Erik Huggers, a Microsoft guy at the BBC, takes a look at Fedora 9 as his first Linux desktop and finds it surprisingly good.
"I am glad that I got a chance to test drive Fedora and as a result have come to believe in the potential of Linux as a mainstream operating system.
As Ashley said in this post last year, the BBC does a lot of work with open standards already - but in the future we plan to do more.
We want to make iPlayer work on all operating systems including open source ones like Fedora and I am confident we'll make good progress on this before the end of the year."
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Member since:2005-07-22
Comparing Fedora & Debian Distros is much like the Tortoise and the Hare or Classical & Rock Music
Debian is the Tortoise/Classical
Fedora is the Hare/rock
If you want slow and considered updates then by all means go with Debian or an Enterprise Distro ( CentOS, Ununtu LTS etc)
If you want to 'rock & Roll' then go with Fedora. It makes no bones abouts its aim to be at the cutting edge of distros.
Back to fedora and your problems with codecs.
I don't think you shouldn't try to use both Livna & FreshRpms at the same time. You can use an option in yum to temporarily disable one of the repositories. Personally, I only ever use Livna. It has all the codecs etc I need.
The speed of update (using yum) has improved considerable over the recent releases. In fact, getting the list of which packages to update is now pretty speedy. Then there is the download. Well you would get that limitation with Debian/SUSE/Mandriva etc so that should be a constant. Perhaps you would like to expand with a little more detail of what exactly you are unhappy with? Remember that as Fedora is a cutting edge distro the rate of package updates is going to be higher than that for a distro like Debian. Do you only use Linux to perform updates? Updating should be a very small part of your use and it can be run in the background can't it? So whats the problem?
Member since:2005-07-06
What you're experiencing is ultimately the deciding factor as to whether one should go for a community based distribution or whether one is willing to pay for a commercial one such as Turbo Linux which includes all the CODECs and a DVD Player out of the box.
Are you willing to pay the extra money for the convenience of knowing every works out of the box or would you sooner have something for free with the inconvenience of having to do the searching yourself. That is ultimately what you have to decide as a user - whether the time saved equals the money spent.
Member since:2005-07-22
In my experience, adding third-party repos to Ubuntu has been less painful than with Fedora. Back in the FC 2 or 3 days it seemed to be recommended that you do a complete install to avoid missing dependencies when you try installing stuff from added repos.
I'll give F9 another chance (using the install DVD) when I have a fresh HDD to play with. The fact that I didn't have to futz around with config files to get horizontal touchpad scrolling to work was nice.
Member since:
2005-07-22
Decided to try out Fedora 9 before I had my laptop's hard drive replaced. Installed from the live CD.
Good:
Sound worked out of the box, without having to manually un-mute the front or surround channels. Seems a lot snappier than Ubuntu 8.04.
Bad:
Updating is still a drag. Takes seemingly forever, and I keep getting missing dependencies (some C libs, I think) when I try installing non-free codecs after adding the Livna and FreshRPM repositories. Guess I'm supposed to buy the Fluendo codec pack. No credit card, though.
Might as well try Debian proper and experience trouble-free rolling system upgrades.