Fedora Core has been out for almost 2 weeks and the first reviews, both good and bad, start trickling in.
A Roundup of Fedora Reviews
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The PCWorld.com review mentioned that the num lock light doesn’t come on when FC2 is booted. After one or two of my users complained about this (lets face it, if you really do want to use the numeric keypad on a non-laptop, you want num lock on permanently), I found and installed “numlockx” at http://caraldi.com/jbq/numlockx/numlockx-1.0.tar.gz (source code, so you’ll have to compile it).
If you install the numlockx binary somewhere like /usr/X11R6/bin then to run it when X starts up in FC2, put this at the end of the file /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0 (or whatever your global pre-login startup script is):
if [ -x /usr/X11R6/bin/numlockx ]
then
# Turn on Num Lock key
/usr/X11R6/bin/numlockx on
fi
Yes, there is an “off” param you can use to numlockx too if you prefer to have numlock off on boot (e.g. laptops).
I’ve been using Fedora2 for almost two weeks now and I really love Gnome 2.6. Ok, I turned off the ‘new’ browsing method and went back to the old way, but I’m loving this version of Gnome more than KDE and I used to really hate Gnome.
I’m happily using Fedora Core 2 with all KDE. it still installs some Gnome stuff for compilation reasons I think, but KDE has always been happier for me. I just don’t care for the look and feel of gnome. Of course if I had my way Enlightenment wouldn’t have disappeared and stopped all progress… gotta love the eye-candy. With a dual Xeon and 2 GB of ram I think i can spare the cycles.
The first time I had FC2 installed properly I was thinking how polished it was when I saw the attractive GDM screen and good looking cursors… and then I got to the rest of the distribution. It’s prolly just my bias now, but I keep going back to Debian/knoppix variants. Like Mepis specifically. I can virtually use the whole distro while it’s installing on my system.
RPM-based distros just seem real lackluster from there on out, especially when you realize how intuitive synaptic really is. I’ll give the next big release of Fedora a shot, just out of habit, but I really end up totally underwhelmed when I’ve used the latest incarnations.
Still, more power to RH for providing it.
foo
I can sort of understand your not liking rpm distros a little, though i have not had a problem with them. However, I cannot understand how you can say synaptic is intuitive. I have used if before on Redhat and now Fedora, and I do not bother installing it anymore. It offers nothing above command line apt-get, apt-cache and so on. Especially if you know what you are looking to install. It is the opposite of intuitive. Red Carpet is more intuitive by a mile and much better thought out IMO.
I think the reason Debian is as ‘good’ as it is made out to be is because it is so slow. The thousands of packages that are said to be available are not always ‘compatible’ with each other, and this is mostly unnecessary choice. Fedora offers most of the packages people need in the core distro (pun intended), and the few most people may need are available already in third party repos. Ther is a community of packagers for Fedora which is very thriving already. For example, dag.wieers.com has some 900+ packages for Fedora Core 2 already, although he does seem to have heavily automated the packaging process. there is Freshrpms and rpm.livna.org , planetccrma and many other smaller repos. Getting what you want is not too difficult anymore, and its the same apt-get install to get there.
I think a lot of people appreciate a community distro that is current and ubiquitous…but FC2 could have benefitted greatly from another thirty days of testing, and perhaps a wider scope of tests.
The dual boot bug should have never have made it to release.
They should have also waited for a kernel with firewire support.
I’m hoping for a Fedora 2.5 or a short wait for FC3, even though I am using FC2, warts and all now.
All things aside though, this is still a great distro and that is why even this won’t make me switch, although the forthcoming desktop distro from Novell (Sundance?) may cause me to reconsider, if it is a homerun.
If it only was possible to browse windows and samba networks through the network icon. Or is it just me that have problems?
Konqueror have no problem accessing windows NT shares.
Other than that I think Gnome is now starting to look really great, and if it wasn’t for that network browsing thing I would strongly recommend it.
Exactly what I think, it couldn’t be ready and it wasn’t. All its test versions had problems which were showstoppers to many, thus those many that could be testing and improving the system simply avoided it.
To each his own.
Probably the next version of Fedora will be much better, ’cause the hard part is in the past already
Probably the next version of Fedora will be much better, ’cause the hard part is in the past already
FC2 problem was inclusion of knl2.6 and SELinux.
There’s another three hard steps to take.
1. Secure X (There’s a lot of talk about SELinux like features for X)
2. HAL (I don’t mean to get it running, I mean to get it interfaced with DE and everything)
3. Data interfacing trough desktop overall (Evo2 is just a start)
Linux as such is going trough a lot of changes right now. And your thought is just too optimistic (:but it’s a nice thought anyway:)
btw. No bashing at FC2. Hell, in another month I’m installing FC2 on my notebook (now still FC1, I always wait for one or two months before use. Let the problems be solved first)
I get the impression that the reviewer is pretty set in his ways and has little patience for change or trying things out. If you try to drive a helicoptor the same way you drive a small passenger plane, you will get into trouble.
I haven’t tried GNOME 2.6 or FC2, but from a few other reviews that I’ve read (the one on Ars Technica being the best), his complaints about the open dialog box can be fixed with a simple CTRL-L. I have no ideas about the “Man and Info pages are gone from the new Gnome help browser”, but since GNOME help apparently still supports Man and Info pages (correct me if I’m wrong), I’m guessing that the Fedora developers decided to limit GNOME help to just GNOME. It makes sense since when people look for *desktop* help they want to see information about the desktop, not the C API. Mixing all documentation together can create quite a mess. Case in point, the MSDN used to be an invaluable source of information for MFC programmers. Now it’s a wasteland. The MFC information is still there, but in order to get at it you have to wade through a bunch of .NET crap. That being said, I’m sure it’s possible to configure GNOME help to reference whatever man page or info page you want and there’s nothing stopping you from using other help browsers in GNOME.
Anothing thing to notice is that he had to make a few corrections in his review. This one is most striking “The author didn’t look closely enough. Evolution has handled cryptographic signatures and message encryption correctly for a long while now”. I think he didn’t look close enough into GNOME. Nautilus can be turned into browsing mode fairly simply if you hate spatial.
He’s done a poor job as a reviewer. As a user, OTOH, his opinion does matter. He represents the type of user that is impatient and thinks that he knows “the one true way” things work. More than a few people fall into this category and GNOME needs to put a bit more effort into letting them know that “GNOME is different, and by the way, this is how you can adapt”. Take the CTRL-L feature for instance.
(See arstechnica http://arstechnica.com/reviews/004/software/gnome-2.6/gnome-2.6-5.h… )
There doesn’t seem to be an obvious way for someone who hasn’t read the documentation to know that CTRL-L will open up the location bar. The menuing system solved this problem. You can find out that CTRL-S corresponds to File->Save simply because the menu also mentions what control keys correspond to what menu entries. How would a newbie find out about CTRL-L in the new dialog box? Personally, I think the fix is simple, add a Menu called “Other options” under the file list (right beside the “All files” button). It could contain “rarely used” features such as “Open Location Bar (CTRL-L)”, and “Open Nautilus Window at this location so you can do stuff like create directories or rename files”.
GNOME 2.6 has some good ideas and it can scale from newbies to power users. It just needs to work on making it easier to newbies to become power users.
Holy Cr*p, has this gut even used GNOME before? The only major Fedora bug he found was theat Rhythmbox had a problem with ogg files. Everthing else he lists under “What’s broken” is a list of issues he has with OSS apps in general. How is Gimp not having icc built in a Fedora Flaw? How is Gnome 2.6 behaving as designed a Fedora Flaw? Hey, I’d don’t LOVE Spatial but chr*st this guy is attacking the version of Gnome that EVERY SINGLE Linux vendor is currently shipping or going to ship this year. Are all of these distros “broken” and in need of “putting” down?
Sorry but this guy either is a newly converted KDE fan who hates both Red Hat and GNOME or he’s a horrible reviewer. Take your pick.
Want to say Fedora is a PITA because it ships with little to no mulitmedia abilities out of the box. Fine. Want to say it was completly bone headed to ship FC2 with that dual boot bug? Fine. But don’t go attacking the OSS apps that every Linux vendor has to work with and then say its a Fedora issue. What a terrible review.
Fedora is complete bloatware and it’s so slow. A minimal install is well over 500MB and with basic GUI it’s 1.1GB. What happened to Linux being tight and fast?
Dual Boot problems put me off trying it this time around and I have run Red Hat since ver6. I bet there is little chance of the kernel being updated in the ISO’s until FC3… Shame but as long as Audacity and Python run in Windows, I can live without Linux!
The dual boot bug should have never have made it to release.
You see this over and over. The bug is in WINDOWS. Should Linux wait for MS to fix all their bugs before making improvements? The “fix” to this “bug” is simple and has been posted everywhere for the last month – just set the drive mode (via the BIOS) to LBA. There – fixed. NOW can we distribute?
> The dual boot bug should have never have made it to release.
This problem is not only Fedora.
BTW solution is very simple:
http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/
I have been running Linux: Fedora Core 1 since early October of 2003 when I finally completed the migration from the “other platform” to Linux. I have been running Core 2 since I was able to download the ISOs and burn to upgrade.
Guess what? No faults, reboots, or loss of system or private data.
No operating system is perfect or comes without its own set of unique hassles. But Fedora Core, as any Linux, by design, has more strengths and less weaknesses as an operating system. I like it alot. Of course, I love BeOS still which is another example excellent operating systems.
Security. While Fedora Core, like any Linux, is not absolutely immune to viruses, it comes extremely close. The design model behind it was built with security in mind. Security flaws, when found, are generally repaired within “hours” of discovery not weeks, months, or, need-I-say, until the next upgrade that must be purchased. The Fedora Cores 1 and 2 both come with excellent built-in security features. Heck, I usually have to scale it back a little for my tastes.
Stability. As a PC support technician and small “other platform” network system supervisor, I dread the reboot cycle of the other platform. Even in X-tra P-lump, though reduced, still exists. The BSOD, well, good lord, don’t get me started. Even in 2003 Server, from NT4SP6 that went before, I dread making drastic changes for fear of taking down or crashing the whole “in-production” system for stopping or starting a needed service daemon. In Fedora Core 2, its hit “system-config-services” and start, stop, or restart the daemons without wasting time rebooting. I would love to see someone do an academic study of how much time these reboot cycles take in a single day over the average fiscal year.
Power. Fedora Cores 1 and 2, as any Linux, is designed to bring the power and flexibility of an enterprise-level server to the user. It can be used as a personal or educational desktop, a business workstation. It can be brought up as a “proof-of-concept” server for home, education, or business purposes. I have set up several “proof-of-concept” Linux servers. On one project we were able to capture two fiscal years worth of student data, one of two months and the other of twelve, to report to the state-level bodies. Fedora, like any Linux, and numbers are funding power. Reality for education.
Licenses. I recently was invited to the “Southeast New Mexico IT Exchange” hosted by Eastern New Mexico University. In attendance was ENMU (my Alma Mater), Clovis Community College, New Mexico Military Institute, Mesaland Community College, etc. It was a nice event and well put together. There was regional sales rep from the alternate operating system company as-well-as reps from other companies.
The rep was given twenty minutes for a presentation. Mostly this covered licenses. The message was clear. Keep a copy of your licenses and they can make special deals with institutions. Most educational institutions are struggling with the costs of licensing and management of them. Fedora Core, as any other Linux, is an excellent option for educational where the goals of teaching critical thinking skills and managing the “public”, read mine and other’s property taxes, funds are critical.
Money. As a business, school, or individual you are going to have to pay for something. But software, new or upgrades, in Fedora Core, or any Linux, are almost “nill”. As I have read in Mr. Marcel Gagne, book, Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!, say, “Free software for Linux is almost an embarrassment of riches.” There is also the K-12 Fedora project for schools with an abundance of software. Even those that “must” use a “other platform” program can do it. It appears Fedora, like any Linux, has better memory management.
The fear for a school board, a business, or an individual is the proverbial technological step into the unknown. I can say from personal experience that what they have learned in another operating system “can” be taken into Fedora Core or any Linux.
“I think the reason Debian is as ‘good’ as it is made out to be is because it is so slow.”
(Two of) the things that put Debian above the herd are packaging quality and integration, which are largely the result of all the packages having to abide by the Debian Policy Manual (http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/). Fedora doesn’t have anything close to this.
“The thousands of packages that are said to be available are not always ‘compatible’ with each other, and this is mostly unnecessary choice.”
“Said to be available”? Lol – don’t just take other peoples’ word for it, then; it’s simple enough to go check for yourself (http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages).
Personally, I don’t agree that having a selection of programs that fulfil the same general function is undesirable. As a case in point, Emacs and Vim are both text editors, and yet users of either are unlikely to find the other an adequate substitute. In fact, that’s why alternatives are ever packaged in the first place – the developer responsible wasn’t happy with what was already available.
“there is Freshrpms and rpm.livna.org , planetccrma and many other smaller repos.”
While that’s better than the software not being available at all, it’s still suboptimal. Each repository has different packaging and QA policies (assuming it has any at all). There’s also a much greater potential for incompatibilities since by and large each repo only tests its packages against a clean Fedora install, and not in conjunction with packages from any of the other myriad third-party repositories around.
which are largely the result of all the packages having to abide by the Debian Policy Manual (http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/). Fedora doesn’t have anything close to this.
What are these?
http://www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraDocuments
http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/developers-guide/
Packages have to go though a Q&A process for Fedora aswell. Certain nameing schemes, no STDOUT, etc. There are some rules and those rules are documented.
Fedora has an aggressive schedule. Debian does not. Fedora has already seen second release and might see third before Debian upgrades to something totally new. No, 3.0r1 and so on do not count. Debian has time to get 15000 or however many packages, whilst Fedora does not. Debian aims to run on 11 (??) different architectures, Fedora does not. Right now there is only active development on 3, x86, x86-64, PowerPC.
Fedora is steered by a company as a development base for its own Enterprise Distribution, Debian is made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts. They couldn’t be more different.
If you are ok with downloading Debian and then choosing repositories so that you can get the system you really want then more power to you. Fedora is for people who want a decent system from the get go, and who would rather do a cd upgrade rather than keep a consistently morphing system.
There are repositories which do not conflict with each other and with the main tree for starters. It is very seasy to find prepackaged software for Fedora. I have most of what I need from 3 repositories only. No problem. It helps Fedora is seen as a truly first tier development platform by the community, because many people actually work from Redhat et al.
Does anyone know if FC2 supports 3D acceleration for IGP 320M ? I know patches from DRI tree are available, but I just could not make it work.
“What are these?
http://www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraDocuments
http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/developers-guide/
Packages have to go though a Q&A process for Fedora aswell. Certain nameing schemes, no STDOUT, etc. There are some rules and those rules are documented.”
Sure, they do. I wasn’t claiming that Fedora has no QA policy at all, merely that it has nothing as comprehensive as the Debian Policy Manual. Try following those links you posted, compare what’s there with what’s available at http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals and you’ll quickly see for yourself what I mean.
“However, I cannot understand how you can say synaptic is intuitive. I have used if before on Redhat and now Fedora, and I do not bother installing it anymore. It offers nothing above command line apt-get, apt-cache and so on. Especially if you know what you are looking to install. It is the opposite of intuitive. Red Carpet is more intuitive by a mile and much better thought out IMO. ”
Hi Maynard,
I do find it intuitive. Let’s say I want a game to pass the time. Just look at synaptics initial menu and there it says “Games” “Games (Non-free)” “Games (Contrib)” all ready to go. I just peruse the offerings, and simply request which be installed. Took around three mouse clicks once I found a package that sounded tempting. There was no command line, no depedency hell, nothing that was really going to stop me from enjoying said package.
Let’s say I know what to look for (as you stated)… say GAIM, just type it in the search field and voila, it’s there. Try finding the appropriate RPM for RH or Suse or MDK even and not only do you have to worry about version of the OS and architecture, there are still dependencies you have little chance finding! At least this has been my experience.
Sorry for straying off topic, 🙂
foo
>
You see this over and over. The bug is in WINDOWS. Should Linux wait for MS to fix all their bugs before making improvements? The “fix” to this “bug” is simple and has been posted everywhere for the last month – just set the drive mode (via the BIOS) to LBA. There – fixed. NOW can we distribute?
>
>
Every freaking IDE hard drive I’ve seen over the past
10 years *TELLS YOU IN THE FREAKING SET-UP INSTRUCTIONS*
to set the drive mode via the BIOS setup to LBA.
Who the heck isn’t doing this? And why? Can’t these people
read?
“Fedora is steered by a company as a development base for its own Enterprise Distribution, Debian is made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts. They couldn’t be more different.”
You must be joking! 😀
You make it sound like this is a case of “enthusiasts” versus “professionals”. Most of the people who develop Debian are actually both, working as sysadmins, software developers or similar to earn a living.
In any case, “steering” is the crucial word. By opening their distribution up, RedHat intended for the Open Source community to do the majority of their development for them whilst keeping control via the Steering Committee. Thus, if you are claiming that the Fedora distribution is still mostly the work of RedHat employees (as opposed to enthusiasts like those who work on Debian) that indicates that the project has failed to achieve one of its primary goals and is hardly something for Fedora to crow about.
In addition, Debian is supported by the commercial distributions that base themselves upon it (e.g. Libranet [http://libranet.com/], Xandros [http://www.xandros.com] and Linspire [http://www.linspire.com]) as well as various governments (e.g. Extremadura in Spain [http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51994,00.html] and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research [http://developer.skolelinux.no/projectinfo.html.en]). I got those from memory; I’m sure there are plenty more.
“If you are ok with downloading Debian and then choosing repositories so that you can get the system you really want then more power to you.”
I’m typing this from a pure (read: no third-party repositories) Debian Unstable system right now.
“I have most of what I need from 3 repositories only.”
Only most? I take it that the number of *actual* third-party repositories you’re using is even greater, then.
“Every freaking IDE hard drive I’ve seen over the past
10 years *TELLS YOU IN THE FREAKING SET-UP INSTRUCTIONS*
to set the drive mode via the BIOS setup to LBA.
Who the heck isn’t doing this? And why? Can’t these people
read?”
BIOSes have been able to detect the correct mode for almost as many years. Why bother with setting it manually?
“The problem is that Windows demands a “sane” CHS table.
This table has been altered by Fedora Cores installer and Windows hangs. Luckily, the actual table, in LBA format, is not corrupted.”
The question is this: Why has no one fixed Fedora Core’s installer so that it does not install an insane CHS table?
Well, I tried out Fedora Core 2 earlier this week. I ran into the dreaded dual-boot bug and royally screwed up my system by trying to fix it without doing the research. There is a good email being passed around (by Jack Aboutboul). If you are dual booting with either Win2K or WinXP, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THIS DOCUMENT!!! They really shouldn’t have released with this bug, but I guess we all make mistakes.
Anyway… I fixed my system and went ahead and installed FC2. This time, I followed the instructions and had no problems. I’m not sure if its the 2.6 kernel, but it definitely feels faster than my Libranet 2.8 installation.
I really like Gnome 2.6. It “feels” right to me. The browser version of nautilus is easy to find for when you need it, but for “managing” user files, spatial works great. It is definitely a matter of taste, but I think some of these reviews are pre-biased against Gnome. At least give it a shot. If you hate it, you can always run KDE.
Installing apps is easy with yum (though Synaptic with apt is a little nicer). yum works well enough, so I’m not complaining. You can find a yum.conf to get you going with “non-free” packages on fedorafaq.org.
Aside from the dual-boot bug, I think its a great distro.
FC2’s boot bug is not a real show stopper if you are willing to invest a couple of minutes on google searching for the solution. Bios solution somewhere in this thread, above this post. The general bloat, gnome, hardware detection and installation, problems are “features” anyone willing to install a “free” OS should be able to either (search and try to) fix, live with, or wait until someone else finds a solution.
My two main complaints, (which I learned to live with), but not restricted to FC2 are: gnome’s bloat and adoption of a very immature, stale, window manager (metacity) – hate the minimizing animation feature and inability to turn it off, and FC2’s inability to detect and configure out-of-the-box my wireless nic. But metacity is not really a problem because FC2 provides a variety of window manager – Openbox + gnome-control-panel looks mean and fast. As for the wireless nic, it is just a question of having patience.
For the brave ones, who also want to have (and/or compile) the latest FC2 kernel, go to: http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.6/RPMS.kernel/ for the latest, almost daily, kernel update.
“Every freaking IDE hard drive I’ve seen over the past
10 years *TELLS YOU IN THE FREAKING SET-UP INSTRUCTIONS*
to set the drive mode via the BIOS setup to LBA.
Who the heck isn’t doing this? And why? Can’t these people
read?”
Apparently YOU can’t read. With some combinations of BIOS and drive, it happens WITH THE BIOS SET TO LBA. It happened to me. Turning LBA off and on made no difference.
The problem is that the 2.6 kernel reports bogus CHS values. The kernel doesn’t use them, so it hasn’t gotten much attention. But the FC2 installer, using parted, changes the CHS values in the partition table. Using different CHS values for other partitions and for boot loaders causes problems.
From reading the mailing lists, I see that some BIOSes have various work-arounds when the partition table CHS doesn’t match what the BIOS would use. That’s not a required feature, but toggling LBA may solve the problem for those BIOSes. Or it may not. It didn’t work for me.
Booting the FC2 installer with “linux hda=15017,255,63” did work. That proves that the issue is the bogus 2.6 CHS values being written to the partition table. Override the values, and everything works.
Guys, Debian and Fedora aren’t that different at heart. It’s obvious that Fedora was inspired by Debian. It also shares many values with it’s older cousin, like the policy of only including non-patented open source software in the core distribution. The distributions are willing to take the flack for this, even though most other distributions cave in on the issue.
Where Debian and Fedora is the implementation of the process.
Debian is community based with a rigorous non-discriminatory process. The install must work on all supported platforms and the distribution must be available everywhere at once. The stable release of any package like GNOME and Subversion has to go through the same *long* Debian process that an arbitrary freshmeat application, even though GNOME and Subversion have their own quality control.
The Fedora Core is basically Red Hat Linix 10 (or 11). The process is a bit more open than previously (especially Fedora Legacy), but by in large, it’s developed mostly by RedHat and goes through the same quality control (In my experience, it seems to be better.). Where Fedora Core differs from Red Hat Linux is that it finally recognizes that people want to be able to extend the core of the distribution with multimedia and other features RedHat doesn’t consider important. It now makes apt-get and yum core to the way things get done. There is a rich user community outside the core distribution. It may not be as rich as Debian’s, but it’s not that bad either.
Each process has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. Debian supporters consider this slow process to be a key advantage — it’s easier to define a standard environment where little changes except the one or two packages you need to update. Fedora supporters consider the brisker pace of their process to be an advantage — it’s easier to keep up to date and still have an integrated environment that supports security fixes (NB: Debian SID and Testing don’t have security patches.)
First off .. I think I will be changing from Mandrake to FC2. Fedora is the first distro to run my ATI TV wonder from the get go. I also was able to install the ATI drivers for my radeon 9700 having to do external AGP in xorg.conf with little poblems thx to the forum links.I did created my own partitions and edit the grub.conf removing (root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet) and replacing it with root=/dev/(my drive). I never experienced the faulty dual boot, don’t know if its because i use SATA drives.
All else has been gravy … I even replaced a real old web server running a version of suse with FD2 apache and frontpage extensions for MS encumberd staff members..
I don’t know why everyone gripes but its a fine distro.. I like the little quirks… I fined them easier to patch or fix then fixing a windows driver problem.
Just saying way to go FC2 team.. kudo’s
I could not for the life of me get my 3com 3c905C-TX Fast Etherlink card working with Fedora 2. It would not allow me to connect to the internet or my network. Seems there are more bugs with Fedora 2 then must know about. Funny thing is that this network card works great on the same machine using Mandrake 10 official.
Nice post. 🙂 I agree with almost all of it, but would just like to expand on the last sentence a little:
“(NB: Debian SID and Testing don’t have security patches.)”
It is true that the Security Team (http://www.debian.org/security) only supports the current official Stable release. However:
By and large, the individual package maintainers upload security fixes for their own packages to Sid (Unstable) in a timely fashion.
Testing won’t receive the fix until the package containing it migrates through from Sid, but there are various upload priorities intended to expedite the process in just such a scenario. For instance, the “Emergency” priority (intended for use when e.g. a remote root hole is found) would result in the affected package making its way down into Testing in only a day or so.
Additionally, Testing will be supported by the Security Team once the “freeze” is declared in the runup to its being released as the next Stable.
Don’t get me wrong; Stable’s by far and away the best of the three as far as security is concerned, but it’s not accurate to say that Testing and Unstable don’t get security updates at all.
Anyway, as far as Fedora is concerned, there’ve been a few recent cockups in this area (see e.g. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-May/msg00356….) but RedHat’s own Security Response Team seems to have now stepped in to deal with the issues.
There are some issues with it, which I noted here: http://www.blindmindseye.com/bmeblog/archives/000197.php however I don’t see what the big deal is overall. It’s getting to be a very good distribution that could help to uproot Microsoft’s position of dominance.
I have been running it since Test3 so I cannot comment on the first two releases’ bugginess, but I never had a problem with Test3, and the machine that I run it on is a bit reminiscent of Frankenstein if you know what I mean…..
http://www.fedoratracker.org makes it real easy to locate extra packages for Fedora Core.
How come the KDE-supporters and -developers have started astroturfing against Gnome? Are they afraid of something?
Competitition is good. Accept it. It is supposed to make both parties better. At least that’s what happening with one of them – Gnome.
Technical design-flaws? Sorry. That was so 1999.
Human Interface Guidelines? I *know* design. I *know* HIG. I may sound like a technocrat, but honestly: This is good for you.
Spatial Nautilus? It works like a charm for both me doing advanced work, and for my computer-illiterate family and friends whom I’ve introduced Gnome 2.6 for. We all love it.
Not tweakable? You don’t know what you’re talking about. Metacity is not tweakable, because it shouldn’t be as default! If you want to tweak your desktop, how did you do it with enlightenment, windowmaker and fvwm in the old days? Nowadays you just install and use openbox or some similar ICCCM and EWMH compliant window-manager to tweak your desktop. They all work perfectly as a drop-in-replacement.
Gnome 2.6. It all just works!!
Disclaimer: I am not a Gnome developer. I am just an ordinary developer and user with long experience, and I am currently looking over and getting to know the innards of Gnome for use in a commercial project. Don’t you just love the LGPL?
You need to disable “kudzu” and you card will work fine, it’s been like this since fc1
chkconfig –level 12345 kudzu off
“What happened to Linux being tight and fast?”
As opposed to what..Windows XP??
erm, have you actually tried that experiment?
in MDK, run rpmdrake, type gaim in the search box, install. or type “urpmi gaim”.
in SuSE, run YaST, search for gaim, install. (slightly vague as I haven’t used SuSE for a few versions, but I certainly know it has the functionality).
in Fedora, use up2date, yum, or heck, use synaptic – seems that’s what most Fedora users use anyway. And in fact you can use it on SuSE or MDK if you really want to. the idea that debian’s dependency resolution and package searching is any better than anyone else’s is just outmoded these days, I’m afraid – it was for a long time, it’s not now.
Did anyone else notice that the Linux.com review that slandered this product was sponsored by Novell?