Review of Fedora 9

As promised, here it is my review of Fedora 9.

Installation
Lets start obviously from the beginning. Maybe I am too used to install an OS (as I had an average of 3 months between reinstalls in both Windows XP e Kubuntu — for Windows ME it was 3 weeks ), but I found the install process very straight forward.

It started with few text-based graphic windows with an option to check if the CD/DVD is clean from reading errors (very important since most Linux users burned these install CDs from the home computer). My install DVD passed the test, but immediately after it somehow the install program bugged out and it kept ejecting the DVD without any chance to continue the installation. The quick and dirt solution was to reboot the computer, restart the installation process from scratch (fortunately that check was just the first step, as I said) and skip the test.

CD/DVD Check

After that, the installation program switched from text-based graphic windows to real graphic windows. The various steps were the usual: the user preferred language (for both the displayed text and for the keyboard input), the hard drives set up and partitioning, the set up of the network card, and finally the selection of the packages to install (something that I always missed from Kubuntu install).

Well … I claimed to have experience with OS install … actually, during the installation I must have miss-clicked something because when the computer rebooted at the end of the install, I have been asked to do some more configuration, but the windows had a text-based graphic (the same style of the CD/DVD Check); more importantly after that I was unable to log in, neither as root nor as regular user. I had this experience a couple of time in the past even with Kubuntu. I never understood the cause of the problem, but I always resolved it with the quick (no really :-/ ) and dirt approach of repeat the installation from scratch (with the due setting to format the main partition to be sure to reset all the installed settings); fortunately the second installation worked well and upon reboot I have been able to log in for the first time to Fedora 9.

Initial Configuration
During the “original” install (I will explain later why I call it “original”) I have chosen KDE as Desktop Manager. I want to clarify something on KDE 4 before I continue (since I joked on remember to being neutral on this): personally I am not happy with the graphical changes made in this version compared to the look of KDE 3.5.x. I have to admit that my aversion is limited mainly to the task bar and the K Menu (the counterpart of the Start Menu if you are more familiar with Windows), as I find them “bloatware” (while I like the look of the actual applications).

The first thing I always do when I re-install the OS is to immediately update the entire system.

A feature I find great in Linux is the “Packet Manager” (generic name for a generic type of software, each Linux distribution has its own program with its own name); basically it is an application that act as front-end to online repositories that can provide the users with not only the updates for the system, but also for all the software installed. If you are familiar with Windows you should know about the existence of Microsoft Update, the Microsoft site that allow you to update both Microsoft Windows and all the Microsoft applications (Internet Explorer, Office, etc); a Linux “Package Manager” is conceptually similar, except from few major differences: it is not limited on the software provided by the Linux distribution vendor, but it covers all the software from any vendor and more importantly it is not limited to the updates installation, but it also cover the initial installation and the eventual uninstall.

The only limitation (that existed also in Kubuntu and I think also on other Linux distributions) is that it can be only one instance of the “Packet Manager” open at any given time. Therefore while the user is installing the updates, he/she cannot install other software. This limitation only apply for software installation through the “Packet Manager”, the old way of downloading the source, compile it and install it can allow parallel installation.

After the first batch of updates I noticed that KDE has not been update to 4.1 despite the release happened weeks ago. After some reading on various post on Fedora’s forums, I learnt that KDE 4.1 has not yet been approved for official update and to get it the user has to enable the Livna repository; in order to do that, the following command is necessary (from the terminal with root privileges):

And then from “Menu” – “Administration” – Software Sources” it is necessary to enable the above repository. Then it is necessary to run “Menu” – “Administration” -”Update System”.

Now it is time to clarify why I spoke about “original” install. I have enabled the Livna repository and I tried to apply the updates, but the process complained about some missing dependency; I tried to deselect the update packages that required that missing package and then I tried to re-apply the updates, but unfortunately my Internet connection died during the process; once I restored the Internet connection I tried to repeat the update process, but when it got half way in downloading the updates it stalled (it shown no error, but it was not proceeding no matter how many minutes I waited); of course I tried to clean the cache with the following command from the terminal:

but without avail. I then tried to reboot, but I eventually ended up to hell: somehow� upon the opening of the KDE session I got into an infinite loop where the update process automatically kept trying to resume itself, but it kept failing because of some failure to fetch the meta-data of the updates.

Now, a good user would have reported the bug (and I should also made some screenshot to post), but for the sake of brevity I rushed to re-install the whole system. This time with Gnome as default Desktop Manager.

After that all the updates proceeded smoothly; I have been able to get KDE 4.1, but for the moment I prefer to keep using Gnome, at least until I finish the system configuration and in the following days I will give to KDE 4.1 a second try.

Once I finished install all the updates, I tried to install the NVIDIA drivers. They are not available through the default enabled repositories, but they are present on the Livna repository (Livna for Fedora Core 9 – x86_64 – Base). Once installed, it is necessary a reboot.

A more complicate thing was the installation of the Adobe Flash plugin.

First it is necesssary to configure the official Adobe’s repository for the “Package Manager” by downloading the file “adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm” from http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ (select YUM for Linux) and installing it with the following command from the terminal:

After that it is neccessary to use the following command to install the Adobe Flash Plugin:

Then for enabling the plugin in Firefox:

The users of the normal 32 bits of Fedora 9 are done. Those that use the 64 bits version need further steps. The first is to enable the Livna’s repository (see above). Then it is necessary to install “ndiswrapper”:

And finally the i386 version of libflashsupport and pulseaudio-libs:

And then restart Firefox.

I am having some issues with Wine since World of Warcraft is crashing as soon as it is started; I will investigate on this.

I found some problem in updating the location of the Document, Pictures, and Videos folders (as I keep them on a separate location from the /home folder); actually I found that the bug is similar to the one I found on Kubuntu 8.04, so basically it is necessary to open the file “$HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs†with any text editor and make the changes.

Conclusion

Beside the Wine problem and some eye-candy details (screensaver, desktop background, menu’s items order, etc.), all my system is configured and working.

Off course it takes days to have an idea on how Fedora 9 is working and I may to used to use a Linux distributions, but from what I can see in this minutes and including the experience I had with Kubuntu I can tell that once the difficulties of the installation and the first configuration are be simplified, Linux will be totally ready for the desktop market.

Links
Fedora Project: http://fedoraproject.org/.