JN4OldSchool
12-09-2008, 04:51 PM
I dislike the direction Fedora is going. It has always been the classic "testing" distro, where the latest and greatest core components are used and are mostly buggy to an extent but Fedora has always been wonderfully stable for those who know what they are doing. Yes, updates usually break things and there is usually a work-around within an hour. The user community is the best of the best, in both attitude and skill. Fedora users look out for each other and the forum is active and helpful, even if there are some personality conflicts going on.
That said, I walked out of Fedora 9. Not because it didnt work, it actually worked fine for me, but because of the philosophy Fedora is taking and because the developer community are a bunch of egotistical idiots that couldn't care less about their user base. They are talented and driven yet are blind as moles and there is no leadership. They all see Fedora as different things and it is really starting to show. It seems they are trying to emulate Ubuntu and create an "idiotproof" distro, yet they still want to remain cutting edge. The results are less than spectacular. The two items that finally did me in was PackageKit and locking the user out of a root GUI login. PackageKit is a worthless bit of code that really has no benefit whatsoever except supposedly someday every distro will use it hence making it a common package manager. Now wait, that sounds good, huh? But I did not say it would standardize packages between distros. No, a deb is still a deb and an rpm is still an rpm. All packagekit does is handle both. Heck, there is an rpm version of synaptic, the worlds greatest package manager, already.
Fedora users have always look at Ubuntu with disdain because they do not create a root account by default. Honestly, many Fedora users have a blind spot here and simply do not understand sudo. I like sudo and I stress that there is NEVER a need for a root account for a desktop user. I even refuse to help anyone running as root. That said, Ubuntu does allow the user to create a root account. Starting in F10 a user can no longer log into a GUI root session in Fedora! There are work arounds, in fact it is an easy fix. But...I refuse to use a distro that treats me like an idiot!!! Even worse, it is NOT a distro like Mint which is geared as point and click, plug and play, set and forget, user is idiot #1, steal them away from Windows. Noooo! Fedora is still a handful for even an average user despite the PR departments delusional, crack addict writeups.
Okay, now that I am 100% clear on where I stand...I installed F10 yesterday just to check it out. I have to admit that it left one of the best impressions of all the releases I have tried! The good: My Atheros 5007EG was recognized and worked right out of the box! A first for me, in fact, Ubuntu Intrepid is so stubborn I cant get the driver working no matter what I try. And trust me I am no novice. Even their advertised method of installing the ath5k backports package and blacklisting ath_pci will not work. So for me this is big! F10 was mechanically sound for me. This is not saying much as most Fedora releases usually are. I am just a Fedora type...ya know? Sound was perfect. I used Dangermouse's autoten package to seamlessly install all codecs and many packages without incident. Fonts were right without fiddling for the first time. All in all, a very smooth experience.
The bad: Like with every other Fedora release since FC4 the Fedora nv driver is still trash! It refuses to work with every nvidia card and chip I own! Enough is enough already guys, I am so sick of installing in 800x600 vesa! Plymouth...This is the new boot process replacing RHGB. I dont know how it is supposed to look as I get a fugly blue bar on the bottom of the screen. At least it boots though, and I hear it is an easy fix. Shoot...This is what Fedora is supposed to be about, new components. So I dont begrudge them using it. I am surprised they didnt use Grub2 also. Packagekit...Man, I hate this piece of crap. I installed and tried to invoke yum. I got a repo error. Okay, I didnt just fall off the turnip truck, I know the package manager lockup. After an hour, with no update icon or any visible sign of anything working I was beginning to wonder! After an hour and a half I finally got yum to work from the terminal, still no sign of packagekit telling me I had 768,567,987,234 packages to update...I went into autostarted services and shut packagespit off and did a quick yum install yumex. Problem solved...once again.
Overall verdict? Hey, I hold a bad grudge with Fedora and admit it. Really, this seems like a pretty good release. Within two hours I had things set up right and was happily computing away. Could I live with F10? You betcha! I would recommend anyone with a distro or two experience and not afraid to cut and paste into a terminal to try it. Me? I am happily typing this from Mint 6 RC1 specialized Xfce only with git head compiz-fusion, Intrepid and Lenny repos and fluxbox as the only other installed DE/WM. I am happy here, think I will stay. Up yours Fedora. :)
That said, I walked out of Fedora 9. Not because it didnt work, it actually worked fine for me, but because of the philosophy Fedora is taking and because the developer community are a bunch of egotistical idiots that couldn't care less about their user base. They are talented and driven yet are blind as moles and there is no leadership. They all see Fedora as different things and it is really starting to show. It seems they are trying to emulate Ubuntu and create an "idiotproof" distro, yet they still want to remain cutting edge. The results are less than spectacular. The two items that finally did me in was PackageKit and locking the user out of a root GUI login. PackageKit is a worthless bit of code that really has no benefit whatsoever except supposedly someday every distro will use it hence making it a common package manager. Now wait, that sounds good, huh? But I did not say it would standardize packages between distros. No, a deb is still a deb and an rpm is still an rpm. All packagekit does is handle both. Heck, there is an rpm version of synaptic, the worlds greatest package manager, already.
Fedora users have always look at Ubuntu with disdain because they do not create a root account by default. Honestly, many Fedora users have a blind spot here and simply do not understand sudo. I like sudo and I stress that there is NEVER a need for a root account for a desktop user. I even refuse to help anyone running as root. That said, Ubuntu does allow the user to create a root account. Starting in F10 a user can no longer log into a GUI root session in Fedora! There are work arounds, in fact it is an easy fix. But...I refuse to use a distro that treats me like an idiot!!! Even worse, it is NOT a distro like Mint which is geared as point and click, plug and play, set and forget, user is idiot #1, steal them away from Windows. Noooo! Fedora is still a handful for even an average user despite the PR departments delusional, crack addict writeups.
Okay, now that I am 100% clear on where I stand...I installed F10 yesterday just to check it out. I have to admit that it left one of the best impressions of all the releases I have tried! The good: My Atheros 5007EG was recognized and worked right out of the box! A first for me, in fact, Ubuntu Intrepid is so stubborn I cant get the driver working no matter what I try. And trust me I am no novice. Even their advertised method of installing the ath5k backports package and blacklisting ath_pci will not work. So for me this is big! F10 was mechanically sound for me. This is not saying much as most Fedora releases usually are. I am just a Fedora type...ya know? Sound was perfect. I used Dangermouse's autoten package to seamlessly install all codecs and many packages without incident. Fonts were right without fiddling for the first time. All in all, a very smooth experience.
The bad: Like with every other Fedora release since FC4 the Fedora nv driver is still trash! It refuses to work with every nvidia card and chip I own! Enough is enough already guys, I am so sick of installing in 800x600 vesa! Plymouth...This is the new boot process replacing RHGB. I dont know how it is supposed to look as I get a fugly blue bar on the bottom of the screen. At least it boots though, and I hear it is an easy fix. Shoot...This is what Fedora is supposed to be about, new components. So I dont begrudge them using it. I am surprised they didnt use Grub2 also. Packagekit...Man, I hate this piece of crap. I installed and tried to invoke yum. I got a repo error. Okay, I didnt just fall off the turnip truck, I know the package manager lockup. After an hour, with no update icon or any visible sign of anything working I was beginning to wonder! After an hour and a half I finally got yum to work from the terminal, still no sign of packagekit telling me I had 768,567,987,234 packages to update...I went into autostarted services and shut packagespit off and did a quick yum install yumex. Problem solved...once again.
Overall verdict? Hey, I hold a bad grudge with Fedora and admit it. Really, this seems like a pretty good release. Within two hours I had things set up right and was happily computing away. Could I live with F10? You betcha! I would recommend anyone with a distro or two experience and not afraid to cut and paste into a terminal to try it. Me? I am happily typing this from Mint 6 RC1 specialized Xfce only with git head compiz-fusion, Intrepid and Lenny repos and fluxbox as the only other installed DE/WM. I am happy here, think I will stay. Up yours Fedora. :)