my story (not using fedora anymore)

[shtik]

hi everyone,

at the moment, i'm extremely unhappy with fedora ... there are many points which are rather disappointing with it. i recently installed mandrake 10.1 on my computer (just for trial, i didn't have a change of my main os in mind) and, well, i couldn't believe that linux is actually that mature ...

i started using linux with fedora core 1, and i really liked it. it was stable, looked nice, after alsa installed, even the sound worked fine. the availability of rpm pakets and repos was overwhelming, so i thought, way to go, linux takes its way!

having had such good experience with core 1, i installed by time core 2, since i thought kernel 2.6 was generally a good idea - and, what to say, the first bigger problems became slowly visible ...
so i've had several issues with my sound card, but after spending LOTS of hours, i managed these things somehow, well, sound is my main point, without it an os is for me worthless. i got my kernels for core 1 from planet ccrma, which is a repo targeting at multimedia systems with main focus on audio applications. after the release of core 2, planet ccrma didn't manage to create a stable packet for core 2 (said even on their website), so i staid with standard kernel, no realtime within my apps :(

the hope, that core 3 would be a mature version of fedora core 2, i upgraded one number - and, i couldn't believe, what was going on? new versions on everything, but many many things did not work. i never managed to get my sound card play soundfiles with other sample rates than 44.100 - a basic requirement for me. many of my dvds refused to play, even after consulting many howtos, faqs and installing corresponding files - sometimes it worked, sometimes not. for video thumbnails in konqueror and nautilus, which are very useful to manage my video collection, in ~97% of all cases it just didn't want to show them at all ... never got a fix for this.

that's just the major issues i had, but it made my pc nearly unusable in the face of multimedia usage - no sound, no video! i know that it's a distro which doesn't ship with mp3 and video codec support, but i did expect (from a major release) that these things would be tested at least, but now i'm not sure anymore about this. my conclusion, fedora is a system not build for multimedia, and i better keep my hands off when using multimedia stuff ... it's just not meant to run.

remarkably, ALL of these issues adressed before were not reproducable with my new mandrake system, i can adress even my second on board soundcard, and use them at the same time, wow, even windows has its problems with it ... i never thought that system management would be that easy, no more reading (and then despair) of hundreds websites in hope to get my basic things running.

maybe i'll be trying fedora again when it seems more adult, but now i'm thinking of it as a big beta version of an operating system - unfortunatly not trustworthy :(

okay, that's my story until now, thanks for reading, i'm writing this using mandrake
shtik

[greatscot]

From: http://fedora.redhat.com/

What is The Fedora Project?

The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project. It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc.

From what I have seen and heard, Fedora Core is meant to be a testing ground for Red Hat and, as such, will have some problems. It is not meant to be a completely stable distro - however, I have had very few problems with this wonderful distro.

The trick is to come to places that offer support (http://fedoraforum.org is the big one) and post your problems so that others may help you with them. I have seen and heard people using Fedora Core 3 to watch movies, listen to music and play sophisticated games, so I know it is possible.

Before you give up on FC3 totally, try posting in this forum and following the advice that you receive. I'd be willing to bet you'll find solutions to your problems :)

[bob]

Personally, I haven't had your problems with either FC2 or FC3, however this Forum certainly has dealt with many threads about sound cards and their fixes. I am happy that you've found success with Mandrake and do hope that you'll give Fedora another try in the future. Perhaps it will be all you need the next time.

[dickinsd]

Sorry to hear about all your problems, it doesn't sound like Fedora has performed to well for you.

One of the great things about Linux is that there are so many distributions, you can look around and you will find one that fits your requirements.

I personally can't get enough of Fedora, I think it is great, but then my multimedia usage on my Fedora machines is limited, xine to watch DVD's on the laptop, and xmms to play MP3's on the laptop and one of the desktops.

The video cards have never really caused me any problems, but then I have not needed to use any graphically demanding apps under Fedora, I have not even tried playing games.

I did recently try Mandrake 10.1, well I installed it on my sisters machine and then played with it for a while, and I thought it was very nice, but like I said before, I like Fedora, it has the X factor for me.

I have seen SuSE Live-eval 9.2, and that looks pretty damned good, very mature, but it seems a little closed, considering it is a distribution of Open Source Linux.
If you feel like trying something else, have a look at SuSE, I have heard it has very good driver support etc.

And don't forget to give Fedora another try when FC4 comes out, you never know, some of your points may have been addressed.

Dave

[sailor]

I have not had any unsolvable problems with FC 3 and I also use Suse 9.2 Pro retail version which I also think works very well...
I still think success with any particular distro has more to do with the machine you install it on rather than any software/distro you use. Some work well and some don't . Mandrake was a nightmare on my computer.

[greatscot]

I still think success with any particular distro has more to do with the machine you install it on rather than any software/distro you use. Some work well and some don't . Mandrake was a nightmare on my computer.
Very good point, I totally agree. I use FC3 on an AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 512Mb ram, 160Gb HD but can't even get FC3 to run on my old AMD K6 - III/333, 512Mb ram, 80Gb HD. CentOS won't run on it and neither will Mandrakelinux 10.1 PowerPack. All of these distros run very well on my AMD Athlon, however.

shtik: is it possible you can install FC3 on another machine and see how you fare?

[shtik]

good to hear that most of you have no bigger problems with fedora, maybe it's not as bad as my experience suggest, but fedora is actually using many nearly bleeding-edge program versions; it's in many cases one of the first distro to try new features out (i remember kernel 2.6 for example) and it's no suprise that problems within this approach are, well, most likely ...

first i thought of this as a nice idea, new versions=more mature versions and new nice features. now i'm thinking of going a step back, so i prefer older and more stable versions over the newest ones. so, for example, i'm using kde 3.2 (shipped with mandrake) i don't even see a difference to the newer fedora version, it's damn reliable!

@greatscot
i don't think i want to try fedora on other machines since i like using the same system on every pc i'm using, at the moment it's only one anyway, so i'm not tempted to try it out :)


shtik

[krisnalada]

The bottle does not matter since you can be drunk
^_^

[ltam]

first i thought of this as a nice idea, new versions=more mature versions and new nice features. now i'm thinking of going a step back, so i prefer older and more stable versions over the newest ones. so, for example, i'm using kde 3.2 (shipped with mandrake) i don't even see a difference to the newer fedora version, it's damn reliable!

I'm of the same opinion. I'm running CentOS3.4 because it is stable and works well even with CrossoverOffice for windows apps. It's my main workstation. I just installed CentOS4 (RHEL4 rebuild). It didn't pickup my ATI tv tuner card whereas the FC3, running on the same box, recognizes the card. You need to find the distro that works for you. :D

[chiku31]

I personally like FC 3 a lot. I managed to get all things I want working. My ati 9200 is configured probably, my Belkin usb wireless adapter is working, my onboard soundcard had just been fixed, everything is working. I have it play quake 3 and unreal 2004 nicely. I can watch dvd(with Xine) and stream videos(with Mplayer) without any issues. I do agree FC3 is not easy to configure to the way you want it(I had spend nearly a month to solve all the initial probelms). Once everything is fixed, FC3 runs quite stable.

[Firewing1]

Well shtik, many, many of your probs. have been fixed or are fixable. I fixed my sound using a certain technique in about hours, use gmplayer (graphical mplayer) to play DVDs (had to donfigure the drive, took 5 min.), videos (avi, aiff, mpg, mov, many more...). Also, ur videos may not work if they were created with copywright protection, as Linux can't read it's garbled format...
Stay with Fedora,
Firewing1

[GospelOfLinux]

It's also important to realize that fedora is essentially a stable test distro. The good folks at redhat and other kind developers use fedora as a place to enhance GNU/Linux. It isn't a retail distro, so it isn't going to ever be "done". This means that to use Fedora you will need to take the time to work with the distro. Not everything is going to just "work." Sure, it is more "out of the box" than gentoo or slackware, but it still takes some configuration to get 100% up and running.

To get that 100% out of box feeling, you are going to have to hand out some cash. Good choices are Mandrake, SuSE... <insert normally recomended distro here>.

[Truthfatal]

I installed Fedora (core 3) because Mandrake 10.1 wouldn't install on my system. (The installer froze after I chose a language.)

Heh.

[BoHu]

I have heard that Xandros and Lycoris are both good for multimedia.