Hello Fedora ppl

[Mutsumi]

Hi all. This is my first post, from now I'll start reading the forums, and learning about Fedora itself. I've been using Linux for 2 years: Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo... and now I'm thinking about giving Fedora a try.

I'd like you people tell me, as a complete Fedora n00b I am, what do you like about it, what are it's strong points and, if you've tested other distros before, what do you like more about Fedora compared to them.

I apologize for my away-from-perfect english and greet you all. Thanx in advance.

[telmo]

The thing i like most about Fedora it's the easy installation and it was the only one that made my hardware work almost fully the first time. I'm not sure about comparing to Gentoo, because i never tried it and it might not be as fast, but i can compare it to Mandrake and Debian... It's better! For me works much better than Mandrake 10 and it's easier to install than Debian (altough Debian is pretty easy), you get the latest software available and it's very easy to update... with Fedora you don't have to pay for anything and you get this wonderfull forum to help you with your issues.
I love it!

Maybe you can give me a few tips on how to install Gentoo... i'm curious about that one...

So... enjoy your stay!

[Mutsumi]

Hi telmo, thanx for answering It was an interesting information. I think I could enjoy Fedora. Glad to see those forms are populated of friendly people

Well, I can tell you Gentoo is really a great distro. It's a bit faster than Mandrake or Debian, but that wasn't what made me migrate. There are other things, like:

• Being a source based distro, the packages are ready to install almost when the developer puts the tar.gz in the website, not having to wait for a rpm being made. Also the Gentoo developers make a great work testing the builds, so you have a bleeding edge system (you wait no more than a pair of weeks in the worst case for a new release of a package) but rarely something brokes (in Debian SID I had lots of problems, and then I switched to Gentoo).

• You can select what is compiled in each package or what not, in RPMs other people selects what should be included. i.e. I use a Gnome desktop, and don't have any KDE or Qt related package in my system. Or if I don't use a mysql db, I don't compile the part of the packages that make them use of mysql, so the package is smaller on the HD.

• The packages come with a very well written config file, and then you have to edit it by hand. This way you know all the options and personalize it to the maximun. Gentoo doesn't select the options for you. Well, perhaps in any other distro yo could edit the config file after installing, but if you don't know about those config files, surely you won't never know that a lot of options exist for each package (and maybe you needed one of these).

• The Gentoo forums are great, really great. I had lot of problems as any Linux user, and got all the answers already written in the forums. This is one of Gentoo's strongest points. Really.

But there are some reasons because of which I'm thinking about switching to Fedora:

• Althought updating the system weekly only takes a hour or so of compiling, when you install the system from zero, you could have your system one or two days compiling. (X.org takes 1 hour, Mozilla takes 1 hour, Gnome takes 6 hours, OpenOffice takes 8 hours... all the other parts are lot smaller but the first time you have to compile those monsters). It's not a great problem, as Gentoo is so stable, you could install it once and have it working forever without any problem, but I've been playing with Linux for two years or so, and now I want a Linux system easy of installing and updating, to spend less time on it.

• Perhaps that need of a less customizable, easier, but not "for dumbs" system is the cause of my try with Fedora. If someday I have to use Linux at work, surely they won't use Gentoo, but Red Hat or Suse. So I want to know how a Red Hat based system works and so be familiar with what I could find in the future.

I really hope Fedora gives me what I ask, and I can stay with it to pay less atention to my computer. I apologize for writing such a long post Greetings to all!

[Mutsumi]

Sorry telmo, I didn't answer your question.

Installing Gentoo is very similar to installing Debian. With one difference. This is done in a terminal and you do all the steps by hand. But there is the Handbook where all the proccess is explainded step by step. I like booting from a Knoppix CD and reading the Handbook online while installing. With this install method you know exactly all what you are doing, and when you have enought knowledge, you can also do some steps different, to suit your tastes.

There are three "stages" available. This means you can compile all the system (stage1), download an already compiled base system and compile everything else from there (stage2, which I use), or install everything from the CD (stage3). I like using the latest versions, so I use stage2, as the packages in the CDs get outdated with the time.

And once you have all installed, it's really easy to update. As easy as using apt-get. Once you have a running Gentoo system, it's one of the simplest to mantain.

Hope you liked my explanation. Greetings.

[imdeemvp]

Welcome!
Now for info on fedora check the faq's. www.fedorafaq.org and another great source is www.fedoranews.org

[Mutsumi]

Thank you very much. I'll add them to my bookmarks.

[wct1490]

When I fisrt used redhat 8 2 years ago
It took me almost a week to settle everything working
with fedora core3 , in just 2 days.
that's why I'm here...
to keep learning

[sailor]

For me and my system, Fedora seems to work very well from the install. There a few tweaks for nvidia graphics card and my sound card. But all in all I have had few problems, of course different systems incur different problems.

Welcome to the Forum!

[Ug]

'Ello there.