OSNews

Ditto.

Been running Rawhide since I installed the 7 test 4 KDE live CD. Rocking.

In Fedora 7, yum does not download rpm headers anymore and depsolver is several times (I guess it was 7x) faster than the one in FC6. The slowdown is mainly caused by networking and the mirrors are obviously slow today. I think yum would seem faster if it could simultaneously connect to several mirrors, as apt does. Still, Yum is going to be faster in each subsequent release, because this is the main focus of development AFAIK, and also addition of yum-presto plugin which downloads delta-rpms for updates (these are binary "patches" or "diffs" to currently installed version) will save about 70%-95% MB of download. Yum-presto is already available in F7 and FC6 but not enabled by default because it needs more testing and official mirrors do not support it yet.

Didn't know about yum-presto; that sounds promising. Like I said, yum seems faster than in FC6 (even with the mirrors getting slammed), which is a "thank the good Lord" kind of improvement. It used to drive me nuts in earlier versions.

to enable yum-presto:
yum install yum-presto

and in /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo file add the following line in [updates] section:
deltaurl=http://www.lesbg.com/jdieter/updates/f$releasever/$basearch

I would also expect yum to speed up once the rush to upgrade dies down a little...

yes, this is the Anaconda installer but updated specifically for Live installation - it's very similar to the "normal" Anaconda. Additionally, the LiveCD comes with Gparted and NTFS-3G thanks to which I was able to resize Windows partitions to make room for Fedora on my computer at work without loosing any data :-)

I had some issues with the KDE RC2 CD. It would *seem* to me that the live images might not get as much testing as the full install media.

Actually, it was installed by default, but X was not configured to utilize it. Splitting hairs, I know ;-)

Famous last words:

[EDIT]Oops, posted as reply to wrong comment. Still true, if you look below

Edited 2007-05-31 19:29

Well, duh. That would be a total disaster if it did. It's a pre-alpha almost-kinda-maybe-working driver at this point.

From nouveau's FAQ:
1.4. When can we expect a working driver?
For 2D there are still some known bugs but nouveau should work the same as the nv Xorg driver. ...

1.5. What is the current status of the driver?
... 2D works as well as nv driver from Xorg with a few additional features. ...

It's basically the same as the nv driver, only deobfuscated. Might as well use it instead of nv, if you can't ship with the binary driver nv default.

It's basically the same as the nv driver, only deobfuscated. Might as well use it instead of nv, if you can't ship with the binary driver nv default.

Right... Then these have an opengl screensaver kick in and the entire X server crashes. You'll never see that happen with the 'nv' driver :-)

Adam

http://polishlinux.org/choose/comparison?distro1=Fedora&distro2=Deb...
A little dated (FC5) but probably still largely true.

I personally skipped down to the security section. That's where I find the biggest differences between Fedora and other distros.

"(8) SELinux is included in the default install. Fedora Core offers a whole bunch of extra security features like Exec-Shield, Compile Time Buffer Checks, ELF, Data Hardening, Restricted Kernel Memory access and more."

Few other distros have that many security features. (you hear me ubuntu?)

Few other distros have that many security features. (you hear me ubuntu?)

windows?

brewmastre: Not trying to start a Debian v. Fedora war or anything, but what does Fedora offer that Debian doesn't? I have only used Fedora once for a very short time, it seemed slow so I blew it away and reinstalled Ubuntu. I guess I was just wondering if people could give me, and probably others, some insight into what makes Fedora as popular as it is. Thanks.

Fedora 7 is more up-to-date than Debian Etch and more concerned about user freedom than Ubuntu 7.04. Fedora's package management is RPM-based and yum is very slow compared to Debian's deb-based apt-get. Booting speed and general snappyness seem to be behind Debian Etch, but everything is very polished and reliable. Everything so far seems to be configurable with a GUI tool, if stuff like this is important for you.

The release notes page highlights some other very advanced features of Fedora, e. g. the Fedora Directory Server, that are lacking in Etch. I would say that on the desktop you cannot get a better mainstream distribution at the moment -- and I'm an old Debian hand. For the server stay with Debian or CentOS.

Fedora's package management is RPM-based and yum is very slow compared to Debian's deb-based apt-get.

Probably not anymore as of Fedora 7.

Yum was never really slow for me but I cannot complain about it being significantly faster now. I heard someone say about 7x faster at solving dependencies than F6 Yum.

Edited 2007-05-31 20:12

You are right Yum has come a long way since the slow FC3 days when a lot of people only used Yum to install apt4rpm.

With FC6 even I found Yum very fast they are certainly making it quicker with every release.

Woo Hoo! This is the one thing that made me keep coming back to Debian. RPMs and Yum were so slow it'd piss me off just watching every time a package was installed. I may have to give this a try. Maybe I'll wipe out Ubuntu on my laptop....

How often do you install packages anyway!!

"""
How often do you install packages anyway!!
"""

Fedora Core 6 has had an average of about 160 update rpms per month since October 24. (total: 1128.) So if you have *everything* installed, about 5-6 packages a day. Less depending upon what you have installed.

Edited 2007-06-01 03:42

Personally I like to test out different software, so that I can say "Hey, you should switch to Linux, they have the software that could replace what you do in Windows and it's free." I've done this with several people, especially since in a lot of instances, the software in Linux is better than that which is in Windows, or even some older software that is no longer being developed (like Personal Ancestry File, a genealogy program) and there is a better one (GRAMPS).

I have an HP laptop (Athlon64 3400, 1GB RAM, slow hard drive); nice in its day, but starting to get a little long in the tooth. For some reason, the Fedora releases feel much 'snappier' than Ubuntu on the same hardware (even with some of the common 'performance tweaks'). YMMV, of course; on my desktop, Fedora still has an edge (IMO), but not near as much.

Of course, desktop 'snappiness' is quite subjective. I'm just saying the way menus pop open, apps seem to start quicker, the system just feels more responsive with Fedora to me. The only reason I primarily use Ubuntu on my laptop is a) it's still a damn nice distro and b) it makes setting up my particular wireless card a breeze.

Cheers!

Edited 2007-06-01 13:52

Since you asked so kindly , I'll list a few things that has/will always keep me with Fedora (in no particular order):

* It's about as rock-solid as a desktop-based distribution can get. They integrate/develop many security-based programs into Fedora. They have an exceptional package-review policy, which has never failed *me* during an update.

* Fedora is free in the true meaning of free. Yes, that means a basic desktop (compared to say, Ubuntu) for most people, but its easy to find/install proprietary-licensed packages.

* They keep Gnome as close to the default as possible, and its easy to figure out what they have patched and why. Also, every patch is quick to be sent upstream.

* Rpm/Yum is my friend, although I acknowledge it isn't everybody's .

Yes, it has things about it that annoy me, but seriously, doesn't every distro have something that could be done better?

Well, since both Fedora and Ubuntu are mainstream Gnome centric Linux distros, the difference is probably not that big. I think the biggest difference is the community. Ubuntu has quite a following. Even though i use Fedora, i find myself reading the Ubuntu forum and wiki quite a lot whenever i need to fix something.

I have never seen APT get slower the longer a computer is running. APT has always been quick and rock-solid for me.

No, I'm sorry if my statement was vague. I meant that my Ubuntu system, as a whole, gets slower the longer it runs without a reboot. APT for me is also is also fast and rock solid. As much as I do love Ubuntu and I do think it has come incredibly far in its short life, I still think it needs more work; or maybe I just need a change. Regardless of which it may be, I will now go download FC7 and see if I have a new favorite. Maybe I just have Linux A.D.D. and can't stick with any distro too long

See

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/Schedule

I'll have a look to compare it to urpmi and yast as soon as i've download them....(it's quite slow here...:-( )

++

Actually, it's ~95% vs... 3%? (I'm guessing here)

However,
A. You might be surprised by that... But most of that 95% are computer-illiterate desktop users that can't tell the difference between Microsoft Windows Vista and OSX / Linux if their life dependent on it. (People around me still fail to understand that my Desktop is KDE w/composite and not Vista...)

B. OSNews is about, well, OS news and most of the OS' out there are -not- MS based. (Just compare the huge number of Linux, *BSD and Unix distributions/variants to... 7 versions of Windows [in ~14 years?] and you'll understand my point). Again, pure guess, but people who care only about Windows, will spend less time in OSNews and more in MS-only sites.

C. OSNews readers, being (much) more tech-savvy (if not actual developers/IT managers/admins/etc) tend to be much more open to alternative OS'.

D. As such (C), you'll have much more people using Linux/OSX/BSD in OSNews then in other, less OS-centric sites.

- Gilboa

ah, okay you're right.

And that's an interesating point. Some people say the mac user would be the most "non-technical" group of all computers users, not prooven to fight maleware, viruses, don't know how to react on software failures and so on…, and not the Windows users (it's not my opinion but I know people that tink so).

So can we say it's a problem that windows users does not see alternative operating systems and are not open minded to it? I think, it's the human nature that says: "many people uses this/are doing it this way, this can only be the right/best way".

OSX bunch is wierd combo.
On one end you've got people that bought the machine because it's cool (or has a very cool interface), on the other hand you have computer literate people who got fed up by Windows or, like my sister, require MAC's unique capabuilities for work. (E.g. computer graphics).

As Windows, don't forget that most people just get it pre-installed with their machine, and never touch it again. (Unless it breaks, and then they pay someone to fix it).
It's not a matter of being open-minded or not.
E.g. my parents... They use Windows because, well, I bought it with the computer and installed it. (Mostly because there are way-too-many-IE-only sites in Israel).
Like 90% of the windows users out there, they don't really care if it Linux or Windows... they just need to work.
When the IE problem finally gets resolved (Will it? - AFAIK Microsoft is putting a lot of $$$ to get major sites to use IIS and IE-related tools... I wonder why...) I'll replace Windows with Linux, and given past experience I have in switching people to Linux, if done right, it will be less painful then switching to Vista.

IMHO, Linux (and the rest of the non-Windows bunch) should -not- fight over joe-six-pack. The added value of getting joe-six-pack's home computer to use Linux is minute compared to the efforts required to get there. We (as in the community) should fight over the IT and enthusiasts market share.
Get them, and they push Linux (*BSD, OSX and Solaris) into their workplace/home/parent's computer/etc for us.

- Gilboa

Right on.
Hear hear!
The thing is, though, those parties involved in the Linux business whose business model is (totally legit) to conquer the corporate/desktop market via the desktop (Canonical, for instance), *will* "fight over joe-six-pack".

The tickless kernel is only on i386 and unfortunately it will be a while before drivers are updated to take advantage of that feature.

If you open Rhythmbox, it provides a plethora list of these stations including Jameson and Magnatune. It also even include some radio stations using Vorbis format.

I modded you up because you listed it in a Monk-ishly perfect array.

Aaaaall in a row of descending sizes. Good.

edited for being basically wrong.

Edited 2007-05-31 23:15

Applications?

How does that make sense in Fedora where you install rpm packages?

"""
If there's a way to get Fedora working with XFS, I'd certainly be interested.
"""

I think you can type "linux xfs" at the isolinux prompt, but I'm not certain.

Both Ubuntu and Fedora use ext3 in the default data=ordered mode.

Personally, I think that XFS is overrated. It has this mystique that comes from SGI having written it. But it has strengths and weaknesses like any other filesystem. For large streaming reads and writes from a raid array, I'm sure it does quite well. But for desktop use, I don't think there is much difference.

It is, however, more fragile than most of the other Linux filesystems due to certain design decisions that were made which made more sense on SGI hardware than on regular x86.

You'd actually probably be making a better speed/robustness tradeoff by setting your ext3 FSes to data=writeback.

But it gives me the warm fuzzies to know that my machines have the extra assurance of data=ordered.

Edited 2007-06-01 04:10

"""
Whatever happened to the cool theme in FC5?
"""

The bubbles? They fizzled. DNA seemed a bit cold to me. I do like their new look though. :-)

======
Up Up And Away

Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon
Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon
We could float among the stars together, you and I
For we can fly, we can fly

Up, up and away
My beautiful, my beautiful balloon

The world's a nicer place in my beautiful balloon
It wears a nicer face in my beautiful balloon
We can sing a song and sail along the silver sky
For we can fly we can fly

Up, up and away
My beautiful, my beautiful balloon

Suspended under a twilight canopy
We'll search the clouds for a star to guide us
If by some chance you find yourself loving me
We'll find a cloud to hide us
We'll keep the moon beside us

Love is waiting there in my beautiful balloon
Way up in the air in my beautiful balloon
If you'll hold my hand we'll chase your dream across the sky
For we can fly we can fly

Up, up and away
My beautiful, my beautiful balloon

by Jimmy Webb

Edited 2007-06-01 04:27

You hear me(x3)
Up, up and away in my beautiful my beautiful
Up, up and away in my beautiful my beautiful balloon(x2)
Now get out!

Gimme(x28)
Give me a ride!

Hot ride in my air balloon
Skippin fast right around the moon
On a bullet train out of town
Walkie talkie, one hand down!

You hear me(x2)

Up, up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful
Up, up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon(x2)

I'll put you out!

Gimme(x28)
Give me a ride!

Gimme(x28)
Give me a ride!

Hot ride in my air balloon
Skippin fast right around the moon
On a bullet train out of town
Walkie talkie, one hand down

Hot ride in my air balloon
Skipping fast right around the moon
Minds made up, theres no luck when time leaves you

Hot ride in my air balloon
Skipping fast right around the moon
Times made up, theres no luck when time leaves you

You gotta...

PUSH IT!
PUSH IT!

Hotride
by Prodigy

:)

I believe that it's a patch. It makes a long list of preferences more organized. Glad you liked it.

" I know that the latest kernel makes IDE disks appear as they were SCSI disks but maybe this is unrelated. "

It is very much related. VMWare just needs to adopt. There isn't much Fedora can do about this. Every distribution which is going to libata following Fedora is going to run into the same issue.

Actually the problem is referring to is not related to libata switch.
Seems that new(er) kernel, running as guests under VMWare do not detect the VMWare-emulated LSI SCSI disks due to breakage in the LSI-emulation->mptbase driver.
According to a number of threads I saw in LKML, this is a VMWare issue.

In general, someone @VMWare forgot to wake up. A lot of people (including myself) are getting numerous crashes (both host and guest) when using newer (>= 2.6.19) kernels.

- Gilboa "waiting for VT/SVN-less KVM to be released" Davara.

Edited 2007-06-02 07:11 UTC

this is a VMWare issue.

I doubt it because fedora core 7 couldn't handle a trivial raid0 (2 SATA's) setup with a separate boot partition on /dev/sda1 on my amd64 system.Only the default partitioning sheme with lvm worked.

In addition it seems they haven't addressed the nvidia driver install issue.as far as i looked at it a simple SELinux policy issue.

RAID and SELinux bugs are completely unrelated to vmware. Bugzilla #?

Again, AFAICS, he's not talking about host SCSI devices (problem like your own) he's talking about guest SCSI which is a known VMWare issue. [1].

- Gilboa
[1] http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/3/23/345

Exactly ;-)

It's a known -VMWare- issue.
Seems that changes in the kernel mptbase driver exposed a bug in their SCSI emulation.
Just switch to IDE and it'll work just fine.
(I'm using VMWare to test RAWHIDE for years now...)

- Gilboa

It is well know there is no Flash Player 64-bit on any x86-64 operating system therefore a Linux distribution cannot be blamed. Ask Adobe to support it. It is possible to run Flash Player 32-bit on a 64-bit Firefox using nspluginwrapper.


Working in progress. The goal for each developer is to provide a stable support and less hack as possible.


Request that to developers. There should be an equivalent available like Amarok, Audacious to name a few.


Looks like a obscure legacy Webcam. E Have you tried to ajust bright/contrast?


That's debatable at best. Some users have reported the opposite. Frankly, does that make difference if an Operating System boot 30 seconds slower?




Both distributions have different philosophies. Ubuntu is mostly desktop oriented traditional sense while Fedora is all about getting the cutiest free and open source technologies available. For example dbus, hal, udev are the technologies provided by Fedora developers accessible to other distribution so it is a win-win situation.

Edited 2007-06-02 23:30

It is well know there is no Flash Player 64-bit on any x86-64 operating system therefore a Linux distribution cannot be blamed. Ask Adobe to support it. It is possible to run Flash Player 32-bit on a 64-bit Firefox using nspluginwrapper.

I don't get Adobe's point. It would be so easy to release a 64-bit Flash Player and make it available. I still want to understand why it takes so long for them to compile a 64-bit compatible player. I don't blame Linux, in fact, Linux x86-64 is way ahead than XP Pro x64. In XP Pro x64 loads of drivers don't work (including my webcam). It have tried to install the nspluginwrapper in Firefox but had no success - even Skype alpha was "easier" to install.

2) Kopete or aMSN have no voice calling support.
3) Skype Linux has no video support as of yet.
Working in progress. The goal for each developer is to provide a stable support and less hack as possible.

4) Foobar2000 doesn't have a native binary for Linux.
Request that to developers. There should be an equivalent available like Amarok, Audacious to name a few.

It's about time the Messengers have got video/voice support! Skype video is under its way and latest alpha is a great improvement, almost on pair with its Windows counterpart. As for foobar2000 it is said in Hydrogenaudio.org that the developer is not interested in porting it to Linux. (Although he might any time because of the so many whining). I personally don't think Amarok or Audacious are on pair with foobar2000 specially when you use the file management features like audio conversion, FLAC to mp3, FLAC to WAV, ReplayGain, Masstagging, 20-band EQ, true gapless playback. Foobar2000 runs under WINE but the point is that foobar2000 had everything to be the leading linux player.

5) My Webcam DLink DSB-110 works but too dark.
Looks like a obscure legacy Webcam. E Have you tried to ajust bright/contrast?

They say it's legacy in the site, but believe me, it's not a year yet since I bought it. I believe it's because the driver can't still get the best out of it. It uses the gpsca/sn9x102 bridge. It has its adjustments but nothing compares to the Windows image.

6) Boot time is slower than XP.
That's debatable at best. Some users have reported the opposite. Frankly, does that make difference if an Operating System boot 30 seconds slower?

My Windows XP has a fast load, I don't allow applications to load with it, no Spyware, no Anti-Virus load with it. Its RAM load after boot is around 99-120 MB, it's a very taken care system, couple of services disabled. I might see some situation where a user will definitely make XP turn into a slow slug. For me, Ubuntu was slower. I have to watch that orange bar for almost 1 full minute, and from XP boot to XP login I just have to wait 18 seconds.

I personally don't think Amarok or Audacious are on pair with foobar2000 specially when you use the file management features like audio conversion, FLAC to mp3, FLAC to WAV

I use audacity most of the times for converting audio formats and analysis.

The GUI interface of foobar2000 is arguably archaic.

That question should be addressed to Adobe, Flash Player developer.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform



It looks like you have not installed the plugin with "nspluginwrapper -i /foo/bar' command.




It is obvious your comparison is already flawed because you have a tweaked Windows XP vs a stock Ubuntu. Shouldn't you do the same for Ubuntu or Fedora (to keep on topic)?

a) foobar2000 interface is bad, agreed. But the management it provides is not found in any other player. You also have Columns UI and Album Art Plugin, but of course not everyone is keen to customize.

b) I did try to nspluginwrapper -i /foo/bar but it returned error, something like invalid plugin type.

c) if you install stock XP, stock Ubuntu and stock Fedora you will notice that XP still loads faster, Ubuntu slower, and Fedora even more slower. Just make yourself a test.

d) Too bad we depend on Flash nowadays, to be honest I wished this format was never the defacto standard for animations in the web. I am really sick of it.

"/foo/bar" is just an example. The path of Flash plugins should be "/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins". The name of file is libflashplugins.so AFAIR once you have it installed.



Not anymore in the case of Fedora 7. On my system, a stock Windows XP Professional has a slight advantage to load on login screen and slower on initializing desktop. It is a case of variable mileage depending the system.

question is is it faster to a responsive system or just to a windows screen

What has Ubuntu taken the lead in. Fedora makes it clear it is about developing a totally free and unencumbered operating system. Most of the extra stuff you can get easily, from livna, which is available for a new version even before it is released. One of the first things I did was to download the nvidia driver from livna.org, hours after Fedora was released.

Fedora caters to a more diverse crowd than Ubuntu. Fedora is ahead in many respects. Especially with SELinux. Now I suppose you speak for yourself when you say SELinux is not important to you, but I like having a secure system.

People can continue harping about codecs, but that is not going to change for Fedora. Redhat is a public company and has a duty to its shareholders to cover their backs.

Mixing livna and freshrpms, as suggested by that link, is not a very good idea.

and the reason for that would be ? (care to explain)

To avoid dependency hell.
Using third party repositories is all right, but I've had conflicting packages/dependencies when I had both Livna and Freshrpms enabled, and it's a bit of a pain to fix it then.

So these days I'm more on the conservative side when it comes to third party repos.

But everybody is free to find that out for her/himself, of course.

What's more, you really don't *need* both for that mp3 and video dvd stuff. One will do.

I added Livna repo and it was a breeze to install mp3, divx, and mplayer. yum install mplayer mplayer-fonts mplayer-gui. I installed the RPM for realaudio off of real.com and Flash 9 from Adobe's site. Loaded up win32codecs and I can play Windows media, mpegs, real audio, mp3, and Flash video. I have a flash drive where I keep all my multimedia binaries and I just reinstall them when a new Fedora release comes out. Add Microsoft's core web fonts RPM and Firefox looks great.

Far easier is install livna repo and
yum install vlc gstreamer-plugins-bad (or via gui)

this should install evertything you need including lame, dvdcss, mp3 dvd playing etc