My Experiences with Fedora 10

[fedora57]

Greetings!

I've been involved with Linux since before Red Hat 6... I can remember awaiting the arrival of RH 6 with great anticipation!

I've used, intermittently, RH, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu and SuSe all with varying degrees of success. I guess I experienced the same hassles that most people have: enjoying Linux for its speed and security compared to Microsoft but frustrated at the problems with installing wireless networking unless you know the required hacks.

Oh, and the frustration when installing Linux on a laptop - why do the ditros install with a high resolution splash screen and then can't even find a mid-resolution driver once the distro is up and running; this has been a problem for so long that someone should have solved it by now! I had the same experience when installing F10 on my laptop, so it has for now, remained an Ubuntu 8.04 box.

My PC was also setup with Ubuntu, but having read the reviews for F10, I had to give it a try.

Installation was quicker than I remember with Windows offerings. I took the disc out and rebooted... problem 1.

In a system with 2 discs, RH swapped the order of my drives, meaning it booted straight into Fedora; whilst I'm happy to do much of my work in Fedora, there are some graphical art apps that do not yet work under Wine so I have to be able to dual boot. I tried to fix grub.conf myself, which lead to much frustration as I could not discover the right drive designations, leading to a Grub that ceased to work.

Being a mad adventurer, I also managed to bust the kernel in several ways, but that's how I learn.. so two days of reinstalls followed! Finally, Bob the Admin gave me the right instructions and I now dual boot happily.

Networking is also a problem - I can do it by ADSL with a network cable, but my wireless adapter remains inactive at present.

Other than those two gripes, I love the new F10 - Plymouth is awesome and KDE is stable... most of the time. I have crashed it once or twice, but hey, no big deal.

I love yum update, and the way it loads updates from smallest to largest - a small but nice touch.

Overall conclusions - I do not believe F10 will usurp Ubuntu's lead position for a while yet. Why? because newcomers to Linux will find the changes required to get a stable system daunting; they are better steered to Ubuntu. Once some experience is gained, and they become confident with using the terminal, that is a different matter.

I'm here to stay - I just wish I could use it on my laptop too!

[Dan]

Overall conclusions - I do not believe F10 will usurp Ubuntu's lead position for a while yet. Why? because newcomers to Linux will find the changes required to get a stable system daunting; they are better steered to Ubuntu. Once some experience is gained, and they become confident with using the terminal, that is a different matter. OK. I've got no gripe with that. Sounds like a fair assessment and an advisable course to follow. I might add that any distro with a six month turnover rate isn't a good newcomer candidate by that fact alone.

Brand loyalty in Linux isn't required, but often indulged in. Bottom line? Generally I'd say, use what works for you, and you'll probably be reasonably satisfied. Beat your head against that which doesn't ... and you probably won't. <..:p..>

[BlueTrin]

My issue with the trends in distro is that they force you to learn stuff everytime. When I was a student I did not mind, but it is not enough simple and I have to use external help to do what I need.

fedora development (http://www.linux-archive.org/fedora-development/)

[Jake]

BlueTrin, learning is fun.. So enjoy it :D

[philo565]

First off...I'm an old-timer who took my first computer class
back in 1968. Fortran IV and punch cards. I thought there
surely must be a better way! By 1982 I got out of the computer
field entirely and swore I'd never touch one again.

I was given a p-1 in July of 1999 and was soon hooked.
Took about six months to try to catch up on all I missed...
but wanted a challenge greater than win9x and DOS.

Spent $25 and purchased a Linux for Dummies book
that included a Red Hat 5.2 CD...

It literally took me six months to get Linux installed,
configured and working...But that may have been the best
$25 I ever spent. Think I learned more than I would have
in two or three years in a classroom.

Though I continued to use Linux over the years and have tried
most of the major distributions...

I had not made any major upgrades in many years...
and finally built a dual core CPU machine mostly from junk box parts.

Now, time to start evaluating the new Linux !

In the past I have used Ubuntu...and though I have had good
results on a few older PPC's...for my i386 machines it was not
quite to my liking...

So I grabbed a few smaller drives (my machines have removable
drive kits) and installed:

Fedora 10
SuSe 11.1
Mandriva 2009
& Debian 5

Though they all worked pretty well...and it was a close enough
call...I'd *definately* rank Fedora at the top of the list.

Though the live/install CD sure was slow in booting...
I almost thought it had hung...after I got to the desktop
and did the HD install...it was sure smooth sailing!


Though I ran into a few glitches with the other distros...
Fedora was essentially trouble free.

Within a few minutes I had all my old "friends" such
as midnight commander installed
buy simply entering:
yum install mc

So , though RH 5.2 might have taken me six months to get going...Fedora 10 hardly took more than 6 minutes!

Nice going!

[jaslar]

I use an older HP Pavilion a520n, 512 megs of memory. Although I started out with Red Hat (7, I think), and use Ubuntu at work, I'd been using PCLinuxOS at home. The last big updates to PCLOS had made my system a little flaky, so I decided to play.

Installation: pretty good. I blew away my home partition because I was too dim to uncheck it. But I had made a backup first, so no biggie. Sometimes, it's a good thing to start fresh. The install took about half an hour, which seemed a little long.

I found a guide on the web about installing all the usual stuff -- it seemed to me closely modeled on the Ubuntu guide, which is no criticism at all. Since I wasn't put off by the command line and yum, I just cut and pasted the commands, worked through the list methodically, and got everything working. (I think -- I haven't tested it all, and I think I did have one or two repositories error out, but I'm not worried about it.) Incidentally, I've now seen several guides, and think a lite version should be INCLUDED with the distro. The official list is a little long and daunting. I bet there are about 8 commands that bring most users up to speed (codecs, browser plugins, video drivers).

I then spent awhile dragging back my blown away files from the backup. All worked well.

I got it to sync with my Palm Centro -- just a matter of "modprobe visor," a yum install jpilot, and setting the preferences to "usb:"

The surprise to me is the many hours it has apparently been running updates -- all night (that would be 8 hours and counting -- with apparently lots to go). But I'll assume the good folks at Fedora are patching problems, and it's not killing me to leave up a window on the screen.

I think right now the only couple of issues I have are about nvidia drivers. I have an older card, and followed the instructions in the guides, and did indeed get a much improved screen. But I can't load system-config-display (errors, which I'll post somewhere else). And I also can't find the gconf-editor, which I needed to flip around some buttons for a theme. But no deal breakers. It's working very well, and I'm finding Fedora a familiar and reliable friend.

[marko]

Make sure you activate 'presto', it really reduces the amount of bytes you have to download to update packages. Presto is covered in the forum as to how to turn it on.

[jaslar]

Great tip. I'll do that tonight. Thanks, Marko.

[philo565]

Well I've been using Fedora 10 for two weeks now and have all the apps
I need installed and working and I have all my hardware installed and working 100%...or at least I thought I had it all...
but then realized I needed a head cleaning utility for my Epson printer.

I did a quick search on the forums here and in 2 seconds realized
I needed to install Gutenprint.

That took about a minute and I'm all set.

This place is great!!!!

[Simian Man]

I'm using Fedora 10 on my laptop and it works great. Webcam, microphone, native screen resolution and touch pad all worked out of the box. Even wireless and 3D drivers were effortless thanks to RPMFusion.

[jaslar]

I'm running an update now, and I do recognize that playing with Fedora is walking along the bleeding edge of technology. But it's also the case that I'm having things happen lately that EITHER have something to do with failing hardware (possible) OR highlight some surprising weaknesses.To wit: it's about 50/50 lately whether or not Fedora 10 will connect with my wireless network at home. Sometimes, the resolution resets from 1280x1024 to 600x400. I'll be honest. These seem like utterly unexpected and very disappointing problems! Is this kind of thing just a given in the experimental branch of Fedora? That is, if I'm seeking stability, should I be looking at (from a home user perspective) CentOS or Fedora 8 instead?

[philo565]

Fedora 10 problems???

Did you apply all updates?

I did not begin to use my system until I applied all updates (yep
there were a lot of them)
Once that was done my system worked pretty close to perfect.

Yes there were a few minor (not needed) packages I installed
that crashed...but I found that almost too minor to mention.

CentOS? Don't know it that will be any better but I suppose you
could try it.
Not really a fair comparison but in addition to the 32bit version of Fedora
I also installed the 64bit version of CentOS and found Fedora to
be preferable. To be fair I really need to use the 32bit version of
CentOS

Otherwise give Debian (Lenny) a try...
for me , Fedora was a better option
but it might work better for you

[jaslar]

Thanks for the comments. Yep, I'm updated. I posted elsewhere about my network issues. Everything else works very well. I'll slog it out awhile and see if I can figure it out. I suppose the issue could be something about my setup. Or maybe there's a conflict between networking systems? (NetManager versus network?)

I was a PCLinuxOS user for a long time, and never did get around to trying Debian. We'll see. I've been impressed so far with the level of knowledge of Fedora users so far, and since I started with Red Hat, have a kind of fondness for it.

[al12gamer]

Greetings!

I've been involved with Linux since before Red Hat 6... I can remember awaiting the arrival of RH 6 with great anticipation!

I've used, intermittently, RH, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu and SuSe all with varying degrees of success. I guess I experienced the same hassles that most people have: enjoying Linux for its speed and security compared to Microsoft but frustrated at the problems with installing wireless networking unless you know the required hacks.

Oh, and the frustration when installing Linux on a laptop - why do the ditros install with a high resolution splash screen and then can't even find a mid-resolution driver once the distro is up and running; this has been a problem for so long that someone should have solved it by now! I had the same experience when installing F10 on my laptop, so it has for now, remained an Ubuntu 8.04 box.

My PC was also setup with Ubuntu, but having read the reviews for F10, I had to give it a try.

Installation was quicker than I remember with Windows offerings. I took the disc out and rebooted... problem 1.

In a system with 2 discs, RH swapped the order of my drives, meaning it booted straight into Fedora; whilst I'm happy to do much of my work in Fedora, there are some graphical art apps that do not yet work under Wine so I have to be able to dual boot. I tried to fix grub.conf myself, which lead to much frustration as I could not discover the right drive designations, leading to a Grub that ceased to work.

Being a mad adventurer, I also managed to bust the kernel in several ways, but that's how I learn.. so two days of reinstalls followed! Finally, Bob the Admin gave me the right instructions and I now dual boot happily.

Networking is also a problem - I can do it by ADSL with a network cable, but my wireless adapter remains inactive at present.

Other than those two gripes, I love the new F10 - Plymouth is awesome and KDE is stable... most of the time. I have crashed it once or twice, but hey, no big deal.

I love yum update, and the way it loads updates from smallest to largest - a small but nice touch.

Overall conclusions - I do not believe F10 will usurp Ubuntu's lead position for a while yet. Why? because newcomers to Linux will find the changes required to get a stable system daunting; they are better steered to Ubuntu. Once some experience is gained, and they become confident with using the terminal, that is a different matter.

I'm here to stay - I just wish I could use it on my laptop too!

I use it on my SUPER OLD Gateway (7405GX) CrapTop and it still works wonderfully. Though I replaced it with Elive (for the non-hackintosh OSX look) a while ago and use the Live Flash Drive on my Acer Aspire One, I love Fedora!!! I've had great experiences with it also. The easiest distrobution of Linux, in my opinion!!!! :D:D:D
I also agree that sudo su
yum
Is the best thing ever!!!

[MorphingDragon]

I use it on my SUPER OLD Gateway (7405GX) CrapTop and it still works wonderfully. Though I replaced it with Elive (for the non-hackintosh OSX look) a while ago and use the Live Flash Drive on my Acer Aspire One, I love Fedora!!! I've had great experiences with it also. The easiest distrobution of Linux, in my opinion!!!! :D:D:D
I also agree that sudo su
yum
Is the best thing ever!!!

Better yet su -

What I like most is PackageKit,
So much faster than Yast and whatever Fedora 9 used :S

ATi support is shoddy but thats not RedHat's fault.

[giulix]

I'm here to stay - I just wish I could use it on my laptop too!
Glad to hear that - Don't forget to update the "Laptops running Fedora" thread (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=137531) so that others can benefit from your experience when making their choice... Thank you!