Fedora Core 2 Review

An anonymous reader writes "Linuxlookup.com staff member Rich Hughes posted his thoughts on the latest Fedora release with this Core 2 Review. "Fedora Core 2 is the newest release from The Distro Formerly Known As RedHat. Updates include the 2.6 kernel, KDE 3.2, Gnome 2.6, X.org replacing Xfree86 and numerous package updates. Having played around with SuSE 9.1, Arch .6 and Slackware 9 with the 2.6 kernel, I was interested in seeing how the Fedora team did with this release.""

running it right now

[codepunk]

I really like it alot, so far no problems. The only thing I don't like about a fedora box is that I have to hunt around for weeks to get the necessary multimedia stuff in it. It ships with full blown mozilla, that will be gotten rid of here shortly in favor of firefox. Great distro but alot of post install work to make it into a usable desktop.

My biggest beef so far: VPN

[grasshoppa]

I've been using it since tuesday, and my biggest complaint is CIPE being dropped, and the gui setup not being updated for the new IPSec tools.

IMHO, they should have kept cipe ( depreciated maybe, removed next release ), but added the new userland tools and gui for the ipsec stuff in the kernel. Give people some wiggle room, for those of us using vpns.

Of course, it'd also be nice if they included support for pptp out of box...but I digress. ;)

Plug it in?

[Anonymous Coward]

So,

Can I toss this disk in my cd-rom drive, and have linux install and "just work?"

Like I did with windows 2000?

This isnt a troll. Its a serious question. I dont really use any windows specific programs anymore.. so....

Re:Don't install yet

[maharg]

Is it possible to just use lilo instead of grub, to get round the problem ?

Re:Don't install yet

[oldgeezer1954]

For those who don't want to heed your advice about not installing I'd suggest they use lilo and change their bios settings to remove hdd auto detection. Set the params manually instead. That was the eventual solution I used to get around the problem with RC1. Those who lost all their data probably did themselves in by trying inappropriate corrective action to repair their partitions. I've hit several variations of the problem and lost nothing *except* on one system I had to recover xp and lost some of the patches. But no data or settings. I know I'm being unkind but losing data should not be a result of a damaged, but repairable, partition table.

What advantages over slackware?

[bigberk]

Slackware [slackware.com] has been the most straightforward distribution I have used - no frills; lean, easy to upgrade packages, and no tricks. For those already familiar with the technical aspects of *NIX administration, is there any advantage of Fedora over Slackware?

Re:Slashdotted already?

[pyros]

Your journal entry for the Fedora Core 2 review is dated April 8. Fedora Core 2 was released May 18th. Since I'm pretty SELinux was still enabled in the development versions, and has been disabled in the final release, your review is invalid.

BAN THESE MODERATORS

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot,

Please consider EITHER ONE of the following policies:
1) No mod points for people who redundantly copy and paste articles
2) Automatically create a mirror of stories you link (without permission, of course, just like #1 but more formal)

It's stupid to reward people for doing what you yourself know is not always legal to do. I don't even care if the story allows for reposting... these are as annoying as "First post!"

So even when it's not content theft (and actualy legal), it's still wrong because it rewards laziness (the bad kind of laziness).

It's also a quick-and-dirty way for future trolls to accumulate karma and mod points, allowing the trolls and biased weenies the ability to tilt slashdot even though they are a brand new account.

Suggestion #2 is rhetorical.. you don't want to get sued, but you might as well formalize what mod points (wink wink nudge nudge) encourage. But if you don't get sued and do it, then we won't get the "heroes" doing slash-copy-paste.

plug in issue

[maryjanecapri]

so why has no one come up with a solution for this problem. now i'm a huge linux zealot and use FC1 (will upgrade as soon as the slashdot effect is gone from the download sites) so this isn't bashing. but it just amazes me that i've yet to come across a distro that, out of the box, has a browser with all the bells and whistles! and let's face it - the average jane wants all the bells and whistles! so enlighten me - why is this so hard? thank you, peace, good night.

grub error

[nycsubway]

I've got a recommendation... Fix the grub error. That is the most important feature of any installation in my opinion. The fact that boot loaders still have bugs in them after years of work amazes me. I installed Fedora Core 2 last night. Everything went well during the install, then when it rebooted itself... Grub error. can't boot anything. can't boot Windows, can't boot linux. can bearly read the screen because of artifacts. Fedora is a great product, but if you can't boot into it, its useless.

Your Functionality Is My Puffery

[reallocate]

My impression of Core 2 is that it is a lot like Core 1, only better. I like it.

The review criticizes Fedora for lacking mplayer, xcdroast, dvd ability, concluding it lacks basic "functionality". Now, in addition to RedHat's well-known stance on mp3's and other IP issues, I think it is safe to say that a lot of Linux users -- myself included -- don't count listening to mp3's and playing DVD's as part of basic functionality. Not that it isn't for a lor of other folks, but it isn't for me and, presumably, it isn't for the market any future Fedora-based commercial release is intended for. (Besides, my sound system is within arms reach, it cost more than my PC, and it sounds a lot better. I've never seen why I should bother to copy tracks from my CD's to my PC and put up with degraded quality.)

That said, I updated with up2date immediately after installation with no delays or stalling. Yum, on the other hand, is much slower and can appear to stall out. (My FC1 experience was just the opposite.) In addition, Yum offered to install packages that up2date did not. That should not happen. The Fedora user should have only one choice of updating his system, it needs to be fast and foolproof, and the user should never be expected to edit the list of sources used by the update tool. This is a problem RedHat will need to solve if it ever wants to make money from a Fedora-based release.

I also agree that commonly used plugins ought to be installed by default. At the very least, add their installation to the post-install routines. Point the user at the right repositories and then lead him through the installation.

Re:BAN THESE MODERATORS

[YellowElf]

They put up the copy of the story BECAUSE THE ORIGINAL LINK WAS SLASHDOTTED. So it's remarkably convenient rather than having to way two days until all the nerds stop viewing the story. The original server and ISP will probably thank you as well; no one is trying to "get one over on copyright" here.

So quitcherbitchin.

--dv

Re:running it right now

[mahdi13]

I see a lot of these complaints about Fredora being "Crippled" and "Missing multimedia", like this choice quote

You are given a browser with no plugins, so if you jump online excitedly with your new system, there are a lot of things that won't work. You load your favorite mp3s, then find out you cannot play them. God forbid you have a dvd drive.

Wow, an OS that doesn't have all the 3rd party software already installed and configured for you...last I checked Windows was nice enough to include MP3 playback AND ActiveX for your browsing pleasure, you still need to download and install Java and Flash

Repeat after me

Linux is not Windows

I don't think anyone will be happy with any Linux distro until they realize this fact
What I want to know, is why don't people complain that Flash is not installed when they first install Windows? But having to spend an extra $300 for an office suite is OK?

Re:Fedora Core 2 wins the vote of this Debianite

[el-spectre]

This isn't a matter of philosophy, it's a matter of legality. MP3 has licensing costs. So do most video formats. To get many windows media movies to play you have to borrow DLLs from windows.

If Fedora shipped this stuff w/o paying the licensing, they'd get their ass sued off.

If you want a free (beer) distro, you can't have costly items included. Besides, it's easy (run a specific command easy, not 'tweak the kernel and recompile' easy) to install mp3 support, mplayer, etc.

You either pay with money or your time. Want the distro free? then you gotta learn to install the extra stuff.

Re:Why is that a troll? It's a valid fucking point

[MortisUmbra]

You might want to pay attention before you go off on a rant. A cursory glance at this thread would show you pretty clearly that several people commented on the originating site being down, and a few requests were made for someone to post the full text.

I for one am glad the OP posted this because I am very interested in FC2 and I was really looking forward to reading this article until I found out it was allready /.'ed

In short....chill ;p

Re:FC2 and stunnel

[JofCoRe]

You might get a better/quicker response posting your question to the fedora-list [redhat.com] rather than /.

I've always had good experiences getting my issues resolved via the list...

Feeling like RH's guinea pig...

[Anonymous Coward]

but on the other hand, FC is a free product.

/Rant on/

Not bad for wanting to keep an imaginary deadline, but releasing FC2 while this bug is still active (http://www.onlamp.com/pub/wlg/4896) doesn't inspire much confidence in the product, especially if the temporary fix/warning is not that complicated.

(Bitten personally by the bug... my (easy) fix: play around with the bios primary HD AUTO/LBA/etc setting.)

Where the f*ck is the lilo option durring installation. I hate grub primarily for not wanting to R(grub's)FM since lilo did/does the boot managing job just fine.

/Rant off/

Testing FC2 along side Mandrake 10. The question now is, which one is the less of two evils... FC2 or Mandrake 10.

FC2 is junk (or rather, the release management)

[Henke]

I don't see how I'm going to be able to install this junk. I have an Asus P4P800 motherboard which makes the installation trip on bug 121819 (immediate crash /reboot as soon as I hit enter on the first installation screen). That motherboard has got to be one of the most popular in the world and Fedora didn't care enough to fix it before release. Speaks volumes, I think.
If I HAD been able to even install this, there's the issue of trashing my Windows XP installation (bug 115980). That's always nice...
To top it off, the NVIDIA drivers won't work. That's easily fixed, but it kinda adds up...

JUNK!

/Henke

Re:running it right now

[Yobgod Ababua]

I think a more accurate caveat is this:

A free (gratis) OS distribution can NOT legally include mp3 or dvd support.

Windows -can- only because they charge you a bucket of money and use some of that money to pay off the appropriate license fees for that copy.

So it's not that it's not Windows... it's that it's free.

Lightyears better on x86_64

[niall2]

Well I was about to toss my new AMD64 machine into the drink with Core 1 (which was a late add-on to the effort released after the fact). NFS problems, Java from sun failed to run, automount was rather flaky. Is still see some minor problems with window resizing under KDE but other than that its been smooth.

I understand the legal issues that keep things like mplayer and such out of the distro. However it would be nice of we could start getting some RPMs for x86_64 out there.

Re:here's my review...Annoyed!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I feel for you. What a bunch of nonsense responses you got.

WTF does switching away from MP3 have to do with fixing firewire support?!

Any good distribution autoloads common hardware support, one shouldn't need to drop to command line to get basic hardware to work, that's plain nonsense.

Firewire support shouldn't just be disabled. If there is something wrong with it, it should be fixed.

If linux support is about blaming the user for problems, then the world does not need Linux.

Re:Your Functionality Is My Puffery

[eviltypeguy]

This is a problem RedHat will need to solve if it ever wants to make money from a Fedora-based release.

Except RedHat never intends to Box Fedora (AFAIK). That's why they have RHEL, and RedHat Professional Workstation. Fedora is for the technical enthusiast, not Grandma.

I also agree that commonly used plugins ought to be installed by default. At the very least, add their installation to the post-install routines. Point the user at the right repositories and then lead him through the installation.

You're very inconsistent, at the beginning you shrug off MP3's because of IP and licensing, but then here you say they should have browser plugins. Guess what, the *same* licensing problems exist there.

Fedora will not include patent-laden, or possibly illegal in some countries material, or material that cannot be freely redistributed without very minor restrictions. No common Browser plugins I know of or Java for that matter has very free redistribution terms.

And no, they should not provide post-install scripts for other people's products. If flash isn't easy to install on Linux, talk to Macromedia, not the Fedora people.

If Java isn't easy to install, talk to Sun or IBM or whomever provides your JRE, NOT Fedora.

Fedora is for technical enthusiats, not Grandma, and not people expecting a super easy to use desktop.

Fedora developers reaction to the review

[Ktistec Machine]

Here [redhat.com] is the top of a thread on the fedora-test-list mailing list, showing some of the reactions to the review. I've been watching the list for a while now, and I've gotta say that this is pretty typical of the childishness that goes on there. Which really worries me, since I'm getting ready to upgrade a whole department to Fedora soon.

Re:Don't install yet

[theroterts]

And this is precisely the attitude that will keep Linux on the sidelines compared to Windows. I love tinkering with Linux and I love the community that has sprung up around it. But the absurtity of saying, "No problem recovering from a hosed hard drive due to a bug in the software...!" We're kidding ourselves if we think Linux will ever get anywhere with this blindness. Please don't interpret this as flaming - just calling it like it is...

Re:Meta-Mod

[bradkittenbrink]

Hence to a large approximation, "Slashdot should ban these moderators" should read "use your Meta-Mod powers to punish (eventually disallow) these moderators".

The meta-mod system is no less broken. Posts which are obviously trolls when you click the links, are are rightly moderated as trolls, but then get meta-modded as unfair. Obvoiusly this doesn't happen all the time, but the problem is that there is no way to force people to put a quality effort into moderating or meta-moderating. The majority of mods and meta-mods are just cruising through doing their thing without really thinking critically about what they're doing. Overall, the people who do take personal responsibility will be averaged out with the people who don't.

Re:BAN THESE MODERATORS

[gfxguy]

I agree, but usually people who are trying to be magnanimous post the text of the article anonymously.

So while it's nice to have the text of the story, I also agree that people shouldn't be rewarded just for reading the story before it was slashdotted without adding any insightful or informative content. He didn't say to not allow users to post.