Good review. I just installed Core 2 a few days ago, (with some hesitation) but I have to say I am very impressed, everything just works. I did have one problem installing Nvidia drivers because of some 4stack problem. But that was solved quickly by downloading a couple rpms and a precomplied kernel with 8stack enabled from here: http://rebus.webz.cz/
I have an odd event: when I scroll up, using the wheel, with my Logitech cordless mouseman optical mouse, it acts as if I’ve right clicked…very annoying…The other issue I have is poweroff reboots. Other than these two problems I got samba, print, and file services up in working pretty quickly.
Nice review, not biassed and informing like it should be! Anyways I like FC 2, i updated both my workstation and personal box without no problem and it just works!
[offtopic]
Who is that muppet reporting punkass his post as abuse? It’s an informative post. And if you think you wanna play around leave this shit please …
“I have an odd event: when I scroll up, using the wheel, with my Logitech cordless mouseman optical mouse, it acts as if I’ve right clicked…very annoying…The other issue I have is poweroff reboots. Other than these two problems I got samba, print, and file services up in working pretty quickly.”
there were some workarounds. this is specifically caused by the interchange of mouse devices. it is misconfigured. ask the fedora channel.
I tried to install FC2 on a clean hard drive, with no partitions on it and GRUB wasn’t installed properly, which means I couldn’t boot. It seems that ALL distros with 2.6 kernels detect the geometry of my HD’s incorrectly. I had no idea that the solution is to simply pass the correct geometry as an argument to the kernel (e.g. linux hda=4865,255,63), so I partitioned the drive from the rescue mode of FC1 (2.4 kernel) and reinstalled – that worked.
I don’t know what “feature” of the new kernel is causing this but if this is an undesired side effect of some change, it shows that it would’ve been better to wait for the 2.6 series to mature before including it in the distro.
The inclusion of a kernel that is not quite ready for mainstream in Fedora goes to show that for Red Hat, Fedora users are nothing more than guinea pigs for testing features to be included in RHEL.
Exposure is good but too much could be interpreted as nothing more than cheap propaganda if there are no balancing articles on how to fix some of the more obvious problems, pointed out in the numerous, but-more-or-less the same FC2 generic review.
Question: Could Synaptic replace FC2’s gui package manager, durring the instalation process? Why, one may ask? Minimize bloat! – obvious problem.
I don’t know what “feature” of the new kernel is causing this but if this is an undesired side effect of some change, it shows that it would’ve been better to wait for the 2.6 series to mature before including it in the distro. ”
Question: Could Synaptic replace FC2’s gui package manager, durring the instalation process? Why, one may ask? Minimize bloat! – obvious problem.
Fedora Core developers are currently working on Add/Remove Program that may include YUM support. Synaptic is an option so you can have a choice with two packages managers.
Re:”I don’t know what “feature” of the new kernel is causing this but if this is an undesired side effect of some change, it shows that it would’ve been better to wait for the 2.6 series to mature before including it in the distro. The inclusion of a kernel that is not quite ready for mainstream in Fedora goes to show that for Red Hat, Fedora users are nothing more than guinea pigs for testing features to be included in RHEL.”
First I see complaints on forums that it must be the boot loader that causes these issues. Now I see complaints that it must be the new Linux Kernel 2.6 that’s causing Fedora to not install properly. Why doesn’t anyone say..”Maybe I didn’t do something correctly during the installation” or “Fedora developers have released yet another version with bugs not fixed”. I don’t believe issues with dual boot set up are caused by the Linux Kernel 2.6. My reasoning for this is that I’ve set up two machines as dual boot that had differant hardware and haven’t run into the issues some users complain about. The OS tested were WinXP Pro (NTFS) and SuSE Linux Professional 9.1 (ReiserFS). The dual boot set up was done with Yast and I chose Grub as the boot loader. Neither machine showed any issues while booting or testing the software.
I have installed FC2, and booting from FC2 or Win 2000 is no problem. I prefer KDE and the system is noticeably snappier than FC1.
I have run into two problems so far:
1) There is no sound (on-board AC97).
2) I use Norwegian national characters in filenames. In FC1 I use the ISO8859-1 character set and all characters are correctly displayed, even on a VFAT partition shared by Windows and Linux. With the same parameters in “/etc/sysconfig/i18n” and “/etc/fstab” FC2 displays only the standard ASCII characters on the VFAT partition.
I do not know whether my problems can be traced back to FC2 or KDE?
I am looking forward to using FC2 as my standard OS but until these two problems, and a few more reported, have been sorted out, I’ll stick to FC1. I hope it will not take long.
I don’t think you can do anything wrong during the installation of Fedora Core – it’s really simple. All 2.4 based distros that I tried installed perfectly on my machine, but 2 different 2.6 distros, with different 2.6 kernels incorrectly detected my disk geometry. I think it’s a very convincing evidence that the problem is in the kernel (that and the boot log of the kernel which clearly states the incorrect geometry in the part about IDE hard drives).
Also the fact that the problem went away when I passed the correct geometry as an argument to the kernel (again, worked with both distros).
This “bug” is not really a bug at all, and happens with all distros using the 2.6 kernel. This is easily corrected by changing your BIOS settings to use LBA on your hard drives. The problem is with some older BIOS that the auto-detection does not work correctly. By telling the bios to use LBA the problem disappears and is no longer an issue. That is my understanding and what I have found with google searches so far. I verified this on 2 machines, one of which had the problem the other did not. Once I changed the bios to use LBA, everything installed correctly on the machine with the symptoms.
“This “bug” is not really a bug at all, and happens with all distros using the 2.6 kernel. This is easily corrected by changing your BIOS settings to use LBA on your hard drives.”
It doesn’t work on with all BIOSes (like with mine). Besides, why does the 2.4 series of kernels correctly detect the LBA geometry while the 2.6 kernels don’t?
Since Redhat let go of their linux to the open community, there is not another widely used as the old Redhat 8-9 ect. This leaves the average user in the dust and no choice but to use Windows. Before you could use Redhat and Windows, now I think there is so much division amoung the distro’s it is to hard to find one to get programs to work right. If you find one they go under or do something like this. Very disappointing, I liked the way it was before they dropped support.
I don’t think there are too many unknowns. Fedora is still available for the average user – completely free. And for all intents and purposes it is Red Hat.
If they don’t like it they should probably use Mandrake 10.
OK, this is getting my goat now. Piles of reviews of recent distros attribute supposed miraculous speed increases to the 2.6 kernel. Not a single one of them, though, seems to have gone to the trouble of actually testing this in any way whatsoever. Not a benchmark nor even an actual COMPARISON with a 2.4 kernel (which I know MDK and SuSE at least provide, and I expect Fedora does too) have I yet seen. Come on, people! This is just pure laziness. I run MDK Cooker, and don’t recall seeing much of a speed increase at all on my standard desktop system when I switched from using 2.4 to 2.6 kernel. Before I believe there really *is* some significant speedup for standard desktop tasks associated with 2.6, I’d like to see some proper TESTING done, thanks.
after performing these steps i was able to use my iPod once again…although i do use a script that manually loads the sbp2 module (modprobe sbp2) prior to mounting the iPod.
The main problem with Fedora is that it is Redhat, what I mean is before they disbanded support for Redhat Linux 8-9 ect it was the ‘status quo’ for the average user or people wanting to use it. Mandrake and the others do not compare nor do I like them. For this reason and this reason only, this is the biggest problem with linux on the desktop. As soon as they get something that the public likes, they bait and switch.
I like a main distro like Redhat that had a ‘common’ set of components and plenty of users who run across the same problems. Now it is back to the way it was, sure there are others, but finding fixes, making it work is a big can of worms which most don’t have the time nor the patience to deal with.
I do not know about Redhat workstation 3 or if they will discontinue support on it, but now it cost $100 and you can buy Windows XP Pro OEM for that price. So I do not see how linux can be cheaper, if you can’t get it to work or keep a version around long enough to run it.
I do not know about Redhat workstation 3 or if they will discontinue support on it, but now it cost $100 and you can buy Windows XP Pro OEM for that price. So I do not see how linux can be cheaper, if you can’t get it to work or keep a version around long enough to run it.
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there are several other distro but you have redhat enterprise clones too
i don’t know, i agree with anonymous poster, a supported and boxed version would be great. of course it would only be once a year, let’s say every third core release could be boxed, so basically the upcoming FC 3, FC 6, FC 9 and so forth, that would come out to one product every year. they could polish it before release even moreso, and turn a profit perhaps. ‘cos right now the only real alternative to windows is os x and FC 2, suse is rather ugly =/
I can’t believe that the up2date problems still exist. They should have just taken it out if they weren’t going to fix it, because it’s completely unusable in its current state. I wouldn’t have as huge of a problem with it if it wasn’t in the system tray by default, but the fact that yum is the main alternative and there’s no gui for it knocks it down another peg as well. And for those that would ask, yes I can use the command line and have done so when using FC1 with yum for a brief period, but I’m less concerned with me and more with the novice linux user and the fact that I shouldn’t HAVE to use the command line for such an important function that other distros don’t seem to have a problem with.
Sorry, but that combined with the multimedia issues, and the fact that I don’t like bluecurve (and certainly like galaxy a lot better) means that I’m sticking with Mandrake.
“And for those that would ask, yes I can use the command line and have done so when using FC1 with yum for a brief period, but I’m less concerned with me and more with the novice linux user and the fact that I shouldn’t HAVE to use the command line for such an important function that other distros don’t seem to have a problem with.
Sorry, but that combined with the multimedia issues, and the fact that I don’t like bluecurve (and certainly like galaxy a lot better) means that I’m sticking with Mandrake.
”
the next version would add support for yum and apt and fix the up2date problems. up2date is undergoing some changes to increase performance. you can read about the discussions in the list if you are interested.
Well, I am installing FC2 at the moment, haven’t touched a RH distro for ages… I can say that kernel 2.6 is a much better performer under stress. For example the link between software and hardware is a lot more potent. For example I have 512MB RAM, GeForce 4 ti4200 8xAGP on an Athlon 2600XP and Ut2K4 flies in Linux at 1600×1200 (with everything turned to max), windows just dies and my old 2.4 kernel couldn’t handle it like 2.6 does…
The author didn’t actually go into what made up2date buggy, just stating that it was such.
Did he mean that it sometimes stalls when there is high load on the server? I don’t like that either but if you pay for a RHN account you wont have that problem, likely why It’s not a priority with FC2. Perhaps a timeout window or something should be there?
I don’t use up2date for that reason, I yum -y update only keeping the applet for looks and notification.
This is a pretty good review. If it wasn’t for the dual boot bug this release would have been the first time I’ve not had to configure ‘anything’ on linux. all my hardware worked out of the box without so much as a dialog box. BTW I’m using the on-board AC97 (intel8x0) also and it worked from the ‘play sound’ at first boot up. I don’t even remember telling it I had a radeon 9600 card, it appeared to know that only asking for resolution which as the author stated was a problem with FC1
I’m ‘trying’ to get used to spatical nautilus but I don’t like having to close 9 windows after getting my file, perhaps there is some shortcuts and tricks I’m not aware of yet so I still use the start menu’s browse folder for now.
Redhat is charging $100+ for a workstation version (re-hash) of this linux distro in which you can download all the stuff for free. This Fedora is a mess, so you wonder why the user community or new users ditch it and go back to Windows. Heck for $100 you can buy Windows XP OEM or W2K OEM FULL version.
Another FACT is that you can actually play an MP3, watch a movie, and use MULTI-Media in Windows that is so crippled in Fedora and everyother Linux distro.
To me I do not think hunting for patches to play a DVD or burn a CD, or do something as simple as listen to music needs to be so difficult as it is in Linux.
Then to have if you don’t like this Fedora use some other difficult and fly by night ‘linux distro’ with no applications or patches or functionality.
I say NO thanks, at least with Windows it will work for the end user without wasting countless hours to only find out that it no longer exists. What a waste of time and energy.
“To me I do not think hunting for patches to play a DVD or burn a CD, or do something as simple as listen to music needs to be so difficult as it is in Linux. ”
I just want to point out that the CD burning capabilities in Fedora are extremely good (K3b and Nautilus, both have always worked like a charm for me), and that Microsoft doesn’t give you DVD playing out of the box, either. People seem to love to confuse “software I got with my CD-RW or DVD” with “software Microsoft provides me”. Simply ain’t true.
The MP3 thing, as has been said a million times over, is a patent issue. Go bitch to Fraunhoffer if you don’t like it. Red Hat is being responsible.
Compared to the hassle of installing emacs and all the GNU utils in Windows, Linux is positively awesome. Don’t assume your priorities are the same as everyone else’s.
I recently went from FC2 back to FC1, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the dual boot bug (which I managed to avoid with some judicious use of fdisk). Turns out my wireless device (WUSB11 v2.6) has some issues with kernel 2.6 still, and, frankly, I need Internet access far more than kernel 2.6 and GNOME 2.6. Trust me, I was trying damn near everything to keep from having to yank it – I really like FC2!
If it gives you any perspective, I briefly considered buying a wireless bridge to use with the onboard LAN (forcedeth).
The only really annoying bug in FC2 that I saw was that my nForce2 audio seemed very spotty in GNOME. Not too many issues in KDE, so it’s probably an ESD issue. No surprise, considering ESD is pretty much the _worst sound daemon ever_. Let’s see some hardware mixing, nVidia!
If you’re not dual-booting, or you’re comptent enough to follow LWN’s instructions on how to fix the issue, I’d highly recommend giving FC2 a roll.
Redhat is charging $100+ for a workstation version (re-hash) of this linux distro in which you can download all the stuff for free. This Fedora is a mess, so you wonder why the user community or new users ditch it and go back to Windows.
I’ve used FC1, RH 8-9. What mess are you describing. No there are no viruses, backdoors and or unessessary bloat. What a messs.
Heck for $100 you can buy Windows XP OEM or W2K OEM FULL version.
Then you have to spend $100 on an AV. $100 on a firewall $100 on anti-spyware, $100 for some sort of maintence software, $100+ for office software andother $300 for a decent graphics program. Another $100 to watch your movies or play mp3’s. Oh yea, windows is cheaper alright. Oh no. You updated your dat file for your AV. Now your system is running like shit!
Another FACT is that you can actually play an MP3, watch a movie, and use MULTI-Media in Windows
Yes AFTER you purchase the correct software to watch said media on windows.
that is so crippled in Fedora and everyother Linux distro.
Psst… apt-get.
To me I do not think hunting for patches to play a DVD or burn a CD, or do something as simple as listen to music needs to be so difficult as it is in Linux.
Its not! no one hunts for ‘patches’ ,to play their DVD or mp3 music. They download what is needed and then enjoy. No blaming ‘3rd party apps’ because your DVD or mp3 player stops working in windows.
Then to have if you don’t like this Fedora use some other difficult and fly by night ‘linux distro’ with no applications or patches or functionality.
Or use another version of windows. Still have all the same problems and still have no solution. I’ll take one of those ‘hard’ distros.
I say NO thanks, at least with Windows it will work for the end user without wasting countless hours to only find out that it no longer exists.
Instead they will wast countless of hours trying to keep the dll files under control. Trying to keep windows up and running long enough to even do simple tasks, endlessly tweeking the registry, install, reinstall and reinstall again.
Did anyone else notice that nearly every comment had the “report abuse” link clicked? My guess is one of the trolls did it out of spite when their comment got modded down. Such people need to be banned.
The booting problem is not the kernel, it’s the new GRUB that comes along with the new distros. It uses a newer BIOS function for reporting the drive geometry. The problem is that some BIOSes will switch modes based on the geometry call, leaving the older function call in the lurch. Windows uses the older BIOS function, which is now returning improper data due to the previous use of the newer function by GRUB. The “fix” of switching the drive to LBA mode gets around the BIOS switching modes automatically by forcing the mode to be compatible with the older loaders. I imagine that some BIOSes also don’t handle the newer function call properly. Some people may need a BIOS update to use the new GRUB.
Tons of free players have this functionality, like Winamp. And why should I use Fedora when Mandrake already has this out of the box? Further, I dont like Gnome, so why should I use Fedora when it has a flawed implementation of KDE? Other reviews have indicated that Mandrake’s hardware detection is better. Even if I liked Gnome, I see no reasons to choose Fedora over Mandrake.
You don’t have to pay to play mp3s, video or dvd in Fedora either, but you have to get the packages yourself. http://www.fedorafaq.org covers how to get packages for Fedora. It’s not hard, not at all. In windows you get Winamp, in Fedora you get xmms-mp3, in windows you get quicktime, in Fedora you get mplayer. In Windows you get PowerDVD, in Fedora you get ogle. It’s easy to get software, the software is free and available with tools already in the distro.
Stop acting like the multimedia issue ruins the distro, it doesn’t. It’s a minor issue easily resolved.
I just installed FC2 last night. I installed over ftp, only having to download and burn the boot.iso image before installing.
One tip for you: keep /usr/local on a separate partition and make /home a symlink to /home -> /usr/local/home. I do this so as I update distros, I can keep my home and local files all in one place.
So far, a few problems, but I don’t see too much that’s show-stopping for me as yet. For some reason, GNOME was very slow and locked up when I first logged in (as root, to do some cleaning), but it seems to work okay now.
“Then you have to spend $100 on an AV. $100 on a firewall $100 on anti-spyware, $100 for some sort of maintence software, $100+ for office software andother $300 for a decent graphics program. Another $100 to watch your movies or play mp3’s. Oh yea, windows is cheaper alright. Oh no. You updated your dat file for your AV. Now your system is running like shit!”
Norton Anti Virus: $50 at Compusa.
Zone Alarm Pro: $60 from zonealarm.com, but with the soon to be released SP2 for Windows XP, you will beable to knock this extra cost off.
Spyware checking and removal: Free at adaware.com
Watching movies and playing mp3s. Well, maybe I am blind, but I am pretty sure that Windows comes with a media player included for free, which will play mp3s and just about any other audio file I can dish out by default. Yes, you do have to pay for support for DVD movies, but last I checked it was about $20.
Office Program: What about Open Office? It sure seems good enough for the Linux folks, so why cant this be considered a free program for Windows too?
Graphics Program: See above, but replace Open Office with Gimp.
OK, so this adds up to a grand total of an extra $130. Now, you will beable to subtract $60 bucks for the zonealarm when SP2 is released, and if you dont watch DVDs on your computer, then another $20. So thats only $50 for an anti-virus program. Reasonable enough. Sure is a far cry from the $600+ extra to run Windows FUD you are trying to run. Hey, atleast if you want some excellent programs like Photshop or Microsoft Office, you can run them on Windows. People always say choice is good, and they are right. The choices I have software wise for Windows is excellent! If you are going to try to make Windows look bad and expensive, atleast use some reasonable arguments.
I agree with what you said. I use OOo, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, Zonealarm, adaware, spybot with windows – all free. I also use AVG antivirus, also free.
BUT, I am on dialup without a choice of broadband, and it’s a pain to download all those programs for windows. With linux, I can buy a set of disks from cheapbytes or whoever, or borrow a set to copy (legally), and I get all those programs already on the disks.
So, you are correct about not needing to spend the money in windows, but I count my time and effort to download in this argument as well.
If you have broadband – great, disregard these comments. Anyways, I currently use Debian, but I may give Fedora a try someday.
I feel that I covered the bases about the so called, “multimedia issue” in the review. It really is a non-issue as far as i’m concerned and as Sindre also points out.
Zone Alarm Pro: $60 from zonealarm.com, but with the soon to be released SP2 for Windows XP, you will beable to knock this extra cost off.
Zone Alarm pro $60 + an external firewall $100 or you still have basicaly no protection. SP2. Forget it! Its still a a patch for a patch and is still liable to screw up your system.
Spyware checking and removal: Free at adaware.com
A good spyware and removal software will STILL cost you $100 . If you get the ‘free’ alternative. You are still left with unwanted junk on the computer. Pluse don’t forget. If a anti-spy ware program removes something from the registry it is liable to screw up your computer.
Watching movies and playing mp3s. Well, maybe I am blind, but I am pretty sure that Windows comes with a media player included for free,
A basic version, yes. Not one that can play mp3’s. You need a patch for that.
which will play mp3s and just about any other audio file I can dish out by default.
Yes AFTER it has been patched or updated.
Yes, you do have to pay for support for DVD movies, but last I checked it was about $20.
Linux = free! Same with mp3 support!
Office Program: What about Open Office? It sure seems good enough for the Linux folks, so why cant this be considered a free program for Windows too?
No problem there. Most people who use windows usualy use M$ office. That runs into hundreds of dollars.
Graphics Program: See above, but replace Open Office with Gimp.
See above.
OK, so this adds up to a grand total of an extra $130. Now, you will beable to subtract $60 bucks for the zonealarm when SP2 is released, and if you dont watch DVDs on your computer, then another $20. So thats only $50 for an anti-virus program. Reasonable enough.
Nope! An anti -virus program is still %100 pluse all the ‘dat files.’ Mainitence costs to keep your hard ware up to date to run such programs. You have to pay for a proper add removal program or your registry is going to be toast. You still need a proper fire wall, SP2 does not count. Patches for windows rarly solve anything pluse if you really want to be safe then and external firewall IS needed.
Sure is a far cry from the $600+ extra to run Windows FUD you are trying to run.
Nope. What I said is dead on accurate. Since I KNOW what windows needs. But I agree its a far cry tothe complaints to the Linux FUD that you try to run. No linux user has to go through that bullshit.
Hey, atleast if you want some excellent programs like Photshop or Microsoft Office, you can run them on Windows.
You can run them on linux too, what is your point?
People always say choice is good, and they are right. The choices I have software wise for Windows is excellent!
And the choice for linux is even better!
If you are going to try to make Windows look bad and expensive, atleast use some reasonable arguments.
I don’t need to ‘try’ to make windows look ‘bad and expensive.’ As I have stated, there are plenty of evedence by itself. Unlike the FUD you have spread about linux. If you are going to bash Linux, follow your own advice and at least try to use some reasonalble arguments!
2.) Download and burn the “/pub/linux/fedora/linux/i386/os/images/boot.iso” file from your mirror onto a CD. This is ~5 MB
3.) After backing up your data, insert the burned CD into your machine and reboot.
4.) Machine will reboot and start installation.
5.) Select “FTP” or “HTTP” installation (depending on which type of mirror server you’re using). You’ll have to input the address of the mirror as well as the path to the OS installation files. This is essentially the same as the path I showed above, something like: “pub/linux/fedora/i386/os”. Some experimentation required, but the install program lets you know if its wrong.
6.) Setup proceeds as usual. NOTE: depending on your download speed, it can take a good bit of time to do this. My suggestion: get it to the point its only installing files, monitor it for a little while, and go to bed. I let it install overnight and wake up to reboot after the install and tweak it to my heart’s delight.
Overall, I like this method, even on a home cable connection. It means I don’t have to download and burn gigabytes of CDs (all of my downloads are immediately installed). Its not for everyone, and it can take a bit longer (which is why I do it overnight). My install last night took ~4 hours (30 minutes for user-input and 3.5 hours for download and install), YMMV.
I failed to understand your question. Concerning 3D support, it is up to propertary GPU companies as OSS developer don’t have access to their hardware sources. The 4KSTACKs issues from Fedora kernel just exposed the problem from NVIDIA driver
Fedora will be around as long as the other Red Hat distros where. Its a big project which just isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, and as for 3D support? Its easily fixed – and something which plagues most distros.
Until I can go to a store and buy a PC game title off the shelf (not just Unreal Tourney 2004) and run it on Linux just like in Windows, Linux will continue to be a hobby OS for home users. I am a huge gamer and Linux just doesn’t cut it for game support or graphics card support.
Good review. I just installed Core 2 a few days ago, (with some hesitation) but I have to say I am very impressed, everything just works. I did have one problem installing Nvidia drivers because of some 4stack problem. But that was solved quickly by downloading a couple rpms and a precomplied kernel with 8stack enabled from here: http://rebus.webz.cz/
I have an odd event: when I scroll up, using the wheel, with my Logitech cordless mouseman optical mouse, it acts as if I’ve right clicked…very annoying…The other issue I have is poweroff reboots. Other than these two problems I got samba, print, and file services up in working pretty quickly.
Nice review, not biassed and informing like it should be! Anyways I like FC 2, i updated both my workstation and personal box without no problem and it just works!
[offtopic]
Who is that muppet reporting punkass his post as abuse? It’s an informative post. And if you think you wanna play around leave this shit please …
[/offtopic]
“I have an odd event: when I scroll up, using the wheel, with my Logitech cordless mouseman optical mouse, it acts as if I’ve right clicked…very annoying…The other issue I have is poweroff reboots. Other than these two problems I got samba, print, and file services up in working pretty quickly.”
there were some workarounds. this is specifically caused by the interchange of mouse devices. it is misconfigured. ask the fedora channel.
I tried to install FC2 on a clean hard drive, with no partitions on it and GRUB wasn’t installed properly, which means I couldn’t boot. It seems that ALL distros with 2.6 kernels detect the geometry of my HD’s incorrectly. I had no idea that the solution is to simply pass the correct geometry as an argument to the kernel (e.g. linux hda=4865,255,63), so I partitioned the drive from the rescue mode of FC1 (2.4 kernel) and reinstalled – that worked.
I don’t know what “feature” of the new kernel is causing this but if this is an undesired side effect of some change, it shows that it would’ve been better to wait for the 2.6 series to mature before including it in the distro.
The inclusion of a kernel that is not quite ready for mainstream in Fedora goes to show that for Red Hat, Fedora users are nothing more than guinea pigs for testing features to be included in RHEL.
http://www.fedorafaq.org/ if you installed FC2 and have questions.
Exposure is good but too much could be interpreted as nothing more than cheap propaganda if there are no balancing articles on how to fix some of the more obvious problems, pointed out in the numerous, but-more-or-less the same FC2 generic review.
Question: Could Synaptic replace FC2’s gui package manager, durring the instalation process? Why, one may ask? Minimize bloat! – obvious problem.
”
I don’t know what “feature” of the new kernel is causing this but if this is an undesired side effect of some change, it shows that it would’ve been better to wait for the 2.6 series to mature before including it in the distro. ”
it only affects dual boot systems.
“it only affects dual boot systems.”
Like I said in the previous post I did not have a dual boot system and it happened nonetheless.
Question: Could Synaptic replace FC2’s gui package manager, durring the instalation process? Why, one may ask? Minimize bloat! – obvious problem.
Fedora Core developers are currently working on Add/Remove Program that may include YUM support. Synaptic is an option so you can have a choice with two packages managers.
I guess it just goes to show how much of a Gnome/Fedora hater that Linux.com reviewer has become.
Thanks a lot for the positive feedback folks on my review!
Re:”I don’t know what “feature” of the new kernel is causing this but if this is an undesired side effect of some change, it shows that it would’ve been better to wait for the 2.6 series to mature before including it in the distro. The inclusion of a kernel that is not quite ready for mainstream in Fedora goes to show that for Red Hat, Fedora users are nothing more than guinea pigs for testing features to be included in RHEL.”
First I see complaints on forums that it must be the boot loader that causes these issues. Now I see complaints that it must be the new Linux Kernel 2.6 that’s causing Fedora to not install properly. Why doesn’t anyone say..”Maybe I didn’t do something correctly during the installation” or “Fedora developers have released yet another version with bugs not fixed”. I don’t believe issues with dual boot set up are caused by the Linux Kernel 2.6. My reasoning for this is that I’ve set up two machines as dual boot that had differant hardware and haven’t run into the issues some users complain about. The OS tested were WinXP Pro (NTFS) and SuSE Linux Professional 9.1 (ReiserFS). The dual boot set up was done with Yast and I chose Grub as the boot loader. Neither machine showed any issues while booting or testing the software.
I have installed FC2, and booting from FC2 or Win 2000 is no problem. I prefer KDE and the system is noticeably snappier than FC1.
I have run into two problems so far:
1) There is no sound (on-board AC97).
2) I use Norwegian national characters in filenames. In FC1 I use the ISO8859-1 character set and all characters are correctly displayed, even on a VFAT partition shared by Windows and Linux. With the same parameters in “/etc/sysconfig/i18n” and “/etc/fstab” FC2 displays only the standard ASCII characters on the VFAT partition.
I do not know whether my problems can be traced back to FC2 or KDE?
I am looking forward to using FC2 as my standard OS but until these two problems, and a few more reported, have been sorted out, I’ll stick to FC1. I hope it will not take long.
I don’t think you can do anything wrong during the installation of Fedora Core – it’s really simple. All 2.4 based distros that I tried installed perfectly on my machine, but 2 different 2.6 distros, with different 2.6 kernels incorrectly detected my disk geometry. I think it’s a very convincing evidence that the problem is in the kernel (that and the boot log of the kernel which clearly states the incorrect geometry in the part about IDE hard drives).
Also the fact that the problem went away when I passed the correct geometry as an argument to the kernel (again, worked with both distros).
But of course, I could be wrong.
This “bug” is not really a bug at all, and happens with all distros using the 2.6 kernel. This is easily corrected by changing your BIOS settings to use LBA on your hard drives. The problem is with some older BIOS that the auto-detection does not work correctly. By telling the bios to use LBA the problem disappears and is no longer an issue. That is my understanding and what I have found with google searches so far. I verified this on 2 machines, one of which had the problem the other did not. Once I changed the bios to use LBA, everything installed correctly on the machine with the symptoms.
for crap’s sake people, stop clicking the “Report abuse” link without a reason!
“This “bug” is not really a bug at all, and happens with all distros using the 2.6 kernel. This is easily corrected by changing your BIOS settings to use LBA on your hard drives.”
It doesn’t work on with all BIOSes (like with mine). Besides, why does the 2.4 series of kernels correctly detect the LBA geometry while the 2.6 kernels don’t?
Since Redhat let go of their linux to the open community, there is not another widely used as the old Redhat 8-9 ect. This leaves the average user in the dust and no choice but to use Windows. Before you could use Redhat and Windows, now I think there is so much division amoung the distro’s it is to hard to find one to get programs to work right. If you find one they go under or do something like this. Very disappointing, I liked the way it was before they dropped support.
I don’t think there are too many unknowns. Fedora is still available for the average user – completely free. And for all intents and purposes it is Red Hat.
If they don’t like it they should probably use Mandrake 10.
(Author of MadPenguin FC2 Review)
Wow. They look almost exactly like the Gnome screenshots. That is impressive. I like the uniformity.
OK, this is getting my goat now. Piles of reviews of recent distros attribute supposed miraculous speed increases to the 2.6 kernel. Not a single one of them, though, seems to have gone to the trouble of actually testing this in any way whatsoever. Not a benchmark nor even an actual COMPARISON with a 2.4 kernel (which I know MDK and SuSE at least provide, and I expect Fedora does too) have I yet seen. Come on, people! This is just pure laziness. I run MDK Cooker, and don’t recall seeing much of a speed increase at all on my standard desktop system when I switched from using 2.4 to 2.6 kernel. Before I believe there really *is* some significant speedup for standard desktop tasks associated with 2.6, I’d like to see some proper TESTING done, thanks.
1. install the latest kernel you can find from here:
http://people.redhat.com/~arjanv/2.6/RPMS.kernel/
the latest ones have firewire enabled
2. add this line to /etc/modprobe.conf
alias ieee1394-controller ohci1394
after performing these steps i was able to use my iPod once again…although i do use a script that manually loads the sbp2 module (modprobe sbp2) prior to mounting the iPod.
Every package is still done by redhat employees. its not really open to community packaging and infrastructure yet
To be honest – i’d never thought of doing a benchmark!
I’ll certainly start doing them from the next distribution review I do.
(Author of the Mad Penguin Review)
The main problem with Fedora is that it is Redhat, what I mean is before they disbanded support for Redhat Linux 8-9 ect it was the ‘status quo’ for the average user or people wanting to use it. Mandrake and the others do not compare nor do I like them. For this reason and this reason only, this is the biggest problem with linux on the desktop. As soon as they get something that the public likes, they bait and switch.
I like a main distro like Redhat that had a ‘common’ set of components and plenty of users who run across the same problems. Now it is back to the way it was, sure there are others, but finding fixes, making it work is a big can of worms which most don’t have the time nor the patience to deal with.
I do not know about Redhat workstation 3 or if they will discontinue support on it, but now it cost $100 and you can buy Windows XP Pro OEM for that price. So I do not see how linux can be cheaper, if you can’t get it to work or keep a version around long enough to run it.
I do not know about Redhat workstation 3 or if they will discontinue support on it, but now it cost $100 and you can buy Windows XP Pro OEM for that price. So I do not see how linux can be cheaper, if you can’t get it to work or keep a version around long enough to run it.
—————
there are several other distro but you have redhat enterprise clones too
caos.org
whiteboxlinux.org
taolinux.org
i don’t know, i agree with anonymous poster, a supported and boxed version would be great. of course it would only be once a year, let’s say every third core release could be boxed, so basically the upcoming FC 3, FC 6, FC 9 and so forth, that would come out to one product every year. they could polish it before release even moreso, and turn a profit perhaps. ‘cos right now the only real alternative to windows is os x and FC 2, suse is rather ugly =/
I can’t believe that the up2date problems still exist. They should have just taken it out if they weren’t going to fix it, because it’s completely unusable in its current state. I wouldn’t have as huge of a problem with it if it wasn’t in the system tray by default, but the fact that yum is the main alternative and there’s no gui for it knocks it down another peg as well. And for those that would ask, yes I can use the command line and have done so when using FC1 with yum for a brief period, but I’m less concerned with me and more with the novice linux user and the fact that I shouldn’t HAVE to use the command line for such an important function that other distros don’t seem to have a problem with.
Sorry, but that combined with the multimedia issues, and the fact that I don’t like bluecurve (and certainly like galaxy a lot better) means that I’m sticking with Mandrake.
“And for those that would ask, yes I can use the command line and have done so when using FC1 with yum for a brief period, but I’m less concerned with me and more with the novice linux user and the fact that I shouldn’t HAVE to use the command line for such an important function that other distros don’t seem to have a problem with.
Sorry, but that combined with the multimedia issues, and the fact that I don’t like bluecurve (and certainly like galaxy a lot better) means that I’m sticking with Mandrake.
”
the next version would add support for yum and apt and fix the up2date problems. up2date is undergoing some changes to increase performance. you can read about the discussions in the list if you are interested.
fedora faq solves your multimedia issues
yum install xmms-mp3
galaxy can be installed in fedora too.
Well, I am installing FC2 at the moment, haven’t touched a RH distro for ages… I can say that kernel 2.6 is a much better performer under stress. For example the link between software and hardware is a lot more potent. For example I have 512MB RAM, GeForce 4 ti4200 8xAGP on an Athlon 2600XP and Ut2K4 flies in Linux at 1600×1200 (with everything turned to max), windows just dies and my old 2.4 kernel couldn’t handle it like 2.6 does…
The author didn’t actually go into what made up2date buggy, just stating that it was such.
Did he mean that it sometimes stalls when there is high load on the server? I don’t like that either but if you pay for a RHN account you wont have that problem, likely why It’s not a priority with FC2. Perhaps a timeout window or something should be there?
I don’t use up2date for that reason, I yum -y update only keeping the applet for looks and notification.
This is a pretty good review. If it wasn’t for the dual boot bug this release would have been the first time I’ve not had to configure ‘anything’ on linux. all my hardware worked out of the box without so much as a dialog box. BTW I’m using the on-board AC97 (intel8x0) also and it worked from the ‘play sound’ at first boot up. I don’t even remember telling it I had a radeon 9600 card, it appeared to know that only asking for resolution which as the author stated was a problem with FC1
I’m ‘trying’ to get used to spatical nautilus but I don’t like having to close 9 windows after getting my file, perhaps there is some shortcuts and tricks I’m not aware of yet so I still use the start menu’s browse folder for now.
Does s-video out work on fedora core 2. It works on RH8-9 using the VESA drivers but it didn’t FC1.
So I hope that they fixed this problem.
P.S. its a radeon 7500 graphics card, incase your wondering.
I already know I can install NVIDIA drivers in FC2, but what about ATI?
ATI drivers work with FEDORA?
Redhat is charging $100+ for a workstation version (re-hash) of this linux distro in which you can download all the stuff for free. This Fedora is a mess, so you wonder why the user community or new users ditch it and go back to Windows. Heck for $100 you can buy Windows XP OEM or W2K OEM FULL version.
Another FACT is that you can actually play an MP3, watch a movie, and use MULTI-Media in Windows that is so crippled in Fedora and everyother Linux distro.
To me I do not think hunting for patches to play a DVD or burn a CD, or do something as simple as listen to music needs to be so difficult as it is in Linux.
Then to have if you don’t like this Fedora use some other difficult and fly by night ‘linux distro’ with no applications or patches or functionality.
I say NO thanks, at least with Windows it will work for the end user without wasting countless hours to only find out that it no longer exists. What a waste of time and energy.
“To me I do not think hunting for patches to play a DVD or burn a CD, or do something as simple as listen to music needs to be so difficult as it is in Linux. ”
I just want to point out that the CD burning capabilities in Fedora are extremely good (K3b and Nautilus, both have always worked like a charm for me), and that Microsoft doesn’t give you DVD playing out of the box, either. People seem to love to confuse “software I got with my CD-RW or DVD” with “software Microsoft provides me”. Simply ain’t true.
The MP3 thing, as has been said a million times over, is a patent issue. Go bitch to Fraunhoffer if you don’t like it. Red Hat is being responsible.
Compared to the hassle of installing emacs and all the GNU utils in Windows, Linux is positively awesome. Don’t assume your priorities are the same as everyone else’s.
I recently went from FC2 back to FC1, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the dual boot bug (which I managed to avoid with some judicious use of fdisk). Turns out my wireless device (WUSB11 v2.6) has some issues with kernel 2.6 still, and, frankly, I need Internet access far more than kernel 2.6 and GNOME 2.6. Trust me, I was trying damn near everything to keep from having to yank it – I really like FC2!
If it gives you any perspective, I briefly considered buying a wireless bridge to use with the onboard LAN (forcedeth).
The only really annoying bug in FC2 that I saw was that my nForce2 audio seemed very spotty in GNOME. Not too many issues in KDE, so it’s probably an ESD issue. No surprise, considering ESD is pretty much the _worst sound daemon ever_. Let’s see some hardware mixing, nVidia!
If you’re not dual-booting, or you’re comptent enough to follow LWN’s instructions on how to fix the issue, I’d highly recommend giving FC2 a roll.
-Erwos
This is nuts, not having an up2date agent working is out of control!
Fedora is nothing but a bunch of cobbled code that is all crappy source code.
The lack of a floppy boot option is not an oversight, the 2.6 kernel image has become too large to fit on a floppy.
Looks like the trolls are starting to roll in, done with this tread, thanks for the insightfull comments while the lasted.
Redhat is charging $100+ for a workstation version (re-hash) of this linux distro in which you can download all the stuff for free. This Fedora is a mess, so you wonder why the user community or new users ditch it and go back to Windows.
I’ve used FC1, RH 8-9. What mess are you describing. No there are no viruses, backdoors and or unessessary bloat. What a messs.
Heck for $100 you can buy Windows XP OEM or W2K OEM FULL version.
Then you have to spend $100 on an AV. $100 on a firewall $100 on anti-spyware, $100 for some sort of maintence software, $100+ for office software andother $300 for a decent graphics program. Another $100 to watch your movies or play mp3’s. Oh yea, windows is cheaper alright. Oh no. You updated your dat file for your AV. Now your system is running like shit!
Another FACT is that you can actually play an MP3, watch a movie, and use MULTI-Media in Windows
Yes AFTER you purchase the correct software to watch said media on windows.
that is so crippled in Fedora and everyother Linux distro.
Psst… apt-get.
To me I do not think hunting for patches to play a DVD or burn a CD, or do something as simple as listen to music needs to be so difficult as it is in Linux.
Its not! no one hunts for ‘patches’ ,to play their DVD or mp3 music. They download what is needed and then enjoy. No blaming ‘3rd party apps’ because your DVD or mp3 player stops working in windows.
Then to have if you don’t like this Fedora use some other difficult and fly by night ‘linux distro’ with no applications or patches or functionality.
Or use another version of windows. Still have all the same problems and still have no solution. I’ll take one of those ‘hard’ distros.
I say NO thanks, at least with Windows it will work for the end user without wasting countless hours to only find out that it no longer exists.
Instead they will wast countless of hours trying to keep the dll files under control. Trying to keep windows up and running long enough to even do simple tasks, endlessly tweeking the registry, install, reinstall and reinstall again.
What a waste of time and energy.
I agree. Windows IS a wast of time and energy ;-D
Did anyone else notice that nearly every comment had the “report abuse” link clicked? My guess is one of the trolls did it out of spite when their comment got modded down. Such people need to be banned.
The booting problem is not the kernel, it’s the new GRUB that comes along with the new distros. It uses a newer BIOS function for reporting the drive geometry. The problem is that some BIOSes will switch modes based on the geometry call, leaving the older function call in the lurch. Windows uses the older BIOS function, which is now returning improper data due to the previous use of the newer function by GRUB. The “fix” of switching the drive to LBA mode gets around the BIOS switching modes automatically by forcing the mode to be compatible with the older loaders. I imagine that some BIOSes also don’t handle the newer function call properly. Some people may need a BIOS update to use the new GRUB.
Tons of free players have this functionality, like Winamp. And why should I use Fedora when Mandrake already has this out of the box? Further, I dont like Gnome, so why should I use Fedora when it has a flawed implementation of KDE? Other reviews have indicated that Mandrake’s hardware detection is better. Even if I liked Gnome, I see no reasons to choose Fedora over Mandrake.
Hi,
I wonder why nobody talks about the bug (go on bugzilla for that) regarding the showstopper in ASUS P4P800 series motherboard that prevents install.
I am one of this. No FC2, no Party…long life to FC1.
– Regards
– Paolo
no, because you already pay for it when you buy it.
In your case Mandrake may be better for you because KDE, in mine FC2 is better to me because I like GNOME over KDE, its all about choice.
You don’t have to pay to play mp3s, video or dvd in Fedora either, but you have to get the packages yourself. http://www.fedorafaq.org covers how to get packages for Fedora. It’s not hard, not at all. In windows you get Winamp, in Fedora you get xmms-mp3, in windows you get quicktime, in Fedora you get mplayer. In Windows you get PowerDVD, in Fedora you get ogle. It’s easy to get software, the software is free and available with tools already in the distro.
Stop acting like the multimedia issue ruins the distro, it doesn’t. It’s a minor issue easily resolved.
I just installed FC2 last night. I installed over ftp, only having to download and burn the boot.iso image before installing.
One tip for you: keep /usr/local on a separate partition and make /home a symlink to /home -> /usr/local/home. I do this so as I update distros, I can keep my home and local files all in one place.
So far, a few problems, but I don’t see too much that’s show-stopping for me as yet. For some reason, GNOME was very slow and locked up when I first logged in (as root, to do some cleaning), but it seems to work okay now.
How many CDs (4 total) do i need for installation?
Thanks
“Then you have to spend $100 on an AV. $100 on a firewall $100 on anti-spyware, $100 for some sort of maintence software, $100+ for office software andother $300 for a decent graphics program. Another $100 to watch your movies or play mp3’s. Oh yea, windows is cheaper alright. Oh no. You updated your dat file for your AV. Now your system is running like shit!”
Norton Anti Virus: $50 at Compusa.
Zone Alarm Pro: $60 from zonealarm.com, but with the soon to be released SP2 for Windows XP, you will beable to knock this extra cost off.
Spyware checking and removal: Free at adaware.com
Watching movies and playing mp3s. Well, maybe I am blind, but I am pretty sure that Windows comes with a media player included for free, which will play mp3s and just about any other audio file I can dish out by default. Yes, you do have to pay for support for DVD movies, but last I checked it was about $20.
Office Program: What about Open Office? It sure seems good enough for the Linux folks, so why cant this be considered a free program for Windows too?
Graphics Program: See above, but replace Open Office with Gimp.
OK, so this adds up to a grand total of an extra $130. Now, you will beable to subtract $60 bucks for the zonealarm when SP2 is released, and if you dont watch DVDs on your computer, then another $20. So thats only $50 for an anti-virus program. Reasonable enough. Sure is a far cry from the $600+ extra to run Windows FUD you are trying to run. Hey, atleast if you want some excellent programs like Photshop or Microsoft Office, you can run them on Windows. People always say choice is good, and they are right. The choices I have software wise for Windows is excellent! If you are going to try to make Windows look bad and expensive, atleast use some reasonable arguments.
Well,
I agree with what you said. I use OOo, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, Zonealarm, adaware, spybot with windows – all free. I also use AVG antivirus, also free.
BUT, I am on dialup without a choice of broadband, and it’s a pain to download all those programs for windows. With linux, I can buy a set of disks from cheapbytes or whoever, or borrow a set to copy (legally), and I get all those programs already on the disks.
So, you are correct about not needing to spend the money in windows, but I count my time and effort to download in this argument as well.
If you have broadband – great, disregard these comments. Anyways, I currently use Debian, but I may give Fedora a try someday.
I feel that I covered the bases about the so called, “multimedia issue” in the review. It really is a non-issue as far as i’m concerned and as Sindre also points out.
(‘Ello Sindre btw)
Norton Anti Virus: $50 at Compusa.
Yes, $50 US. Its STILL too expensive!
Zone Alarm Pro: $60 from zonealarm.com, but with the soon to be released SP2 for Windows XP, you will beable to knock this extra cost off.
Zone Alarm pro $60 + an external firewall $100 or you still have basicaly no protection. SP2. Forget it! Its still a a patch for a patch and is still liable to screw up your system.
Spyware checking and removal: Free at adaware.com
A good spyware and removal software will STILL cost you $100 . If you get the ‘free’ alternative. You are still left with unwanted junk on the computer. Pluse don’t forget. If a anti-spy ware program removes something from the registry it is liable to screw up your computer.
Watching movies and playing mp3s. Well, maybe I am blind, but I am pretty sure that Windows comes with a media player included for free,
A basic version, yes. Not one that can play mp3’s. You need a patch for that.
which will play mp3s and just about any other audio file I can dish out by default.
Yes AFTER it has been patched or updated.
Yes, you do have to pay for support for DVD movies, but last I checked it was about $20.
Linux = free! Same with mp3 support!
Office Program: What about Open Office? It sure seems good enough for the Linux folks, so why cant this be considered a free program for Windows too?
No problem there. Most people who use windows usualy use M$ office. That runs into hundreds of dollars.
Graphics Program: See above, but replace Open Office with Gimp.
See above.
OK, so this adds up to a grand total of an extra $130. Now, you will beable to subtract $60 bucks for the zonealarm when SP2 is released, and if you dont watch DVDs on your computer, then another $20. So thats only $50 for an anti-virus program. Reasonable enough.
Nope! An anti -virus program is still %100 pluse all the ‘dat files.’ Mainitence costs to keep your hard ware up to date to run such programs. You have to pay for a proper add removal program or your registry is going to be toast. You still need a proper fire wall, SP2 does not count. Patches for windows rarly solve anything pluse if you really want to be safe then and external firewall IS needed.
Sure is a far cry from the $600+ extra to run Windows FUD you are trying to run.
Nope. What I said is dead on accurate. Since I KNOW what windows needs. But I agree its a far cry tothe complaints to the Linux FUD that you try to run. No linux user has to go through that bullshit.
Hey, atleast if you want some excellent programs like Photshop or Microsoft Office, you can run them on Windows.
You can run them on linux too, what is your point?
People always say choice is good, and they are right. The choices I have software wise for Windows is excellent!
And the choice for linux is even better!
If you are going to try to make Windows look bad and expensive, atleast use some reasonable arguments.
I don’t need to ‘try’ to make windows look ‘bad and expensive.’ As I have stated, there are plenty of evedence by itself. Unlike the FUD you have spread about linux. If you are going to bash Linux, follow your own advice and at least try to use some reasonalble arguments!
Jack, if you’re adventurous you could try to install without the CDs. If you want them, I think you need all of them.
However, if you would like to try a network (ftp or http) install, its relatively easy.
1.) Select a mirror: I used ftp://ftp.aleron.net (I think that’s it).
2.) Download and burn the “/pub/linux/fedora/linux/i386/os/images/boot.iso” file from your mirror onto a CD. This is ~5 MB
3.) After backing up your data, insert the burned CD into your machine and reboot.
4.) Machine will reboot and start installation.
5.) Select “FTP” or “HTTP” installation (depending on which type of mirror server you’re using). You’ll have to input the address of the mirror as well as the path to the OS installation files. This is essentially the same as the path I showed above, something like: “pub/linux/fedora/i386/os”. Some experimentation required, but the install program lets you know if its wrong.
6.) Setup proceeds as usual. NOTE: depending on your download speed, it can take a good bit of time to do this. My suggestion: get it to the point its only installing files, monitor it for a little while, and go to bed. I let it install overnight and wake up to reboot after the install and tweak it to my heart’s delight.
Overall, I like this method, even on a home cable connection. It means I don’t have to download and burn gigabytes of CDs (all of my downloads are immediately installed). Its not for everyone, and it can take a bit longer (which is why I do it overnight). My install last night took ~4 hours (30 minutes for user-input and 3.5 hours for download and install), YMMV.
How long will it be around?
That is the question, and another key question 3d support.
nuf said
I failed to understand your question. Concerning 3D support, it is up to propertary GPU companies as OSS developer don’t have access to their hardware sources. The 4KSTACKs issues from Fedora kernel just exposed the problem from NVIDIA driver
Fedora will be around as long as the other Red Hat distros where. Its a big project which just isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, and as for 3D support? Its easily fixed – and something which plagues most distros.
“nuf said” indeed.
Until I can go to a store and buy a PC game title off the shelf (not just Unreal Tourney 2004) and run it on Linux just like in Windows, Linux will continue to be a hobby OS for home users. I am a huge gamer and Linux just doesn’t cut it for game support or graphics card support.
“home users” are not the same people as “game players”.
Well WineX does a pretty good job. And you can always dual boot windows… no harm in that!