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Red Hat Software Businesses Operating Systems Software IT Linux

Fedora 9 a Bit Behind the Curve On Installation 110

Posted by timothy from the click-here-but-only-once dept.
bsk_cw writes "Today, many Linux users are getting blasé about the ease with which they can install Linux. Possibly, they've been spoiled by distributions such as Ubuntu, which is actually easier to install than Windows. Unfortunately, Fedora 9, the latest version of this community edition of Red Hat, was a bit too much of a blast from the past for Computerworld's James Turner." (Except for bits about the installation, the review is actually quite positive.)
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Fedora 9 a Bit Behind the Curve On Installation More

Fedora 9 a Bit Behind the Curve On Installation

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  • Shoot! (Score:5, Funny)

    by XanC ( 644172 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:05PM (#23411386)
    Imagine what Fedora 9 would have done to UbuntuDupe's hard drive!!

    • Imagine what Fedora 9 would have done to UbuntuDupe's hard drive!!
      Shhhhh!! He would have to change his user name on some other forum to UbuntuMacFedoraDupe only to run out of space for his user name and and have to make a forum himself to complain about it. And then one to complain about the complaint forum.

  • Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by croddy ( 659025 ) * on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:08PM (#23411410)

    "actually easier to install than Windows" (!!)

    I'm not sure what rock he's been living under, but Linux has been a lot easier to install than windows for ages. Ubiquity, Anaconda, Debian-Installer... sure, the old Debian boot-floppies installer was kind of a pain, but when you want to get your OS installed quickly and easily you don't exactly reach for silvers from Microsoft.

    Lately I got a bit tired of Wine's partial support for Steam so I've been trying to get some kind of Windows installed on my system to run some games. It's been a comic horror show of 0000007B this, 80070241 that, swapping out different optical drives and dumbing down BIOS settings to try to get either the XP or Vista installer to not bluescreen or otherwise give up on life trying to copy data from the installation media.

    Thankfully, when I need a sane, easy OS to regroup and try to find out what the cryptic hex codes barfed out by Microsoft's fragile-as-glass, no-system-logs-provided installers, I only have to reach for one of my Linux discs to get things up straight away.

    And let's face it... if your goal is to quickly get a quality browser, IM client, office suite, and some basic development tools installed, you're going to have an easier time popping in an Ubuntu disc to get there even if Windows is preinstalled on the box!

    • I have never had Windows fail to install for any reason.. The only problem I have ever had with Windows is when I install Linux first and then Windows wipes out GRUB. Then I gotta find a GRUB ISO and figure out the GRUB commands to restore the bootloader (floppies? what are those? while I have a floppy drive still, I have a hell of a time finding disks, even at a tech school). So now I always install Windows first so it's all happy and in place and then let Linux have its way. Windows doesn't even have a clue. It's really best this way.

      • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "I have a hell of a time finding disks, even at a tech school" that's exactly where you won't fin floppies, try in the literature school or something you might find it there...

      • Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! (Score:5, Informative)

        by pembo13 ( 770295 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:50PM (#23411830) Homepage
        Installing Windows on most IDE/SATA interfaces cards requires a floppy. Grub does not require a floppy to reinstall, at least not for Fedora.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by secolactico ( 519805 )
          Installing Windows on most IDE/SATA interfaces cards requires a floppy.

          I think SP2 slipstreamed into the install disk recognizes SATA and SAS. Or you could slipstream the drivers themselves, which I don't recommend to anybody who isn't comfortable mucking with inf files.
        • If you get a good embedded sata controller like the one built in to modern nvidia nforce motherboards, each sata socket shows up as an standard IDE channel to the OS, allowing you to use it without specialist drivers (if you're not using raid).

          XP's installer's insistence on floppy disks or slipstreaming for new drivers is a pain, but Vista's installer is a major improvement and takes drivers on any media during the installer.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by sumdumass ( 711423 )

            If you get a good embedded sata controller like the one built in to modern nvidia nforce motherboards, each sata socket shows up as an standard IDE channel to the OS, allowing you to use it without specialist drivers (if you're not using raid).

            Surely you mean just in "real mode" (only at boot) and not all the time and durring "protect mode" operation (once the 32bit OS is running and the bias no longer controls the SATA channel) right? Otherwise you would lose a lot of the benefits of the SATA channels an

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by amorsen ( 7485 )

              I'm betting they just provide an int hook that a generic IDE driver can use until a protect mode driver gets loaded.
              It's much worse than that. AHCI-controllers can emulate regular IDE controllers in hardware. Not some BIOS-INT-thing, but actual emulation. Most computers I have seen with AHCI-controllers run them in IDE-emulation-mode.

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by greed ( 112493 )

                We ran into this at work; particularly on a workstation that was being used as a Web server for ClearQuest (*shudder*). Anyway, Linux I/O just _sucked_ on it. Perusal of the boot messages showed it couldn't bind the SATA driver because the IDE driver was already bound at that PCI address; and the IDE driver wasn't happy with the hardware so was running in 16-bit PIO mode.

                Flipping "SATA Support" from "Compatible" to "High Performance" in the BIOS got that fixed real fast. But I'll bet Windows XP won't

              • Thanks for the info on that. I think it might prove extremely useful to me.

                Of course running the controllers in an IDE-emulation-mode would probably slow the devices attached down to a crawl compared to the IO speeds it should be capable of. I usually use the drivers during install so I think I'm safe on it but I guess I should double check in case the windows plug and play code can't switch the device out of the compatibility/emulation mode when the real driver support is installed. I have about thirty- th

        • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          No, it doesn't. I have had SATA since 2003 and never had to install a disc for this reason. For Vista, all you do is boot off the cd, put in your key and let it install. There are no choices to make (which may or may not be good, but it is easy) and its simple to do.

      • Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! (Score:5, Informative)

        by Shikaku ( 1129753 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @08:01PM (#23412532)
        Super Grub Disk is a nice way to semi-automatically reinstall GRUB.

        It also teaches you the commands, and tells you what it's doing. Very cool little ISO file.
        • Very nice headache solver for a problem I've been recently having with Ubuntu 10.04 and XP. If you weren't already I'd mod you up more. Thanks.
        • I have installed Fedora 8 under dual booting with XP on my office laptop. I could not afford to let the admin view the installation at bootup, so I have installed GRUB on sda3, and so the Windows bootloader is untouched.

          I always boot the computer through a Super Grub Disc and choose XP or Fedora as I want. SGD can search for and find the partition where GRUB is installed by itself. It always saves the day.

      • Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! (Score:5, Informative)

        by kryptkpr ( 180196 ) * on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @08:01PM (#23412542) Homepage
        I have never had Windows fail to install for any reason..

        While the plural of anecdote is not data, I think I know what the GP is talking about and have experienced it myself.

        There are some known AHCI problems [microsoft.com] with a common ATI southbridge chipset which made installing Vista impossible unless you first disable AHCI (I assume this is what the GP meant by having to dumb-down BIOS settings).

        So, lets try XP I thought. Too bad it has no drivers for the sata controller at all, and I have no floppy drive. I ended up having to inject the controller drivers into the XP CD and re-burn it. The XP installer then saw my disk in IDE mode, but not AHCI mode..

        I gave up and left the controller in IDE mode.

        For reference, Ubuntu 7.10 had no trouble on the same machine.

      • Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @09:02PM (#23413018)
        I never had a problem installing Windows 2K or XP on my machine either.

        That being said, I *always* had a problem getting them into a usable state once they were installed.

        Problems include:
        1. Having to install multiple service packs and other packages, often with multiple reboots.

        2. Searching for the right version of drivers for my hardware on the internet. (Why can't they just use repositories like debian?)

        3. Installing all the applications I generally use. (Again, central repositories make it much easier. They can even be used by proprietary applications with a validation on first run.)

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by k33l0r ( 808028 )

          That being said, I *always* had a problem getting them into a usable state once they were installed.

          True enough, Getting Windows installed isn't even half the work (though until Vista, it took at least 45 - 60 minutes).

          Once you had Windows running you'd have a tedious couple of hours installing drivers and updates, and of course every driver you install would require a reboot.

          I'm amazed that installing pretty much ANYTHING on Windows still requires a reboot.

        • Because Microsoft do not write drivers, do not take any responsibility for them and only redistribute the ones they build onto the distribution CD

          the repositories contain everything because they have to - they are theoretically the only place you can install from ...

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by immcintosh ( 1089551 )

            Because Microsoft do not write drivers, do not take any responsibility for them and only redistribute the ones they build onto the distribution CD

            That's something of a non sequitur. Ubuntu, Fedora, and all the rest also do not write the drivers. They do not take any responsibility for them. Yet the fact remains that their installations have much more complete driver support without all the hunting and fishing around. But still, their installation CDs aren't really different in nature from any Windows

            • The Repositories are graded the ones that someone has checked and verified to work and are being maintained by someone at the top and the ones that are moribund or contain unmaintainable code at the bottom, so there are supported and maintained drivers....

              You can install other software, but why bother I have a choice of several variants of every type of package why download and install one that :
              Will be more difficult to install
              Will not be auto-updated
              Will not be
        • Don't forget loading it up with all of the antivirus and antispyware software. AVG, Ad-Aware, Spybot, firewall, firefox+noscript, all before you can feel safe connecting the thing to the internet. Then creating an image of the system so you can revert back to it when the system gets pwned by the virus of the week.
      • I've had two problems I had an old computer at work in 2003 that blue screened during win xp install. Also recently Win xp failed to install on a low end motherboard I bought on new egg. Just wouldn't do it. It didn't seem to have some of the drivers for the chip set. I spent a day trying to figure it out, couldn't installed ubuntu with out a hitch. Thats not to say that modern linux is always better. I've had it run into problems during install as well. They are what they are, computers can be fickle.
      • And your experience is an anecdote. Here's mine.

        I am a Solaris/Linux user. Around two years ago, I decided to build a PVR (personal video recorder). I had heard good things about Windows XP, and the mainboard I had chosen had a note in it stating that "USB 2.0 function can only be obtained with Windows XP". And all the hardware (video input devices, video display) came with drivers for Windows XP. So I bought a copy of Windows XP (retail). Assembled the system, and attempted to load Windows XP.

        After loading from the DVD drive, XP booted. However, the DVD did not show up. I reinstalled. Same thing. I assumed that the DVD was defective, and replaced it. Same thing. Tried a CD. Same thing. Turns out I need a driver from the CD supplied with the mainboard in order to use the CD/DVD. How do I get it there? XP also doesn't recognize the network adapter (same deal, I need a driver). The drivers are too large to put on a floppy.

        I gave up on trying to use XP for this application, and installed Linux. At least it recognized the DVD and network "out of the box" (Fedora). I then put on MythTV (I had wanted to try a Windows PVR program, but, hey... Windows didn't work).

        I tried XP on another box. It also didn't work. Turns out to need a "hard disc driver". In fact, the only thing that XP works on (for me) is a VMware session. Hell, even Mac OS works there. And that's where that copy is running today (along with MS Office and some other Microsoft stuff -- development tools, and a laser printer driver).

        The only thing I conclude is that you must be a Windows XP expert. Or, that Windows XP came pre-installed. I understand that VISTA supports additional (modern) devices, but I am not going to pay hundreds more to find out it doesn't.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by donaldm ( 919619 )

        So now I always install Windows first so it's all happy and in place and then let Linux have its way. Windows doesn't even have a clue. It's really best this way.

        Fully agree with that.

        I have a dual boot on my work laptop running XP (we are not allowed MS Vista) and PCLinuxOS which works well except it is getting harder to use Linux because many applications I need to use are Microsoft centric so basically my dual boot is really a single boot into XP (Sigh!).

        My home laptop came with Vista Ultimate which actually works fine except it had nothing except the OS and a lot of crap-ware (8GB all up), which leaves me to download Open Source or pirate. I backed up MS

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by glens ( 6413 )
        Why not simply

        dd if=/dev/xxx of=/mnt/thumb/xxx.mbr count=1

        beforehand, and

        cat /mnt/thumb/xxx.mbr > /dev/xxx

        later?

        Also, it's adviseable to pre-partition the hard drive, assigning the available-for-Windows area to the tail (slow) end of the disk, whichever order you install the systems. After all, why relegate the better system to the slow(er) part of the media and allow the junk (which is pretty much kept around mainly for BIOS updates anyway) to occupy the best part of the platter(s)?

    • Re:Of course it's easier to instal than Windows! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WK2 ( 1072560 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @09:15PM (#23413124) Homepage
      Windows never really failed to install for me. I've had other problems, like trying to hunt down drivers, having to disable drivers in order to get Windows to boot, Safe Mode failing, and Windows ME blue screened on its first boot.

      The main problem I have with installing Windows is that it takes so long. Why does it have to take 1 hour to install an OS? You pretty much just copy a bunch of files onto the HDD, right? Even on a slow CD drive that shouldn't take more than 10 mins max. And why does it ask me questions at several different parts of the install? It should ask them all at once. If it only took a few minutes, this would be forgivable, but if it's going to take an hour, I would at least like to set my options when the CD boots, and then let the install go on for the next hour while I do other things. I shouldn't have to babysit my computer. And why do I have to boot twice to install, once from CD, and once from HDD? And I have to answer questions on each boot.

      Microsoft could learn a lot from Linux about OS installs.
      • Try installing Vista, most of your complaints have been addressed.

        • "Try installing Vista, most of your complaints have been addressed."

          I'm flabbergasted. Are you saying that M$ solved the problem hunting down drivers by simply making them completely unavailable for Vista? Are you saying they solved the slow install time problem by only allowing it to install and newer/faster hardware? Maybe you are saying that they changed the Blue Screen of Death to black, so that you get a ? ... oh wait, that would still be a BSOD, wouldn't it :-)

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by TheThiefMaster ( 992038 )
            Vista includes a lot more drivers on the disk, because it's a new release, so the drivers actually existed when the disk was pressed. You can load drivers from cd or usb pen during the installer (no more needing a floppy drive!). It asks all the questions at the start. It doesn't spend years loading drivers for hardware that hasn't been used in 5 years before starting. You only boot once to install. It even installs faster than XP did.

            I'm not surprised Windows ME bluescreened on you on it's first boot, it w

      • "Windows never really failed to install for me. I've had other problems, like trying to hunt down drivers, having to disable drivers in order to get Windows to boot, Safe Mode failing, and Windows ME blue screened on its first boot."
        Well, that means Windows failed to install for you. The install process doesn't end when the M$ stops doing stuff. It ends when you have all of your drivers installed and working, and all updates applied, etc.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by WK2 ( 1072560 )
          Except that those times I successfully installed Windows. It was just a lot of work beyond the "ideal" 1 hour install.

    • I'm not sure what rock he's been living under, but Linux has been a lot easier to install than windows for ages.

      You clearly have not installed Vista. I did an upgrade install and it took hours and left things in a mess. I formatted the drive and started with a fresh install. I started it right before I went to bed, expecting it to take hours like the upgrade, but it was ready to set up user profiles in 30 minutes. Ubuntu asked all the same questions when I installed it, except for the key. I wouldn't consider being asked one less question that doesn't even require thinking to be "a lot easier". In fact, the pa

      • Oops, I forgot to mention that my computer is a 5 year old laptop that was only middle-of-the-line when I got it. It has a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with a max of 1GB RAM and a 8X/2X/1X DVD-RW drive. It has served me well.

  • Swap issues (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kernowyon ( 1257174 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:15PM (#23411488) Journal
    I actually had a look at the link! One of the issues was -

    Finally hit ctrl-alt-return to restart the window manager and found it had hung trying to mount swap off the fstab. For some reason, the installer didn't like trying to reuse the swap partition left over from the previous install, and it made something go pear-shaped during the initial boot.

    This is something which seems to plague some Linux installs - if I recall correctly, Vector Linux (or was it Puppy?) has a similar problem with re-using swap partitions which are also used by other installed distros.
    The fact that the author managed to get things going by telling the installer to repartition the drive seems to confirm this. It is a long time since I tested Fedora, so I have no idea if this problem is common with that distro.Luckily, most users will probably not have multiple distros installed and this should not prove an issue to them.
    Kudos to the author for reporting the issue as a bug though - that may help to get this sorted for the next release.
    • One task I was given at a previous job was to set up a computer running a lot of different linux distros to find out if there would be anything extra required past a basic install (installing extra packages and such) to get our software running. As such I ended up installing about 10 different distros all on the same hard drive and all reusing the same swap partition and never ran into that problem. In fact I've never even heard of that problem before. Is it a recent development? Sounds like a strange b

  • Reading the frackin article..... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phoenixwade ( 997892 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:18PM (#23411526)
    "(Except for bits about the installation, the review is actually quite positive.)"

    I must have read a different article (whupps, sorry, it's slashdot, I know I'm not supposed to RTFA, backsliding again, I suppose)

    the first page was complaints about the installer, a paragraph or two that's positive about the performance, and then a complaint that you have to buy the enterprise edition for support, because you can't buy support for Fedora...

    Didn't do much for me as a review of the new Fedora, and it certainly didn't seem like the rest was "Positive".

    • ...and it certainly didn't seem like the rest was "Positive".


      0.001 > 0. Any questions? :)

    • "(Except for bits about the installation, the review is actually quite positive.)"

      I must have read a different article (whupps, sorry, it's slashdot, I know I'm not supposed to RTFA, backsliding again, I suppose)

      the first page was complaints about the installer, a paragraph or two that's positive about the performance, and then a complaint that you have to buy the enterprise edition for support, because you can't buy support for Fedora...

      Didn't do much for me as a review of the new Fedora, and it certainly didn't seem like the rest was "Positive".

      Yes.. I think you did read a different article. The complaints about installing as a second distro on the same computer took the bulk of the first page, The remainder being about the fact that Fedora is not supported by Red Hat. True enough, but then Red Hat is a corporate distro, and Fedora is a bleeding edge test bed/community distro, so two different markets.

      The second page was about F9 detecting his hardware, including the Wifi, and the ease of installing stuff. And minor complaint about previous probl

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rts008 ( 812749 )
        "I'm looking forward to installing this weekend."

        I truly wish you good luck.

        I've finally given up after 4 tries.
        For some reason it insists on trying to install itself back onto the DVD.
        I even redownloaded the ISO, reburned to CD and DVD, all to no avail.I have never encountered anything like this before, and am now convinced it's 'not ready for prime time' yet.

        I'll just stick with my comfortable Kubuntu setup.

        • "I'm looking forward to installing this weekend." I truly wish you good luck.

          Thanks. It should be fun judging by some of the problems I've seen mentioned. I got a new driver to put it on anyway, so if there are major problems, I can just swap it out for F8 again, and wait until F10 comes out.

          I've finally given up after 4 tries. For some reason it insists on trying to install itself back onto the DVD. I even redownloaded the ISO, reburned to CD and DVD, all to no avail.I have never encountered anything like this before, and am now convinced it's 'not ready for prime time' yet.

          Where's the fun in a smooth install ;-) Out of curiosity, were you using a rewriter to install from? I had problems with F7 and 8 not liking my DVD writer, and failing before the graphic install.

          I'll just stick with my comfortable Kubuntu setup.

          Have fun. Good thing Fedora isn't the only distro.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by trouser ( 149900 )
      He said, 'frackin'. Tee hee. Frackin. That's a polite form of 'fucking' which, where I live, is what a bloke with tickets on himself says when he means 'cunting'.

      Reading the cunting article....

  • Has Fedora fixed the packager manager performance? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Last time I tried Fedora/RedHat I was totally put off by the performance of the package management system. Not only did I experience RPM-hell with dependency shit but it was slow as hell. I mean the package manager would sit there and bring my computer to its knees for a long freaking time.

    Not too good if you ask me. But hell who needs Fedora anyway when there are much better distros without that RPM crap.
    • $> yum install [package]

      $> yum remove [package]

      yeah, i can see how your dependedncy hell transpired.

      ( heres a hint though, after yum works out all the dependencies, enter 'y' or 'n' to accept/reject the dependency resolution yum works out for ya...)

      oh, and theres a graphical tool for command line averse.

      the much shorter ( and accurate ) response to this A/C would of course be 'bullshit' :)
      • Believe it or not, I've had
        $> yum install [package]
        $> yum remove [package]
        fail on RHEL 5.1 x86_64 with some development package where *yum* installed both 32bit and 64bit versions. It couldn't figure out what to do with the remove statement, and I had to use rpm to nuke the packages.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by donaldm ( 919619 )
          If you are having problems with "yum install {package}" or "yum remove {package}" I would suggest looking very carefully at your repos. I only ever have the default repos enabled and always select a repo with "yum --enablerepo={my_repo} install {package}". Also I would be careful with what repos you use anyway since some can really cause problems.

          Personally I have found the "Livna" repo to be the best one to match the default repos. If I cannot install a particular package by default I enable "Livna" then

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rakarra ( 112805 )
            If you are having problems with "yum install {package}" or "yum remove {package}" I would suggest looking very carefully at your repos. I only ever have the default repos enabled and always select a repo with "yum --enablerepo={my_repo} install {package}". Also I would be careful with what repos you use anyway since some can really cause problems.

            Unfortunately, most people need a lot more than what is provided by the standard "totally free software only" repositories. We need to be able to play mp3s. We ne

      • Sorry, it's not that simple. In Fedora 6 (which I consider a broken distribution) all the repositories are disabled by default. The user has to do a lot of research to figure out how to enable them, and it still doesn't work. In the end, I've had to do as much work with yum as I did with manually downloading each RPM - or installing from tarballs, in some cases.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by pdusen ( 1146399 )
      "RPM-hell with dependency shit?" You don't think Apt has dependencies too? The only real difference between apt and yum (aside from the fact that yum has a priorities plugin, which I think apt seriously needs) is that yum does have speed issues, but I understand they've improved for this release (haven't had a chance to try it myself).
  • Anybody remember THAT installer? There was no "back" option on most of the screens. If you screwed up, you had to start over from scratch.

    • Re:I guess he never installed Slackware 3.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @07:52PM (#23412448)
      What about the old Gentoo installer?

      You know, a webpage full of instructions.
      • Quite right. It sure was fun, though. If I ever install Gentoo again (still truckin' after three years), I will forgo the graphical installer. I also use OpenBSD, which has a daunting install process as well. I may use NetBSD at some point, and the installer is similar. I'm sure there are many people like me that shun oversimplified interfaces in favor of flexibility, but we're a definite minority.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by pxc ( 938367 )
        When I did my first Gentoo install, I was really intimidated because of all of the scary things I heard about it, but when it comes down to it, it's only a matter of following instructions. Now, I kind of prefer that kind of install, because of how robust it is. For example, you can do a Gentoo install
        -from another working Linux install (all you need is chroot)
        -from any LiveCD with an internet connection
        -telnet/SSH

        And you
      • I have had an enormous help when working with various Linux servers at work from my Gentoo experiences. Gentoo forces an insight into the inner workings of a Gnu/Linux system that is reusable on all the other distributions. I have to Gentoo installer to thank for my career even if i at the time thought it must have been written by a sadist.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by mrbluze ( 1034940 )

      Anybody remember THAT installer? There was no "back" option on most of the screens. If you screwed up, you had to start over from scratch.
      You mean you had to download Linux From Scratch if you decided you wanted a back button? I didn't know LFS had a back button.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by IrquiM ( 471313 )
      It's not like the installer has changed much since then either...

      but it's still easier to install than windows! ;)

      2 days ago, I installed slackware 12.1, and moved the raid from the older server... took me less than 1 hour to complete all tasks, and had a running server...

      All hail to the slackware god!

  • Clueless author (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here's my favorite quote:

    "a 2.6.x kernel is a 2.6.x kernel"

    Yeah, right. I think he has no clue about what he's talking of. Even if you take a 2.6.18 kernel that RedHat uses for their RHEL systems, and 2.6.25, there are a lot of differences. To say nothing of the first release of 2.6.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      There is that, but even within a minor release, 2.6.16 and 2.6.16.60 are probably rather different. There are also kernels with patchsets - 2.6.25 and 2.6.25-mm1 are most certainly different. Then there are the distro modifications. Some will be bugfixes, yes, but there are many drivers, supplementary features and additional architectures out there - some that don't even appear in the -mm patches, as they're too new, too experimental, too unknown, or even too different from the requirements in the kernel st
  • Just pulled it down today via the torrent and got it installed on a Dell Inspiron 600M in a matter of minutes. The previous distro on this machine was Ubuntu 8.0.4 which, though pretty good, works just a little differently than I prefer. However, Ubuntu worked very well on the machine including Compiz, wireless (via ndiswrapper), and even my volume keys. This was the bar that Fedora had to meet.

    So far so good. Compiz and wireless work fine. The volume controls don't but I can live with it for now.

    Nice thin

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by init100 ( 915886 )

      The volume controls don't but I can live with it for now.

      They are usually not defined directly after install, but are easy to define using the keyboard shortcut control panel applet.

  • Linux is much easier than Windows (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sc0ob5 ( 836562 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @08:59PM (#23412990)
    Linux is MUCH MUCH easier to install than windows, it has been for many years. No layman that I know can fully install windows XP or Vista. Let alone trying to install it on a RAID partition. Not only that but you don't need to load a drivers for your video/network/raid/sound, surely that counts as part of the install process. Also the installer installs applications as well not just the OS so you have to consider that as well. I mean if your count the number of applications that can be installed in the installation then compare it with Windows and what you would need to do to get those applications I think it's pretty clear that a Linux installation even if you have to read a small blurb about what you are doing is so much easier, quicker and superior.

    Simple fact is that if you think it's hard you are either a Windows user or an idiot or quite probably both.

    I guess "installing" Windows involves taking the newly bought HP/Dell out of the box and plugging it in.

  • For those who don't have DVD write capability.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by hmm_slashdot ( 1170681 )
      http://mirror.umoss.org/fedora/releases/9/Fedora/i386/iso/ [umoss.org] There's also a live CD.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by doktorjayd ( 469473 )
      try the livecd image.

      you can boot straight up into it, and theres a double-click 'install to hard drive' desktop icon.

      single cd image, and once installed, you can pick and choose additional packages from the public repositories.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by sc0ob5 ( 836562 )
        I have installed a lot of different distros on many lower spec machines, many of which don't have DVD drives but have CD drives and the only option to upgrade to a DVD drive comes at a significant cost when it's really not even needed. I can understand why distros these days tend to package everything on a DVD or CDs, what with a cheap and easy way to distribute the ISOs (bittorrent). But what I would like is a basic install CD that allows you to install from CD using FTP/HTTP as the source but still gives

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by JonJ ( 907502 )
          You can use the rescue disk for this purpose. Just boot with "linux askmethod" and you can install from http/ftp/nfs. "linux text askmethod" gives you a text based installer.
          • All the kiddie flames about buying DVD drives and installing over the internet presuppose that you have a drive bay available and an interest in DVD technology, also they "the angry kids" assume that everybody is willing to pay for broadband that they really don't need!

            Grow up! not everyone is a twenty-something with a technology addiction.
  • There's also this one [google.com]. It's not Netcraft, but still.

    I expect to burn in flamebait karma hell for this, but as a Fedora user I do find it sad. But not surprising.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by doktorjayd ( 469473 )
      heh,

      doesnt that just indicate more people have to do more searches for issues with ubuntu than fedora? :)

    • Notice the tagged spikes for Ubuntu, though:

      Ubuntu Security Notice - courier vulnerability (USN-294-1)
      Help Net Security - Jun 9 2006
      Ubuntu Security Notice - openoffice.org2-amd64, openoffice.org2 vulnerabilities (USN-313-2)
      Help Net Security - Jul 19 2006
      Dell, Ubuntu 7.04
      Digital Silence - May 24 2007
      Open-Xchange and Ubuntu woo small business
      PC World Magazine - Jul 19 2007
      Ubuntu update for k

    • That link is actually pretty funny. The first two hits on the right: "Ubuntu Security Notice - courier vulnerability (USN-294-1)" and "Ubuntu Security Notice - openoffice.org2-amd64, openoffice.org2 vulnerabilities (USN-313-2)"
  • I know Fedora is not the easiest to install, but instead, let's look at the other side of the matter.

    Being a Fedora user myself, I walked through the install process in about ten minutes (excl. the time of merely waiting for file extraction/copying). And everything worked fine.

    Installing Fedora is not a click-through. For new users it may appear to be more intimidating than it actually is. But don't forget the old practice of RTFM. Fedora has an excellent installation guide available from their wiki. The gu
    • Totally agree with your post, though I should put the disclaimer that I run Fedora as well. Ubuntu and Fedora are made for two different purposes so you can't judge them by the same rubric. If you want user-friendly* and stability go with Ubuntu. There is obviously a need for a Linux distro that is more appetizing to newcomers to Linux. If you want more of the bleeding-edge, Fedora is there always pushing with the new versions of software. FF3 beta makes a ton of more sense** in Fedora then Ubuntu.

      *

  • Who should use this: Experienced Linux users who want an enterprise-grade distribution or will be deploying software to Red Hat Enterprise.

    and

    Incidentally, it's a good idea to start with Fedora if you're part of a business that may want to transition to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) sometime in the future. Since work done on Fedora flows into Red Hat, this allows for a fairly simple transition from Fedora to RHEL.

    Surely if you want an enterprise-grade distro but don't want to pay for it then you go for C

    • CentOS 5 is a blend of Fedora and RHEL. Getting Fedora or CentOS to place nice in VMware depends on how the distro feels that day.
      • Eh? Unless you add optional repositories Fedora has absolutely nothing to do with CentOS. The only packages changed from upstream RHEL are done for copyright reasons (i.e. artwork).

        Not sure what problems you have with CentOS in VMware. We have dozens of production instances running just fine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by yuna49 ( 905461 )
      I built a server on Fedora (Core) 3 since we were in that period after RedHat became commercial but before there were reliable respins like Centos. I'll never do so again, primarily because of the short time period during which Fedora distros are supported.

      I think the article's author hasn't had much experience with Linux in the enterprise if he's encouraging people to start with Fedora in order to transition to RHEL. I've used Centos 5 as a desktop distribution, and it would be just fine for most workpla
  • There was a bug in the installer when using dvd version, so he had to use the text version, no real critisms.
    • The graphical install would have still worked if he had repartitioned. Still a bug, but not quite as ugly of one as TFA makes it seem.
  • It sure does seem like they made a lot of installer changes and didn't test them enough.

    I upgraded from FC8 to FC9 from a .iso in the home directory, and found it didn't mount /home during the install, causing the installation to die because I had (perhaps unwisely) used the home partition to hold some /var/cache/yum via a relative symlink, a couple of years ago. I tried mounting home and continuing, but it skipped right past the install and claimed it was done, leaving me with a GRUB prompt on reboot. I

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