After suffering ever-degrading support for my aging Fedora Core 4 installation, I decided to see what the latest fedora release had to offer. So, I downloaded the six ISO images, burned the CDs and proceeded to start the installation.
I chose a fresh installation and resigned myself to re-configuring the computer. The installation was uneventful, though I did burn a few coasters. I highly recommend that you use the disc testing program to make sure your discs will work. It would really suck to get halfway through an install and not be able to continue due to a bad installation media. My installation used all six discs, so unfortunately you’ll need to burn them all.
The installation went smoothly, with just about everything except my monitor detected properly. I have a very strange monitor which is actually for an MRI machine, so this was expected. Changing the monitor to generic LCD 1800×1600 seemed to do the trick.
I also had a couple of problems: Firefox didn’t have flash, sound didn’t work and the screensaver was just a blank screen.
I have the AMD64 version installed, and apparently the default installation included *both* the AMD64 and i386 versions of firefox. I uninstalled the AMD64 version of firefox, and everything worked.
Then I went to work on fixing sound. It turns out that whenever you install fedora and have a SoundBlaster Audigy it mutes the sound. So after a trip to alsamixer, sound worked.
Fixing the screensaver was easy enough,
yum remove gnome-screensaver
yum install xscreensaver-base xscreensaver-extras xscreensaver-gl-extras
seemed to do the trick.
It took a little fiddling, but now that all of those issues have been resolved, it looks like a very solid and pretty distribution. I especially like the desktop effects with wobbly windows which look like goo when dragged. Far from mere eye candy, these effects help usability as well. Throwing the mouse into the top-right corner smoothly shows every window which you can then select –much like expose does on OSX. I find this feature is one of the most innovative usability features I’ve seen in any OS. I’m not aware of any OS that utilizes one of the five easiest points to hit with the mouse (the four corners of the screen and the pixel directly under the cursor) to do something useful. Hopefully, the other three corners will soon be utilized.
I’ve also noticed things seem much snappier than under FC4. Windows pop up and appear with alacrity and disappear with a graceful fade-out. Very nice.
While it’s not a giant leap from my old FC4 install, I feel that this upgrade has been well worth the minor hassles.
January 27th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Dear god, I can’t believe you Redhat people actually go through such nonsense with every upgrade! It’s quite silly you know. If you’re too afraid to use Debian, at least run Ubuntu for a few weeks and you’ll realise what you’ve been missing!
January 29th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
I use Debian on my server, and prefer something newer on the desktop. Keeping this system up to date is actually rather easy, which is more than I can say about the previous releases.
February 19th, 2007 at 3:08 am
Ubuntu is rather nice, I must say. I used Debian from 1998 until late last year, when I switched over to Ubuntu (Xubuntu specifically). The “root-less” administration is a great feature IMHO!
February 19th, 2007 at 5:57 am
Man scrape, is there anything you *don’t* do? Fly jets, install linux… It’s not fair I tell you.
February 19th, 2007 at 9:30 am
I don’t play guitar. But, I do play banjo. And no, I can’t play “Dueling Banjos” from Deliverance.
February 19th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Another word for me is “overextended.”
February 19th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Yes, but does your F16 run linux?
February 20th, 2007 at 1:13 am
Actually, it’s funny. I used to joke that it would be time to stop flying when I saw a BSOD on one of my jet’s displays. (F-15E) Well, I haven’t seen a BSOD, so still good to go, but computer problems are not rare! Performing a “soft CC reset”, followed by a “hard CC reset”, and maybe an MPDP/AIU reset is not uncommon. “Turn it off, then back on” is a pretty standard way to fix things.
March 11th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I used Ubuntu for about three days. The vim editor was a piece of crap. Every time I used the arrow keys it gave me A,B,C, or D. When I searched the web I found many sources that said install vim-full because apparently Ubuntu is lame enough to install vim-tiny instead. Just when i thought I found the solution I tried the vim-full install but my computer stated that I could not install vim-full because vim-tiny was installed.
I also didn’t like the default permissions in Ubuntu and prefer the slight challenge of Fedora 6. Overall, the contributors of the Fedora project are doing something right and I will continue to use their collaborative effort on my machines.