HCSuperStores Posted July 5, 2004 Posted July 5, 2004 I know there's a crowd of TCH folks out there that have found a haven in Linux. I made the switch back about 4 months ago myself. The stability and functionality and software that you attain is just really top-notch. Thumbs Up My expereince is pretty limited to most. I've done the Knoppix CD, which got me thinking that Linux was much more than just a server based OS. I recommend it for those who just want to peek at Linux without doing anything to thier current hard drive or OS. Just download Knoppix, burn it as an image CD, and boot it. There are many "live" cd's that you can check out now besides them too. Anyway ... I've been using Mandrake 10 Community for a while. It's been good. Stable as a rock. But there have been some hardware compatibility issues that have plagued me. The sound card issue that I have finally discovered isn't completely covered unless you buy the retail version. I just thought that was kind'a cheezy. I'm just about ready to start putting together 2 new AMD systems and I will be needing to put a new operating system on them. I thought I'd give FC2 a fry&try. Any feedback on the pros and cons of FC2? Installation? Use? Compatibility? I would kindly ask the the M$ fans not post their "I've never had a problem" replies. This post isn't a slam on M$, or their users. It's an exploration on FC2. Thanks! Quote
stevevan Posted July 5, 2004 Posted July 5, 2004 Just installed a new hard drive and dualboot with FC2 and windoze. Install was a piece of cake and went very smooth! Been using it all w/e and haven't found any problems yet! A lot faster and just as easy as Microsuck (IMHO). Good luck with your install! Quote
borfast Posted July 5, 2004 Posted July 5, 2004 Well, if you're planning on dual-booting Linux and WinXP, here's a couple of things to take into account: 1 - I know there are Linux distributions that can repartition your hard drive without deleting the existing data. I believe Mandrake is one of them but I'm not sure. I don't know about the other distros but I guess that's easy to find out. I never bothered about that because I repartitioned my HDD with Partition Magic a long time ago and I never touched the partitions again. If you have Partition Magic, use it, unless you're sure the Linux distro you chose will be able to do it for you without any problems. 2 - If you chose Fedora Core 2 (which I recommend, although I also feel tempted to recommend Mandrake 10 for new users), be aware that there is a possibility of thrashing your Windows instalation. I was lucky enough that my instalation was safe but there's been lots of people having problems. I couldn't remember where I had read about this but I searched fedoraforum.org and found the answer: http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15712 or, the direct link: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-May/msg00908.html I've been using Fedora 2 since it came out and I find it nice, although I do think the quality is dropping a bit. Red Hat Linux (which I've been using since version 5.0) was quite good, although some hardcore linux geeks don't like it because it's a "mainstream" linux distribution and try to make life easier for the end user. But when Red Hat Linux 9 was terminated and Fedora Core replaced it (actually, it didn't replace it at all, Red Hat still controls Fedora Core, they just don't have so many responsabilities in it... ), I think there are some things that are being overlooked. That's not a problem if you know how to do certain stuff but... well, I'm babbling here, so I'll just shut up Give it a try. If you can, try Mandrake 10, too (the official release, not the community edition). Then decide which one you prefer Quote
HCSuperStores Posted July 5, 2004 Author Posted July 5, 2004 My intention is just to run a Linux only box. I have a couple of boxes in the make and one old box that I'm trying to load FC2 on now. I had MD10C loaded, and it seemed fine and responsive. So far I've had just one minor difficulty that has made it a major pain on this old box. It doesn't seem to acknowledge the serial mouse that's conected that MD10C did. I haven't done any looking on the FC site or forums yet, but I plan to. I'm just doing a "test install" just to get the look and feel. I'm using the Gnome v.s. the KDE that I've been using with MD. Oh, one major thing. FC2 is maxing out the CPU on this old box. It's a K2 running at 366mhz. Yes, it's old but MD worked well. It has 256MB ram. Is FC that much more demanding on the CPU or is it Gnome? Not doing anything the processor goes between 80% and 100%. That seems odd to me still ... Any info on the CPU nature of this beast would help. Oh, and yes, I do plan to fry&try MD 10 Official too. Same idea there ... see how it is different and the same. Thanks for all the info and suggestions! woooot Quote
borfast Posted July 6, 2004 Posted July 6, 2004 I don't know about the mouse but the generic driver should work... As for the CPU usage, I know Gnome is pretty heavy on the CPU but so is KDE, so I don't you're having those problems. Try using KDE with FC2 and see if your CPU is still used as much as with Gnome. If so, Gnome (or some software Gnome uses) is the source of the problem. Otherwise, it may be something FC2 is loading. Even better: Load up System Monitor (Applications -> System Tools -> System Monitor) and see which process is eating up the CPU. Quote
HCSuperStores Posted July 7, 2004 Author Posted July 7, 2004 Well, my experiment with FC2 wasn't that encouraging. My first attempt on an old box delivered conflicting results, especially with maxing out the PCs CPU. Which I couldn't find out why as no particular process seemed to be hitting it so hard. So I dropped it. I received the last of the few parts need to assemble 2 new Athlon XP 2000+ boxes (my first assemble from scratch). (a few hours pass) I decided to try FC2 on one of the new boxes. I liked the way it started. The install program keeps the questions to the minimum if you want. Installs fast. Once I was up I was almost instantly greeted with the need to upgrade. I like the fact that it tells you this and that upgrading was seemingly uneventful, although it took multiple steps. The final step moved me to the 2.6.6..... core. Here's were things didn't go so well. After the install I had 2 ways to boot ( the old core or new one). I thought I'd be just dumb if I chose the old core. At boot-up time evertyhing seemed normal, until I tried to get on-line. Something happened that dissabled my internet connection. Everything I tried would not enable it. If I booted the old core, I was on-line instantly. I tried for some time, but no go. I gave up and gave MD 10 Official a try (I've used MD 10 Communinty). They've cleaned up the install process and the upgrade process also worked as smoothly. Everthing was great. No problems. So, for now, I'm sticking with MD 10 Official. I gave FC2 a try because it seemed to receive from Raul, who I consider to have the TCH corner on Linux knowledge. But later comments from him, and my expereince, leave me to believe that FC2 might have a few issues left to work out. Any comments to share on this would be appreciated! Quote
Etanisla Posted July 7, 2004 Posted July 7, 2004 A key thing to remember about FC2 is that it is a "a proving ground for new technology" for RedHat. Those things that work here will wind up in RHEL later. Fedora, then, is the bleeding edge. Having said that, I can run it mostly fine. I haven't gotten my Clie to sync with it yet, but an answer was just posted on the Fedora List. But if you're looking for something to work out of the box, yeah, Mandrake. I'll admit, the bleeding edge is sometimes my ego on an (as yet) unsolvable problem. Quote
HCSuperStores Posted July 7, 2004 Author Posted July 7, 2004 Oh yeah, one other weird thing. On a download, the numbers were all weird. The speed was all over the place and so were the accumulated download totals. I wasn't aware that FC2 was more of a Beta (maybe Alpha) release of RH. If there wasn't a major bump, like internet access, I'd join up and test it out. But the lack of an internet connection would make that difficult. I'll keep the disks around and see what develops here, on their site and on the future possibility of machines on this end. Quote
borfast Posted July 7, 2004 Posted July 7, 2004 (edited) Well, Fedora Core isn't exactly beta os alpha quality software. It is stable software (supposedly, at least ). The big difference is that Red Hat wanted to test new stuff in the real world and they probably were also tired of supporting their "home" version of Linux (Red Hat Linux 9 was the last one), so they solved two problems with just one move: they handed over Red Hat Linux to "the community" but they still control it almost 100% (yes, it's stupid and yes, lots of people were mad at Red Hat because of this move), so now they don't have the responsability to provide support for Fedora Core, because it's a "community project" but since Red Hat still controls the project almost 100% they can make anything they want, like testing bleeding edge software in the real world and see how well it will work on their Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Unfortunately, FC2 does have some serious problems. Starting with Red Hat Linux 8 or 9 (can't remember which one), Red Hat decided to remove MP3 support from XMMS (Linux's "Winamp" equivalent) and other media players, due to *possible* licensing problems and Fedora Core 2 was no exception. No other Linux distribution worries about this and none ever had any problems but hey, Red Hat, that's fine, no problem, I'll just download the xmms-mp3.rpm package double-click it and... I said "double-click it".... oh, wait... yeah, I forgot, in FC2 you can't install RPM packages simply by double clicking them, just like you did in RH8, 9 and FC1 because someone forgot to set it up to do so... For me, this is not a real problem, I actually prefer to install RPM packages from the command line but for a new user who doesn't know how to do that or doesn't know how to set up Gnome/KDE to open RPM packages with the package manager, he/she will be in trouble! But perhaps this is a nasty bug that has already been solved. And look, the Up2Date icon is flashing with a red exclamation dot! It means there are new updates available! I right-click it, select "launch up2date", enter the root (admin) password and I'm presented with a nice, easy to use wizard that helps me update my system with just a few steps. I click next and it starts downloading the new packages' headers... done. I click next and I select... err... wait a minute, now it says there are no updates available? But just a minute ago, the tooltip over the up2date icon said there were like 5 updates available! Well, I'll give it a another try later on. Now let's surf the web for a bit. Mozilla is our only available browser (unless you chose to install KDE and Konqueror), so I open it and go straight to Mozilla Firefox webpage and download it. While it downloads, I might as well go watch some Happy Tree Friends cartoons (happytreefriends.com). Err... where's the site?? Oh crap, I forgot, because of *possible* licensing issues, Red Hat decided not to include the Flash plugin with FC2... well, I guess I'll have to install it. And while I'm at it, I might as well install Java, too, because... yes, you guessed it, because due to possible licensing issues, Red Hat decided not to include it in their distribution. Well, after installing all this stuff and playing around for a while, I decide to give another try to the update tool. This time the available updates list is not empty and I select them all. I click next and it starts resolving the dependencies.... and it keeps resolving the dependencies... yes, it crashed. I have to kill the app and start all over again. I guess you got the message. I can use FC2 because I know how to fix all these nasty "bugs" but if I was a novice user, I doubt I would want to keep it as my main OS. But even I am getting tired of having to constantly fix things Red Hat overlooks or forgets... If I wanted to have to compile half or all of my system, configure it all by hand, etc, I would have chosen Gentoo or Linux From Scratch. Well, time to shut up. What started as a simple comment, ended up as a micro-review of Fedora Core Edited July 7, 2004 by TCH-Raul Quote
stevevan Posted July 7, 2004 Posted July 7, 2004 I can relate to some of the issues. But being a relative *nix noob, I just figured it was part of the learning curve...which I have no problem with. I mean, ya gotta start somewhere, right? (Still haven't figured out the sound card issue yet, but I'm still looking and reading help files and forums!) I guess I must have been the "odd one" in the bunch. My install went pretty flawless with no problems. Been using it all since last weekend and haven't seen it hiccup once. I've even connected up to my DSL (haven't tried the modem yet) with no issues and it seems to be running faster than Windoze. Just my $.02! Quote
HCSuperStores Posted July 9, 2004 Author Posted July 9, 2004 It's all good, right? Well, Raul, you described some of my frustrations. It's not very noob friendly. Not that it has to be, but the number of bugs I ran into weren't that impressive. I'm more of a "release it when it really works" kind of a guy. So if a piece isn't working very well, don't release it. Save that for the beta testers if they are willling to work through the issues. I would probably rather NOT have the apparent ability to do automatic updates and not rely on that functionality. Otherwise, it starts to look more like a M$ distribution of Linux. And that wont go over well with the community! I think for now I'll keep using MD 10 Official. They've got a quality project going as far as I can tell and everthing seems to work right off the CDs. Time to get cracking I guess! Thanks for all the info! It's always very helpful. Quote
borfast Posted July 9, 2004 Posted July 9, 2004 (edited) That's the reason why I suggest Mandrake over Fedora for new people. And quite frankly, the main reason for me to keep Fedora is because it has huge software repositories that are constantly refreshed with new and updated packages. To be honest, I don't know if Mandrake has such things but if it does, I think I'll be switching to mandrake, if FC3 doesn't get better... Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention one other thing that *really* bothers me in Fedora / Red Hat: no pre-compiled NTFS kernel module! Mad!!! Mad!!! Once more, because of possible licensing issues... blargh!! Every other distro includes NTFS modules in their kernels, why doesn't FC include it?!? It makes me recompile the kernel just to enable NTFS and access a Windows filesystem! Fortunately, I always take the chance to remove unnecessary drivers and modules and make the kernel even faster Edited July 9, 2004 by TCH-Raul Quote
stevevan Posted July 10, 2004 Posted July 10, 2004 Curious...do you think mandrake would work on an older laptop (P333 Gateway)? Quote
borfast Posted July 10, 2004 Posted July 10, 2004 Well, I have MDK10 Community Edition working on an old Compaq Presario 1200 series (AMD K62@400MHz)... it's quite slow but it works... If you simply want to use the command line, then it will work as a charm but if you want to load Gnome or KDE, then I'd say it will drag itself a bit Quote
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