Fedora Core 3, test 2
Gentoo is gone, long live Fedora.
The Gentoo experiment is done. I ran it mostly to be running the same OS on the Intel and SPARC machines. Since I’m selling off all the SPARC stuff (anyone wanna buy an Ultra 1/170E?) I don’t need to keep the OS the same. I also got very tired of the whole “I want to install this, so now I must watch 1,200 lines of compiler stuff go by.” I did that in the 80s and 90s, it doesn’t interest me now. I’ve built X11R4 more times than I can count, I’d rather run the binaries they produce. The whole idea of “USE flags, only compile in what you need” didn’t work for me. I’m a clutterhound on my laptop: if it can be there, then chances are I might need it someday so I’ll install it. My USE flag was 9 lines long, so I compiled everything in. Bah.
The cluster at work runs Fedora and I’ve run RedHat in various versions since 1997, so I grabbed the latest beta of Fedora Core and threw it on. Impressions so far:
- Evolution 2.0 kicks serious ass. I like the new “task” buttons at the bottom, as opposed to the clunky old method of listing them in the folder list.
- X.org 6.8.1 works very well on the D600’s Radeon Mobility M9. Using MergedFB with an external LCD gives me a 2680×1050 desktop. I still can’t get the attached LCD to run at anything other than 1400×1050, but I’m not complaining. As a benefit, 6.8.1 will now turn off the LCD light when the screen blanks, handy for saving power when on battery. It also has the new “DynamicClocks” support, to slow down the video processor during less intensive tasks. More battery savings foo.
- GNOME 2.8 is amazing. There’s too much to list here that is goodness. Volume manager, keyring, NetworkManager, HAL/DBUS (Ok, not GNOME exclusive), vino, just GNOME it.
- SELinux is enabled in enforcing mode by default in this beta. I’m running the ‘targeted’ profile, which only enforces policies for certain daemons and processes. I might turn on ’strict’ mode later and see what breaks.
- Firefox is included. No more adding it first thing after install.
- udev is enabled by default (no more static /dev)
- and too much more to list.
I still have to do the typical gotchas specific to this laptop: it needs ndiswrapper to use the Dell internal wireless, the smartcard reader is still useless bits, and hot plugging the CD/DVD into the bay doesn’t work. Battery life is excellent tho, much better than when gentoo was loaded on.
Long live Fedora.
Fedora? Ugh. Maybe it’s just me, but haven’t had good luck with any version of RHL/Fedora since RHL 7.3. Every time I try one of their slick GUI admin tools it barfs Python all over the screen. Last week I loaded FC3 onto an old laptop for a postdoc. Cardbus Ethernet/modem didn’t work because the slot didn’t have an IRQ, FC3 didn’t find the sound chip, misconfigured the panel resolution, etc. etc. All fixable, but I’m tired of fixing FC. Since I couldn’t very well stick the guy with Gentoo, I decided to try SuSE, which I’d never used before. Loaded up 9.1 Personal and was amazed. Everything just worked, first time. YaST whips a monkey’s ass– wireless and PPP config was a snap. Downloading packages was easy and trouble-free; no ambiguous “dependency errors” that FC2 used to give me. Anyway, it earned the ultimate praise from me: if I had to pay money for a Linux distro, SuSE would be it. Hopefully Novell won’t ruin it.
I haven’t loaded SuSE in a lone while. I’ve got a coy of NLD (Novell Linux Desktop) at work somewhere that I need to give a try. Personally, I’ve never liked YaST, it felt too much like SMIT from AIX.
I’ll admit, I skipped FC2 on the cluster in the lab. It felt like it needed to bake a while before they released it. I am annoyed at the whole “Fedora Extras” situation, but for the most part I’m happy with it. The other big plus it has is that FC very closely resembles Red Hat Enterprise, which is probably what we’ll roll out.
I’m also keeping an eye on Ubuntu. I loaded it on my machine for a while, but like FC2, it needed to cook a while. Switching to the ‘debian’ mindset wasn’t difficult, but it took some doing. My problem is that the packages it shipped with were old and caused issues on my laptop.
Ah, the wonders of Linux distributions: don’t like one, try another flavor!
Ah, SMIT. The thought of that little runner doing a face plant on an ABEND still makes me smile, though usually at inopportune times
I’m not a GUI admin fan, but I was just impressed that YaST actually worked.
Between FC3 and SuSE, I tried loading the current Debian release. I figured it was so old it might actually run decently on a PII/366. After I scrounged up a paper tape reader and got woody installed, I decided that GNOME 1.4 and KDE 2 was a little too retro. I think Debian should forget about doing releases and just make debs. Let the Knoppix and Ubuntu guys take care of bundling it all up purty.
For my lack of money, Slackware is still the best distro going. Hope Pat pulls through.
hi, i havent found any other way to contact you so this will have to do
i hope thats ok…
i’ve just ready a post on sourceforge that you wrote about connecting an ipaq to your dell via bluetooth and had a question…
i’ve followed everything you stated and was able to connect to my laptop from my ipaq but am unable to view anything on the net, get email, etc.
you mentioned “a simple static ifcfg file automatically configures it when the iPAQ connects”; what config are you talking about? i seem to recall i need to set up my laptop in some way to allow “through” connections, is that what you mean?
any help would be greatly appreciated.
cheers,
reagen