OSNews Rates Fedora Core 1 Mild Disappointment 510
JigSaw writes "OSNews has reviewed the Fedora Core 1 Linux distro, but the author personally found lots of usability problems and bugs with the distro, making Fedora Core a trying experience. The writer puts the blame on poor QA of Fedora Core 1 done by its community, since Red Hat has shifted focus to Enterprise, with Fedora serving merely as a testbed for them."
Usability Issues (Score:-1, Insightful)
Only to be expected, really (Score:5, Insightful)
Simon.
They've gone elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Problems? Well yeah.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm having code compile issues because of the new linking setup myself. Code the compiled perfectly under RHL 9 blows up on FC1.... Can't say I didn't expect this to be a problem free migration. Reminds me of when RH first kicked out the glib updates... Code all over the place blew up left and right until everything else started updating.
What a shock (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Usability Issues (Score:4, Insightful)
I have never had any trouble finding pre-compiled binaries for gaim. Not when I was running SuSE, not now that I'm running Mandrake.
But no, I was wrong. You, with your two hours of NetHack, you have brought me to the light. It's back to Windows for me. Thank you, oh gods of astroturf.
My interpretation? Not having software installed != usability issues. Last time I checked, Windows didn't come with a compiler installed either... and to run AIM, you had to install pre-compiled binaries. But Linux must be unusable if your demo CD doesn't have everything you ever wanted to use pre-installed.
Doofus. Seriously. Your logic sucks ass. Think before you troll^W^W^W^W^W post, OK?
So what's new? (Score:4, Insightful)
> since Red Hat has shifted focus to Enterprise, with Fedora serving merely as a testbed for them.
That was kinda my impression of RH9, for that matter.
Re:Usability Issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't brush off criticism like that. Whether he's trolling or not, this "no no it works just fine!" attitude is one of the reasons I don't want to switch to Linux. I don't like being treated like a lying asshole because I have a problem with a solution that's disgustingly obvious to everybody who's climbed the Linux learning curve.
Re:Usability Issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, why were you trying to compile? SuSE has binaries of gaim. Just start up YaST, go to the installer, and install the gaim program.
Go easy folks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fedora represents a shift to a new development model which is more community centric; of COURSE there are going to be problems with the 1.0 release. Is that a reason to bag the whole thing and declare it dead? Please!
I'm running Fedora 1.0 on a couple of machines. While there are a couple of quirks, I'd say that overall it's a fine distribution, and an improvement from RH 9.0. I'm certainly going to give it more than a week before I condemn the whole project! Meantime I'm going to reflect on the fact, that people seem to like to forget, that the whole OSS community owes a debt of gratitude to RedHat. RedHat has consistently failed to live up to conspiracy theories about "betraying the community".
Re:Only to be expected, really (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought one major advantage of free software was that we could afford to release only when ready, rather than when the marketing department demanded? The article wasn't demanding "perfect". Some RPMs included in the distribution that wouldn't install!
I'm not anti-Linux. I like it so much that I want us to use on it the same (or higher) standards we judge software we pay for.
this is crap (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Usability Issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Strike 1: Pre-compiled binaries. Two words which mean nothing to the average windows user.
Strike 2: Well. Good thing you finally told me. Here I've been running Linux on my desktop for years, thinking it worked. Silly me. etc. An asshole atittude instead of trying to offer the least bit help. Most people who've seeked assistance on an IRC channel is used to this.
Strike 3: Last time I checked, Windows didn't come with a compiler...M/i> For average Windows functioning, no compiler is needed. However for many basic operations in *nix, one is needed. Many programs are not distributed in binary, including drivers which are often required before the OS can even go online. Without a compiler being provided by the distro, the situation becomes irritating.
Strike 4: Doofus Insulting the potential *nix user. That's right, wonder for years about why no one switches, then when someone tries, insult them.
People, try to remember that the alternative environment is so mindblowing that problems which appear easy to you are brick walls to others.
Re:Usability Issues (Score:5, Insightful)
So lemme get this straight.. you grab a SuSE LiveEval CD and are able to boot up, use it, play a game, toy around with the interface and decide within two hours that Linux is not right for you and are able to boot back to your previous OS without any distruption.
I am surprised that Windows people don't find this simply amazing. Seriously. Lets say you were running umm.. Win98 or W2k
Don't like it? Hehehe.. good luck getting back to your previous system.
In anycase, there are a lot of people that try out Linux and do not really seem to have a REASON to switch over. As a result (as in your case) there was absolutely NO effort to try and find out what differences there are between the two systems. You expected to boot into Linux and have essentially a Windows knock-off.
Needless to say, it takes much more than 2 hours to really understand a new system and start to really appreciate its unique features (and yes, a KDE based FOSS OS/distro has a LOT of great features) but for most people, there is a lack of acknowledgement on how long it truly took them to master their current OS due to the simple fact that MOST started out on some Windows variant and gathered knowledge over a long period of time.
Know what you're doing, first. (Score:5, Insightful)
The box I'm typing on now began its life running Red Hat 4.2. It's been upgraded countless number of times, and it's now on Red Hat 9. And it's rock-stable solid. And the reason that it's stable, and functional, is precisely because what I've been doing, for the last six years, was the exact opposite of what this "review"er did.
Notice that she began having problems when she tried to hack together an upgrade to some application. Lesson number one when running Red Hat: do not install any software yourself. Always use rpm, which checks in, keeps track of, and maintains, all the inter-library and inter-application dependencies. Once you begin flinging random libraries and applications into the system, some of which may or may not overwrite existing libraries or files, you're well on your merry way to Linux's equivalent of Windows DLL hell, when you've got ten versions of the same basic library installed in fifteen different directories, and you now have absolutely no clue whatsoever what you end up running when you start a given application. Which randomly crashes, I wonder why?
By the way, the same also applies to other Linux distros too, I'm sure. They all use some kind of a package management system, be it rpm or apt. The same principle applies in either case.
My box is very solid even though I have plenty of custom software installed which I've compiled and built myself. But the key difference is that all the software was installed by rpm. Rach time I upgraded to a new distribution release, the installer correctly detected that I have an application that has a dependency on an older version of the library. The installer then proceeds to load a compatibility library, in addition to the new, incompatible version of the library. After upgrading, I then recompile all my custom software and install the new RPMs, whenever I have some free time. Everything still works in the meantime, because all the dependencies are correctly satisfied.
Eventually, I get around to cleaning out my box, seeing which compatibility libraries can be removed. When I try to remove them, inevitable RPM complains because I forgot to recompile some application that still depends on the old library. After doing that, and when nothing no longer needs it, it gets removed by rpm without a peep.
I also see that the reviewer grabbed some random third-party RPM from some dark alley (strike 1). Unsurprisingly, rpm refused to install it due to missing dependencies (strike 2). The reviewer tried to fix the situation by, once again, grabbing a bunch of third party libraries, and installing them manually (strike 3). End result: a big, recursive mess (strike 4).
I wonder why?
Sheesh, what exactly are the qualification to be an "OS reviewer", these days???
Re:What a shock (Score:5, Insightful)
The message consisted of little more than gibberish.
This was supposed to be a distribution review, and yet the first thing that the reviewer did was circumvent the included packaging system. Fedora uses yum by default, not apt-get and synaptic.
The entire review essentially consisted of a large rant about how hard it is to compile software from source. No duh Sherlock! That's why the distribution comes with a packaging manager and a set of RPMs that have been tested together. The whole point is that you shouldn't be compiling packages unless you know what you are doing (which she clearly does not, otherwise she would have been able to build the packages in question).
In short, the article was not a review of any part of Fedora but the install. After that the article degenerated into nothing more than a public expose of the author's shortcomings as a systems administrator.
Re:Usability Issues (Score:3, Insightful)
I, for one, wouldn't consider someone with a problem to be lying or an asshole. I've had plenty of problems with linux, and have clawed my way up the learning curve slowly but surely, and I still don't consider myself to have everything `working'.
But all things considered, I'm happy with my current setup. I don't use XP for anything except to boot up if I need to call my ISP for support (they don't know how to help you if you're using linux). But that's just me.
(Warning: Gentoo plug)To be honest, I didn't have a distro that really did 90% of what I wanted until I tried Gentoo. It's a little arcane to begin with, but their documentation *rocks* and I think I learned more in the three days it took me to set up my system :) than I had in the five or six months I had messed around with redhat.
I don't know, I guess I'm just saying that trolls or zealots with screwed up attitudes shouldn't prevent you from switching to linux. Someone switches to linux (I'm thinking desktop) when they can make it do what they want it to, and not before.... IMHO.
Just Say No to being Mandrake's Testbed (Score:1, Insightful)
If you have to be a 0-day upgrader, you take your chances!
Just how did RedHat give you the shaft by asking to be paid for their support? You still get the OS for free. I don't understand the leach mentality of the underside of OSS. Give something back, or STFU! Leaches like you are the reason why windows maintains its dominance in the marketplace.
Why this review is bullshit. (Score:2, Insightful)
Or grabbed the source package and rebuilt it with his customizations.
"Now think what a newbie user coming from Windows-land would think about this whole --literally-- usability fiasco."
They wouldn't think anything, cause they wouldn't compile their software, much less do it in the same half assed way the reviewer did. They might complain that yum needs a good GUI frontend through, or up2date needs a better one. Which would be fair, as opposed to this review.
They'd also read the documentation that comes with VMWare and realize that VMWare's Samba server can indeed interfere with an existing Samba server. That isn't a Fedora problem, its a `I didn't real the VMWare documentation'.
There's packages of every multimedia app available at the FreshRPMs repository network. We don't need his xxms-mp3, we especially don't need it as an unpackaged tarball.
He has some valid points: the OSS driver for those yamaha sound cards does indeed suck. ALSA is a much better idea and its time Fedora / Red Hat included it by default. Packages are available on Freshrpms though.
Mike
Re:Corporate Improvements! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fedora Fine for Me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Go easy folks! (Score:3, Insightful)
Fedora should never have been started. It's redundant. It's a waste of people's talents. There's no need for multiple community projects packaging the exact same software. Debian and Gentoo already fill this need. And even Gentoo is probably redundant, though at least it brings something slightly unique to the table.
Meantime I'm going to reflect on the fact, that people seem to like to forget, that the whole OSS community owes a debt of gratitude to RedHat. RedHat has consistently failed to live up to conspiracy theories about "betraying the community".
I personally think that it's good that RedHat has finally decided to specialize and aim for a reachable market. They weren't doing much good otherwise. Now if only they would build upon Debian as the core of their 'Enterprise' solutions, they could focus on a standard distro and save some resources as well.
Re:How will IBM deal with it if Fedora is a dud? (Score:3, Insightful)
It would behoove IBM to support a community distro that they can have some influence over and that won't disappear randomly. That influence comes simply by helping out to improve it as needed to better meet their customers' needs. Debian is the largest, most mature, and most professional effort. It would therefore be the most logical way to turn at this stage.
Re:Expected Outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the manpower that Red Hat has devoted to Fedora (Which has gone UP vs. RHL), and the fact that they're trying to get "the community" involved more, this could actually be a good thing for Red Hat users.
They're not abandoning the enthusiast market, they've just spun it off into a not-for-profit so they can write off what isn't making them money. Think of it as RedHat Edge.
Re:Know what you're doing, first. (Score:3, Insightful)
As for Window's users, you're just as likely to get hosed by a third-party application install as a foreign RPM, so I figure it's a wash. On Windows, it is still a problem that newly installed programs will occasionally downgrade DLL's in the system folder. If you leave the happy confines of your distribution, you're taking risks. No two ways about it.
Finally, users should Read The Manual. Especially, if they are not serious computer users.
-Hope
Does Windows have that problem? (Score:1, Insightful)
> person that worries about moving from
> gaim
> install your distribution, then Fedora
> probably is not for you. Or you could
> wait until updated RPMs hit the
> official repositories instead of
> grabbing Joe Bob's RPM build and
> wondering why your installation
> exploded.
Just run Windows, and your installation won't explode when you install third party software.