Submitted by The Fedora team has clearly spent a lot of time trying to refine some of the smaller, but perhaps more common user interface elements in some thoughtful ways. Take, for instance, the new setting that allows you to manage power settings from the login screen. It’s a small tweak but it makes shutting down simple. There’s no need to login when you wake from hibernate – just shut down straight from the login screen. Similar attention to these basics can be found throughout the new release.
On my machine which accepted all linuxes including previous fedoras; the installer crashed and outputed a bug report for me. It was the final and it was checked for media consistency.
Its not so well done. Because installers should never ever crash due to a bug.
… And I assume that you took the time to report the bug (instead of just complaining about it) – in-order to make sure that no -future- installer will crash on your machine, right?
– Gilboa
There’s something very odd about this sentence (fragment).
I’ve had the same issue with both 8 and 9. it seesm it has issues with my sata chipset. Considering its about 4 years old and supported by every other distro I know including older versions of Fedora (which is what I originally installed on my machine when I built it 4 years ago), I’m thoroughly confused and frustrated.
Installed it yesterday.
Lots of broken.
probably going back to 8.
Agreed. Disappointing that there aren’t any NVIDIA packages yet in livna.
Nvidia driver is incompatible with the default xorg server in Fedora 9 although there is a beta version that only run 2D: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=107725
So Livna cannot make it work.
Nothing new otherwise and that scenario has been seen before (4k stack anyone?).
I’ve only tried it on two machines (one admitedly too old to have bothered trying) and I had no end of badness come of it. Sometimes I wonder just how Red Hat manages to make RHEL so solid when Fedora is what they start with.
Damn shame too, because Fedora always has a ton of what look like really cool things on paper…
I am a Fedora person, tracking it and using it as my regular Desktop since Fedora 4. I did not use Fedora 8 much, due to some machine / partitioning changes, it would not install so I ended up using Ubuntu instead. But I think 8 was quite good.
With 9, I had problems from the start: Installation went fine but the kernel-devel package was missing. I needed this to compile the madwifi drivers. Not on the DVD. Had to hunt it down from another machine and copy it. Activating the atheros card from the Network Manager was no good. Resorted finally to editing the conf files by hand. No problem for me, but an absolute no-no for a beginner. The new xorg server is not supported by the stable NVidia driver. You will need a beta and plenty workarounds if you wish to get the 3D desktop running. Did not even bother, I will wait for the stable driver.
I am using it right now, and have no other problems: No crashes yet – I will not reboot, I will leave it on and see how long it will keep going. Definitely not beginner friendly (but that depends on the hardware too).
[root@turtle ~]# yum list kernel-devel
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Available Packages
kernel-devel.i586 2.6.25.3-18.fc9 updates
kernel-devel.i686 2.6.25.3-18.fc9 updates
You mean you can’t download it? or just didn’t want to cause it takes too long?
I didn’t install madwifi on f9 but on f8 if i remember right it was in livna/dag and tookcare of kmod and everything for me. Something change with 9 that livna doesn’t have it anymore?
the dvd doesn’t have every piece of software just like 1 CD doesn’t have every piece of software. These days i think they’re trying to rely on repos more for the less popular packages such as kernel-devel which most people dont need to do much anymore.
btw kernel headers is on the dvd isn’t that what you need for kmods?
I’ve been using Linux since Red Hat Linux 6.2. Went through all their releases and this is the first time I am so disappointed with Fedora 9. It seems there are a lot of bugs in this release…
– restart networking after reboot because of missing routing entries
– SCIM cannot start at all
– bind doesn’t like me?
– Firefox 3… (I know, is beta)
– Thunderbird update problem
Possibly I am just unlucky with my HP Pavilion dv1604tn. Install Fedora means ask for trouble, IMHO, otherwise just go for Ubuntu. Every releases there are a lot of bugs (hiccup?) but this release is just too much…
Hope people don’t encounter problem like I do…
You are not alone!
Laptop installations have improved tremendously overall since I first started using Linnx in 2000-1, but for some reason, it is still pretty chancy as to what will and won’t work immediately after installation. What works out of the box on one release fails on the next. Go figure. This is just my general impression. Now, many laptops come with an extra hard drive bay. I keep Windows on one and Fedora or Ubuntu on the other. Eventually, I get things working but it can take a while.
I dont understand. I’ve been using this since alpha and never see total crash issues. I’ve seen plenty of bugs but I can’t honestly say i remember the last time i’ve had a system lockup or x crash or anything like that on a system level. Closest thing was during alpha the calculator would lock up but the update was in the next day i guess it was a typo or something uncomplicated.
Its a shame how much experience can vary from system to system. I tend to buy mainline hardware maybe thats why i tend to not have issues. There is a bug with the mousepad im experience but no major stability issues.
Since everyone seems to be complaining i figured id chime in and say not everyone is disappointed with the stability. rpm fusion or rpm deltas would be nice but i guess it didn’t get enough attention from people who wanted to put in work on it.
Appaerntly fedora isn’t for everyone. too bad cause id like to see it get more testers seeing as how its 100% dedicated to free software.
Please report your bugs instead of just posting them on message boards so these things aren’t reoccurring also so we know you’re not full of it =)
This blaming the user business is getting a little irritating. Reporting your problems does not get you a solution in the near term, and if the problem is a critical one with the installer, then you pretty much have to wait until the next release–6 months later–to get it solved. This is not necessarily different from proprietary software, but it is no better either.
There was a regression in Fedora’s installer–F7 or F8–I can not recall. At any rate I simply could not create one logical volume or even a raid partition of several physical disks. It worked in RHEL but not the then more recent Fedora release. By the next Fedora release, problem solved, but there were no updated installer releases to fix the problem.
Yep. When F8 came out I tried using F7 and got the same exact error. When I tried F9 pre-release version it was the same thing so I gave up. I consider myself an Ubuntu user, but like to keep an eye on other distros just to see what they are doing. I complained about the issue on Fedora’s forum but got no solution and no help. I did some google searches and found some suggestions on an ubuntu forum that had some Fedora posts, but that did not work. I never had so many issues installing a distro, even as far back as Fedora Core 1, I’ve been able to install it on my machine without issues. The only time I had issues was with Mandrake (when it was called that) and a striped array I had that worked once I turned RAID off. I personally find it unacceptable for such a huge regression.
Fedora 9 includes the most advanced Linux software even in key components for desktop way too fast. KDE 4.0 + ext4 + Firefox 3 beta -> all ~ BETA.
It is more like future (2008 10 or 11) Linux technology preview than every day stable OS.
And at all rushing to KDE 4.0 can and up in disaster. Because ~30% old Linux users like KDE 3.5 and they do not want any other DE.
I can agree with these notes, but think about this: Linux users always were able to cope with the usual cycle: release early, release often. In fact, they’d even fetch their “beta software” from source, fiddle with it till they get it to build and then use it. It crashed on them, alot, but they didn’t mind and went on using it just the same.
Now you get the prebuilt packages in pretty good shape and we still complain. When exactly did the Linux user lost his “edge”? I’m running Fedora 9, ran an PreUpgrade on my F8 and it works. KDE 4.0.3 is a MAJOR (and I mean, MAJOR!) difference from 3.5.8 and cannot be on pair with 3.5.9 series, it can’t even compete with 3.0 (which is an evolution step from 2.x). Give it time, it will grow up just like 2.0 did.
Anyway, if Fedora didn’t ship all the beta software today, Ubuntu wouldn’t have anything to ship tommorow.
“Fedora 9 includes the most advanced Linux software even in key components for desktop way too fast. KDE 4.0 + ext4 + Firefox 3 beta -> all ~ BETA.
”
KDE 4.0.3 is what is included in Fedora 9 and it is not marked as a beta release upstream. KDE 4.0.4 is already available as an update and KDE 4.1 will follow. Refer
http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/05/14/fedora-9-and-the-road-to-k…
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/KDE4FAQ
Ext4 is explicitly marked as experimental and Red Hat has several ext filesystem developers such as Stephen Tweedie and can lead this effort. You have to pass special options to the installer to even see this so this is not a issue at all.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Interviews/EricSandeen
Firefox 3 beta 5 is what is included in the latest Fedora as well as Ubuntu even though it is supposed to be a long term supported release. Red Hat employs one of the primary release engineers of Firefox in Linux so it has a advantage in this regard.
http://christopher.aillon.org/blog/dev/mozilla/20061204-linux-allia…
Fedora has always been about pushing the envelope and getting stuff out there to be tested, and 9 is a continuation of that process. it’s the distro for people who want the latest and greatest of OSS.
NEXTSTEP had shutdown options in the login screen 15 years ago… You’d think that would be a pretty basic option. Heck, even Windows lets you do that.
The new features aren’t shutdown which has been supported forever but power management features like suspend and hibernate right from the login screen.
aaah.. ok, that would explain it
I installed Fedora 9 on a whim last night. It installed fairly ok, had to switch some SATA settings in the bios to get things working, but it has been a nightmare ever since then. It hard locks all the time sometimes even before I can do anything after a boot, graphics corruption, even glxgears will completely lock up everything. It looks like it is not friendly towards intel video. I’m also definitely not liking KDE4 at all. That clock just keeps staring at me.
What kind of hardware did you install it on?
It was the integrated intel G33 chipset that it wasn’t liking. I found lots of reports of the latest drivers not working for it. The work-around was to shunt in the older X.org from Fedora 8 and then just make sure you don’t upgrade X until the problems were fixed. Not a solution that I was happy with so I am back on openSUSE now.
I used the text installer and it worked just fine, I had the python error from the graphical install.
Fedora just works for me, I like the way Red Hat has configured the system and I find it easy to use. There will be a Fedora 10 before RHEL6 is released so it will be the final bed for the Enterprise Release.
I have RHEL5.1 Server on my laptop, workstation at work and they are getting replaced by F9 on Monday.
Funny … the latest release of a very popular linux distro has many problems reported … yet folks quickly jump to the defense of the distro.
Microsoft releases an OS with a gazillion more variables … and they get hammered for 12 months.
Gotta love it.
What value, exactly, are you hoping to add to this forum with that post? New Fedora releases have their problems. It has different goals and a different target audience than do Microsoft’s OSes. I will be waiting 3 months or so before upgrading my customers to Fedora 9. Of Linux distros, you would have done rather better to pick CentOS, Ubuntu, or Debian releases for comparison. Their goals and target audience also differ, even between each other, so the validity of comparisons would still be limited. But Fedora’s goals involve being Free and cutting edge. They do quite well on reliability and quality within those constraints. But you can’t just ignore the constraints.
Your post was intended to foster needless conflict, and I am calling you on it.
Amen. Funny you got modded down, I wonder why? Your post is factual. It’s the sort of modding experience that I’ve experienced from using osnews for six or 7 years that really grates me. You haven’t used bad language (unless Microsoft is a bad word lol), you’ve stated something that is factual. Because many of the Fedora/Linux loversâ„¢ simply cannot stand the fact that you are factually bagging a Linux distro, they overreact and reach for the modding button. Furthermore, they break the osnews rules by modding you down for a non moddable reason.
Dave
You have to remember that Fedora 9 has BLEEDING edge software within and is intended as a community supported distribution. For those users that keep this in mind, they should expect a certain amount of bugs, because that is what you get with bleeding edge software (except the installer bug, that is a big one that I personally have experienced). Windows, on the contrary, is not BLEEDING edge and one would expect that it would have a certain level of “bugless-ness” as you would expect a supported distro like RHEL or SLED to have. We need to make sure we are comparing apples to apples.
Used to be a Red Hat fan since 5.5, so I thought I’d try the latest Fedora.
Installed it on a primary partition on a second hard drive.
GRUB refused to load.
So, I installed it in an extended partition on my primary hard drive.
Machine reboots every time Fedora starts.
Forget it. Other distributions don’t have such basic problems.
Fedora is the ‘test bed’ for the Next Red Hat Enterprise Linux release, I find it amazing how people can trash Fedora yet they have never installed it, used it or done anything with it.
Stop blaming a test release for the worlds problems, I have been running Fedora since the first release and it has always worked fine for me. The support from the community is great and I have NO Windows OS’es on any of my work machines, workstation, laptop or home machines. I can do all of my work using the ‘free software’ and have no viruses, no spyware, no problems with rougue programs running.
Until people actually use Fedora or for that matter any Linux distro how can you make comments comparing it to a Windows OS. All I know is it WORKS, and it does not cost me anything. PLUS, it pays my bills since I am a RHCE and I administer RHEL Servers…
Fedora is undeniably upstream for Red Hat Enterprise Linux but also powers OLPC systems, Creative Commons Live Content DVD’s, most of the wikipedia servers, several NASA systems, http://kernel.org and so on. It is also the primary OS that Linus Torvalds uses and has turned out to a lot more than just the base of one distribution.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview
I think that is only going to be more evident over time.
actually fedora isn’t the “test bed” for RHEL, it is a stable community developed distro sponsored by redhat from which certain new developments will be implemented in a future RHEL release.
So it certainly is not a test release. It is a distribution in it’s own right with stable releases every six months, placing it somewhere in between a rolling release system and regular distros which do not do package upgrades during a release cycle.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraMyths
stefan
Edited 2008-05-19 13:07 UTC
I used the torrent files in fedoraproject page to download x86-64 and i386 versions. Burn the dvds and started the installer. After language and keyboard settings the installer asked for packages because they were not on the DVD. It said that the DVD is not a Fedora Disc. I will stick to FC8 until the flux with ISOs calms down Then I will try again. Is someone distributing broken ISOs?
I have found the Live-Disk install to work perfectly with custom drive setup, I use LVM and it is has a lot more functionality than just plain partitioning (old school methods).
I have found once you learn or grasp the LVM concepts it is really cool. It has a learning curve associated with it, I finally have wrapped my mind around it and abandoned all of the old partitions in favor of LVM, plus you can encrypt the HD in Fedora 9 very useful this day and age.
It gets better and better, sometimes change is difficult however with time you begin to adjust. Plus Fedora 9 uses Upstart the boot-up time is fast, specifically on a laptop!
As with any Linux Distro sometimes you have to step away from the ‘overall’ view and understand what you are trying to do. I have had to on several occasions, plus use the community resources, I have helped and received help from users. The SECRET to the entire Open-Source model is someone always knows a better method, tip or technique to achieve the desired results.
If something is not well suited for the distro, it will be changed/removed or a new solution will be implemented. That is what makes it so fascinating, the ability to adapt and do so rather quickly!
LVM is only useful in a system with more then one disk imho. on a laptop for example with just one fixed disk it has little to no extra value over a clasically partitioned disk, nor do seperating the partitions other then /home make a difference in the disk setup.
stefan
Upstart in fedora 9 has no impact whatsoever to the boot time. Upstart is implemented in emulation only mode for F9 meaning that upstart will just run the “old” SYS V init scripts, without any performance gain whatsoever. This is done to get the framework in place and for F10 and later gradually start changing the init scripts from SystemV to upstart scripts.
that being said F9 does boot faster then F8 (how could it not?) but it has more to do with optimizing the current scripts and the implementation of xorg-server 1.4.999 which starts X a lot faster but nothing at all with upstart, neither on desktops nor laptops.
stefan
Edited 2008-05-19 13:08 UTC
It installed fine from the i386 DVD, but :
– KDE hangs right after login, had to reinstall under Gnome
– No Synaptic package manager, the Fedora package manager is a mess that cannot deal with offline repository, even with the DVD. At least under Ubuntu I was able to add the Ubuntu DVD as a repository and search amongst local packages and install them. The Fedora PM loaded slowly, veryyyyyy slowly the packages when connected on the Internet for update, and started a fetch when I clicked another section (from admin tools to graph tools for instance)
– Under Fedora PM, when you click another section, or try to install a package, it tells ‘Another task in progress’ and add to the job queue. Isn’t Fedora multi-tasking ?
– No nVidia driver, cannot even install the one found on the nVidia site (169.12)
– Several other glitches, cannot find offline repository like http://nonetdebs.homeip.net/ since I’m off the Internet most of the time. It’s strange how current Linux distros believes we’re all on cable !
Kochise
can I ask how to add an ubuntu dvd ISO file as a repository? I’m sure there was an easy way of doing that before but I cant find it… it constantly wants a real dvd and I cant be bothered looking for a dvd each time or I’d be quicker downloading it.
I also remember years ago when I used mandrake being able to use standard folders as an RPM source
I’m just about to try a Fedora dvd iso in a vmware
should be interesting.
Edited 2008-05-19 12:16 UTC
In ubuntu, mount the ISO using ‘sudo mount’ as a ‘/mnt’ subfolder. Then locate this folder under Synaptic…
Kochise
Fedora has apt and synaptic too if you prefer to use it.
# yum info synaptic
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Available Packages
Name : synaptic
Arch : i386
Version : 0.57.2
Release : 16.fc9
Size : 1.6 M
Repo : fedora
Summary : Graphical frontend for APT package manager.
URL : http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/
License : GPLv2+
Description: Synaptic is a graphical package management program for apt. It provides the same features as the apt-get command line utility with
a GUI front-end based on Gtk+
Offline package management is address in PackageKit 0.2 which will hit Fedora in a couple of weeks.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageKitFaq
Fedora is indeed multi-tasking but package management operations are transactional and lock the database to provide maximum safety. Hence the package management will queue the tasks.
for me I use rhel5 desktop is the best for me
no a bug the kernel OK for all H/W
fedora 9 i has test on vmware but a lot of bugg