beta, try the March 28 one called
the Rawhide-20080328-Snapshot at the torrent page above.

Another good idea is not just go by the SHA1SUM file inside
the torrent, also go to a mirror, find the same iso file's directory
and confirm the SHA1SUM in there is the same as the
one in the torrent.

[robatino]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that Fedora now uses sha1sums, and that md5sums haven't been used since FC3. The fact that the file is called "SHA1SUM" should be a pretty strong clue.

Edit: Never mind, I noticed bob mentioned it.

[pilotgi]

Remember that you're using sha1sum values with Fedora, not md5sum so that might have been the confusion as they are definitely NOT the same.
I was wondering about that. How does one check the sha1sum values?
Yumex is the gui version of yum
Do you start this from the command line also?

And yes, I used the official mirrors and torrent sites for the download.

[robatino]

I was wondering about that. How does one check the sha1sum values?
If you're running Linux, just use "sha1sum file.iso" instead of "md5sum file.iso". If on some non-Unix OS such as Windows, there are free utilities you can download that will compute the sha1sum - try googling for sha1sum and windows, for instance.

[Seve]

New to Fedora: Are beta versions usable?
Hello:
Take a few minutes and read some of the documentation that is freely available to assist you.
For example :
Fedora 9 (Sulphur) Beta Release Notes (http://fedoraproject.org/en/f9-beta-relnotes#id2961001)
The Unofficial Fedora FAQ (http://www.fedorafaq.org/)
Read This First (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forumdisplay.php?f=61)
I have six years experience with Linux and I've never experienced anything like this. Any ideas?

Although you will find a lot of help here on the forums, having 6 years of Linux experience in combination with the basic questions you are posting does not portray you in the best light :)

So, just a suggestion .... perhaps you would be best off with trying out Fedora 8, which is the most recent stable release.
More information can be found here: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora


Good Luck :)

Seve

[pilotgi]

Although you will find a lot of help here on the forums, having 6 years of Linux experience in combination with the basic questions you are posting does not portray you in the best light.
In my 6 years of using Linux, I've never had a dvd image do the things that the one's I downloaded from Fedora did. Then when I got the KDE live version installed, I couldn't find a package manager.

When I selected add/remove programs from the menu, that program didn't appear to work properly. Since I've never used Fedora before, I thought maybe the beta version was still under heavy development and not ready for normal use. So I started asking questions.

I'm not concerned what kind of light that puts me in.

[bob]

IMHO (which nobody cares about) Yumex would be a lot better to include than Add & Remove (Piruit). Add & Remove is just too basic and doesn't give you enough feedback on the status of your updates/downloads. Actually, only the recent versions of Fedora provide any sort of gui package manager. Up to FC-5, if I recall correctly, the CLI version of yum was all that was included by default. However, Fedora will work just fine with either Apt or Smart, so if you're more familiar with those, you might want to install them. I haven't tried those in the Beta, so not sure if everything's set up yet.

And, from the perspective of someone who's migrated over to Fedora from another distro and had these problems, you might want to express your experiences here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate so that the devs have some feedback. They don't monitor our Forum.

[RahulSundaram]

Hi Bob,

PackageKit and gnome-packagekit has replaced Pirut in the beta release already. You might want to check that out.

[pilotgi]

I installed PackageKit. Took me a while to figure out that it was a daemon for Yum. Now when I launch add/remove programs it opens with the PackageKit interface which is more like Yumex. I had to select System > Refresh application lists from the tool bar before it would show any packages. But now PackageKit is more like YaST or Synaptic.

Referring to my post above, when I first read 'yum install yumex', somehow 'install' didn't register in my brain (don't ask what I thought it said). When I reread my post, I realized that it was a command just like 'yum install firefox'. So I realize now that sounded like a dumb question.

Thanks also for setting me straight about sha1sum. I had assumed it was the same as md5sum just with a different name. I checked the sha1sum of one of the Fedora9 dvd iso's that I downloaded against a list from the mirrors and instead of matching the i386 dvd.iso, it matched the netinstall version.

I was wondering if anyone else who used the torrents had the same experience getting the netinstall version when they chose the i386 dvd version. This is the one on which the graphics and the install were so glacially slow that I gave up.

So I got off to a rough start but things are looking up. I doubt if I'll make Fedora my main distro, but I'm having fun poking around. But I'm still interested in getting some feedback about the beta versions of Fedora which is what started all this.

Is it just about finished except for some final polish? Or are most major bugs gone but plenty of little ones still left?

Thanks for the help so far.

[Seve]

( Moved to Fedora Focus )

[b_martinez]

My first experience with Fedora 9 beta was that the dvd disc check took over an hour. When it was finally done, it said the disc was ok but then I got an error when I clicked continue and I had to start the install over.
Yep, according to what I read on the development list, Anaconda was doing that after the check, whether it confirmed the installation media as good or not.

After that all the windows rendered extremely slowly and my mouse cursor was very erratic and slow. Two hours into the install I was still at less than 50% complete so I quit.
This one has me stumped.

Then I downloaded the Fedora 9 KDE live cd and loaded it. This seemed to work ok so I clicked on the install icon and installed it to a partition on my hard drive. Firefox wasn't installed so I tried to find a way to install software but didn't have much luck. I clicked on the add/remove software selection from the menu but when I entered Firefox in the search field, it searched for several minutes without returning any results.

I read that Fedora uses Yum for software installs but I couldn't find Yum anywhere on my install of the KDE live cd.

My hardware is new. I have an Athlon X2 processor and 3 GB of DDR2 ram. I have a GeForce 8600GTS PCI-E graphics card and a 200GB SATA hdd.

I also downloaded the dvd iso of Fedora 9 beta twice, one from bittorrent and once from one of the mirrors. Both of the md5checksums from these downloads didn't match the md5s that came with the files.

I have six years experience with Linux and I've never experienced anything like this. Any ideas?

The others have covered the rest of your original post.
However, IMO, yes Fedora 9 Beta is usable, but I've been using Fedora since about Fedora Core 2, and am used to it's way of doing things. I also read the list, and have an understanding of the fact that 'Beta' means 'almost ready for release, but still has warts and other unpleasant things'. This on top of the fact that it is a test bed of integrating the 'latest and newest', means it's always a throw of the dice.
Net install is how I installed on this notebook, 1.5 hours [extremely slow] from start to finish (hey, it's a beta!). I did however start the swap partition before I did the install. :D
Bill

[winston154]

I have been using Fedora since Fedora 6 and cant wait for the betas to come out!!!! very usable IMHO.

[AntMan]

I am using the F9 beta on my IBM T60 without any issues so far. Of course, I have all of the current updates. :cool:

[davfel]

hi,
did you update today?
I just did an update and it totally borked my system, can't even start x

hahahahaha
hate when that happens

did this happen to others or just me?

dave

[bob]

Yes, today's update is a real killer. Bugzilla time. If you've got a digital camera, it looks like a good time to do a bit of typing to the devs.

[davfel]

hello bob,

So now I have a question for you, will it be possible to recover this system or will I have to reload my disk and operating system?

TIA
dave

[davfel]

oh yes and for what it's worth, the part of the system that actually did update and work (that was the part that said load fedora 3...2...1... and the nice picture) was REALLY very nice. They did an awesome job up to that point,

dave

[Firewing1]

"Are beta versions usable?" is a bit of a hard question to answer, since it depends on a lot of things. In general, the prereleases are very usable but you'll find more bugs or unfinished products packaged into them.

The pros to using prereleases are that things are fixed very quickly and you're getting the newest software right away, but at the same time that's a con because things can potentially break just as easily as they are fixed. Today for example I updated to xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99.901-15.20080401.fc9.x86_64 and found when I rebooted that GDM would no longer start (X crashed). Checked for updates and downloaded found xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99.901-16.20080401.fc9.x86_64, now all is well. Things like that don't happen on a daily basis, but it does happen from time to time.
Firewing1

[forkbomb]

"Are beta versions usable?" is a bit of a hard question to answer, since it depends on a lot of things. In general, the prereleases are very usable but you'll find more bugs or unfinished products packaged into them.

The pros to using prereleases are that things are fixed very quickly and you're getting the newest software right away, but at the same time that's a con because things can potentially break just as easily as they are fixed. Today for example I updated to xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99.901-15.20080401.fc9.x86_64 and found when I rebooted that GDM would no longer start (X crashed). Checked for updates and downloaded found xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99.901-16.20080401.fc9.x86_64, now all is well. Things like that don't happen on a daily basis, but it does happen from time to time.
Firewing1
Another thing...

For me, Fedora often feels like a Beta even after the official release date, for a few weeks to a couple months. For example, I didn't find Fedora 8 usable until a couple months after its official release date. F7 was just working better for me, so I stuck with it until I guessed that F8 was in its sweet-spot (guessed right apparently - works great on my laptop now).

Nature of the beast. Welcome to the testbed.

[DCOH]

If you happen to use K3B to burn your cd isos when it loads the iso it says md5sum in the load window. FWIW

[Oldgit]

Hi Guys
A question on updates, I use F7 and find that if I ignore any update that requires a reboot, everything works fine. Question is:- If I continue with this practice, will it all go pear shaped eventually?

Many thanks for any info

Oldgit

[AntMan]

hi,
did you update today?
I just did an update and it totally borked my system, can't even start x

hahahahaha
hate when that happens

did this happen to others or just me?

dave

Yeah, my X was hosed too. I just haven't had the time to fix it yet. My IBM Lenovo T60 doesn't seem to like the 4-04-snapshot. It runs fine on my work laptop though (HP NC6400).

Once I get the time I will check if there was a bug report posted for it.

[Firewing1]

Hi Guys
A question on updates, I use F7 and find that if I ignore any update that requires a reboot, everything works fine. Question is:- If I continue with this practice, will it all go pear shaped eventually?

Many thanks for any info

Oldgit
That depends - In general, it's best to upgrade... Packaged like dbus of glibc will generally offer you security fixes, betterperformance and a wider range of features.

For more touchy things like kernel it's nice to upgrade once in a while to get new features but since a bug in the kernel can render you system unstable or unbootable (with that specific kernel), I would upgrade it with caution.
Firewing1

[scottro]

For you folks finding that X was hosed, I wonder if this has something to do with some Gnome issues. I found, by accident actually, when someone mention scim in firefox, that none of my GTK apps worked if I had a network connection. (I'd been using fluxbox and opera and hadn't noticed.)

Eventually, I found that renaming /etc/gconf/2/paths to paths.old enabled firefox and most gnome apps to work--but not gnome itself. You might test it by installing some minimalist window manager and doing a startx.

(I should add that by renaming the path to path.old it did make it impossible to boot into gnome, but not using gnome, that's not a problem for me--I only tried it out of curiosity.)

I'd be curious if it's really X or just Gnome. (Insert rant about Fedora being tied to gnome here.).

[Oldgit]

Thanks Firewing1
In which case I'll update on everything except the kernel and maybe do a total upgrade to Fc8 soon!
Oldgit