New Fedora User -- introduction & some notes on my experience thus far

[daemox]

Howdy,

I decided to give Fedora a(nother) try and I wanted to introduce my self a bit and try to get a feel for the community surrounding Fedora a bit. I also wanted to jot down some notes of things I've liked and disliked in my experiences thus far. And this is by no means the final word on the subject, nor am I attempting to troll, I'm just jotting down my experiences so I can learn and get better with Fedora. (I will compare a lot against Ubuntu, simply because that is what I'm most recently and most abundantly familiar with, nothing more).

Anyway, I welcome feedback or hellos or anything. Don't mind me otherwise.

Cheers ,
daemox


Likes
* RPMFusion -- Essentially combine all the worthwhile PPA's in Ubuntu land down into one single entity (with a few exceptions like libdvdcss).
* Schedule hourly updates of all packages (not just security). -- A huge plus in my book, makes it much easier for me to setup on less technically inclined people's systems and one less thing for them to muck with.
* Yum -- apt-get and apt-cache all rolled into one. Automatic repository updates? Easy to use, nothing I'm not liking so far.
* SABnzbd+ and XBMC in RPMFusion -- This was a deal maker for me even testing Fedora.
* Can add third party repositories at install with non-Live installation. -- I normally add on a few to several PPA's with Ubuntu, so being able to do this with RPMFusion will be nice instead of having to wait post install to update/install additional stuff.
* i686 instead of i386 (at least for Live?) -- My systems are both x64 but my fiancee is still stuck on an x86 only laptop. So, this is a nice step up from the generalized i386 builds Ubuntu offers.
* More powerful (graphical) installer.
* Yumex -- Maybe not for novices, but I'm liking it as a wannabe power user.
* Disk Utility -- Love this tool. SMART monitoring, easy disk/volume management, what's not to like?
* The Preferences / Administration menus are well organized, and have some handy tools.

Possible Likes
* More Freedom focus
* No mono (I don't currently care, but I'm a fan of being safe rather than sorry).
* Firewal and SELinux -- Firewall was a breeze to configure, and SELinux has only given me once false positive so far, and I dig added security that doesn't get in my way.
* Root instead of sudo -- think this is more secure (it seems like it would be) also a boon for setups for novice users since I can give them their user password which wont give them admin access concurrently.
* More up-to-date than Ubuntu 10.04 -- So long as stability doesn't suffer I'm happy to have newer packages.
* Get a better handle on how to use Enterprise level Red Hat (hopefully).
* More community focus?
* Less people who think GNU/Linux is something they're entitled too?
* Back-up tool installed by default.

Possible Dislikes
* Pulse Audio by default (but, going to try a non-live install on my next system and not install this). I'm not opposed to Pulse Audio but in my HTPC setup it's a bad thing.
* No integrated support for closed proprietary drivers. -- It'll be easy enough for me to use RPMFusion for Nvidia drivers, but for novice users this would be a possible hassle.
* Less guides / 3rd party support compared to Ubuntu (but maybe quality over quantity)? -- This seems to be a fairly accurate assessment. The guides I've found are generally well done (sometimes outdated, or partially complete) but there's less noise to contend with so it's easier to find these, but if they're aren't there they aren't there.
* Possible Server orientation instead of Desktop orientation? -- But are there any tangible negatives to this in Fedora?
* Less novice user friendly -- May not be a concern once the initial install and setup has been done though.
Edit1:
* I was hoping for a quick and easy pulse free install using a Net Installation, but this was not achieved. Casually browsing through the package lists I was unable to find a simple pulse or alsa meta package that would do the bulk of the work for me. I was hoping for some moderate step between a minimal cli system which I add on everything I want and something I have to go in and gut out post install. I may have missed something (and I'm hoping this is the case), but it exceeded the time I wanted to invest in this currently.
* No Dvorak classic in the install GUI.

Dislikes
* gpk-application -- Kinda the worst of all worlds compared to the Ubuntu Software Center and the Synaptic Package Manager. Trying Yumex to see if it's more to my liking.
* No OpenOffice by default in Live disk installation
* Empathy and Evolution instead of Pidgin and Thunderbird (nit picking I know, see comments RE: Pulse Audio).
* No LTS type release. -- Can skip a release, which I may make a habbit of doing, but there's no long term release which I can focus on or decide to support novice users with.
* No ability to update the installer before installing with the Live disk.
Edit1:
* Was unable to get a functional USB boot stick working (no live, no net install, no nothing). This could be a user or hardware issues but I've been using USB install media exclusively under Ubuntu.
* RPMFusion has a slightly older version of Nvidia drivers compared to the Nvidia PPA (which is maintained directly by Nvidia). This can be worked around downloading directly from Nvidia, but I prefer to use repositories as much as possible.
* No WLAN support during netinstall (not a big deal, and probably no better anywhere else, but still would be nice).

[Dies]

Welcome. Nice first post.


A little advice regarding package management in Fedora, learn to love yum.

Yum is not only powerful but also one of the friendliest cli package managers around, it pretty much makes gui package managers unnecessary aside from browsing/searching when you're not sure what you want.

I know, kind of messed up that I'm posting that advice from an Ubuntu system, but if I had to use and remember all the apt-* and dpkg-* commands... it's a good thing they have Synaptic. It's really too bad yum isn't even an option.

[JONOR]

Hi Daemox, I confer with Dies, an impressive opener.

Originally Posted by daemox

Likes...

easy disk/volume management, what's not to like?

You're going to be much appreciated here if this comment is anything to go by.

[daemox]

Hey, thanks for the welcomes guys.

And for anyone that cares, I've now done a second install on a separate laptop using the Net Install, done some further thinking and learning, and while I'm definitely digging a lot about Fedora I'm not sure if the likes are going to out weigh the dislikes.

I'm going to keep thinking on this and do a bit more reading/searching, but I'm not sure if Fedora is going to be the right tool for my use. Ubuntu's definitely not perfect either, but it might be closer to my, let me emphasize this so I'm not mistaken, MY, needs.

Again, thanks for the welcomes and the tip.

Take care,
daemox

[Mikko]

Originally Posted by daemox

* No LTS type release. -- Can skip a release, which I may make a habbit of doing, but there's no long term release which I can focus on or decide to support novice users with.

This is CentOS, but it's so long-term, that you don't really want in on the desktop, not at the moment, anyway. RHEL / CentOS 6 is coming, though.

Originally Posted by daemox

* RPMFusion has a slightly older version of Nvidia drivers compared to the Nvidia PPA (which is maintained directly by Nvidia). This can be worked around downloading directly from Nvidia, but I prefer to use repositories as much as possible.

The kernel module needs to be in sync with the Fedora kernel updates, which can be a little tricky with any third-party repository. I've often excluded both the kernel and the nvidia driver from automatic yum updates on work machines to make sure than the automatic update doesn't clobber graphics. Then I've done the updates manually to make sure that the versions match and work, and almost always they do.

Originally Posted by Dies

I know, kind of messed up that I'm posting that advice from an Ubuntu system, but if I had to use and remember all the apt-* and dpkg-* commands...

You mean like: sudo apt-get install packagename and sudo dpkg -i packagename ??

Really tough.

[daemox]

Thanks for the information Mikko, definitely good to know for future reference. I've moved back to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS at home for the time being, while there are many things I definitely love about Fedora the costs unfortunately outweighed the benefit a bit too much (for me). Definitely an awesome distro and good for the community, just not the right tool for my current needs.

RHEL / Cent are definitely something I'll keep an eye on, I'm really hoping Red Hat decides to challenge Canonical on the desktop space by releasing a desktop slated build (Red Hat Professional?), whether or not that is a good idea for them as a company I have no idea, but I think it could be neat from my limited perspective.

I'm also interested in possibly pursuing my RHCA/RHCE certs in the future so just for learning purposes I might setup a dual boot or something so I can keep Fedora, RHEL, or Cent around. But, unfortunately for the jobs I'm likely to get (want to get) the MCP/CompTIA tests are more likely to help me out.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone for the information.

Cheers,
daemox

[daemox]

Hey again all,

I've just fired up Fedora 16 and gave it a whirl. Even more I liked this time around but I got stuck on getting the NVIDIA drivers from RPM Fusion to work on my system (they would install, but I would never be able to get it back into X afterwards).

Anyway, I'll be giving it another try come 17 or even before, but wanted to share my experience since I really dug the community last time around.

I wrote up a little post about my experience and considerations at my site here: http://www.ainer.org/ubuntu-alternat...with-fedora-16

Take care all!

[YeOK]

Originally Posted by daemox

Hey again all,

I've just fired up Fedora 16 and gave it a whirl. Even more I liked this time around but I got stuck on getting the NVIDIA drivers from RPM Fusion to work on my system (they would install, but I would never be able to get it back into X afterwards).

Anyway, I'll be giving it another try come 17 or even before, but wanted to share my experience since I really dug the community last time around.

I wrote up a little post about my experience and considerations at my site here: http://www.ainer.org/ubuntu-alternat...with-fedora-16

Take care all!

I actually enjoyed reading that, I would add next time you try Fedora, please check out the how to section. Sounds like you hit the Nvidia / SELinux bug, it has been fixed now I think.

* Bookmarked your site, I will check in now and again.

[AdamW]

daemox: with my Red Hat on, we do actually 'do the desktop' - rumors to the contrary are somewhat exaggerated - but it's the *corporate* desktop, which is something of a different beast from the enthusiast's desktop. We do provide desktop Linux to some of our enterprise customers (and use it internally - most RH staff have a RHEL desktop, not Fedora). It looks very much like what you get if you use CentOS as a desktop distro: basically functional, very stable/reliable, quite old and boring. It's not exactly competing with Ubuntu, it's a slightly different niche.

Speaking with my Fedora hat on - nice post, very interesting. Couple of notes:

on PulseAudio - you can't really remove it from a Fedora system very easily, due to dependencies, but you can disable it pretty effectively if you don't want it. Just removing alsa-plugins-pulseaudio will get you most of the way there; after doing that, anything that wants to can talk to ALSA directly, it won't be redirected to PA. Things that actually try and speak native PA will still use PA, though.

"No ability to update the installer before installing with the Live disk." - this is actually possible, though it's not heavily broadcasted. After booting live but before installing, you can just 'yum update anaconda' if you want to install an official update, 'yum localinstall' or 'rpm -Uvh' any build of anaconda you like. The installer that gets run from the live image is simply a package.

We don't really tend to do a lot of official post-release updates for the installer though - not for any special reason, just it's usually been the Fedora workflow that the released product is pretty much what you get as far as installation goes, and future work goes into the future releases.

"Was unable to get a functional USB boot stick working (no live, no net install, no nothing). This could be a user or hardware issues but I've been using USB install media exclusively under Ubuntu"

Not sure about that one, it usually works, but we'd need a bit more detail. How did you try to write the USB stick? There's three more-or-less officially supported methods (liveusb-creator, livecd-iso-to-disk, and dd) and one method that is definitely not supported but commonly used (unetbootin, gods, how I hate unetbootin).

"No WLAN support during netinstall (not a big deal, and probably no better anywhere else, but still would be nice)." - seems odd, the installer does have wireless support, at least to some extent. config is a bit clunky, but it does work, I tested. exactly how did you try to use it, how did it fail? Thanks!

[Dan]

I have to admit (and this will probably shock Adam) that PulseAudio is no longer the nasty mess it was when it was whelped. In F16, it's been trouble free and a solid performer.

[jpollard]

Originally Posted by Dan

I have to admit (and this will probably shock Adam) that PulseAudio is no longer the nasty mess it was when it was whelped. In F16, it's been trouble free and a solid performer.

I haven't had any problems with it in F14 either, nor F11 (well, briefly, I just had to set the audio level to something to get it to unmute, but once a level was set, things "just worked")

[smr54]

Just to be odd one out, this time, I had to remove the alsa-plugins-pulseaudio, which is the first time in awhile. For the last couple (few?) releases, sound has worked without me having to do anything special.

Seems to be a Just Me(TM) issue too, so I haven't paid it too much attention. Removed the package, sound works, all is good.

[AdamW]

dan: good lord, man, you have to warn me to sit down before saying things like that.

[DBelton]

*GASP*

Call the hospital, Dan's really bad sick!

Next thing you know, he's going to be babbling about how much he loves Gnome 3 shell and that beautiful Adwaita theme!