It's official: I'm skipping F9 entirely

Thetargos · #1 18th July 2008, 02:24 PM

It doesn't matter how hard I try, I simply cannot get F9 to install onto my i386 test PC. At first Anaconda would spit an "incorrect disk" error on me right after selecting custom packages and upon closer inspection of the problem (in VT3) apparently it couldn't read the filelist.sqlite.bz2 file in the repodata directory on the disk... This after I selected some extra components from the Net to have it all installed at once... So I decided to give it a try alone, no yum involved, no mirrors headaches, no nothin'... No dice, Anaconda simply crashes while resolving deps (and I'm not trying to install anything esoteric here! Just a base install, without some bloat). Seems I'm forced to wait for F10

BTW, I took a quick look at bugzilla, and there doesn't seem to be any report about this "Incorrect Disk" problem... I was pondering about reporting this bug, but I'm not so sure... no one else seems to have stumbled into it. I may attempt to install again, with another disk burnt in another machine at a later time, but until I get around to doing that, F9 isn't approaching any other of my systems.

***Dan*** · #2 18th July 2008, 02:32 PM

Well, if it's any consolation, once you get F9 installed, it's starting to learn some manners. Still a bit of attitude there, but it's getting better.

I would absolutely encourage you to go ahead and file that bug report. A no-go at Anaconda, in a known cooperative system, with a well experienced user, sure sounds like a valid alarm to me.

Dan

Evil_Bert · #3 18th July 2008, 02:33 PM

Sorry to hear about it. I haven't had that sort of trouble since FC2.

I, too, am skipping F9 ... though it's more for motivational reasons, or lack thereof.

bbfuller · #4 18th July 2008, 02:33 PM

Hello Thetargos

I've been involved in seven Fedora 9 installations so far and there hasn't been a problem with any of them, from fairly old 1.7 celerons up to a new core 2 duo.

F9 gets enough bad press - at least some of it deserved - in other quarters that I thought I'd just put the other side of the coin here.

EDIT:

Perhaps I'd better clarify that. I did mean with the installation procedure, which was the starting point of this thread,

JN4OldSchool · #5 18th July 2008, 02:54 PM

Well...I am getting strange "usb not enumerated" errors on boot up on ALL my F9 computers, but with the exception of the 5 card reader on my big rig all usb works fine. I am also not mounting my data partition on my big rig on boot up in xfce. It is easiest to boot into gnome first then log out and back into xfce and everything is fine. The reason for this is my wallpaper and icons and emerald theme is tied to this data partition so if I boot into xfce first I have a mess. I am also getting gunshy with updates as they seem to frequently break things. Like playing Russian Roulette.

I agree with Dan that once installed and forcibly beat into submission F9 obeys to an acceptable degree, but like a chow, I keep waiting for it to bite me when I turn my back. I like it...really, I do...but it just does not seem...consistent? Like there is no coordinating influence to it, people just throw parts into the repo and SURPRISE! This update kills wireless, the next fixes that but kills...whatever...

Thet, find a spare computer and play with F9, but I agree that I sure wouldnt put it on a computer you rely on. I am the exception to that advice but I have several installs of F9 to fall back on and also Win vista, with my data central to all these OSs. But yeah, F9 feels very flaky at this point.

Nokia · #6 18th July 2008, 03:15 PM

Thetargos, may I suggest a netinstall ? It would be interesting to see whether you get the same error or not.

briantan · #7 18th July 2008, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbfuller

I've been involved in seven Fedora 9 installations so far and there hasn't been a problem with any of them, from fairly old 1.7 celerons up to a new core 2 duo.

Have you tried VNC-server/GNOME?

LDC · #8 18th July 2008, 03:25 PM

it took me an entire week to manage to install the first released F9, but once installed it never broke: no freeze, no crashes, all updates went smooth. For me, so far, best rel ever....

d347hm4n · #9 18th July 2008, 03:45 PM

Works nicely for me, shame you can't get it going Thetagos, what is it that they say, it's not fun unless it's broken.

adrianx · #10 18th July 2008, 04:30 PM

F9 has, so far, worked very well me. As a rule, I always do full updates, but then again, I don't have wireless and I also don't use any Nvidia drivers. Maybe that's the reason?

Edit: I'm not saying that I have no issues. There are some "cosmetic" things, my timezone was spelled incorrectly and when I edit "locations" on the fancy new gnome clock, it shows that I'm in Pacific/Honolulu? Doesn't affect my clock, though.

JN4OldSchool · #11 18th July 2008, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adrianx

F9 has, so far, worked very well me. As a rule, I always do full updates, but then again, I don't have wireless and I also don't use any Nvidia drivers. Maybe that's the reason?

Hardware is a huge part of it. If you notice, some of my problems may be related to things other than F9. For instance, my mounting problem in Xfce is most likely an Xfce or a settings problem, and I really dont know what is up with the usb error messages on boot. I see nothing on this in the forum but it effects all 4 of my F9 computers? Very strange! The wireless is, hopefully, fixed with this new kernel, though I cant verify this just yet.

At heart F9 seems very solid to me, which is kind of a contradiction to all the problems I have encountered with it. But from the beginning it has been stuff like Gnome, Xfce, the kernel, packagekit, networkmanager, and pulseaudio causing the problems, not the base OS (though the kernel would be considered the heart of the OS).

Really, this laptop has run wonderfully on F9 since I got it going. It was hard to bring up to speed (harder than usual) but within a day it was solid, and once I switched from Gnome to Xfce I felt right at home. This one has no mounting problem for extraneous partitions like my big rig does, which leads me to believe it may be a permissions problem. I probably just need to chown -R the partition to my user.

So...I have great hope for this release. I just see many people struggling still. I think there are some distinct bugs that need to be ironed out before we can call F9 great.

brebs · #12 18th July 2008, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thetargos

I simply cannot get F9 to install onto my i386 test PC

So post the specs of it (and no, vague sigs which might or might not refer to the same PC aren't useful) and try other distros - bonus points if you can specify other distros that *do* install

bbfuller · #13 18th July 2008, 05:15 PM

Probably the only thing that is preventing me adopting F9 at the moment is the state of KDE4.

Of the seven installs I mentioned earlier six of them have wireless, ranging from atheros through broadcom to an Intel 4965 and I can confirm that NetworkManager handles them all perfectly.

As to nvidia, there is an nvidia driver available now in Livna, but it only supports recent cards, how recent I don't know. For information it won't work with an MX4000 but will work with FX5200 and more recent.

Before JN4OldSchool berates me for not using his beloved Xfce, I'd have switched to it long ago as I really do like it except for one, to me, glaring fault, and that is Session Restore. I make use of that extensively and of all the four main desktops, KDE3.5 does it well, next comes KDE4 surprisingly with Gnome and Xfce a long way behind. Try getting them to restore Opera with a selection of tabs open if you want to see what I mean.

Here's hoping for KDE4.1!

JN4OldSchool · #14 18th July 2008, 05:21 PM

There are a few other things which Xfce lacks that keeps a few people from using it. What these functions are actually escapes me at the moment, but yes, Xfce is limited is several certain areas. I understand this and if it wont work it wont work. It does, however, do everything I require and I love it. That said, I wont knock any of the DEs, though I am unhappy with the way Gnome and KDE are heading. I cant wait for KDE 4 to get it all together though. It should prove to be a great DE.

Lamhslea · #15 18th July 2008, 07:10 PM

I also had trouble installing Fedora 9 on an i386 machine. I have x86_64 working more or less fine on this machine, but either the three or four images I downloaded from separate mirrors were all somehow corrupt, or Fedora just didn't like the computer. I eventually got frustrated and threw in Ubuntu and had to install it twice (it exited the first install near the end with an error, but is running acceptably now).