Fedora Core 4 Reviewer Finds It Bloated

Provataki writes "TuxTops reviews Fedora Core 4 and finds a number of problems with the popular distribution: high memory usage, usability problems, bugs, bloat. They awarded FC4 with 6 out of 10 at the end as despite its quirks they also find it a 'powerful distro' and easy to use."

Not a Fan

[niskel]

I have never really been a fan of Fedora. I tried core 3 for amd64 when it came out. I found I didn't have the control I wanted and regularly found myself in dependancy hell. I also found it had way to much stuff I would never use and didn't have mp3 playbck that I would. I know it isn't hard to get it, but still. I have since moved to Gentoo and am very happy.

FC4 was released too early

[NZheretic]

The folks at Redhat have really been pushing the envelope with core components of the Linux system. GCC4, GCJ, Xen, SELinux, X.org, DBus and HAL are all going to be adopted by the rest of the Linux distributions and venders in the near future.

Note: "in the near future". Just like when Redhat pushed the envelope by adopting GCC3 and ELF at an early stage,in comparison to Redhat's x.2 and x.3 releases, the x.0 and x.1 result has been slightly flaky at the edges.

I think that Fedora Core 4 was released two months too early. Another couple of months in rawhide development would have ironed out a few more of the kinks.

Fedora Core is for productivity

[digitect]

Fedora Core strikes me as a good balance between Free and current. Sure there is no MP3 playback, but that is because Red Hat long ago decided to keep it's distributions free of any software using licenses that were not Free Software [fsf.org]. There are plenty of other media formats that are as good or even better. And there are plenty of places that provide a way to add MP3 support, it's just that the distro has decided to keep the base 100% free. (Which is fine with me, I'd prefer that than starting to rely on some software that gets yanked in a year because it's copyright holders decided to start charging an arm and a leg for it.)

Fedora is also up to date. Here again, the basement dwellers among us can point to XYZ distribution that has bleeding-edge package ABC. But the FC packages alwyas seem to work within the distro. From time to time I'll venture out into one of the alternate repositories or closed-source drivers and I always regret it. The system gets unstable or something else stops working.

Which brings me to my main point, Fedore Core is proving to be a fine distribution for my productivity. I have long lost interest in tweaking and exploring the system deep into the night, now I just need one that I can use for email and web browsing, authoring various documents, develop software, draw, do genealogy, personal finances, etc. I'm not saying FC is perfect, nothing is. But it's usefulness is equal and better than my Windows XP station at work. Every release gets better, and while I want to see continuing advancements in my desktop environment, I also need one that is useful to me now.

Balance is rarely appreciated (I like Honda, too) but it's a sign of both skill and maturity. Keep it up team.

What is the Red Hat distro of choice?

[Otter]

I've been planning a switch from Gentoo anyway (Portage has just gotten too big to use over dialup and I can't get a 2.6 kernel to power off correctly) and yesterday [slashdot.org] a bunch of people informed me that Linux Is, In Fact, Ready For The Desktop if I'd just switch distros yet again.

I'd like to go back to a Red Hat variant, but am confused by the various clone options -- Fedora, CentOS, White Box, etc. Can anyone sugggest why one of those might be preferable to the others? (Hint: one thing I've learned from Gentoo is that the packaging system is only as good as the repository behind it.)

memory bloat measuring technique?

[ArmorFiend]

But I wasn't as happy with the memory consumption. About 230 MBs of RAM were used on a clean, default load (according to "free", just after the OS loaded -- no major cashing has occured yet). I find this requirement huge, it means that computers with 256 MBs of RAM will swap heavily after only a few minutes of using the system (e.g. after opening Firefox and Evolution or OOo alone).

I'm not sure about the memory-bloat measuring technique he's using. I just installed FC4 on a 128mb machine, and after boot and gnome login, only 48K of swap is in use - that's nothing! According to his supposition I should be swapping like a banshee already. I think his RAM-measuring technique is not accurate.

No Surprise Here

[Steinfiend]

It's always amazed me how people haven't noticed this about RedHat based distros before. At least the consumer ones, I can't comment on their Enterprise edition. Going back to RedHat 7.x installed on a semi-reasonable laptop was definitely a little "turgid".

As much as I tried to clean and lean the system it still felt slow. A previous comment about services running that aren't required holds very true, as a knowledgeable amateur I was able to discern which services were stoppable but if this is really the Year Linux Takes The Desktop(tm) then things have to be much more beginner oriented. Even then it wasn't as spritely as an OS designed for a 386, the latest and greatest super computer and everything in between should be. I blamed Gnome at the time, but honestly even running CLI only it wasn't satisfying.

Of course I now have a new laptop running Ubuntu and the world is good. I feel bad for all those years spent avoiding anything related to Debian. If anyone wants to get a friend/relative/particularly attractive stranger interested in Linux, give them an Ubuntu CD, a quick 5 minute lesson on backing up and partitioning and they are good to go!