F8: Worth it or too much trouble?

[RobG]

I've been using FC7 for months and it works great. But, I'm getting a new hard drive and will need to reinstall. Therefore, I wonder about using 8 this time, but everything I've read here indicates F8 has LOTS of problems, especially with regard to video drivers (Nvidia in my case)...

Is it worth dealing with F8 or should I stick with FC7?

Rob

[BlueC]

Hmmm, wireless is also screwed in F8 (for many people at least) - NetworkManager is badly broken.

I found more stuff worked "out of the box" on F8 compared to F7, but I installed it on different hardware so it could just be that my new hardware is more linux friendly (or I now know more!).

If you need to reinstall then go for F8 and see how it works out, if you didn't need to reinstall anyway then I'd suggest sticking with 7 and waiting a while before moving to 8.

[linearfish]

I use nVidia and haven't had any trouble with that in F8. NetworkManager is broken so I would look for an alternative for wireless (wlassistant, wicd, or configuring wpa_supplicant manually).

[bbfuller]

Hello RobG

I have Fedora 8 on several machines here and since it was released I've talked to several people on the forum about problems they have with their machines.

Personally, I've had no problems with the nVidia driver mentioned and I have experience of 4 cards. My one ati machine works with the ati driver but does have odd artefacts in the bottom right hand of the screen from time to time.

3 of my 4 wireless cards work without problem but one I can't get to connect to anything except an unencrypted access point even with the latest updates to NetworkManager and wpa_supplicant released in the last couple of days. On the other hand, I've spoken to people with the same cards as me but in different machinery who can't get theirs to work. It does seem that wireless is a bit of a roll of the dice affair at the moment.

I have noticed no other problems with F8 but I don't know what your requirements are.

If Fedora 7 does all you want then you might well consider sticking with it except for the fact that Security and any other updates will be discontinued one month after Fedora 9 comes out sometime in the next few months.

That's Fedora life for you, it's like a roller coaster.

[rclark]

Since this is Fedora which changes versions rather quickly, I would just go with 8. I mean the whole reason anyone loads Fedora is for the 'latest and the greatest' anyway.... If you were looking for true stability for the long term, then CentOS would be a better solution.

FWIW, I had no problems with freshly installing Fedora 8 from the get go. I did have problems trying to upgrade which once again didn't work for me :o .

[stoat]

Hello RobG,

Do you have or can you create some space for Fedora 8 while you continue to use Fedora 7 for a while? That's what I routinely do for the new versions. At first, every version goes through a few rough weeks. It's nice to have the old version for those times. But those times are mostly behind us now for F8.

For me (just me), Fedora 8 is the best Fedora ever. And I feel that way in spite of the NetworkManager thing which still does not work for me. I will use NetworkManager when it works, but for now I still connect with WPA encryption the same way I always have since forever (with command lines in a script; it doesn't bother me).

[forkbomb]

Fedora 8 is a no go for me on both my computers. Too many issues with aforementioned stuff. (Unfortunately, F7 is a no go on my desktop, too.)