Fedora Core 1 Review
Updated: Long, long time ago....
Prologue:
I've been a Linux user for almost a year and a half now. Throughout that whole time-span
I've had an opportunity to experiment with two flavors of this OS: Lycoris (formerly
Redmond Linux), and Mandrake. The latter became my favorite, and I dualbooted to Drake
ever since version 8.1. Only lately, however, have I fully become comfortable with using
Linux, and until recently I usually chose to boot to Win 98SE. This was not all my fault,
however. Mandrake had, and still has many faults which haltered my transition to Linux. I
still cannot fully get sound working in Drake as well as in windows; I cannot run 3d
hardware acceleration (OpenGL) in Mandrake even though it works without a problem in
Windows; and there are many other small annoyances. Leaving the flaws aside, Linux is
really a wonderful OS, it's just, as a well known figure among the community stated,
"not ready for the desktop." I agree with that statement only partially; my mom
has used Mandrake 9.0 for a few days. She got around it very comfortably after a few
hours. Checking her e-mail was not a problem, writing documents and even printing them was
achievable. Could she install it and tweak it to perfection all by herself? Of course not,
but neither could she do that with windows, which too requires work to get running
smoothly. That was with Manrdake 9.0, a year or so ago. Since then many new features arose
in linux, and new linux distributions were born. I was curious how true that statement was
about one new distribution in particular. Fedora, the Red Hat supported Linux project, has
caught my attention when I noticed several screenshots a member posted on one of the tech
forums I frequent. I particularly enjoyed looking at the BlueCurve (r) theme present
throughout the distro. Never actually running any Red Hat flavored Linux, I was getting
very interested, and after a week or two I downloaded two of the three ISO files (only 2
are required for a general desktop setup). Before I go on any further, I would like to
state that because I have never used Red Hat, I don't know which Fedora features are
imported from the RH distro and which are original from the Fedora project. I am writing
this article to evaluate the condition of the distribution as a whole, as a completely new
linux user would.
System:
I'm running an AMD 1.2GHz Athlon based system. I have two video cards sitting in my PC: an
ATI Xpert 128 running as a primary and a Diamond Virge GX/DX as secondary. I was afraid
that the two card setup might cause a problem with X because I have no monitor attached to
the Virge. I chose to leave everything as it is neverthless, just to make things more
interesting ;).
Installation:
Being too lazy to setup a new clean partition I sacrificed my perfectly configured
Mandrake 9.2 setup, a big mistake as I later learned. After placing the CD in the drive
and rebooting I was welcomed by the standard: Push ENTER for standard, F1 for
options" screen. Of course I went with the standard. "Would you like to scan
your media" message showed up, I said no. Next my hardware info scrolled on the
screen; that's when I noticed that my Virge DX was detected as the primary card.
"Damn, there'll be a problem", I though. X tried to start, failed on a first try
and then miraculously worked. YAY!!!! The setup is very straight forward, even more so
than Mandrake. It asks you about your preferred languages, what kind of system you will be
setting up: Desktop, Server, Workstation, etc. The most difficult part of the process was
the partitioning, even though there is a "Automatic" option. After selecting the
automated partitioning, since I already had my Linux partitions set up, it gave me an
option to either "Format Linux Partitions", "Allocate Free Space", or
"Format whole Drive." Not having any free space and not wanting to lose my
Windows partition, I sacrificed my beautiful Mandrake setup. The rest of the setup process
was no more difficult than pressing the "Next" button or placing "CD nunber
2 into the drive." Overall the setup process was WAY to easy. The GUI was very
eye-candied; even the mouse dropped a shadow (now that's not something I see everyday in
an OS setup). The partitioning process was the only part that required you to have some
knowledge about your system. Remember, however, people who install their own Operating
Systems are usually more technically aware than they get credit for. If you don't know how
to parition your drive you do NOT need to be switching Operating Systems right now,
believe me.
Fedora:
I rebooted and Grub presented me with my OS choices. When booting to Fedora I was
surprised not to see any graphical boot process, just the standard Kernel messages with
green [ok] on the right hand side. I have noticed a line of some modprobe errors but the
OS kept on booting. X wouldn't start again (because of my card setup), but quickly enough
an X setup box asked me whether I'd like to run the wizard to try to reconfigure X by
myself. I was presented with a very straightforward screen that allowed me to select my
REAL primary video card. Everything went smoothly from then on. I decided to reboot and
see what a "real" bootup screen looks like now that I had my cards straightened
out. Fedora comes with a nice boot screen, and a very nice First Time Wizard that let's
you set up basic options like the user. The log in screen is very nice, looks Windows
XP'ish. Default screen manager is GNome, but I am used to KDE so I switched. The BlueCurve
style is very eye-cathing IMO. Makes the OS look very professional. First thing I noticed
was that there is no mp3 support in Fedora by default, a result of some legal BS. After
downloading and manually copying several files it's possible to listen to mpeg-3 again
with XMMS. Also, my windows drives were NOT detected. It turns out in the partitioning
process one has to manually give the windows drives mountpoints, Mandrake does that
automatically. And from what I experienced GNome couldn't access my Windows partitions for
some reason, but KDE did that flawlessly. Since I am a Mandarake user I was looking for
several features. For example, if you right click on a tar file in Drake there is an
option in the menu to Decompress the file, without having to go to konsole. That feature
is missing in Fedora AFAIK. Also, the menus are less organized than in Drake, but I guess
it just depends on the user's preferences. Overall, however, Fedora worked right out of
the box, it even handled my unusual video card setup without a whine. The theme gives
Fedora a very professional and likeable look, a big plus. The only major problem I found
was that the update utility and the Add/Remove Programs utility kept on crashing on my
system for some reason, but I guess that will get corrected soon. If I wasn't used to the
several Mandrake features (and I'm very slow to adopt to new surroundings) I would have
kept Fedora Core 1 on my system. I decided to get my Mandrake back up, but I will revisit
Fedora Core 2 when it comes out soon, and maybe then I will keep it on my system.
Conclusion:
Fedora is NOT fully ready for the Desktop. Actually that statement is flawed. Let me
rephrase...Fedora is not fully ready for Windows users. It, as most Linuxes do, lacks
support for out-of-the-box internet multimedia, games, and several other features Windows
users must have. Yes, E-mail, wordprocessing, and basic features of the WWW work
(Macromedia Flash doesn't come preinstalled on Fedora), but that hardly makes a fully
operable OS. However It's possible to get "Windows" things working, but you have
to download and install programs like WineX, Mplayer-plugIn, etc. to do so. If you're
comfortable enough with Linux to play around with it, give Fedora a try, it can't hurt,
you'll only learn something new.
Back to Drake:
Let's just say that installing Mandrake 9.2 is one of the most painful things ever,
especially after having such a pleasant experience with Fedora. I forgot how much hard
work it took to get my Mandrake to operate like I wanted it too. It took 5 installations
of Drake to finally get it working, and then a lot of cursing to make it like I want it.
After I got it 90% the way I liked it, I decided I couldn't take any more, and to add to
that X server started whining and I had to re-run setup again this morning to calm X down.
In the end I don't regret installing Fedora, I just wish I had backed up Mandrake or
installed Fedora on a new partition.
