And So, I have Switched to Fedora

[mrgnash]

(My new desktop )

It just seemed like the right time. With each major release of Ubuntu, I find myself frustrated by the emergence of new stable release of some or other application which is often not included in the backports, yet alone the main update repositories. I understand and certainly approve of the reasons that the Ubuntu developers do this, but it doesn't suit me.

What ends up happening, is that I migrate early to the development version, and wade through the various bugs just so I don't have to wait for all the new improvements and features. This is a pretty extreme route however, and it has often compromised my productivity, so Fedora seemed like a good compromise.

After having installed Fedora 8, and used it for a couple of days now, I must say that I am very impressed. It seems a whole lot snappier than Ubuntu, and I appreciate the fact that there seems to be an even more Gnome-centric approach than the one adopted by Ubuntu. Reading up on a little bit of Red Hat history, I was pleased to learn of the massive contributions they have made to Gnome, and the Linux kernel.

To be fair, I do have a few minor quibbles with a number of bugs I have encountered, and the package management takes some getting used to after the joy that was apt/Synaptic... Codeina is also a pain in the behind, even though I understand why they are going down this road (it wasn't very hard to get around, however). But those things aside, I am really impressed by the overall polish (Nodoka/Infinity is beautiful ), and the way it correctly identified my hardware from the get-go. The added security features are good for peace-of-mind, and I love being able to use the latest versions of my favorite applications without all the fuss.

I am keen to see how Hardy turns out, because I very much enjoyed my time with it, but for now, I think I'm going to stick with Fedora

[BlueC]

Great choice, welcome aboard!

You'll soon get used to using rpms and yum and then you'll wonder how you managed with apt/synaptic!

[bbfuller]

Hello mrgnash

If you haven't tried it already, have a go with yumex. It's a flexible graphical front end for yum.

It's not installed by default. To get it use:

yum install yumex

[lazlow]

You might also want to look at the smart package manager. (yum install smart smart-gui) It opens multiple connections to the repos so it is much faster than any of the yum based front ends.

[FriedChips]

Welcome to our humble forums, and congrats on your new found distro. May your journey be a fun but productive one.

[texasred218]

Hi I moved to fedora 7 from ubuntu and find a more stable and secure distro

[RJFUatHOME]

Psssst, apt and synaptic are available in the standard repos, at least for version 7. The only thing I notice about using synatptic is that it doesn't automatically offer kernel updates, although it displays then as new. But you can use both package managers, just don't run them at the same time.

Originally Posted by lazlow

You might also want to look at the smart package manager. (yum install smart smart-gui) It opens multiple connections to the repos so it is much faster than any of the yum based front ends.

It's definitely faster, but I found it lacking in necessary features, for instance the ability at a glance to determine whether something is installed, available or required an update. It needs a decent filter system to be useful IMHO.

[RJFUatHOME]

I use Smart sometimes also. There are some things about it that are really nice and streamlined. You can use some of the simple built in filters in the menus, but it was kinda made to be simple. Plus this version doesn't do key checking on packages like pirut and synaptic do.

I mainly use it here for removing unnecessary packages and quick dependency checks since it'll pop up dependency changes if you try and delete something important. There really isn't a perfect package manager, they all have pluses and minuses.

[axe_2_grind]

Congrats indeed. I haven't been a big linux user until recently. I messed around with Red Hat 8 a few years back, and was able to get a feel for it, but I never really developed much use for it. I am now in school for IT training and we recently had a class devoted to Linux (Fedora Core 2 is what we used in Lab) and I found that it rekindled my interest in Linux.

First off, I am amazed at the progress that has been made over the years, even in FC2! WOW!! I recently Bittorented the FC8 DVD iso and installed it on my wife's spare hard drive. And again I am amazed at the leaps that have been made since FC2! The GUI is easy to use, installation was straight-forward and smooth, and it comes with Firefox (my browser of choice in Windows) and Open Office which is great right out of the box. Looks and feels like MS Office, which means a minimal learning curve. Love it!

I am planning on building a Linux Web Server as my graduation project, and a group of us are going to do Linux boxes and try to get them to communicate with a Windows network. Should be fun! I will likely be using FC8 for this project as I like the look and feel of it. Very stable.

I am now seriously thinking of building myself a Linux box as my native OS and run Windows XP in VMware.

[AntMan]

I have migrated most of my machines to Fedora 8. So far I find it fast, stable, and straight forward. I don't really play with Compiz stuff and just like a usable desktop/laptop OS that supports all of my hardware.

I also have F8 installed on my USB Flash (with the noatime option to assist with USB life) and it works great.

Waiting on F9.....

[Technopeasant]

Welcome to Fedora, mrgnash. It is the best system I have ever used.

[sideways]

To all new Fedora users, after install please do this (in a terminal)

service yum-updatesd stop
yum install yum-presto

then edit /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo so the [updates] section reads as follows

[updates]
name=Fedora $releasever - $basearch - Updates
failovermethod=priority
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
#mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f$releasever&arch=$basearch
baseurl=http://lesloueizeh.com/f8/i386/updates
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora

Now run 'yum update' etc, the advertised download size will be 3-10 times greater than the actual download (eg a kernel update will be less than 3mb rather than 17mb)

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/...d.php?t=179556