Fedora getting some bad reviews

[Chong Yu Meng]

Actually, the review was no surprise to me. The writer was merely 
rehashing the same problems that I suspect many thousands of Red Hat 
users have encountered before --and fixed. It's just that the further 
you go from the Fedora/RH core functionality, the more problems you will 
have because of the "bleeding edge" stuff such as glibc and gcc in 
recent RH releases.

Examples :
-> Java plug-in not working -- you'll need the JSDK or JRE compiled with 
gcc3.x. And if you're using the Java SDK, you'll need to add the 
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 or LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 as an environment variable
-> Macromedia Flash -- the one on the Macromedia website didn't work for 
me, I had to get the one on the Rutgers University site
-> rpm crashes -- I've never used the graphical rpm package manager. 
Always used the command line. Yes, it does get corrupted from time to 
time, but it's easily fixed by deleting the *.db files and allowing rpm 
to rebuild them
-> nVIDIA drivers -- too bad she did not persevere. I have the drivers 
on my system and they make everything look so great ! Yes, even the fonts.

RH9 is actually pretty good. Takes a fair amount of effort, but it can 
work quite nicely. There are a few things I like better about RH than 
Win2K running on my laptop (only for office use):

1. RH loads faster than Win2K, after I loaded a bazillion patches in 
Win2K -- 2 patches in the last 2 days !
2. RH has crashed only once since I loaded it about 2 months ago -- it 
did not lock up, and only the X Server crashed
3. Most importantly, there is a bill proposed in Singapore's parliament 
to allow snooping software to be installed on all computers in Singapore 
to monitor activities. I don't think it would work on Linux systems. 
Unless and until they make it mandatory for all computers in Singapore 
to run Windows, they'll have to pry my Linux PC and my right to privacy 
from my cold dead hands !

Regards,
pascal chong



Collins Richey wrote:

>On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:06:47 -0600 Michael Hipp <Michael at Hipp.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>The first couple of reviews of Fedora were pretty fawning, but others 
>>are starting to show up. Here's an example:
>>
>>http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5111
>>
>>Gives the impression that Fedora needed more time in the oven.
>>
>>Which isn't fatal. RH9 works great and it's no hardship to stick with it 
>>  for a while.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>If my memory serves me correctly, fedora is using the same philosophy that RH
>used in the past.  RH releases (at least until very recently) have always needed
>more time in the oven.  
>
>  
>