Totally Frustrated With Fedora

Paul_Vandenberg · #1 5th July 2005, 05:10 PM

When Red Hat started the Fedora Project, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. They've always been good to the F/OSS community. After 4 releases, it is painfully obvious that FC is a development distro for RHEL. I don't blame them. It is their right. I just can't use it anymore. FC2, 3 and 4 all have had issues for me. The last straw is the the GCC 4 compiler in FC4. It seems to be the culprit for the Matrox card problem. No problem, I switched to a nVidia RIVA TNT2 card. Then I started to burn DVDs in K3B. I got no errors reported. When I went to use them, I got nothing but errors trying to read them. As a test, I installed CentOS, burned DVDs again.....no problem! They read perfectly. I'm wondering if the burning programs compiled with GCC 4 are to blame? I have no way to be sure, but 2 years of the garbage is enough. I don't have the time or patience to wrestle with my OS every 6 to 8 months, including buying new hardware to overcome issues. I really like Red Hat and the look and feel of their distro. I would buy RHEL if I could afford it. I am truly grateful for all the clones out there. CentOS seems rock-solid stable. Since my Linux box is my only personal workstation, I need some stability.

I don't mean to have a pointless rant or anything or dump on Fedora users. I think Red Hat needs to hear these things. A friend of mine is also having GCC 4 problems compiling packages for MythTV. His research has pointed to GCC 4 as the problem. I just have to accept that Fedora is not for me anymore.

I also saw on the devel list that the early login that is planned for FC5 may not be compatible with nVidia drivers. The attitude was basically....too bad, nvidia is not supported. I am truly concerned about what is happening with Fedora.

Thanks for listening

Mat · #2 5th July 2005, 05:24 PM

well, if you don't like bleeding-edge, don't use it...

Mat

pparks1 · #3 5th July 2005, 05:26 PM

Paul,

My understanding was that the "free" version of Red Hat Linux (6.0, 7.0 to 7.3, 8.0 and 9.0) were always considered the development distribution for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

In addition, when the Fedora name change and philosophy shift came out a couple of years ago, it was clearly stated that the Fedora project was the "bleeding edge", "development path" and "testing" location for things slated for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I'm not trying to argue with you, I just think you are stating something that the community has been told. The way that Fedora works was the intention of Red Hat all along.

With that said, I wholeheartedly agree with you on the CentOS comments. Personally, this is my desktop of choice. I don't need bleeding edge functionality, I need something that runs stable and quickly. I would rather wait for the Fedora community to work out the kinks and Red Hat to incorporate the change into RHEL and then update my CentOS box once that happens.

VN-Frank · #4 5th July 2005, 05:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul_Vandenberg

When Red Hat started the Fedora Project, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. They've always been good to the F/OSS community. After 4 releases, it is painfully obvious that FC is a development distro for RHEL. I don't blame them. It is their right. I just can't use it anymore. FC2, 3 and 4 all have had issues for me. The last straw is the the GCC 4 compiler in FC4. It seems to be the culprit for the Matrox card problem. No problem, I switched to a nVidia RIVA TNT2 card. Then I started to burn DVDs in K3B. I got no errors reported. When I went to use them, I got nothing but errors trying to read them. As a test, I installed CentOS, burned DVDs again.....no problem! They read perfectly. I'm wondering if the burning programs compiled with GCC 4 are to blame? I have no way to be sure, but 2 years of the garbage is enough. I don't have the time or patience to wrestle with my OS every 6 to 8 months, including buying new hardware to overcome issues. I really like Red Hat and the look and feel of their distro. I would buy RHEL if I could afford it. I am truly grateful for all the clones out there. CentOS seems rock-solid stable. Since my Linux box is my only personal workstation, I need some stability.

I don't mean to have a pointless rant or anything or dump on Fedora users. I think Red Hat needs to hear these things. A friend of mine is also having GCC 4 problems compiling packages for MythTV. His research has pointed to GCC 4 as the problem. I just have to accept that Fedora is not for me anymore.

I also saw on the devel list that the early login that is planned for FC5 may not be compatible with nVidia drivers. The attitude was basically....too bad, nvidia is not supported. I am truly concerned about what is happening with Fedora.

Thanks for listening

When I was stating something similar on June 13th (in a sligtly more provocative fashion), I was basically shot down, as I expected. Now after some weeks are gone, we see a rather mixed picture.

Some people report it as the greatets OS ever, others run in trouble. But, is it a pretty image really ? Is it ?

I wish to hit on the same point again, this time from a different angle:

If FC is a "test" product to burn in new features in a continuous beta deployment for EL, its ok in general. But the point is this: People throw it off their systems once the "unreadines" factor is too high. So who remains testing it then ? THATS the point that matters. What kind of people in which context are "testing" a product tht is just too messy at times? The professionals, or home users/newbies ? And what is the value of such testing really for EL ?

An imature compiler and a troublesome kernel at the exact time of a FC releae jump, is to me unacceptable. Does that make ANY sense to ANYbody here at all ? Is that ALL necessary ?

I miss a higher priority for quality, otherwise the product becomes a timewaster in the form its shipped.

Times have changed, lots of new distros coming up, some of them are very promising. Its a dangerous game thinking one can stretch users patience beyond limits. People go off the track and find their linux home in another distro, and usually dont change too often, maybe never back gain.

I got annoyed after RH9, now again seeing this pattern in FC1/2/3/4.
Its not right, sorry !

RedHat do you hear me ?
Are you eventually too self-confident about yrself ?

bitrain · #5 5th July 2005, 05:47 PM

You can always use gcc 3 on FC4, type gcc32 if you already have it installed or yum install compat-gcc (or was it gcc-compat

)

Mat · #6 5th July 2005, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VN-Frank

If FC is a "test" product to burn in new features in a continuous beta deployment for EL, its ok in general. But the point is this: People throw it off their systems once the "unreadines" factor is too high. So who remains testing it then ? THATS the point that matters. What kind of people in which context are "testing" a product tht is just too messy at times? The professionals, or home users/newbies ? And what is the value of such testing really for EL ?

well, the people who understood Fedora's concept will use (or test if you like) it. for instance those that don't complain about having gcc4 installed, but rather like to see how it works..

there's no point in arguing that Fedora should be aim to be the most stable distro with the most conservative configuration possible..

demanding that, would be equal to demand that windows should be free of charge...

the concept is there, so you either accept that, or decide for another distro

Mat

pparks1 · #7 5th July 2005, 06:05 PM

VN-FRANK,

Why would you think that Red Hat would care about this? The make their money (and their living) now from the RHEL product. Businesses use RHEL. They aren't all going to start jumping on all of the other distributions ("the flavors of the month", if you will). It's too risky as a business, they need something that has been around, that works and is used and support (by hardware vendors, software vendors, etc).

Quote:

People throw it off their systems once the "unreadines" factor is too high. So who remains testing it then ? THATS the point that matters.

Lot's of em. Look at this forum, people keep posting, people keep downloading and people keep trying it out.

Quote:

An imature compiler and a troublesome kernel at the exact time of a FC releae jump, is to me unacceptable. Does that make ANY sense to ANYbody here at all ? Is that ALL necessary ?

These things were in the release notes, you weren't forced into the FC4 upgrade. If it was unacceptable, why did you load FC4.

Quote:

People go off the track and find their linux home in another distro, and usually dont change too often, maybe never back gain.

While i hear what you are saying, I disagree. Seems a lot of people here download and install endless versions of Linux to just see them. They threaten to leave Fedora every day (i'm going to knoppix, ubuntu for me, Gentoo here), but then when FC5 comes out you will see them posting on day 2. Something like this, I just downloaded FC5 and I cannot get my {insert_hardware_device_here) working properly. I'm at wits end (after only 1 day), I'm going to download {insert_any_strange_name_here) Linux and screw you guys.

Plain and simple, Fedora is the test grouns for RHEL. People are going to run it. Heck, you are running it. They find what works, what doesn't, and they go on with RHEL. In 6 months or so, we will have FC5 (even if not much has changed). It has a lifecycle, it has a goal.

You might want to try something like CentOS. It's built off RHEL, it doesn't change often and is very stable.

kona0197 · #8 5th July 2005, 06:08 PM

>>>Plain and simple, Fedora is the test grouns for RHEL. People are going to run it. Heck, you are running it. They find what works, what doesn't, and they go on with RHEL. In 6 months or so, we will have FC5 (even if not much has changed). It has a lifecycle, it has a goal.<<<

Hey - I ain't running Fedora! Thank you very much!

VN-Frank · #9 5th July 2005, 06:20 PM

You make good points.

Paul_Vandenberg · #10 5th July 2005, 06:22 PM

I jumped into Fedora because I've always liked Red Hat. Since Red Hat no longer had a consumer version, I thought this was the way to go. I was wrong. However, I am grateful to red Hat for providing source RPMS. It makes it very easy for the clones. Perhaps, that's the way they want it. If you have patience and like bleeding-edge, Fedora's for you, if you like rock-solid stabilty and have big bucks, there's RHEL. For those without deep pockets and still need stability......send in the clones!

Paul

pparks1 · #11 5th July 2005, 06:53 PM

Paul,

Give CentOS a try. If you like Red Hat, Fedora, or RHEL, you won't even notice the difference.

tejas · #12 5th July 2005, 07:18 PM

So what if we are test dummies for RHEL?

I love fedora. I spend hours each day on this forum

It is a great desktop version of linux.

It works great. I don't really care if some company is getting me to test how their programing skills can be fine tuned to make them some real $$$. In return, they give me a great desktop O/S

And as far as other Linux go, I am reminded of this quote

---
"Bessie, I may be drunk, but you are ugly. At least Tomorrow I will Be Sober" - Sir Winston Churchill (I think)

Shadow Skill · #13 5th July 2005, 08:29 PM

LOL, if you want instability take a look at Gentoo, it only has two freaking branches "stable" [It's in quotes for a reason.] and unstable which is commonly called ~arch, some of things that occur on the "stable" branch are just unbelievable sometimes. Yet the general response is "its bleeding edge what do you expect." Sad thing is Fedora is probably more stable because it has three branches, as oppossed to tw.o [In some cases more like one and a half.] I personally use gcc3.3.4 in Gentoo and do not really see a reason for people to install gcc4 or have a distribution default to using gcc4 out of the box. [I wonder if they did it because of improvements in the gcj implementation?]

I personally do not have that many problems running Gentoo with the ~arch branch enabled [specifically ~amd64.] but I would still say that Fedora is still more stable overall than Gentoo despite them both being "bleeding edge" simply because the QC for Fedora is better for a distribution of its size. [I think Gentoo should scale itself back a bit so that there are actually enough maintainers to make a third branch and really make everything more stable across the board.]

I also think that part of your problem is that you are trying to compile software on a binary distribution, I'll keep this short and just say that even if you get source code to compile on your system its going to break your system down the line; other than that never expect compiling from source to work on a binary distribution. That is not to say that gcc4 cannot be the source of your problem with the program you are trying to build.

maclinux · #14 6th July 2005, 12:32 PM

Like most people here I have had good times and bad times with Fedora and with every other distro I tried. With Linux there are many different distros and you pick the one that you like best. If one distro is causing you too many problems then try to find solutions or switch to another distro. Everyone must understand that Fedora is the testing grounds for RHEL and that is what Red Hat wanted it to be. It is a win-win situation where they give us this nice Linux distro and we use it and report problems so they can be fixed and eventually a more stable RHEL can be made so Red Hat can make a profit. For me Fedora has been the second most stable distro I have ever used (first was RHEL) and thats why I continue to use it. I have tried RHEL and clones but it wasn't "bleeding edge" enough for me so I stuck with Fedora. Bleeding edge comes at a price and it is stability. Bleeding edge software hasnt been tested as throughly so it is likely to have more problems. If you dont like fact that Fedora was meant to be a bleeding edge test distro for RHEL then move onto another.

Paul_Vandenberg · #15 6th July 2005, 01:14 PM

My point is that I like the look n feel of Red Hat and have always wanted to use their products. I think Red Hat is one of the best Linux vendors. I would pay the $179 for RHEL WS, but I can't afford that right now. So, it CentOS for now. It gives me the Red Hat look 'n feel with stability.

I understand that Fedora is a 'proving ground for technology that may become part of RHEL'. I just didn't understand the full ramifications of that until now.

Paul