This is not a full FC4 review but a brief overview of a user’s experieces with it and five screenshots.
A quick look at Fedora Core 4
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I just wanted to say I was a little disappointed with Fedora Core 4 final release.
After installing FC4 on my Dell 4500 2.4Ghz system, I started getting white noise generation on my sound card.
This was fixed by disabling one of the en switches in the sound mixer but I never had this issue before on FC1 through FC4 test3.
I was also unable to get VMware v5 to configure properly.
The RPM installed fine but configuring it via the vmware-config.pl tool generated errors on creation of the bridged network.
VMware is a must for some of the tasks I need to do so this was kind of a killer.
Lastly, although not a Fedora issue, I was dissappointed that the DAG repository did not offer FC4 specific RPM packages for mplayer, xmms-mp3, etc.
I know I could download the source and compile to get them going but I don’t want to spend that much time on it.
Until these issues get resolved, I will regretfully have to stay at FC3.
If anyone has advice on how to get around these things, please let me know.
I was pleased with FC4 Test 3 and would really like to adopt the new version.
Regarding the white noise, you may want to submit a bug report. I think it’s bugs.redhat.com.
DAG needs time to rebuild packages for FC4. AFAIK, he does it on his own with his own resources. You should wait if you want it done for you.
As for me, I installed several dag fc3 packages on fc4, and they run fine.
1. Come on, you had to move a slider switch, they can’t plan for all users sound cards.
2. http://platan.vc.cvut.cz/ftp/pub/vmware/ Not sure why this was left of the release notes this time around.
3. check freshrpms.net
I’ve been diligently downloading and installing the test versions of FC4 (from test1 to test3). Each time, I’d never have a problem with it. Oddly enough, upon installing the final release, a couple of problems started popping up.
First there’s the NVidia glx problem (I reported in http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=51972&goto=newpost). Then there were a couple of SELinux-related issues. phpblogger (a photo-blogging software) stopped working, but this wasn’t really a bug but a problem with PHP5.
Other than that, FC4 works great! All the advertised new features were dead on. Booting up is definitely faster than FC3. Clearlooks looks clear and quite professional, and the widgets easy on the eyes and distinguishable.
I’ve got 2GB of RAM on my office workstation so I’ll be trying Xen out next.
Thanks to all the Fedora hackers out there!
The link is dead above. Anyone have a mirror?
I installed FC4 on my desktop machine yesterday.
My ASUS 138g Wifi card was not detected. No worries I think, I am prepared for this.
tar xvfz /mnt/fat/ndiswrapper.tgz
make
make install
rpm2cpio /mnt/fat/driver-marvell-2.3.0.3-1ark.i586.rpm|cpio -idv
ndiswrapper -i ./usr/share/drivers/marvell/mrv8k51.inf
ndiswrapper -m
ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
mrv8k51 driver present, hardware present
Rebooted.
Ran Fedora’s Network config tool, selected wireless. Choose ndiswrapper(wlan0) from the list etc….
Clicked to activate the interface.
ping 192.168.0.1 (My router), it pings perfectly.
ping google.com – Won’t ping it.
Checked browser, can’t see any web sites at all, only my routers webmin page.
Edited /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
GATEWAY is blank, changed it to GATEWAY=192.168.0.1.
De-activated then activated the interface again.
Still the same, got no external access at all.
Played for a few hours then got fed up Mandriva on. Worked fine. Same as Ubuntu and SuSE did.
Other than that, FC4 looks really good. It’s noticibly faster than Ubuntu, SuSE and Mandriva on the same hardware.
GCJ Eclipse seems very nice too.
I got the network to function on my MSI Neo2Platinum but I had to try Eth1 instead of ETH0 like it usually prefers. Very strange. And redhat still doesnt make entries for dos/win partitions during install. When I checked last night there were no freshrpms just yet but I bet they will be present soon.
I downloaded the final the day it came out and installed it over test 3. It has been working like a charm. I didn’t have any install problems at all. It picked up my ethernet card, USB key drive, scanner, palm pilot. I have noticed that Nautilus will crash sometimes when it starts up. I think that is a Gnome/Nautilus bug. It is a little annoying since I have to open up a console and ‘killall nautilus’ and then open nautilus again.
In terms of day to day operations FC4 is working great for me. I have Firefox running, Open Office 1.94 is working great, Real Player is stable, Thunderbird is running my mail, GFTP is uploading downloading files for web sites, and I am using Gedit to write PHP code since it supports PHP syntax highlighting and more development features.
I really like this version of Fedora.
No pretty front end yet, but FC4 packages are there:
http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/4/
someone should get the two companies to combine efforts. No point in having two distros doing so much redundant work.
What is redundant?
Solaris is not Linux
Thats like saying Mac and Windows are the same thing and should work together.
There is some really cool new RedHat technologies that is finally in Fedora that most people who just run desktops might miss, such as:
1) full versions of Redhat’s good HA Cluster. This is first time a decent HA Clustering has been fully integrated and ready to use in a free distro. (A big deal if your running fedora servers)
2) XEN…nuff said.
3) GFS, the really cool new clutered filesystems ala the legendary operating system VMS. If GFS takes off it will make some interesting server environments for Linux, like single system image clusters etc. Nice stuff that some very smart people at Redhat are putting lots of effort into.
4) The new OpenSource version of Netscape Enterprise Directory Server. The first full blown enterprise strength LDAP server integrated into a free Linux distro.
There is lots of other stuff too that you get from the super smart people at RedHat that gets put into Fedora that you do not find in other free Linux distros.
Something to keep in mind at least when comparing Fedora to other Linux distros for use on servers. The only thing that really compares now for being good a good server choice for enterprise type features in a free distro would probably be Centos or Whitebox.
good luck running point2play. it will take down your whole desktop. i suspect somthing to do with gcc4. we have been here before and these problems will be fixed im sure.
Did your computer reboot when starting point2play? Do you use ATi fglrx? Then recompile your kernel with CONFIG_REGPARM=no and CONFIG_4KSTACKS=no, worked fine with me.
Why in the world are these option still default when they are known to cause problems for a LOT of applications? (cedega/wine/vmware/win4lin/atidrivers/nvidiadrivers to name a few)
Besides that, Fedora Core 4 is an excellent release of high quality as always.
To the first comment; what the hell does DAG’s repository have to do with if the distro is good or not? FYI it’ll have packages up soon. Also, don’t blame your inability to install vmware on the distribution, works fine here.
core 4/kde – http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=362&slide=1…
core 4/gnome – http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=363&slide=1…
If this crashed your system, it is either a bug in the XWindows drivers or something beneath that (kernel drivers).
There is no chance that the app was the one at fault in a system crash.
And you people expect to get on the desktop how?
And you people expect to get on the desktop how?
Please educate yourself about Fedora Core by going to its website. You should know Fedora Core is 100% open sources and does not include patent softwares which it is why you will never see mp3 ever. That is debated numerous times.
There is nothing worse than people with serious lack of informations.
It’s legal to distribute the source. They should have automated installation of MP3 software from source to avoid sending binaries out.
It’s legal to distribute the source. They should have automated installation of MP3 software from source to avoid sending binaries out.
Legal as a sponsored distros by Redhat that is Fedora in US?
Is MP3 patent free? Are Mp3 source modifiable?
Encoding sources are not free for companies like Red hat. Including mp3 inside a sponsored free OS means trouble under US laws. You should try OGG Vorbis as alternative.
I was an ex-user of redhat so i decided to give fedora a try but… this is just a collection of alpha-quality packages put toghether and distribuited just to get bug report for redhats “serious” releases. According to my estimations almost all server-packages (except named?) don’t work by default cause of selinux, plus most client-apps crash at least one time in 1 day of use….
I call BS. First of all, you can disable selinux, even on a server by server basis, if it’s giving you problems. Secondly, I’ve played around with quite a few of the included servers, and for basic things I haven’t had any problems at all with selinux getting in the way. And thirdly, I’ve made it a point to go through each of the applications I find on the menus, as well as quite a few others, and test them out as best I can. So far I haven’t had a single application crash on me. I haven’t had any problems yet period, aside from one bug in gcc when I tried to compile the latest version of wine. Perhaps this is the case of yet another luser who mistakenly blames software for hardware problems?
It sounds like the DHCP is having a cry and not setting your DNS address’s correctly.
Easy to fix just do a google.
Don’t use crapy nVidia installer, because you will have problems:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2005-May/msg01602.h…
You can use nvidia drivers with SELinux enabled, just install RPMs from rpm.livna.org
I am a big Fedora fan since Fedora Core 1.0. The installation process was a great improvement over some other popular Linux distributions at that time. What I like the most is that Fedora is a bleeding edge distro and it has the largest package repository among the actual Linux distros.
In my Linux end-user life, all I care is to enjoy a usable and productive environnement at any time even if it means installing few more things by myself after installation (RPM may not be the best system but it works quite well 99% of the time).
One thing I was hoping is that Fedora would improve its intrinsec speed and GUI responsiveness. For my everyday use I have an Athlon 2100 PC running on 1GB RAM. This may not be the latest on the street but it’s still a very decent machine for software developpement, word processing, multimedia etc …
Either using Gnome or KDE, speed has never improved and this no different and so true in this new release Fedora Core 4.
The other day I decided to give “Ubuntu” a try. At first I was very reluctant knowing that it is Debian based because I had this feeling that it’ll takes days to configure for my needs since I had this idea (false maybe) that Debian is a “power-geek-who had lots of spare time to spend” type of distribution. “Ubuntu” installation process is as smooth as Fedora except it is text based (but who cares ? well an eye candy installer would not hurt anyway). It is usable right out of the box and best of all the speed and GUI responsiveness I was looking for years is there. From the speed point of view I can’t see any differences between “Ubuntu” and a standard Windows XP. For the rest it has all the neat user friendly configuration tools and features that Fedora has.
I won’t say more here because I need more time to get a better idea and “Ubuntu” is not really the topic here.
I installed Fedora Core 4 on my laptop, and the display is stuffed. I had to use screenshots on osdir.com just to get through the post-installation setup, but I don’t know what the model is for the laptop’s LCD. Kinda sucks, it worked straight away on Ubuntu, I don’t know why it isn’t working in Fedora.
…now that I think about it, it worked fine when I installed Core 2 last year on it.
Well.. replying to Mathman
1) you can disable selinux? yes, but it is enabled by default, and by default it broke most packages.
2) “I’ve played around with quite a few of the included servers, and for basic things I haven’t had any problems at all with selinux getting in the way” … well in my first and last day with fedora core 4 i have played with named dhcpd and cupsd. dhcpd cannot bind() cause selinux, cupsd cannot write() printer.conf cause selinux, named works.
3) “I’ve made it a point to go through each of the applications I find on the menus, as well as quite a few others, and test them out as best I can”… i’ve used firefox, evolution, eclipse, gedit. firefox works, evolution works, eclipse after 45 minutes refused to save files (too many open files descriptros) and consume 180mb of ram, gedit crash while saving two times.
4) “I haven’t had any problems yet period, aside from one bug in gcc when I tried to compile the latest version of wine.”… it is well-know that gcc4 has many problems compiling old codes and it is well-know that binaries compiled with it are actually slower.
5) at the end i may speak about KDE, that has been made unusable by redhat from redhat linux 8.0… and KDE project lose a lot of users thanks to redhat.. and we lose some high quality code (like konqueror).
So.. i’m really curious to know how can someone use such a crappy distro…
“1) you can disable selinux? yes, but it is enabled by default, and by default it broke most packages. ”
It works perfectly well for me for all the packages that I have tried. Where are the bugzilla numbers for the problems you are talking about?
“well in my first and last day with fedora core 4 i have played with named dhcpd and cupsd. dhcpd cannot bind() cause selinux, cupsd cannot write() printer.conf cause selinux, named works. ”
bugzilla numbers again?. where did you report the problem?. where are the avc messages?
“clipse after 45 minutes refused to save files (too many open files descriptros) and consume 180mb of ram, gedit crash while saving two times. ”
did you upgrade or do a clean install. did you try removing .eclipse folder if you did a upgrade?.
”
4) “I haven’t had any problems yet period, aside from one bug in gcc when I tried to compile the latest version of wine.”.”
this is a not a bug. GCC4 checks follows standards and catches far more bugs in code than the previous versions of the compiler. New compiler versions such as these require code to be modified
“it is well-know that gcc4 has many problems compiling old codes and it is well-know that binaries compiled with it are actually slower. ”
Performance is something faster and at other times slower depending on the architecture and optimisation flags. The infrastructure to do this has been contributed by Red Hat developers however the optimisation work needed has not been merged with this release. You need to get the updated releases (when they are released) for that
http://lwn.net/Articles/84888/
”
5) at the end i may speak about KDE, that has been made unusable by redhat from redhat linux 8.0… and KDE project lose a lot of users thanks to redhat.. and we lose some high quality code (like konqueror). ”
it has very well been usable. If you dont not prefer the default settings you can very well change it.
“So.. i’m really curious to know how can someone use such a crappy distro… ”
its growing in users in leaps and bounds. Just because you dont like it doesnt mean that it doesnt work for anyone else
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/03/14/fedora_makes_rapid_pro…
I was an ex-user of redhat so i decided to give fedora a try but… this is just a collection of alpha-quality packages put toghether and distribuited just to get bug report for redhats “serious” releases.
This is a black and white or negative view on the whole Fedora process. Being a Fedora user I know I am using bleeding edge versions of applications and I am comfortable with that knowing I get to try new stuff way before my Debian buddies. For example I was using Open Office 2, Gnome 2.10 months ago. Were there bugs here and there? yes. But there is also always a stable version of Fedora you can use. I did most my work on FC3 since it was reliable but I kept FC4 around to try out all the new stuff.
I have no problem being the ‘beta tester’ for Redhat since I am benefitting too.
-mark
I’ve installed every version of Fedora Core and have had absolutely NO problems. I do have only ONE problem right now that wasn’t there before Core 4. Upon every log in and log out I get a pop up saying No Volume Control Elements and/or Devices found. I don’t have a sound card – so how do you get rid of this pop up.
I’ve installed this on a Pentium III 600MHZ system with only 256MB of RAM, no sound, G200 Matrox Video card, and Fedora Core 4 is much faster than 3 was in all respects. I can’t believe someone would say this is slow on a better system as someone posted earlier – unless bigger and better isn’t always the case for a Linux system???
This is on the lowest end machine I have and for being on such a piece of crap hardware, I must say it’s very smooth and fast for such a huge distro. This is also setting it up as a Workstation and in the past as a Server.
One plus about Fedora is that it can probably be installed on just about any hardware to bring that old piece of crap back to life whereas other OS’s can NOT.
One thing I’ll say if you have junk laying around bring it back to life and get Fedora Core 4.
“Upon every log in and log out I get a pop up saying No Volume Control Elements and/or Devices found. I don’t have a sound card – so how do you get rid of this pop up. ”
I am not sure whether there is a workaround but this should probably be done automatically. Kindly file a bug report in bugzilla.redhat.com describing your problem. Thanks
Is there any way to get a free RHEL-type distribution that actually uses the RHEL kernel? I’m trying to use Xilinx, but it wants to install a binary driver for parallel port usage. This doesn’t work with the CentOS kernel, nor with the FC3 kernel.
Forgot to say… Xilinx Webpack requires RHEL3, so a distribution that uses that kernel is really what I want.
whitebox linux?
That looks promising. Thanks!
Did you try CentOS 4.0 or 3.x?
People that are happy don’t usually say anything, its the ones who’re mad that do. So Id just like to say I haven’t had any problems so far, during install a couple packages said they could not be opened so I clicked retry and they worked. Only two bugs i’ve seen so far since Monday.
Having dag/livna completly done by now would be nice, but I haven’t needed anything more than xmms-mp3 yet which is done.
in system-config-security level you can click a button and disable selinux support for any daemons selinux locks down. for instance go to the ‘named service’ tree and check mark the box listed either:
allow named to overwrite masterzone files.
disable selinux protection for named daemon
disable selinux protection for nscd daemon
the ‘other’ tab has a check box to disable cupsd config protection or go to the Service protection tree and disable cups all together.
These things are not rocket science, they are check boxes you click. How can you be an admin and be running something as complicated as named then have the nerve to complain about default configs being too secure. You’re an admin for crying out loud. do your job.
What has happened to people in general that are so lazy they can’t even download a file anymore? I remember when windows came out people had to download winzip, winamp, flash, java, codecs, nero, mIRC, etc and nobody thought twice about it. When did we get so lazy we expect redhat to import our personal bookmarks for us before building the ISO’s?
A computer is a tool used to get work or play done. If you want it to do something, you have to give it directions. It can’t do everything for everyone by default. you’re going to have to actually “USE” the PC if you want information from it. WTH is going on?!
this is a not a bug. GCC4 checks follows standards and catches far more bugs in code than the previous versions of the compiler. New compiler versions such as these require code to be modified
Gcc crashes. How is that not a bug in gcc? However the devs say it’s been fixed upstream, so hopefully the patch will make it back into fc4 fairly soon.
Do I need the 4th cd? for a normal instalation.
Afaik you only need the first two cd’s for a normal install.
Regarding FC4 in general I think its awesome. I did run into the selinux stopping dhcp problem. Guess i did? I filed a bug report (actually someone beat me to it so I added to it).
Apart from that FC4 is everything I expected in a free distro. I understand the problem with patents, and can understand why mp3 is not supported out of the box. Then again comparing it to windows xp, fedora is almost as good, if not better. It is far better than anything in the win 9x series. (I should know, i had to fix someones a few days ago, thats when I saw how poor win 9x was.)
Software wise there is no going around finding and downloading OpenOffice, avg, zonealarm, firefox, thunderbird etc. Its all there. for the patented software, just add the right repo file and yum -y install blah blah blabbetty blah.
Fedora extras works out of the box. no tinkering necessary for third party unpatented apps!
Hardware wise in my opinion, it either works or it does not. unlike on windows were it does not work, until you find the right drivers, download, install reboot. positives and negatives on both sides.
Security wise its far more secure than any windows will ever be. even if selinux is turned off (as i have atm, waiting for a bugfixed package).
Fedora core is fast, secure, relatively bug free, supports multilib and its relatively bleeding edge.
Lets be honest if we wanted only stability, we would use Debian. and not the sub-distributions that go for newer stuff thats unstable. Or pay for RHEL.
The only reason I still use windows is dreamweaver. Lets hope macrodobe see the light soon. otherwise lets hope nvu catches up (IMO that has a long way to go. Its heading down the root of frontpage instead of dreamweaver. wrong direction, but hopefully I am wrong).
I’ve been using SuSE 9.3 at work for quite a while. I was bored at work on Thursday, however, so I installed Fedora Core 4 on my IBM Thinkpad T-Series machine (I can’t remember the model number off hand). It was like I bought a new machine.
Speedwise, at least when coming from SuSE 9.3, Fedora is great. The only trouble I had with it was installing the Cisco VPN Client. It didn’t play well with SELinux. I don’t blame Fedora for that though, and it was easy enough to work around.
I also like Yum quite a bit. It isn’t as robust package-wise as apt is on Debian-based machines (or maybe it’s just that “yum list all” makes it look like there are less packages), but it is pretty good nonetheless.
Overall, I would recommend Fedora Core 4 to somebody silly enough to ask me my opinion.
typo:experiences
Hello Clinton
Glad you liked it. Welcome to Fedora
I appreciate the work Red Hat does, but I personally do not like Fedora’s short support policies. Unlike Debian stable, you can’t use Fedora as a server.
I also don’t like Fedora’s out-of-the-box look and feel, but that is highly subjective.
Finally, no other distribution offers the breath of configuration tools that Yast offers. But, let me be the first to say that there is space for all of us at the table, whether it is Ubuntu, Mandriva, Suse, Fedora, Debian, etc…
“it has very well been usable. If you dont not prefer the default settings you can very well change it.”
ahaha
i doubt there exist ONE people in the world that prefer redhat’s kde to standard kde! also i doubt you can change it.. becose redhat peoples change the sources to add new bugs.. not just the theme (as most distros).
“bugzilla numbers again?. where did you report the problem?. where are the avc messages? ”
oops, i can’t give avc messages cause i already jump to debian.. i didn’t have time to report problems, becose i first need to solve them.
“did you upgrade or do a clean install. did you try removing .eclipse folder if you did a upgrade?. ”
no, i didn’t upgrade eclipse. it is just extremely slow and it has at least one stability bug. nothing to add. anyway i think the main problem here is that peoples test distributions instead of using them for some days…
“Performance is something faster and at other times slower depending on the architecture and optimisation flags. The infrastructure to do this has been contributed by Red Hat developers however the optimisation work needed has not been merged with this release. You need to get the updated releases (when they are released) for that ”
i have found benchmarks that clearly say that in most cases gcc4.0.0 was slower. now obviusly benchmarks are never objective but you just can’t ignore them.
Finally, no other distribution offers the breath of configuration tools that Yast offers…
You may be right, but YaST can be one of the glaring negatives in SuSE in my opinion.
If you are going to configure your system through YaST and YaST alone, then it works great, but if you want to make manual changes then YaST just gets in the way.
Personally, I like Libranet’s Adminmenu better than YaST.
Unlike Debian stable, you can’t use Fedora as a server.
Sourceforge, Wikipedia and some Hollywood studios use Fedora as server proving your point wrong.
ahaha
i doubt there exist ONE people in the world that prefer redhat’s kde to standard kde! also i doubt you can change it.. becose redhat peoples change the sources to add new bugs.. not just the theme (as most distros).
Before making generalization, I use KDE with gcc-4.0 supported. I am personnaly glad some effects are disabled so you get the chance to try it out. Generalization is dangerous when your assumption is really bad.
oops, i can’t give avc messages cause i already jump to debian.. i didn’t have time to report problems, becose i first need to solve them.
Glad you find the distro you like.
no, i didn’t upgrade eclipse. it is just extremely slow and it has at least one stability bug. nothing to add. anyway i think the main problem here is that peoples test distributions instead of using them for some days…
I think the problem in this context is your assumption.
i have found benchmarks that clearly say that in most cases gcc4.0.0 was slower. now obviusly benchmarks are never objective but you just can’t ignore them.
You know gcc-4.0 will cath once some bus will be fixed and codes clean up.
“Sourceforge, Wikipedia and some Hollywood studios use Fedora as server proving your point wrong.”
this don’t prove anythings becose we don’t know how much works they have done to setup these servers (and how well these servers behave when compared to others).
Why dont you contact them?
You may be right, but YaST can be one of the glaring negatives in SuSE in my opinion.
If you are going to configure your system through YaST and YaST alone, then it works great, but if you want to make manual changes then YaST just gets in the way.
Never had any problems with Yast in the way you described.And i’m configuring a lot of things manually and run apt/synaptics besides YAST on SuSE 9.3 x86_64.The only thing that could be improved is a more fucntional SuSE Firewall2 GUI a la Kmyfirewall.Would be nice to have a advanced screen with which you could toggle some advanced functions or quickly disabling all ports and only opening the needed ones.Other than that impressive version 9.3
I tried CentOS 3.0. Was that the wrong one?
So far quite a nice experience. I try to spend time in many platforms, FreeBSD, Linux, Win*, and I have to say that this Fedora 4 is pretty slick. FreeBSD is still my desktop at work and at home unless I’m playing games, but Fedora will definitely get some time from me, its much easier to setup things such as vpnc for vpn and binary updates are nice. However, I still enjoy BSD for its cohesive world system. Linux in general seems to run a bit faster on my hardware and I don’t get sound card distortion under heavy load (bunziping files for instance).
I installed the ppc version yesterday, it required a whole hard drive to install kept on getting error about the partition not being complete r something. Anways, my sound card was recognized duriong setup and I confirmed it by playing the test sound, I could not play and sound in the movies or any audio cds. The support to ALSA sound card in Fedora core 4 is only for playing test and alert sound which sucks in my opinion, all the linux distors put in half assed effort for us ppc users sucks.