http://www.osnews.com/story/14054/Review_Fedora_Core_5 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 22 May 2013 19:34:15 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread?106414 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106414 I'm still surprised that they released FC5 without fixing the proprietary module bug. That seems like such a showstopper that you would think they would delay release until they fixed it.

I may (after they've got a fixed kernel) download FC5 and give it a shot...I haven't used Fedora since (I think) FC3, so it should be interesting to see what they've done with it since. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Flatline) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106417 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106417 I installed it yesterday and I had no problems at all. I had been using Fedora Core 4 for a long time and I wiped it off and installed Fedora Core 5. I have an ATI card but I never use the proprietary, closed-source drivers so I had no issues.

I actually like everything about it except that I cannot get surround sound to work with my SoundBlaster Audigy LS card...that is the only issue. I even have some 'well-known' IBM software up and running with no problems!

Congrats to the Fedora team...job well done. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Wuntang) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106418 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106418 i did install fc5 on a box with GT6600. i did not have any problem. btw it was a intel chipset and intel processor.

PS: your wallpaper looks good Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (linux_yogi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106419 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106419 I think there is a fixed version of the kernel already, I don't know if it's in the update repos yet (I'm not a Fedora Core user). Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Slapo) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106420 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106420 Here's one major advantage I find while using Debian-based distributions (like Ubuntu): updating it. My sister uses SuSE, like I did long time ago, and updating it requires 5 CD's or a DVD. Same applies to Fedora Core.

While on Ubuntu, here's what I've got to do (well, almost) in order to get my system upgraded from Breezy to Dapper Drake:

$ apt-get dist-upgrade

...and wait. Bullet-proof process..

Bottomline: if your concerns are about maintaining a system, Ubuntu is for you. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mlopes) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106423 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106423 are due to a bug, that prevents non free modules to load in the kernel. So I expect people will get similar problems with e.g. commersial modem drivers etc.

According to messages in the fedora mailinglists, this bug is suposed to be fixed in later kernel updates.

I guess this will still leave you at the console after installing from the CD, but at least you will not need to mess around with yum settings to find some repository where a working kernel can be found.

I really think this should have been fixed before they shipped FC5.

Other than that I must say FC5 is a very nice distro, w Gnome 2.14 feels very snappy. Beagle is great, in combination with the deskbar-applet, and the beagle firefox plug-in it feels like you have your information at your fingertips. I only wish that there had been some beagle plugin that could index man pages.

All in all a great distro. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (unoengborg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106425 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106425 And in SuSE you could do something similar...I've had luck before with simply adding the new version's repository as an installation source for YaST, then telling it to update any packages if they have newer versions.

Of course, you have better luck with some releases than with others...one of my (very) few gripes with SuSE and YaST is that you have to manually tell it how to resolve dependencies, whereas with Debian-based distros in general that is done for you.

I don't mind downoading the ISO's anyway...I'm paying for the bandwidth already ;-) Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Flatline) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106427 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106427 I read in the first FC5 testing release on Tuxmachines that you can do a network install, thereby cutting down on the need to dowload several discs. Anybody tried this? I must agree on the simplicity of upgrading to the newest version without a new media, though I prefer Debian. To each his own. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gary1979) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106430 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106430 I get errors saying that "random rpm" cannot be installed on my box when I have my nvidia card installed, if I switch for an ATI card, it goes fine, any chance of a reissue of the CD's? Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Devilotx) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106431 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106431 the default kernel provided with FCR5 (see here for more info - http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14009 ) doesnt like non-GPL modules and as a result your nVidia and ATI drivers won't install properly, to fix, download the updated 2059 kernel or wait a few days until it appears on yum - 2059 kernel >> http://people.redhat.com/davej/kernels/Fedora/FC5/

cheers
anyweb
http://linux-noob.com Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anyweb) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106434 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106434 Fedora can do essentially the same thing.. I have gone from Core 2 -> Core 3 -> Core 4 using essentially this process:

1.) rpm -U fedora-release
2.) yum update kernel
3.) reboot
4.) yum -y upgrade Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (amigascne) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106435 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106435 so if I stick with the 'nv' driver, I shouldn't have any problems with the current kernel, right? Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (yanik) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106436 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106436 Yes, I agree. The wallpaper looks good.

However one would think that they could have come up with a wallpaper that looks good and doesn't have the disadvantage of having pattern details that are about the same size as icons you may have on your desktop. This makes files harder to see.

This may sound as a minor problem, but to people that are visually impaired this may pose a problem. I filed a bug report on this and got a WONTFIX response within hours. This really not the attitude you want to see from developers. It takes a lot more than the ability to write good C code to create a modern usable desktop environment. If such skills are not taken advantage of, Bill Gates will have an easy job of keeping their desktop dominance.

To be accessible to people with disabilities is much more important to Linux desktop acceptance than you may firt think, as many government and large companies have policis requiring equippments they use should be accessible. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (unoengborg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106452 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106452 In all fairness, it really doesn't take a lot to change the background when you have problems with your vision...

I also find it a little too busy for a desktop background though. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Daniel Borgmann) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106454 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106454 I installed it (64 bit) on an Athlon 64 and Nforce 6100 video. All went well.

FC5 DVD labels - http://586z.wox.org/~foxkm/FC5 Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (letni) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106455 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106455 i've installed FC5 in 5 computers already. All went well, except one in which i have strange random lockups, but it could be a hardware thing, don't know.
All of these machines have ATi Radeons (9200, 9250, 9550, X800XT...)
A friend of mine has installed it with a Geforce FX5700 and also has been successful.
Overall, my first impressions is that FC5 is quite compatible, and trouble free. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jokinin) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106457 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106457 you only need the first 2 ISO's to install fedora core 5 (and 4, not sure about 3). you can then install the rest via YUM Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Hawley) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106458 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106458 those big organisations should not use fedora anyway, ever heard of suze / red hat enterprise?

fedora is not about acceptance by governments and the devs were right about giving you a wontfix reply. they have better things to do than to worry about people who can't figure out how to change a wallpaper...

i believed fedora was not about becoming the distro for the masses, but being a playground for cutting-edge tech! Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (evert) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106468 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106468 Yes you can if there's another linux on that box .. you can install fedora without even been next to the machine ...

you can install the pxeboot kernel and initrd on the grub menu and reboot the machine then just point your vncviewer to that machine and do a network install from your desktop ...

or the same but without vnc but beeing infront the computer to install ..

check this :

http://www.karan.org/blog/index.php/2005/06/15/p35


Leonel Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (leonel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106470 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106470 yes, it's only a propriatery binary problem.

nv is open source. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ronaldst) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106472 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106472 I have an Nvidia card and I haven't bothered to install the proprietary drivers yet since I don't play a lot of games and I don't care too much about 3D desktop special effects. The kernel problem has already been fixed you fussy paints out there. Just open a shell and type 'yum update kernel' and reboot afterwards. Not very difficult.

If you are looking for a decent cutting edge linux distro then FC5 is a good match. Gnome is much faster now, all my plug and play devices were detected, and the latest open office is working great. I am very happy with this release. I like the support you can get online from all the Fedora community users. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (buff) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106505 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106505 I've been playing with FC5 Test 3 for a couple weeks and I have an NForce4 Pro SLI chipset with a 6800GS video card. Most things worked great, but I did have to patch the nvidia driver to get it to work. What was weird though was that I had to patch it to even work with my custom/stock 2.6.15.5 kernel.

Anyway, it's happy now But I would say it was more difficult a process then it should have been.

Now if only the Creative X-Fi was supported, oh well. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 23:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MightyPenguin) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106508 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106508 Fedora can do essentially the same thing.. I have gone from Core 2 -> Core 3 -> Core 4 using essentially this process:

1.) rpm -U fedora-release
2.) yum update kernel
3.) reboot
4.) yum -y upgrade
You don't even need to do so many steps since YUM installs a new kernel(if you have not disabled this yourself).

1.) rpm -Uvh fedora-release
2.) yum upgrade

I updated to the stable release from the test versions using this method. Thats how I upgrade CentOS as well. When I used Mandriva as my main distro I use to upgrade with urpmi instead of using discs. Tue, 21 Mar 2006 23:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dark child) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106534 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106534 those big organisations should not use fedora anyway, ever heard of suze / red hat enterprise?


Much of what is in fedora will soner or later end up in Red Hat, and that is certainly targeted at large organizations.

The problem with this minor desktop background issue is not that it is hard switch. You do that in a few seconds, or a few minutes if you have really bad eye sight.

The real problem is the developers state of mind. If you are not used to think in terms of usability and accessability you are likely to mistakes when you target the business audience, where things like this matters.

E.g. how many Linux distros would you be able to install blind folded? Why isn't there any Linux distros that tries to identify a sound card early on in the installation process to be able to talk the installer through the installation if he likes.

Another aspect of this is that Fedora is a representative for Linux desktop in general and they contribute to the public oppininon Linux, perhaps more than what enterprise editions from Red Hat and SUSE as this is a Linux version they actually may lay there hands on. As such it is important to address usability and accessability even in tech-edge oriented distros like Fedora. Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (unoengborg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106539 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106539 The writer used the word impressive impressively often. However I can't say the same about the review.

Additionally, having Firefox, Gaim, Gimp, VLC, and Banshee running simultaneously used only 360 MBs of out of a total of 1 GB of memory I had available.
Now these are impressively good news for my 256MB box. Really, if you want to show how much gnome improved in speed/memory usage and you post some ram usage figures at least provide the same numbers for the last gnome release.

Also, Banshee, the music player has advanced tremendously and makes Rhythmbox pretty much useless
Wow. So a program did improve in a new version? No sh*t? Someone hold the press please. I always thought apps get worse from version to version.
At least he didn't tell us about a single impressive improvement. Good move.
And how the hell does banshee make rhythmbox suddenly useless? Does the banshee package conflict whith RB and remove it on installation? Does banshee put a geas on you, that stops you from starting rb? I thought it's a banshee not an evil fairy. Edited 2006-03-22 00:36 Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (h-milch-mann) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106563 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106563 I just installed on a Athlon 64X2 3800+ with nvidia chipset, and Geforce 6800 with no problems, installed perfectly.

Anyone know what is the best forum for support?
I want to get my 3d acceleration going :-) Wed, 22 Mar 2006 01:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (snorkel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106574 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106574 The most impressive thing about this release over the last one is that it actually installed ;^)

Still bloated, but so far it seems both snappy and relatively stable. Wed, 22 Mar 2006 02:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Lazarus) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106575 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106575 Try Fedoraforum.org, they have always been helpful to me, and linuxquestions.org also has one that is active if you see nothing out of the latter in a few days.

and as for nvidia, I would definitly get livna repo on there and let them take care of it, once the kernel update is release, or if you feel like installing it now, the one released shown in an earlier post... or all over fedoraforum.org Wed, 22 Mar 2006 02:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hollovoid) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106620 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106620 do FC releases tend to stable out as time and updates go on, or is waiting for a better release the way to go? Wed, 22 Mar 2006 05:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (spikeb) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106649 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106649 No. There was never new set of CDs for RedHat or Fedora. Wed, 22 Mar 2006 07:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pzad) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106650 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106650 I installed FC5-Test3 and it went very smoothly, however, FC5 Final has a number of problems.

After install FC5 Final doesn't automatically ask to set up one user whereas FC5-Test3 did, with FC5 Final you have to manually log in as root addgroup and adduser etc. In addition FC5 Final boots into the command line (init 3) whilst FC5-Test3 and all earlier FCs booted into the GUI prompt. Why is this?

Also, with FC5 final, Japanese is completely ignored. If you choose Japanese, it boots into English. Why?
Also XFCE is not shown - only GNOME and KDE is shown, even though I installed XFCE.
These problems didn't exist on FC5-Test3. I don't know how they appeared in FC5 Final. I've been using FCs since FC1... I have like liked FCs even up to FC5-Test3. But now I have so many basic problems to solve before it is minimally useable.Edited 2006-03-22 07:51 Wed, 22 Mar 2006 07:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nii_) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106651 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106651 I don't think, that something that is not suported by them at all (binary only drivers), should stop release.

There will be simple solution to problem - kernel upgrade. 3D on NVIDIA (and latest ATI) never worked out of box. Wed, 22 Mar 2006 07:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pzad) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106719 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106719 Every release which I have tried (1, 2, 3 & 5) has had lots of small but irritating bugs when first released (eg. UDEV in FC3, kernel in FC5)

I really like the distro, and it's philosophy but it always feels a little untested when first installed. I hasten to add that the problems have always subsequently been fixed with updates, but that's no help if you don't have internet access!

Perhaps a bigger gap between the final test and the actual release would help make sure every thing works straight from the disc.

Otherwise, keep up the good work! Wed, 22 Mar 2006 12:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hornett) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106729 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106729 I installed FC5 on my Dell D600, and for once everything (so far) works out of the box. Suspend function finally works without any tweaks with the ati/radeon driver that's comes as default though 3D hardware acceleration seems to suffer to some extent. As pointed out by several other readers, perhaps a longer period between final test and release may help to iron out the annoying bugs and make the future releases better in that respect. Such bugs, however miniscule they may be, gives very bad publicity to the Fedora community and developers to the otherwise solid distro. Been with FC since Core 2...keep up the good work :-) Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dhaneshr) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106732 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106732 There was enough glitches in the second install, that I can say if you have a Nvidia card or a motherboard with the Nvidia nForce chipset, you should look elsewhere for a linux o.s. or be prepared to do a fair amount of tweaking.

I would be curious to know what justification he has to make such a bold statement beyond this isolated example.

I am running an NForce 3 motherboard, and was able to install with out any memorable trouble, I did do a HTTP based net install, however, as I said I have had no problems at all.Edited 2006-03-22 13:51 Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wibbit) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106735 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106735 That's interesting, I also have a D600 and unlike Ubuntu Breezy, the wireless does not work out of the box (mainly because the firmware is not included). Again, annoying but easy to fix.

The installer consistently picks the wrong screen resolution (800x600 during install), then after selecting a lcd screen 1024x768, it jumps to 1280x960. Can such things still not be detected reliably?

BTW, 'radeon' 3D accel can be greatly improved by tweaking your setup with driconf.

On a final note, I just noticed that yes hibernate and suspend do work, but in the shut down dialog, the button which hibernates the system is labeled as Suspend. WHY? Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hornett) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106753 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106753 Network installs have been possable with Fedora/Redhat for a long time now, it is nothing new.

The biggest change with FC5 is that anaconda now uses Yum. If it is not already possible, it makes the use of third part repositories significantly simpler. I would assume that it would also mean that we can get rid of doing a network install, and then spending several hours doing an update, as it will just get the latest packages.

How is it done?

Go to your favourite mirror, and download the following file http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/i...
Obviously making the appropriate changes based on hardware and release version.

Put that on CD and then boot.

At the boot splash (or what ever it is called), type linux askmethod and allow it to boot.

It will then ask you what mehtod you want, you may choose your favourite one (almost certainly HTTP/FTP).

When it asks you for the host/location you need to entre the path to either the ISO images (for certain types of installs like NFS, not sure if it works with HTTP), OR to the "os" version.

You are then good to go.

Hope this helps. Wed, 22 Mar 2006 15:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wibbit) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106785 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106785 # apt-get dist-upgrade works fine on FC1,2,3,4 as well , havn't tried it on FC5 yet but yum update did a good job today...only 5 updates to get mind you. Wed, 22 Mar 2006 18:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nordickiwi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106789 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106789 apt4rpm is dead. The creator moved to Smart package manager. Wed, 22 Mar 2006 18:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Finalzone) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?106803 http://www.osnews.com/thread?106803 I can't even think how difficult it is going to be to try to install Fedora Core 5 on servers with RAID controllers. My personal experience says that quite a large minority of new servers need some sort of proprietary drivers to get the hard drives to be seen during installation. How are you going to get your Linux system to boot up so that you can update the drivers so that you can boot your system up? What a mess... I think I am going to have to stick to Fedora Core 4 and jump straight to Fedora Core 6. At least they went back to a 6 months release strategy. Wed, 22 Mar 2006 18:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Don T. Bothers) Comments