Every Fedora Core release outshines the previous one, Fedora Core 4 maintains this pattern with an excellent collection of the latest open source packages and improved performance. Two areas that still need some work are out-of-the-box sound mixing and package management
Before I speak: I really love Linux and use FC4 myself..
GCC 4.0 does in fact speed up things (base OS, some programs), but we really won’t see a major speed improvement until later GCC releases and when developers are able to harness that power. This is however a good taste of things to come. In that same light, there are many a few programs that don’t play nice with GCC 4.0 yet (mplayer comes to mind), but give it time.
Following that line: even with all the great code optimizations, we’re still looking at a long bootup time for linux. (Another nice hack is the early-login feature, which is *not* enabled by default: look for another 15 or so seconds that appear to be shaved off bootup time… http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2005-April/msg00416…)
However, init scripts are still really depreciated. If Linux is ever going to start making an impact, it’ll have to incorporate some sort of parallel init scripts (there is a gentoo project working on this, but I can’t recall ATM, as well as an IBM whitepaper: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-boot.html?ca=…)
But this needs to make it into the mainstream kernel. BeOS still has a 10 second -> usable system, and it was created in 98-99….
Many computer users upgrade computers because they want it faster.. but a good many a time it’s a combination of OS and software (A 500mhz PIII running Win98 compared to a 3.2Ghz P4 running XP). But, if one could take an older computer and run services in parallel… grandma or grandpa won’t have to get up and pour a cup of coffee while waiting for the computer to boot up.
[/rant]
All in all, I too am very happy with the x86 version of FC4. It is a vast improvement to past releases, and I hope to see much more good come out of the Fedora Foundation!
However, init scripts are still really depreciated. If Linux is ever going to start making an impact, it’ll have to incorporate some sort of parallel init scripts
You may want to check cinit. It’s a young project, but seems to be promising.
Cheers,
Artem
BeOS was written in 1991 and released in the mid-90s…
But this needs to make it into the mainstream kernel. BeOS still has a 10 second -> usable system, and it was created in 98-99….
Of course, let’s not forget that BeOS doesn’t even support half the hardware that Linux distributions do now, nor does it feature near as much as functionality. So in reality, I don’t ever expect a 10 second boot time like BeOS had. Let’s be reasonable. I would expect something closer to Windows XP at the least, but not much better than that.
” If Linux is ever going to start making an impact, it’ll have to incorporate some sort of parallel init scripts ”
Already happening
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/FC5Future
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2005-June/msg01390…
Thanks, quite an interesting reading.
I wonder why they want to get rid of the X Font Server? Never really had issues with it. In my opinion, it’s better than putting all your font paths in your xorg.conf…
Your comment about the long boot times is valid to a point, but keep a couple things in mind. First, Linux is really designed to be left on all the time. Hence, you can do everything except change kernels without rebooting a million times ala Windows. Second, even in Windows, you wait a good 30-45 seconds after login for all things to get loaded, like antivirus, network connections, any extra third party apps you have. WHen you get to the login prompt in linux, you are completely ready to go.
I agree completely. In windows, it *looks* like you’re all set to go (because loading the desktop et al takes priority), but if you start using it right away it’s very slow and if you click start most of the icons take some time to show up, same with sub-menus, etc.
I like it when I get to my kde desktop, it’s all set to go. If I open my case and listen to the hd, normally it’s chugging away while booting, but when it gets to the desktop it simply stops, because all is done. It’s *really* ready.
I hope these parallel init scripts and early-logins don’t ruin that, or at least, in good linux/unix style, provide an option for the system to be all set before getting to the desktop.
very stupid comment.
Yes, Linux is designed to be left on all the time. No, that does not mean that boot times have to as long as they are. Long uptimes have nothing to do with long boot times.
FC4 was the first RH distro I’ve tried. I’ve always stuck with Mandrake/driva, because as a newbie, it was alot easier to transition to. FC4 seems to be very nice and stable, however, I am unable to get my WUSB11 ver 2.6 working with it. I’ve tried following all of the “how-to’s” that I’ve found on it, but after running into errors, I cannot get any help from neither fedora.forums, nor any of the other linux forums. While I would like to stay with FC4 and continue using it, the Fedora community has been very unhelpfull, and I’ll be going back to Mandriva.
have you tried irc.freenode.net #fedora?
They have a handfull of pretty helpfull people there if you ask nicely and be patient. Anyway thats where I go, never tried the forums.
Before going back to Mandrake think of it this way. You have one obsticle but several reasons to stay (you apparently like FC4) So dont give up so fast if you think you’d have a better experience in the long run.
Trust me when I saw that I’ve been very patient. It works flawlessly on my laptop, but it took me 3 days to get it installed on my desktop correctly (probably was Grub kept flaking out, and end result was having to edit the .map file so it could finally figure out where to install the bootloader). I’m gonna give it through the end of the week before I call it quits on it.
Please disable services you do not need before voicing your opinion on boot time. I disable services on Windows XP and my Fedora machine (duel boot) And although I haven’t timed FC4 with a watch they both are finishing just as im returning from getting my coffee every morning.
Maybe Fedora is 10 seconds slower, or 10 seconds faster but how can cause such a bug ruckus is beyond me. I used to work in a PC shop and you know what one of the biggest complaints next to spyware was? Boot up time for windows. For ppl who don’t know anything they have 50 things in startup and the boot can take well over _several_ minutes. After removing this programs you find hardly any speed improvement because of such a terribly cluttered registry which you also have to clean. Fedora doesn’t have that problem no matter how many apps you install.
Maybe Mac is better than both, so is BE and BSD, etc, etc. But I always compare to the market leader because if 90% of the world can deal with it then everyone should be quiet about it being unbarable.
As far as I can understand and see, init scripts are run in a linear fashion because of the incredible flexibility of a GNU/Linux system and for ease of setup.
As another poster mentioned, Linux is really meant to run 24/7. If you turn your box off every day, then install hibernate (http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~scs49/install_linux.html)
Fedora Core is relatively slow to start up, but considering all the functionality enabled it is worth it. Yeah you could run debian, slackware, or gentoo for fast startup times if that is a priority.
In regards to Fedora Core as a distribution, I have found it very well put together, with a lot of convenient extras. Its good bloat!
First of all, I’m really in love with Fedora.
I enterted the Fed.Comm at the time of Core 2.
Installation was funny. I choose the language to be Hungarian, so the setups was Hungarian for the rest of time, but after the first boot the whole OS was English. FC4 just didn’t care about my language settings, however FC2&3 managed the problem successfully. Not a big problem, but think of those trying to change from m$.
It took me enough time to browse thru the packages that came with the DVD, keeping in mind, that i will dl most of them with synaptic. After a 15-20min work, I clicked the installbutton and dear FC4 installed every single package it had on its install DVD regardless to my preferencies. Later it took me an hour to remove them with synaptic, and free lots of diskspace.
This SELinux stuff is also driving me nuts.
– boot time internet access
– nvidia driver
– amsn
– acrobarreader
couple of examples the selinux didn’t allow to use. A simple fixlabel solved the issue, but then why – i ask why hadn’t the installer done it already. Okay, I’m not really into this selinux yet.
If my FC3 iso hadn’t been lend, I would have reinstalled it. But actually i am a happy person with my FC4. I love it. It worth it, but I really don’t think this release was a step forward to defeat m$.
I have been on FC since 1, and used RH since 8. I really enjoy using it, and everytime I try another distro (Debian, SuSe, Ubuntu, Mand-rake/riva, I always come back.
These are the things Fedora needs to compete with the big boys.
1) GUI Based Configuration Tools – You should be able to configure everything through a GUI, including PAM, LDAP, Kerberos, RAID, virtualization, etc. Of course, emphasis should still be in making very clean configuration files to ease editing by hand.
2) New Init Engine – Starting one process at a time is so DOS. Linux kernel is multithreaded, treat it like one during boot time. Don’t be afraid to start things at the same time. *Gasp* maybe even take some ideas from Windows and use dependencies to start certain services later.
3) More Professionalism at the GUI – A lot of the tools Fedora currently uses look like Fischer Price toys. Compare printer configuration in Fedora to printer configuration in Windows.
4) Less packages in Core – Take out sendmail, take out KDE, take out a lot of things that you don’t need. Place them instead in extras.
These are the things Fedora needs to compete with the big boys.
Take a look at distrowatch. Fedora *is* already one of the big boys (BTW, who are the “big boys”???)
1) GUI Based Configuration Tools – You should be able to configure everything through a GUI, including PAM, LDAP, Kerberos, RAID, virtualization, etc. Of course, emphasis should still be in making very clean configuration files to ease editing by hand.
RAID, LVM and Authentication can already be configured using GUI configuration tools (and by Anaconda). I’m running the x86-64 version so I can’t really comment on Xen configuration.
2) New Init Engine – Starting one process at a time is so DOS. Linux kernel is multithreaded, treat it like one during boot time. Don’t be afraid to start things at the same time. *Gasp* maybe even take some ideas from Windows and use dependencies to start certain services later.
A. Multi-threading has nothing to do with init scripts. (Multi-threading means break a single process into smaller sub-processes, or threads) I assume that you’re talking about multi-processing. (Run multiple init scripts concurrently).
B. Cross dependencies. (You cannot start NFS before network is running; you cannot start the network before you load the modules, etc)
C. Slower performance. Most init scripts are pretty much I/O bound (hence the read-ahead scripts introduced in FC3 to try and cache the scripts before they run); If you have a single IDE/SATA drive without NCQ, having multiple init scripts trashing the drive might actually slow the boot process.
3) More Professionalism at the GUI – A lot of the tools Fedora currently uses look like Fischer Price toys. Compare printer configuration in Fedora to printer configuration in Windows.
I find the XP default theme to look like a Fischer Price toy. But I agree, XP’s configuration tools do luck more polished.
4) Less packages in Core – Take out sendmail, take out KDE, take out a lot of things that you don’t need. Place them instead in extras.
A *lot* of people use KDE/Fedora (including myself), I suggest you take a look at the RedHat-KDE project. (http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/).
I’d suggest they repackage the CDs like slackware does.
Disk 1: Core.
Disk 2: Gnome.
Disk 3: KDE.
Disk 4: Software.
Disk 5-: Extra.
I think that XEN is not the absolutely essential thing, it should be in Extras. I mean, how many people need or even understand what virtualization is?
Because XEN to work right has to be part of the base system, it just can’t be “tacked on”. It doesn’t matter how many people need or understand virtualization, Fedora Core is a distribution for technology enthusiasts, not my grandmother. Though my grandmother could use it.
Windows, OS X > Linux. Sorry — brutal truth.
Due to licensing issues, MP3 support is missing from FC4. Hopefully this will be resolved as the newly announced Fedora Foundation assumes development of future Fedora Core releases.
MP3 support won’t happen until Thomson technologies decide to remove all royalty fee and patents. Users should push toward ogg vorbis format.
1) GUI Based Configuration Tools – You should be able to configure everything through a GUI, including PAM, LDAP, Kerberos, RAID, virtualization, etc. Of course, emphasis should still be in making very clean configuration files to ease editing by hand.
Some of them are already available via Desktop–>System Settings–>Authentification. Even setting for Logical Volume Management.
3) More Professionalism at the GUI – A lot of the tools Fedora currently uses look like Fischer Price toys. Compare printer configuration in Fedora to printer configuration in Windows.
You can change the themes if you like. My system uses Aqua look.
4) Less packages in Core – Take out sendmail, take out KDE, take out a lot of things that you don’t need. Place them instead in extras.
KDE probably won’t be removed before there are lot of Fedora KDE users around. I agree that packages that duplicated functionality should be moved to extras. Anaconda is currently getting facelift to support yum so customization will be further expanded.
Who in their right mind wants to leave their computer on all the time? Unless it is a server, why leave it on? It takes up electricity unnecessarily and could be noisy as well.
I shut down my computer every night before I go to bed (unless I need to download something throughout the night), and boot it when I get home from work. The boot times on FC4 don’t bother me (I turn off some services, of course. Why would my desktop need acpi anyways?); they feel like windows xp boot times actually. I regularly switch between my FC4 and WinXP partitions and I feel that the boot times are about the same. Of course, I’m always in favor of improvement, why settle with mediocre or normal when you can have exceptional? Still, the boot times aren’t rediculous.
Any screenshots available ?
I installed FC4 on my older Toshiba satellite a few days back just to see how well it would detect the hardware. It detected everything(Firewire, video card,USB etc..) except for the built in SD Card reader as i expected. The best part is that it detected the built in wireless card although it didn’t configure it at install. It was a simple task to get it working properly. The menus are layed out superbly and no more funky font problems with Firefox. Its fast too! overall job well done on FC4.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fedora+core+4+screenshots
Well another excuse for poor examples reguarding linux,
that is a good one, I for one dont accept leaving your
computer on always just to put up with linux,
long boot up times and slow performance makes no sense,
it is good that we now have a choice, but i think i
will stay with windows
im a Fedora user, but i couldnt get my x86-64 bit of FC4 to even recognise my Sony SDM-S74 LCD Monitor, so im now on Suse9.3