loads of screenshots for you while you wait for the iso...

Hi, two pre-download questions:

1. How many of the traditional install CDs are necessary? There are 6 CDs, but are they all necessary to install a lightweight system?

2. What is Fedora's policy for updating packages? I use Ubuntu, but it irritates me that they never update packages until the next release six months later, even if the program has a new major release.

Thanks!

Livna is already done can be found here

Ah, yes Modelines, yearly 1980.

Linux at it's worst. Still in 2008, struggling with basics...

* Screen resolution wrong on my 4:3 CRT monitor (even if I pick the exact model from the monitor list) - it appears that an "unknown" monitor only gives you options for mostly widescreen resolutions or a surprisingly low 1024x768 4:3 resolution. Yep, Modes line needed in /etc/X11/xorg.conf to fix this - a major step down from F8.

Linux at it's worst. Still in 2008, struggling with basics...

If you just have to have the drivers from nvidia.com, the stick to Fedora 8 until Nvidia releases them.

Fedora, as far as I know, made no public statement about this fact that nvidia video cards/chips will not work. They announce the OS as finished and ready for consumption but it is not. It is using incomplete beta software including Firefox and X and these are two central applications to the OS. Also KDE is unstable and I'm not sure if that's KDE's fault or Fedora. I'm glad to blame Fedora because they included it and touted it as a main feature of the release.

Also, why are nvidia drivers mandatory to get X working? Even windows 3.1 will work in VGA mode, and so will WinNT, Win2K, WinXP and I presume even the much despised of them all, Vista.

This OS is not ready for consumption by anyone who isn't technically inclined and patient. And by that, I say that while it is potentially great, it is an epic fail.

VGA mode people, use it! It's a standard for about 20 years now.

Fedora, as far as I know, made no public statement about this fact that nvidia video cards/chips will not work.

"If you just have to have the drivers from nvidia.com, the stick to Fedora 8 until Nvidia releases them.

That's exactly what I'm saying: all I got is initlevel 3, a text login. Typing 'startx' does not work. No GUI login of any kind. That's what I said, it didn't work.

I got 2d acceleration working by searching the internet and running a beta nvidia 173.08 driver. But even doing that took me a few hours because there were other problems, like trying to get the file. Hard to browse to a web site if I have no gui and I don't have the exact url to the file.

Every reply to my previous post got it wrong. Basic standard VGA mode on my nvidia card did not work. Instead for 'bleeding edge' I got a 1970's state of the art, textual login prompt.

You might think I criticize Linux but I mean to do so only to point out that this is a huge kind of failure I repeatedly get with linux because X is so bad at self configuring for even a simple bare bones VGA login. I've used quite a few linux distributions over the years and every single one gives me hurdles with X.

Forget the nvidia driver issue, it's a bit irrelevent. Give me a reasonable GUI login, and not a 1970s mainframe login and I'd be a little happier.

The average Joe Bob farmer and Jane soccer mom would throw the disc away when confronted with that login. Oh and yes, it was the 'nv' driver and it didn't work. I have no idea why, and I wasn't given an alternative during any step in the installation process.

And even then when I did install the beta nvidia driver, X burps out a huge error message about ABI. The Fedora forums have posts from other people getting this error and a user-created solution. No patch is coming, so far. What a waste of time just trying to get the very basics working. Bleeding edge my *ss.

Should, and Do are two different things. Autodetection is *not* perfect,

KDE4 shots. What can be done with that panel these days? Can it be moved? Reduced in size? Made something other than solid black?

No sign of fglrx/nvidia stuff in there at all, which was the point I was making in my original post. BTW, I wandered into the Livna development tree and got all the equivalent F9 bits for fglrx that I had for F8 - I then installed them, but it just doesn't work (screen flickers like crazy at the console and never fires X up). I think they must have issues with the kernel/fglrx combo in F9.

As an example, I recently tried to run a Live CD variant of Ubuntu (not the very latest release) and also dreamlinux 3.1. Well, Ubuntu was good, it didn't detect the monitor properly (Samsung 245T 24" widescreen, I use it for my photography related work), but it did at least show it at 1024*768 16 bit. So, Ubuntu is doing the right thing. Dreamlinux wouldn't even start X, not even manually configuring xorg.conf did it (although I'm pretty sure that I didn't enter one line for widescreen that I need to, simply because I couldn't remember the right thing to enter). This just shouldn't happen - ever.

I'm really sick and tired of the pro Linux brigade modding down anyone who dares knock Linux.

I suspect that it's a wider issue than just dreamlinux to be honest. And judging by others comments about black screens instead of X post install, that seems to validate my thoughts.

Ah, yes Modelines, yearly 1980.

Linux at it's worst. Still in 2008, struggling with basics...