What is Fedora 8 hardware detection like?

[pamount]

Hi

I'm getting a trial version of Red Hat Desktop 5 Multi OS soon. How would Fedora 8 compare in terms of hardware compatibilty? I'm going to trial Red Hat because of their Certified Hardware list. Obviously, Fedora 8 would save me money but I have a business and I'd want to make sure it is just as good with hardware.

I know there's CentOS so I'll check out that web site as well.

Thanks.

[markkuk]

F8 is newer than RHEL5/CentOS5, so it has better support "out of the box" for recent hardware such as Intel 3x series motherboard chipsets and integrated graphics adapters.

[stevea]

RH5 is roughly comparable to FC6. If you read the release notes for F7 and F8 you'll have an idea of what you are missing.

I installed .... Centos5(=RHEL5) a few weeks ago and I was surprised how old and stale it feels compared to F7/F8. That isn't a complaint - it's just that a lot of nice little improvements appear with each fedora rev and it's easy to forget how much these little tools add to the "feel".

IF you are using this for business server, other than a personal work computer, then yes RH5 is a better choice than Fedora. Whenever Fedora rev's I spend a few hours to a few weeks chasing down little incompatibility issues. F8 was trivial on my hardware/software. With F7 I had a few days of headaches. Occasionally, but rarely the fedora software updates will break something. With RH you can almost install, config and forget. RH5 will be supported for quite a few years [don't recall the number at the moment] so you aren't forced to upgrade every 12-18 months to keep with a support stream.

[pamount]

Originally Posted by stevea

IF you are using this for business server, other than a personal work computer, then yes RH5 is a better choice than Fedora.

I do have a web development business with a list of clients so I've found myself thinking that. I do need a work horse that I can rely on. I've got 3 hard drives so I can always put Fedora on one of the other hard drives.

Thanks

[stevea]

Good idea. I think you'll enjoy seeing the difference in a dual-boot arrangement. If you aren't running a server then Fedora (not the rawhide development stream) is "safe enough" - very extremely unlikely you'd lose files for example. OTOH it is *possible* that some Fedora update might make your favorite fedora vid driver or dbus app or plugins non-functional for a few days. Hasn't happened to me for a long time, but such things have happened.

That's why you want to rely on RH as "work horse".