First impressions of FC4

steve1961 · #1 11th September 2005, 07:37 PM

Over the last year I've experimented with several distros - suse, mandrake, xandros, ubuntu, and now fedora. I briefly tried fedora some time ago but after many years of being a windows user I found it difficult to get to grips with it. The same could be said of suse and mandrake though, and it wasn't until I tried the windows clone, xandros, that I really started to feel comfortable with linux. From here I moved on to ubuntu, which is a really great distro for those willing to learn about linux, largely because a lot of first class documentation is available. But no distro is perfect, and the ubuntu 64 version that I'm still using suffers from intermittent screen freezes and crashes, especially after applying updates. So... I decided it was time to install fc4.

First impressions? It seems very stable, and once I'd figured out yum it didn't take long to get everything configured the way I wanted. I've even been able to set up apt-get and synaptic just so that I feel at home. I had to search down win32 and dvd codecs, but that's par for the course, and to be expected with any free distro. So a couple of days on from the install I'm pretty happy with fc4. No crashes or screen freezes, I've now installed all the software I use regularly, and - and this is the best part - I didn't have to scour the forum looking for answers about how to get sound or networking working properly.

Hope this stabilty continues. Watch this space.

RahulSundaram · #2 12th September 2005, 03:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve1961

Over the last year I've experimented with several distros - suse, mandrake, xandros, ubuntu, and now fedora. I briefly tried fedora some time ago but after many years of being a windows user I found it difficult to get to grips with it. The same could be said of suse and mandrake though, and it wasn't until I tried the windows clone, xandros, that I really started to feel comfortable with linux. From here I moved on to ubuntu, which is a really great distro for those willing to learn about linux, largely because a lot of first class documentation is available. But no distro is perfect, and the ubuntu 64 version that I'm still using suffers from intermittent screen freezes and crashes, especially after applying updates. So... I decided it was time to install fc4.

First impressions? It seems very stable, and once I'd figured out yum it didn't take long to get everything configured the way I wanted. I've even been able to set up apt-get and synaptic just so that I feel at home. I had to search down win32 and dvd codecs, but that's par for the course, and to be expected with any free distro. So a couple of days on from the install I'm pretty happy with fc4. No crashes or screen freezes, I've now installed all the software I use regularly, and - and this is the best part - I didn't have to scour the forum looking for answers about how to get sound or networking working properly.

Hope this stabilty continues. Watch this space.

Welcome to Fedora.

Rahul
Red Hat

defkewl · #3 12th September 2005, 04:54 AM

Welcome to the club

lenticular · #4 13th September 2005, 06:39 AM

I have been using ubuntu (dual-boot) on my Sony TR1 laptop for a while. This was my first go at linux and I spent a fair bit of time cursing ubuntu. In the end, I got it working the way I liked, but never did get it to display in the resolution I wanted. Tonight, I installed FC4 from a DVD iso. It just doesn't seem to do as good a job as ubuntu in recognizing and configuring my system hardware. The configuration right after the initial reboot was a bear, since the top of my screen was munged, and the bottom did not include the "Next" button needed to advance through the process (F12 did the job). The built-in Intel 802.11b that ubuntu could talk to out of the box is a mystery to Fedora. It sees the device, but configuring it would involve providing info on IRQ and other things that I don't want to worry with. The max resolution that I'm getting is even less than ubuntu. Eventually, I will probably get it all figured out, but ubuntu was easier out of the box.

The most disappointing thing about linux is how far away it is from being ready for prime time. Ubuntu on my desktop made me find out the PCI address of my nVidia card and include it in a configuration file. I've dinked with UNIX since the '80's, and found it kind of fun, but is there anyway my 73 year-old dad could have done that? No way.

-John Ross

steve1961 · #5 13th September 2005, 08:12 AM

My experience is certainly different to yours. I had to fiddle about with Ubuntu to get it configured properly, and I had lots of problems getting sound to work properly. FC4, in contrast, recognised and set up all my hardware automatically. You have a point though. Linux in general is still not ready for people who expect is to 'just work'. It will work most of the time, eventually, but sometimes there's a bit of a steep learning curve. However, for me that's part of the fun.

mndar · #6 13th September 2005, 08:23 AM

My take on this is 'If you are just a user stick to windows else Linux welcomes you'

daihard · #7 20th September 2005, 10:30 AM

I installed FC4 on my workstation a few weeks ago. I like it a lot.

FC is easy to set up and configure. The "yum" tool is very simple and intuitive for those of us who are used to rpm and up2date. A lot of its core operations are identical or similar to those of Red Hat 7.3, the last RH/FC product that I've seriously used before FC4, so it reduced my learning curb quite a bit.

I've fiddled with both the i386 and X86_64 versions. I'll stay with the 32-bit version for now, mainly due to its stability and compatibility with other software products. I hope more third-party applications and plugins will be available for the 64-bit Linux by the time FC5 is introduced.

One of the things I love about FC is the wide availability of native and third-party packages. With livna enabled, you can get pretty much everything you need via yum. What a difference compared to my old distro, Turbolinux, which required me to build my own packages for virtually everything!

Keep up the great work!

steve1961 · #8 28th October 2005, 09:14 PM

Well I'm still here, and I'm not looking to migrate to another distro anytime soon. FC4 is definately the most stable distro I've tried and I now use it as my main system. It's stable, the updates don't trash the installation, the forum is friendly and helpful, and overall my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I now have FC4 purring happily away on my machine. The only slight niggle is the fact that lmsensors can't detect my cpu temp - but hey, that a really minor thing as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, I've ditched Ubuntu altogether now. That said, I still like experimenting with other distros (but on a spare hard drive, not the one FC4 is installed on), and my current flavour of the month is Kanotix. However, the first apt-get update I ran trashed the installation so it'll only be a passing fad I'm sure. Can't wait for FC5!

daihard · #9 28th October 2005, 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve1961

Well I'm still here, and I'm not looking to migrate to another distro anytime soon. FC4 is definately the most stable distro I've tried and I now use it as my main system. It's stable, the updates don't trash the installation, the forum is friendly and helpful, and overall my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I now have FC4 purring happily away on my machine. The only slight niggle is the fact that lmsensors can't detect my cpu temp - but hey, that a really minor thing as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, I've ditched Ubuntu altogether now. That said, I still like experimenting with other distros (but on a spare hard drive, not the one FC4 is installed on), and my current flavour of the month is Kanotix. However, the first apt-get update I ran trashed the installation so it'll only be a passing fad I'm sure. Can't wait for FC5!

Sounds good! I've been FC4 for a while now. I'm a happy camper. It's very easy to maintain and update. Most new applications will be available via yum shortly after they are released - including OpenOffice.org 2.0. Its GUI frontends for configuring users, servers and services are intuitive and easy to use. There are tons of third-party package repositories so whatever I need, I can almost always find it through yum.

steve1961 · #10 28th October 2005, 11:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daihard

Sounds good! I've been FC4 for a while now. I'm a happy camper. It's very easy to maintain and update. Most new applications will be available via yum shortly after they are released - including OpenOffice.org 2.0. Its GUI frontends for configuring users, servers and services are intuitive and easy to use. There are tons of third-party package repositories so whatever I need, I can almost always find it through yum.

The only real problem I have is the fact that I really like to tinker with my PC, and when things go wrong, as long as they're not serious, I quite enjoy the challenge of finding out how to fix the problems. In this respect I've found FC4 really, really boring. Good job I've kept XP!! I knew it would come in handy for something.

daihard · #11 29th October 2005, 12:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve1961

The only real problem I have is the fact that I really like to tinker with my PC, and when things go wrong, as long as they're not serious, I quite enjoy the challenge of finding out how to fix the problems. In this respect I've found FC4 really, really boring. Good job I've kept XP!! I knew it would come in handy for something.

Very true. I'm sure XP will give you more opportunities to fix problems than FC4.

RahulSundaram · #12 29th October 2005, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve1961

The only real problem I have is the fact that I really like to tinker with my PC, and when things go wrong, as long as they're not serious, I quite enjoy the challenge of finding out how to fix the problems. In this respect I've found FC4 really, really boring. Good job I've kept XP!! I knew it would come in handy for something.

If you like to tinker, Fedora can use your help in checking out the development version and reporting problems

See

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/TestingGuide

Rahul
Red Hat

steve1961 · #13 29th October 2005, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RahulSundaram

If you like to tinker, Fedora can use your help in checking out the development version and reporting problems

See

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/TestingGuide

Rahul
Red Hat

That's a great idea, I'd be more than happy to help out with this.

daacosta · #14 30th October 2005, 08:02 AM

Greets here...

I have experimented with Xandros, Debian and Fedora Core 1. Recently I obtained FC4. My impression of FC1 was that it is very, very sleek. I loved the background for the desktop with the clovers and the single taskbar it had [elegant is the word that comes to my mind...] FC4 required some getting used to it because the Up2date wasn't working very well for me and I had to learn either apt-get or yum. Yum wasn't that terribly difficult and after tweaking my yum.conf file to have a longer timeout I was able to work around my dial up connection. Apt-get is not really intended for Fedora as I learned and I didn't even try to use it [It would be cool to learn this one too but why bother?]

The thing that I didn't like about FC4 was the look of the desktop and the fact that I couldn't find my clovers anywhere

I had therefore to get the file from my other CD and save it elsewhere. I also worked with those two taskbars and merged them into a single one... Lastly, I wanted to have the nautilus look whenever I browsed a file... Those minor modifications helped me retain the best looking Fedora in my opinion: the one from FC1.

In regards to the packages I can't get enough of OOo 2.0 [What a kick ass Office suite!], Gaim has worked fantastically well and I can use both my yahoo and hotmail accounts without a trouble [except for the smileys...

], I also appreciate the fact that FC retained VIM and Emacs [Love the former but wouldn't mind learning the second one] and some cool developing tools [I didn't have to download LaTeX for example...] In the Games department I would have liked some selections to be eliminated like Gnome-Robots and some others to be included but that's as subjective as any opinion can be. I have been able to compile programs that I like from source and incorporate them seamlessly onto my space (Scid being the one...)

What would I like from Fedora? Keep some of the art themes around for us who like them. The background with the clovers is just pretty and I am sure that some other people would love to have the Start Here icon with the compass instead of the goofy Computer a la Microsoft Windows [It is just cheesy in my opinion...]

steve1961 · #15 18th January 2006, 07:06 PM

Yep, FC4 has a lot going for it. I hope FC5 is as stable and reliable. I'm an avid distro hopper and constantly install new distros to see what they're like. However, so far Fedora is the only one that I haven't over-written. For several months now it's been my main operating system, although if I'm in KDE mood I occasionally use Suse, but most of the time it's Fedora. Can't remember when I last booted XP. I'm starting to think that it's a waste of disk space and high time I went Linux Only.

Well done to the Fedora developers. This is one hell of a distro and seems to be going from strength to strength.